1. #CourtPacking: On Feb 5, 1937, #FDR announced his #courtpacking plan to deal with a conservative Supreme Court that was acting as a super-legislature to overturn the desperately needed recovery acts that were attempting to save America from total economic collapse.
2. Congress' attempts to fix the economy were repeatedly stymied by the imposition of a judicial activist theory of "substantive due process" that created a right of contract that trumped all Constitutionally granted legislative power. By 1937, FDR had finally had
3. enough and announced his #courtpacking plan that would increase the number of #SCOTUS justices to as many as 15. The reaction was similar to what we are seeing from the Conservatives who this time seek to turn the US into an extremist white supremacist Christian theocracy.
4. In reaction to FDR’s threat, the Court's own political forces caused two Conservatives to switch sides and the issue of #courtpacking was avoided. Soon the economy recovered just in time to face the threat of global war brought on by the same white supremacist/fascist forces
5. that are the political foundation of the current GOP along with a belief that socially conservative Christianity should become the US state religion.

Most lawyers first study Constitutional Law in law school. Not me. I took it as an undergraduate at
6. @UmassAmherst in my two-year whirlwind run to get the 120 credits needed for my long-delayed BA. Taught in the Socratic method by a renowned constitutional scholar, the class had few undergraduates, made up of mostly PhD and masters candidates.
7. Like most Con Law classes, it started with Judicial Review.

SCOTUS' power to overturn an act of Congress, known as the power of judicial review, is not in the Constitution. It was created out of whole cloth by a very clever judge. When I first read Marbury v Madison,
8. I thought it was nonsense. I viewed the power of judicial review by the SCOTUS over an act of Congress as just judge made-up gobbledygook. A power-grab by the political minority Federalists.

Under FDR's threat to pack the Court, in 1938, the #SCOTUS finally relented when two
9. Conservatives switched sides. A criminal case came before the court to seek to overturn an act of Congress that criminalized selling adulterated milk. In the Caroline Products case, penned by another former @UmassAmherst student, the court
10. set forth the proper limit of judicial review in its famous footnote No 4 that has since been my guide.

Fun Fact: that justice, Harlan Fiske Stone, had to leave @UmassAmherst and head across town to @AmherstCollege after Stone and the dean got into fist-fight.
11. I’m ashamed to say that has always endeared him to me. 😎

The use of the Court to take away rights is contrary to everything I believe about the exercise of legitimate judicial power. For those of us concerned about the fall of American liberty to an extremist
12. white supremacist based Christian theocracy, Congress still has the power to pass national reproductive rights legislation that removes the issue of abortion from the power of state legislatures to control. Just like adulterated milk.
13. @senatemajldr McConnell has been engaged in using rules to pack the court. Where was the outcry by the Conservatives when they were getting their way? Silence.

I believe in a political theory of the Court that predicted that, like the two justices in 1938, CJ Roberts would
14. cross over and become part of a liberal majority. The hardcore theocratic Catholic ideologues like Thomas, Alito and Kavanaugh are unlikely to switch.

So to protect First Amendment and the secular foundation of US Constitution, we must add justices and the Court
15. as an un-elected political force will end. We are not going backwards on rights. That road is a one-way street towards increasing liberty that a court packed with Catholic ideologues would destroy. Mitch McConnel started the court packing and
16. @JoeBiden @KamalaHarris can end it. Once the @GOP confirms another Catholic religious extremist, the die will be cast. If the GOP wants to stop court packing, they must first stop packing the court. @POTUS @SenateGOP @senatemajldr @LindseyGrahamSC @SenTedCruz @TeamCornyn

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More from @TimInHonolulu

11 Oct
1. Will @SenateGOP religious extremism bring on a period of overt religious sectarian conflict because beliefs can be made the subject of attacks and ridicule by a Catholic #SCOTUS? If Christian right need not respect others' religious beliefs, why should others respect theirs?
2. Will Catholic belief in the Holy Trinity and virgin birth, LDS beliefs in Latter Day Saints, Evangelicals' belief that prayer is maters over good works, become the subject of overt sectarian attacks? Why shouldn't people who don't adopt the Evangelical, Mormon,
3. Catholic view of life be subject to the others' religious beliefs and overt sectarian hatred but Evangelical, Mormon, Catholics, not expect it in return? It's easy. It's in the Constitution stupid. @CatholicBishops @SenateMajLdr @SenMcSallyAZ @SenatorCollins @SenCoryGardner
Read 5 tweets
10 Oct
1. The US should not pull out of any conflicts until the election is over. The sacrifices of our brave men and women and their families and loved ones should never be in vein. Lincoln said it best:

"With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as
2. God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan – to do all which may achieve and cherish
3. a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations."🇺🇸✌️

Fight Song via @youtubemusic
@USArmy @USNavy @USMC @usairforce @USCG @NSAGov @CIA
Read 4 tweets
10 Oct
1. The nitwits who answered Trump's call for armed insurrection are likely scrubbing their online lives but it's too late. @FBI has evidence that can turn this armed terrorist threat into an army of disarmed criminal defendants in shackles held without bail on 20 year felonies
2. The #Kremlin infested @NRA has set up the mother of all gun-nut round ups. The honest loyal gun owners have nothing to fear. I'll support more rational #NFA regulations for the loyal gun owners but full background checks and no more gun-show loophole are certainly coming.
3. The armed seditious conspirators need to run and hide but it won't save them if they don't stop their criminal conduct. Just go home and put your guns in your safe and save your family.

Fun Fact: I came up with the settlement of the #RubyRidge civil case while on vacation in
Read 4 tweets
9 Oct
1. When I saw the inorganic Reopen movement quickly evolve into armed threats in #Michigan, starting around April, its apparent coordination with a similar Reopen push from Trump made me suspected then it was coordinated. Whether Kochs or GRU, it was a crime and it was obvious.
2. For decades the extreme right had been nurtured by the GOP with money from ideologically driven donor base that first produced movements like the Tea Party using Astroturf events on the DC Ellipse. This had now evolved in something more akin to an armed insurrection advanced
3. by Trump-supporting white supremacists. When I saw it, I knew they had crossed the line and that the @FBI would get them. I think Trump may be going off on Barr because Barr didn't leak the Michigan investigation to him and his storm troopers are terrified.
Read 5 tweets
8 Oct
Here is my post that was contemporaneous with the events in the federal complaint. I haven't seen the state complaint.
Reading the complaint and listening to the high respiratory rates of the people at the presser, it tells me that this is just the tip of an iceberg and the big one will sink the Titanic.
Something odd about the case got me to look. I don't know WDNY practice, but usually federal charges are made in an Art 3 docket that has "cr" designation. That means it is assigned to a US district judge who went through Senate confirmation under Art. 3.
Read 5 tweets
8 Oct
1. Trump's admittedly untrustworthy doctor says Trump has not had a fever for days. Does that evidence Trump has been sick longer than we currently were led to believe? Don't most people have a fever for at least a week?
2. The Fever That's So Common With COVID-19 Tends to Linger — Here's What You Can Expect popsugar.com/fitness/how-lo… via @POPSUGARFitness

If he has been infectious since say, last Monday, it could explain the large scope of the @Whitehouse hot zone. Also might explain why they
3. put Trump on the experimental drugs usually given to the most severe cases and always for people on supplemental oxygen. How long was Trump really on oxygen? Conley just can't be trusted. We must presume for some time.
Read 5 tweets

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