The Ennead Awards: Nine Justices, Nine Prizes
Well, folks, before the arguments to the Supreme Court on Prop 8 and the Defense of Marriage Act are erased from your memory tapes to make room for “Thrift Shop” (clean version only, please!), we present the First-Ever Ennead Awards. There are — conveniently — nine categories, to wit:
Most Willfully Clueless Award: To Justice Antonin Scalia, for his remarks that sociologists were in disagreement about the effects of gay and lesbian parenting on children. OK, they’re not. The most one can say is that more evidence would be helpful, but this position is usually taken by those who are trying to avoid the implications of the studies that do exist — and show that kids do just fine across all measures when raised by same-sex parents. It might be that Scalia was sending out one of his increasingly high-pitched dog whistles to the far right, a sonic treat that was prominently featured during his otherwise-inexplicable excoriation of the Obama Administration for not doing enough to deal with illegal immigration. But it might also be that, once again, the opera-loving oenophile just didn’t do his homework. As Maureen Dowd pointed out, he didn’t even seem to know how many states have full marriage equality. (He might have just been posing, though.) And last year, he seemed to lament the suggestion that he should actually read the Affordable Care Act before deciding its constitutionality. Try that in your job.
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Best Performance by an Actor in a Fantasy: To Chief Justice John Roberts. When the Justices agreed to hear the case, some of us hoped that they would finally take up the issue of whether discrimination based on sexual orientation should be judged by what the Court calls “heightened scrutiny.” It doesn’t look like the Court’s going to do that. In fact, I doubt they’re even going to get into the vast equal protection problems at all. And one reason for their declining to do so was voiced by the Chief Justice, who suggested that gays and lesbians don’t need the suspect classification designation that’s reserved for groups that lack political power. According to Roberts, the reason same-sex marriage laws have passed is because of our powerful lobbying. Then he added:
As far as I can tell, political figures are falling over themselves to endorse your side of the case.
OK, this is a valid point (and one I made, in a somewhat different way, in this Slate piece). But here’s the much more persuasive response of Roberta Kaplan (representing Edie Windsor, the DOMA plaintiff):
The fact of the matter is, Mr. Chief Justice, is that no other group in recent history has been subjected to popular referenda to take away rights that have already been given or exclude those rights, the way gay people have. And only two of those referenda have ever lost.
[A]nd until 1990 gay people were not allowed to enter this country. So I don’t think that the political power of gay people today could possibly be seen within that framework, and certainly is analogous — I think gay people are far weaker than the women were at the time [the Court found women to be a “suspect class.â€]
Just to make sure no one else might claim this award, the Chief Justice also expressed mild incredulity that the 84 Senators who voted for DOMA might have been motivated by a dislike of lesbian and gay people. Sustaining this particular fantasy requires ignoring the contribution of our next award winner…[1. Justice Roberts would also have won the “Oops!” Award if the Academy had recognized the category. At one point, he let slip the obvious point that Congress wasn’t really concerned with uniformity in enacting DOMA, but in something else: “Do you think Congress has the power to interfere with the [oops!!]…to not adopt the state definition….”]
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Best Audiobook Reading Performance: To Justice Elena Kagan. Her sparring with Paul Clement, who was trying to defend the indefensible DOMA, was devastating. When Clement kept insisting that the real purpose of DOMA was to ensure uniformity, she confronted him:
JUSTICE KAGAN: Well, is what happened in 1996 — and I’m going to quote from the House Report here — is that “Congress decided to reflect an honor of collective moral judgment and to express moral disapproval of homosexuality.”
Is that what happened in 1996?
MR. CLEMENT: Does the House Report say that? Of course, the House Report says that. And if that’s enough to invalidate the statute, then you should invalidate the statute.
Yes, it does. And yes, you should.
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The Lactose-Intolerance Award: To Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who delivered this dairy product:
It’s — it’s — as Justice Kennedy said, 1100 statutes [that confer federal advantages], and it affects every area of life. And so he was really diminishing what the State has said is marriage. You’re saying, no, State said two kinds of marriage; the full marriage, and then this sort of skim milk marriage.
Well, we know what she thinks of DOMA. But I don’t want to milk the point any further.
I mean, take a state that really does nothing whatsoever. They have no benefits, no nothing, no nothing.
Anything but that!
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[To a flabbergasted Charles Cooper]: “And you might address why you think we should take and decide this case.” (Really? Now? Over at Slate, I offered a possible reading of this statement.)[T]here is an immediate legal injury…and that’s the voice of these children. There are some 40,000 children in California, according to the Red Brief, that live with same-sex parents, and they want their parents to have full recognition and full status. The voice of those children is important in this case, don’t you think?
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John Culhane is the co-author of the new book, Same-Sex Legal Kit for Dummies. He is a law professor who writes about various and sundry topics, including: disaster compensation; tort law; public health law; literature; science; sports; his own personal life (when he can bear the humanity); and, especially, LGBT rights and issues. He teaches at the Widener University School of Law, and is also a contributing writer for Slate.
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New York Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan heard arguments in court Tuesday morning without the jury present after prosecutors in District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office accused Donald Trump of violating his gag order ten times, via posts on his Truth Social account.
Judge Merchan did not rule from the bench, but is expected to announce his ruling possibly as early as later Tuesday. Prosecutors asked for Trump to be held in contempt, and outlined four possible responses. Merchan refused one response but agreed three were possible.
Among them, Merchan might fine Trump and issue a stern warning that could threaten jail time if he violates the gag order in the future.
From the bench, Merchan had directed attorneys to create a timeline of events to show if Trump was reacting to what the ex-president’s attorneys called “attacks.”
“We’re gonna take one at a time, otherwise it’s going to get really confusing,” Judge Merchan said to Trump lead attorney Todd Blanche, as Lawfare managing editor Tyler McBrien reports. McBrien noted the judge “wants to get the timeline of these posts, reposts, and replies clear.”
RELATED: Fox News Host Suggests Trump ‘Force’ Court to Throw Him in Jail – by Quoting Him
Trump’s attorneys appeared to suggest if his posts are “political” they should not be subjected to the gag order, which bars Trump from making “public statements about known or reasonably foreseeable witnesses concerning their potential participation in the investigation or in this criminal proceeding.”
“Blanche says that the witnesses are making money, documentaries, TV interviews about Trump, all while Trump is gagged and threatened with jail if he responds,” McBrien also reported. “Merchan wants to get into what was actually said rather than interpret and ‘read between the lines.'”
Blanche earlier had insisted Trump was aware of what the gag order requires.
“‘Just to set the record very straight and clear: President Trump does know what the gag order’ allows him to do and not do,” MSNBC contributor Adam Klasfeld reported.
One of the larger issues discussed appears to be Fox News segments made by host Jesse Watters. One aired hours before then-juror number two asked to be excused, saying they no longer felt they could be impartial.
MSNBC’s Katie Phang posted this exchange between the judge and Trump’s lead attorney:
“Now, Merchan asks Blanche about what Jesse Watters, in fact, said.
Blanche: No.
Merchan: “So your client manipulated what was said and put it in quotes?
Blanche: I wouldn’t say it was a manipulation.
Merchan: This isn’t a repost at all. Your client had to type it out. Use the shift-key and all.”
It did not go well for Trump and his legal team.
At one point Judge Merchan told Blanche, “You’re losing all credibility.” McBrien reports when Merchan said that, “there was an audible gasp from the press.”
Former U.S. Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal weighed in:
Very very ominous for a judge to say Trump’s lawyer has lost all credibility with the court. https://t.co/yAKk5HzFby
— Neal Katyal (@neal_katyal) April 23, 2024
“This isn’t quite like watching a full blown car accident, but it’s certainly like watching a fender bender,” McBrien also noted.
“This is going very badly for Trump already,” reported Courthouse News’ Erik Uebelacker. “Judge Merchan is losing his patience with Blanche, who can’t seem to prove that any of Trump’s attacks are ‘responses.'”
Attorney George Conway went further: “Blanche is flailing. This is painful to watch. Merchan is cutting him to shreds.”
Continuing, Conway wrote (not in quotation marks) Merchan said: “I’ve asked you several times to show me the post that the defendant was responding to. You haven’t done so once.”
He called the judge’s remark “BRUTAL.”
READ MORE: ‘Rally Behind MAGA’: Trump Advocates Courthouse ‘Protests’ Nationwide
“Basically, Blanche is pretty much arguing there’s a ‘running for president’ exception to the gag order that has been specifically directed at the man running for defendant,” Conway adds. “Merchan now getting pissed at Blanche’s unresponsiveness and evasiveness.”
Klasfeld also characterized the exchanges as “brutal.”
“Merchan says he’s going to ‘reserve decision on this,’ after brutal arguments for the defense.”
Trump has been criminally indicted in four separate cases and is facing a total of 88 felony charges, including 34 in this New York criminal trial for alleged falsification of business records to hide payments of hush money to an adult film actress and one other woman, in an alleged effort to suppress their stories and protect his 2016 presidential campaign, which could be deemed election interference.
Image via Shutterstock
Republican U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake is promoting a conspiracy theory suggesting Hillary Clinton wants to assassinate her. Her remarks came just one day before she lost her attempt to have the Supreme Court review what some have called her conspiracy-theory fueled lawsuit about electronic voting machines.
“Lake, who filed the lawsuit during her failed campaign for governor in 2022, challenged whether the state’s electronic voting machines assured ‘a fair and accurate vote.’ Two lower courts dismissed the suit, finding that Lake and former Republican state lawmaker Mark Finchem had not been harmed in a way that allowed them to sue,” CNN reported Monday.
Also on Monday Law&Crime reported that when she filed her lawsuit, a Dominion Voting Systems spokesperson “rejected Lake’s cybersecurity claim, telling Law&Crime it was ‘implausible and conspiratorial.'”
Democracy Docket, founded by top Democratic elections attorney Marc Elias, called it “the end of the road for a conspiratorial lawsuit,” and Lake and Fincham, “election deniers.”
READ MORE: ‘Old and Tired and Mad’: Trump’s Demeanor in Court Detailed by Rachel Maddow
Lake, a far-right conspiracy theorist who has yet to concede the 2022 election, which she lost to Democrat Katie Hobbs, has a history of pushing exaggerated and baseless claims.
On Sunday, as MeidasTouch Network reported, Lake promoted an old, anti-Clinton conspiracy theory but twisted it to try to make it appear she was in danger from former U.S. Secretary of State and former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
Lake on Newsmax listened to a clip of Secretary Clinton calling Trump’s fondness for Russian President Vladimir Putin a “bromance,” and saying the ex-president is “just gaga over Putin, because Putin does what he would like to do: kill his opposition, imprison his opposition, drive, you know, journalists and others into exile, rule without any check or balance.”
Then Lake promoted a thoroughly debunked conspiracy theory by responding, “Oh, boy. Oh, that’s really rich coming from a woman like Hillary Clinton, who’s, how many of her friends have just like, mysteriously died or committed suicide?”
“I mean, honestly, that’s rich of her. What President Trump wants is to root out the corruption and deliver our government back to We The People and she looks very nervous. She talked about her friend Mark Elias, Mark Elias has meddled in in his and his cohorts have meddled in the elections.”
She called Democratic policies, “destructive, deadly and frankly, in some ways, diabolical,”and added, “it’s almost comical that Hillary Clinton is talking about Trump wanting to kill his opponents.”
READ MORE: ‘Election Interference’ and ‘Corruption’: Experts Explain Trump Prosecution Opening Argument
“I just want to say as I’m as I’m speaking about this topic, I want everyone out there to know that my brakes on my car have recently been checked and they work. I’m not suicidal. And Hillary, I don’t mean any harm to you. Please don’t send your henchmen out to me. We understand what you’re about. ”
Watch below or at this link.
.@HillaryClinton is talking about Trump wanting to kill his opponents.
We call that projection.
While on the subject of Hillary, I want everyone out there to know that the brakes on my car work just fine. I’m not suicidal.
I’m very happy to be alive & working to save Arizona… pic.twitter.com/Mhj84g5bVu
— Kari Lake (@KariLake) April 22, 2024
READ MORE: ‘Rally Behind MAGA’: Trump Advocates Courthouse ‘Protests’ Nationwide
MSNBC top host Rachel Maddow, inside Manhattan’s Criminal Courthouse on Monday declared Donald Trump appeared “old and tired and mad,” as she delivered observations about the ex-president on trial for 34 counts of falsification of business records alleged in the alleged pursuit of election interference to protect his 2016 presidential run.
Trump “seems considerably older, and he seems annoyed. Resigned, maybe, angry. he seems like a man who’s miserable to be here,” the award-winning journalist told MSNBC viewers Monday afternoon.
“I’m no body language expert,” she conceded, “and this is just my observation. He seemed old and tired and mad.”
The New York Times’ Susanne Craig, from inside the courthouse Monday morning reported: “Trump is struggling to stay awake. His eyes were closed for a short period. He was jolted awake when Todd Blanche, his lawyer, nudged him while sliding a note in front of him.”
The Biden campaign was only too happy to pick up and report Craig’s observation, adding “feeble.”
A feeble and tired Donald Trump once again falls asleep in court pic.twitter.com/ShcnxYI8jH
— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) April 22, 2024
Former Obama senior advisor David Axelrod, pointing to his piece at The Atlantic, wrote of Trump: “He has charmed & conned, schemed & marauded his way through life. He was bred that way. But the weariness & vulnerability captured in courtroom images betray a growing sense in Trump that he could wind up as the thing his old man most reviled:
A loser.”
Watch Maddow’s remarks below or at this link.
Maddow: Trump seems old and tired and mad pic.twitter.com/kQuHrBo4v1
— Acyn (@Acyn) April 22, 2024
READ MORE: ‘Election Interference’ and ‘Corruption’: Experts Explain Trump Prosecution Opening Argument
‘Election Interference’ and ‘Corruption’: Experts Explain Trump Prosecution Opening Argument
‘Old and Tired and Mad’: Trump’s Demeanor in Court Detailed by Rachel Maddow
‘I’m Not Suicidal’: Kari Lake Pushes Hillary Clinton Murder Conspiracy Theory
‘Cutting Him to Shreds’: ‘Pissed’ Judge Tells Trump’s Attorney ‘You’re Losing All Credibility’
‘Cutting Him to Shreds’: ‘Pissed’ Judge Tells Trump’s Attorney ‘You’re Losing All Credibility’
‘I’m Not Suicidal’: Kari Lake Pushes Hillary Clinton Murder Conspiracy Theory
‘Old and Tired and Mad’: Trump’s Demeanor in Court Detailed by Rachel Maddow
‘Election Interference’ and ‘Corruption’: Experts Explain Trump Prosecution Opening Argument
‘Rally Behind MAGA’: Trump Advocates Courthouse ‘Protests’ Nationwide
News1 day ago‘Rally Behind MAGA’: Trump Advocates Courthouse ‘Protests’ Nationwide
News24 hours ago‘Election Interference’ and ‘Corruption’: Experts Explain Trump Prosecution Opening Argument
News21 hours ago‘Old and Tired and Mad’: Trump’s Demeanor in Court Detailed by Rachel Maddow
News18 hours ago‘I’m Not Suicidal’: Kari Lake Pushes Hillary Clinton Murder Conspiracy Theory
News59 mins ago‘Cutting Him to Shreds’: ‘Pissed’ Judge Tells Trump’s Attorney ‘You’re Losing All Credibility’