n4ku wrote: 
This is great news !

Justice Kennedy wrote his own separate opinion stating that his biggest problem with all of this is that the part of the HC regulation this deals with was written by an unelected and unaccountable bureaucracy.

 

Breaking: SCOTUS holds govt can’t require closely held corps w/ religious owners to provide contraception coverage.

Under the Hobby Lobby decision, the government can pay for the coverage itself so that women receive it.

Breaking: SCOTUS limits power to compel contributions to public employee unions but does not forbid it. The decision says that union bargaining fees cannot be imposed on employees that are not full public employees.

The above from @SCOTUSblog on Twitter, which is NOT the official blog of the Supreme Court.

Bumping this for those who wish to debate the rulings coming down today.

Be nice.

I announce natural persons to arise; I announce justice triumphant; I announce uncompromising liberty and equality; I announce the justification of candor, and the justification of pride. I announce that the identity of These States is a single identity only; I announce the Union more and more compact, indissoluble; I announce splendors and majesties to make all the previous politics of the earth insignificant. I announce adhesiveness—I say it shall be limitless, unloosen’d; I say you shall yet find the friend you were looking for. I announce a man or woman coming—perhaps you are the one, (So long!) I announce the great individual, fluid as Nature, chaste, affectionate, compassionate, fully armed. I announce a life that shall be copious, vehement, spiritual, bold; I announce an end that shall lightly and joyfully meet its translation; I announce myriads of youths, beautiful, gigantic, sweet-blooded; I announce a race of splendid and savage old men.

 

 

Walt Whitman 

 Zep wrote: 
The Feds are keeping a close watch since our former County Executive plea bargained his way down to only doing 7 years for corruption. All the other charges were dropped.

    I got turned down on a couple RFP's in my own county in Md. but got the contract for handing most of Fairfax County, Va. 's recyclables.

 I even had a recycling center in Ward 6 in DC for awhile, but couldn't deal with Nadine Winters. -edit, googled for nostalgia and it's now a ~600K condo. It used to be a historic firehouse.

 bokey wrote: 
In PG (and many other places), it's the placement of some high denomination bills that do the trick. 

 Zep wrote: 
As a resident of PG, I'd say it's well past time.

If I can ever get back to work I don't understand why I wouldn't be given minority preference on any county RFP's. If 26. 6 % isn't a minority and 65. 4% is, somebody flunked math.

 hippiechick wrote: 
Abigail Fisher was denied admission at U-Tex and sued. She argued that the Texas admission standards goes farther than the standards allowed under Grutter, a case decided by the court in 2003. In that case, which involved the University of Michigan Law School, the court decided that race could be a factor in deciding admissions, so long as the decision was aimed at creating a diverse student body. 

Grutter was decided by a different court (Rhenquist, O'Connor, etc). Alito and Roberts are now on the court. Also, Kagan recused herself due to her work as Solicitor General on Fisher. With Fisher being the appellant, the case will require five votes to reverse, which is likely: Robert, Alito, Scalia, Thomas, and Kennedy, the likely swing vote. A 4-4 decision upholds the court below, and the decision stands. 
 

This could change the future of affirmative action

Fisher v. University of Texas: Supreme Court Takes Up Affirmative Action

hippiechick wrote:
Justice Ginsburg is on the Supreme Court. She IS power.

Justice Scalia must resign

 hippiechick wrote: 
MONEY $$$ is mother's milk to politics. Free Speech rights ya know.  You have all the right to spend gazillions on getting your candidate elected so he/she can favor your interests.  To hell with mounting debt, health care, unemployment...you know those little social problems that can be just waived away.  We're doomed!

Occupy the Super PACs

Justice Ginsburg knows the Citizens United decision was a mistake. Now she appears to be ready to speak truth to power.

 romeotuma wrote:
What more basic example of freedom of speech is there in a democracy than advocating for or against a candidate in an election? What the McCain-Feingold monstrosity did was limit that freedom based on who was talking.

That can't be anything but wrong. And Justice Stevens should know better.

Yes, I dislike government seizing power it doesn't deserve. The power to control who gets to speak up about who runs the government, say.

The Supremes could have made some ridiculous hair-splitting decision that preserved that power, but it would have had to shred the first amendment to do it. Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech...unless someone is speaking too much. And we'll let you know how much too much is. After all, we're Congress! Who better to decide who's had enough to say about Congress?

The "unchallenged" bit was a reference to that last point. When any faction in a democracy is muzzled their opponents get to tell the story while they have to sit there and take the abuse.

 ScottFromWyoming wrote:
Let's assume this actually is a problem (not just a gripe) for the sake of argument. Why do we have to solve this problem with yet another law?

A quick refresher on what a law is: do this or fail to do that and armed men will take you to jail. If you won't go they can kill you.

So let's say you get a law passed that prohibits saying anything about any political contest without identifying yourself and the people who paid for the message. Stand up in a public park and give a testimonial and you're an upright citizen participating in democracy, put up a poster on a phone pole without your name and address on it and you're a felon, enemy of the state, off to prison.

Let's say I do that—post an opinion online on who's fit to be elected anonymously. Here, for instance. Just to prove a point.

Arrest me. For a political crime. Now I'm a political prisoner.

Is that how we want the power of the state used?

Oh, but that's different! No money was spent. Sure it was, just not by me. And so what? Why does free attention from a biased press not count, but an ad one column away in the same paper does?

This ridiculous dodge of phony organizations doing hit pieces is itself a byproduct of limits on campaign contributions. The fact that they are anonymous is not why the ads are so dishonest; they are dishonest because they think lying will work. They are anonymous because the donors don't want who they are to color the campaign, or they don't want their political views to to make them enemies.

As one of, what, two or three Democrats in Wyoming I think you can understand that motivation. Try supporting right-to-work legislation in Chicago, or gay marriage in Mississippi.

If anonymity is a problem make it an issue in the campaign. Far better than having the district attorney prosecuting his opponent for campaign law violations.

 Lazy8 wrote: 

Yes, Colbert can mock the decision... (which was not necessarily the "correct" decision—  I see it as much murkier than any easy absolutes...)

no, Colbert cannot lead a movement to overturn the (simultaneously incorrect and) correct decision—  it will take Congress to do that...

I don't think Colbert is misleading anybody about the decision...  don't be such a Disneylander and use some common sense...  here is criticism of Citizens United expressed by Justice Stevens—

"At bottom, the Court's opinion is thus a rejection of the common sense of the American people, who have recognized a need to prevent corporations from undermining self government since the founding, and who have fought against the distinctive corrupting potential of corporate electioneering since the days of Theodore Roosevelt. It is a strange time to repudiate that common sense. While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this Court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics."

The Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision by the Supreme Court was a direct response to the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act passed by Congress in 2002, which prohibited corporations and unions from broadcasting communications that mentioned a candidate within 60 days of a general election or 30 days of a primary...

I'm with the ACLU always so I am not of any absolute opposition to Citizens United, and I didn't particularly like the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act when it passed, but we don't need international corporations buying our politicians, either...

I understand your phobia of the government, but corporations are equally fearsome if they control the government...  none of this is easy or simple, and it is good that we are discussing it, and it is good that Colbert is providing a valuable service to the citizens of the USA rather than just making his money off of Dick jokes...

it's ironic that you are dismissive about the article that I pasted on my last response, because the concerns for civil liberties are all caused by ominous government empowerment...

and what are you referring to when you say, "But you don't have the power to do so unchallenged"?  Whoever said I did? 

 

Ultimately we can all live with the Supreme Court's decision, I guess. But isn't the real issue the fact that these dollars can be anonymous? That a corporation or private person with a grudge can put huge amounts of money into a SuperPAC, and that SPac can say and do things on behalf of a candidate that the candidate would never get away with? We make candidates say "I'm Jack Sprat and I approved this message," which is stupid to have to say that but it cut down on the outlandish tall tales a campaign could say about the other side, and if one side is outspending the other 20 to 1, what chance does the underfunded guy have against a falsehood.
 
I'm stopping mid-thought because I don't know wtf I'm talking about. But to me, Colbert's not just ranting about the huge amounts of money being spent (and in some cases it's clearly more than is necessary to get the message heard), he's ranting about the fact that it can be more anonymous and full of half-truths and innuendo and the candidate can say "not my ad, I didn't approve it, I have no idea who told them to say my esteemed opponent is a closet toad-licker. "