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From: Tom Jensen, Director of Public Policy Polling To: Interested Parties Subject: Americans Don’t Trust Trump on Supreme Court Vacancy; 65% Want Hearings Date: 5-9-16 A new national Public Policy Polling survey finds Americans don’t trust Donald Trump to nominate a new Supreme Court justice, and would much rather have that decision in the hands of either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton. Beyond that, there is growing support for filling the seat this year and failure to do so could result in strong backlash for Senate Republicans this fall. Key findings from the survey include: -Only 38% of voters nationally...

The 120-nation Nonaligned Movement headed by Iran accused the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday of violating international law by ruling that nearly $2 billion in frozen Iranian assets can be paid to victims of attacks linked to the country. A communiqué issued by the NAM’s Coordinating Bureau follows an Iranian appeal to the United Nations last week to intervene with the U.S. government to prevent the loss of their funds. Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif called the ruling an “outrageous robbery, disguised under a court order.” The NAM, comprising mainly developing countries, called the U.S. waiver of “the sovereign...

Snooping on a tablet computerImage copyrightThinkstock The US Supreme Court has approved a rule change that could allow law enforcement to remotely search computers around the world. Previously, magistrate judges could order searches only within the jurisdiction of their court, often limited to a few counties. The US Department of Justice (DoJ) said the change was necessary to modernise the law for the digital age. But digital rights groups say the move expands the FBI's hacking authority. The DoJ wants judges to be able to issue remote search warrants for computers located anywhere that the United States claims jurisdiction, which...

Dr. No seems to have become Dr. Yes. Kind of. Tom Coburn, the former Republican senator from Oklahoma known for his often contrarian views, said Wednesday that Judge Merrick B. Garland should get a vote by the Senate Judiciary Committee, going against his old colleagues who have staunchly opposed even considering President Obama's Supreme Court nominee in a presidential election year....

On Saturday night, HBO debuted its account of the 1991 Clarence Thomas hearings. While it was billed as “meticulously researched” by the leftist screenwriters and Hollywood executives behind the film, Confirmation rewrites history to advance the myth that Anita Hill was a victim of sexual harassment by Clarence Thomas. The fictional “docudrama” that twists and omits key facts, and in some cases, outright makes things up, is yet another attempt by the left to establish through persistence what could not be established through evidence. At the end of Clarence Thomas’s confirmation hearings, polling done by Pew and others showed that...

In 2014, President Barack Obama signed 12 executive orders directing various agencies in the departments of State, Justice and Homeland Security to refrain from deporting some 4 million adult immigrants illegally present in the United States if they are the parents of children born here or legally present here and if they hold a job, obtain a high-school diploma or its equivalent, pay taxes and stay out of prison. Unfortunately for the president, the conditions he established for avoiding deportation had been rejected by Congress. In response to the executive orders, 26 states and the House of Representatives sued the...

“Lawfully” does not mean “legally.” Welcome to what Solicitor General Donald Verrilli told the Supreme Court on Monday is the “immigration world.” Or, more accurately, welcome to the new world President Barack Obama — through his solicitor — is asking the Supreme Court to join him in declaring. […] “Aliens with lawful status under the [Immigration and Nationality Act] are here lawfully; their presence therefore is not a basis for removal,” said Obama’s solicitor in his brief. “By contrast, mere ‘lawful presence’ occurs when the Executive ‘openly tolerate[s] an undocumented alien’s continued presence in the United States for a fixed...

Don't tell anybody what I want to do. If they find out you know that they'll never let me through. Just so you know, when a case reaches the Supreme Court and the Justices deadlock, that means the lower court ruling stands. That was bad news last month when it meant California teachers unions got to continue their shameless extortion racket. But sometimes it’s good news, and that appears to be the case when it comes to Obama’s executive amnesty. If The Hill’s sources are reading the Justices correctly, a lower court ruling halting the practice appears to be generating...

It's a bad sign when you get halfway through a presidential campaign with no sages wagging their heads sagaciously as they cite Lord Acton. No wonder the politicians get away with so much. Their consciences have not had to reconcile with the most profound political sagacity of modern times. To wit: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." The great English historian delivered this pronouncement in a letter to his friend Bishop Mandell Creighton. I'm not aware of any instance in which the words have suffered intellectual rebuff -- probably because they illuminate such occasions as the Supreme...

Do not let 'Justice' Kagan manipulate you again, like she did on Obamacare. Do NOT let a President create Law. That is not his position. Do not 'tweak' his Law or you will be creating Law and that is not your position either! Congress didn't act because we already have Laws to deal with immigration. It's just that this Administration isn't bothering to follow the Law. And they sue States who try to enforce the Laws on the books. Our immigration system isn't broken, it is simply that the IMMIGRATION LAWS AREN'T BEING ENFORCED!

The impassioned election-year debate over President Obama’s immigration executive actions lands Monday before a short-handed Supreme Court, where justices will consider a fundamental question: how much power does the president truly have? The justices plan to hold 90 minutes of oral arguments dealing with Obama’s bid to spare millions of illegal immigrants from deportation. A coalition of states calls it an executive power grab. "President Obama's executive action is an affront to our system of republican self-government," said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, who supports those states. But the White House contends the president’s authority is clear, and the policies humane...

This case was denied by Justice Roberts. The DC Madam's attorney refiled and asked Justice Thomas to hear it. Justice Thomas has held it over for conference.

Tough luck, pastafarians. You'll just have to go back to being annoying, dressing like pirates, and pretending to worship a wad of noodles without any of the protections of a real religion As Dan and I have written several times, militant atheists are so obsessed with a thing they don’t believe in - namely faith - that they spend much of their time thinking up creative ways to mock it. This makes them feel clever, superior, and better than the neanderthals that believe in a higher power. If they actually got their wish, and religion became a thing of the...

Not everyone is a fan of putting Merrick Garland on the Supreme Court and we’re not just talking about Senate Republicans here. Though the complaints are a bit veiled, it sounds as if Supreme Court Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor isn’t exactly leading the Garland cheering section either. In an address she delivered at the Brooklyn School of Law, Sotomayor made an oblique reference to Garland when she bemoaned the lack of “diversity” on the bench and why it would be important to judge prospective nominees, at least in part, on factors other than their judicial bona fides. (Time) U.S....

In Evenwel v Abbott, the recent Texas legislative apportionment case, the plaintiffs argued that the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution requires that the boundaries of legislative districts be drawn so as to equalize numbers of CVAPs (“Citizens of Voting Age Population”), not total population. A unanimous Supreme Court rejected the argument and upheld Texas’ use of total population. The Court refused to go further, and left open the question whether Texas could, consistent with the Constitution, use CVAP if it so chose. Two concurrences (Thomas and Alito) emphasized that the choice of population base -- total numbers or CVAP...

the U.S. Supreme Court .. issued an injunction blocking the EPA from implementing its Clean Power Plan, which would end America’s use of coal, its cheapest and most abundant source of electricity. ... Western Colorado’s economy is so dependent on coal. It employs more than 2,000 people and generates $58 million in federal and state royalties, $28 million in private landowner royalties, $4.5 million in reclamation funds, and pays $28 million in property, severance, and sales taxes — all of it on the Western Slope. EPA has never tried anything so unpopular in its 45-year history, and that is saying...

How strange. The brass-knuckle, bare-fisted, no-holds bout to determine who will succeed the late Antonin Scalia as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court has been throwing off sparks at every turn. But I can remember wondering what all the fuss was about when he handed down his lone dissent in Morrison v. Olson decades ago. It was in the summer of 1988 and Antonin Scalia was still a junior member of the court. But both political parties were united in deploring his youthful indiscretion, and so was popular opinion. For that was after the notorious Saturday Night Massacre...

Speaking at the University of Chicago Law School on Thursday, President Barack Obama was asked by an audience member how his nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court would bring “diverse characteristics” to that court. In answering, Obama argued: “I have transformed the federal courts from a diversity standpoint with a record that’s been unmatched.” He also said: “But at no point did I say: ‘Oh, you know what, I need a black lesbian from Skokie in that slot. Can you find me one?’” …

President Obama defended his pick of Merrick Garland for the Supreme Court on Thursday, acknowledging he was a “white guy” but adding that he was an “outstanding jurist.” Obama defended the diversity of his federal appointments during a conversation in Chicago, Illinois, about nominating Garland. However, Senate Republicans have largely been steadfast in saying they will not hold hearings for him, since it’s an election year. Obama contended he had appointed more African Americans, Native Americans, Asian Americans and LGBT judges than any president before. He quipped he never felt he needed a “black lesbian from Skokie,” saying that was...

At the school where he used to teach constitutional law, President Obama declared today that "in some ways the judicial process is a casualty of some broader trends in our democracy." Obama's discussion at the University of Chicago was intended to needle a reticent Congress on holding confirmation hearings for his Supreme Court nominee, Chicago native Merrick Garland. He was joined at the event by House Dems representing Illinois and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.). The president said his decade teaching classes and seminars at the law school was "really fun." "It used to be that people read the Constitution and...