Bennet Kelley Profile picture
Jun 27 17 tweets 11 min read
1/ My starting point for #SupremeCourt jurisprudence since 2000 is a telling quote from Joel Klein's "The Natural" in which a Republican Senator concedes to Clinton that Republicans don't believe in government, but they love power.
2/2000: #BushvGore, the Supreme Court stays the Florida recount with any opinion justifying the stay and then reverses the Fla. Supreme Court recount order as violating the Equal Protection Clause in a per curiam opinion that can't be cited as precedent.
3/2002: President Bush signed the #McCainFeingold campaign finance reform law, which foolishly included a restriction on the use of independent expenditures for commercials 60 days before an election.
4/ 2010: In #CitizensUnited, that provision was challenged. Rather than issue a narrow ruling that kept intact a law the court upheld in 2003, Chief Justice Roberts engineered a 5-4 ruling that invalidated all restrictions on independent expenditures. newyorker.com/magazine/2012/…
5/ 2006 - Congress overwhelmingly reauthorizes the #VotingRightsAct of 1965 (following 21 hearings and a legislative record that exceeded 15,000 pages) that required areas with a history of voting discrimination to submit election law changes to the Justice Dept for approval.
6/ 2013: #ShelbyCountyvHolder. In a 5-4 ruling, Roberts ignored a 15,000-page legislative record to declare there was no longer a need for DOJ pre-clearance opening the gate to voter suppression laws. bennetkelley.wordpress.com/2013/06/29/the…
7/ Despite the fact that the 2006 #VotingsRightsAct extension passed the Senate 98-0, once the #ShelbyCounty decision gave the green light for voter suppression in the age of Obama, Republicans abandoned support for voting rights altogether. washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/…
8/ 2016: Senate Republicans refuse to consider the March 2016 nomination of #MerrickGarland to the #SCOTUS claiming it is too close to the November 2016 presidential election and that the issue should be left to the voters. washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost…
9/ In August 2020, the Republicans renominate Donald Trump for President without adopting a platform. The party had abandoned any pretense of being interested in policy or government, but instead merely cared about #power and holding on to it.
10/ 2020: The Republican Senate confirmed Amy Coney Barrett ONLY SIX DAYS before the presidential election. Barrett, Trump's third Justice, had previously called for #RoevWade to be overturned and to end its “barbaric legacy”. brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/20…
11/ With Barrett's confirmation, she became the third Supreme Court justice who had a role in supporting the Republican fight in #BushvGore where #power was the guiding principle. msnbc.com/all-in/watch/c…
12/ Barrett gave the court an anti-Roe majority which allowed the court to ignore at least 49 years of precedent to reverse Roe simply because they now had the votes. #Dobbs #RoeVWade
13/ Justices Breyer, Kagan, and Sotomayor explain what was evident in #BushvGore and is also too transparent in #Dobbs: "#Power, not reason, is the new currency of the Court's decisionmaking."
14/ Remember when the GOP cried for judicial restraint? Guess again, these unelected legislators for life are not done. In #Dobbs, Justice Thomas calls for a reconsideration of decisions finding a right to privacy, invalidating sodomy laws, and protecting gay marriage.
15/ Justice Gorsuch is dying to invalidate the #ChevronDoctrine in which the Court gives deference to an agency's interpretation of the statute it enforces. Doing so would enable the Court to undo environmental regs, a goal of Gorsuch's mother.
16/ The decision in #Dobbs teaches us that this activist Court will abandon #staredecisis and ignore precedents if they have the votes to do so and it favors the Republican party and their base - simply because they have the #POWER and they can.

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More from @bennetkelley

Jun 15
1/Tonight, for the 17th time in the last 50 years, the #StanleyCup champion returns to defend their crown. This time, the #TBLightning are going for that rare feat - a three-peat and #dynasty status.
2/Three-peats and dynasties themselves are relatively rare. Below is a tour of the dynasties from the last 50 years starting with the 1974 Oakland #Athletics completing a three-peat with a 4-1 win over the #Dodgers with this home run.
3/ In 1979, the #CanadiensMTL completed their second four-peat, winning 4-1 over the New York Rangers. #StanleyCup #Dynasty
Read 13 tweets
Dec 1, 2020
1/ #GivingTuesday #COVID19 Thread
The global pandemic has been devastating and we can help on Giving Tuesday. One way to help is to give to a COVID charity that is giving grants to an array of communities impacted - such as #GlobalGiving.

globalgiving.org/projects/coron…
2/ If your goal is to assist those on the front lines, Americares has provided more than 34 tons of PPE to health care workers on the front lines of the outbreak to facilities in 40 states. #GivingTuesday #COVID19 #Americares americares.org/emergency-prog…
3/ In the United States, #COVID19 has disproportionately impacted #NativeAmerican communities. The First Nations Development Institute has distributed over $2.5M in grants and provided food, PPE and water. firstnations.org/covid-19-emerg… #FNDI303 #GivingTuesday
Read 9 tweets
Jun 20, 2020
1/ A conservative friend of mine argued at various times and in different contexts (including racial preferences or affirmative action), that slavery ended in 1865, he had nothing to do with it, so why don't African-Americans "just get over it." #RaceMatters
2/ Yes, slavery ended in 1865 and while it contributed greatly to the wealth of white America, African-Americans were given nothing in return as the government reneged on its promise of 40 acres and a mule after the end of the Civil War. #RaceMatters pbs.org/wnet/african-a…
3/ Compare this to the Homestead Act of 1866 which transferred an area of land in the west the size of CA and TX (10% of all US land) to whites who need only improve it for 5 years and file a deed. aeon.co/ideas/land-and… #RaceMatters
Read 25 tweets
Jun 6, 2020
1/ Thread: How we got here (in brief).
2014: #MichaelBrown killing sparks #Ferguson unrest, #EricGarner killing triggers #BlackLivesMatter #icantbreathe protests. #HowWeGotHere
2/ 2015: President #Obama's post-Ferguson task force releases a report on 21st Century Policing outlined specific improvements that can make policing more just, safe, effective and constitutional — and work better for everyone. nytimes.com/2020/06/04/opi… #policereform #HowWeGotHere
3/ Fall 2016: Colin Kaepernick kneels for 1st time, #Trump says he should find another country. nfl.com/news/donald-tr… #KaepernickKnee #HowWeGotHere
Read 11 tweets
Jun 5, 2020
DC #MayorBowser is invoking the 3rd Amendment to force out of state Natl Guard troops to leave the city. It is most obscure of Bill of Rights and only one never considered by Supreme Court. Only one appeals case and it found NG troops are soldiers. #3rdAmendment
The absence of any case law directly construing this provision presents a serious interpretive problem and little illumination can be gleaned from the debates of the Constitutional Convention. Engblom v. Carey, 677 F.2d 957 (2d Cir. 1982). #dc #3rdAmendment
So if Natl Guardsmen are soldiers, is mere presence in DC sufficient or must they be on city property? businessinsider.com/third-amendmen… #dc #3rdAmendment
Read 4 tweets
Jan 31, 2020
1/ @SenToomey , it is hard to believe that is has been nearly 40 years since you and I made our first trip to Washington as part of #CloseUp_DC in February 1980, where for a week we would see Washington from the inside.
2/ @SenToomey, on our first night, the keynote address was given by former Congressman Brook Hays (D-AR), who lost his seat in Congress because he chose the right side of history in the battle over integrating Little Rock's Central High School. washingtonpost.com/archive/politi…
3/ @SenToomey As he spoke that night, I remember how proud Congressman Hays was of the fact that President Kennedy said that "If I write a sequel to 'Profiles in Courage,' you will be Chapter One."
Read 9 tweets

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