SCOTUS under Trump

But what happened to all the babies that were in Limbo? Are they just floating around in space now?

They’re in a caravan headed for El Paso.

Found one of them.

Now SCOTUS will take up the census citizenship question test, even though it hasn’t been heard by an appeals court yet. Any bets on how they’ll decide it?

I think it will probably pass? The Census asks all kinds of weird shit. I haven’t been really following it that closely though. I don’t know what the details of the case are really.

The argument is basically that the Constitution says the census is necessary and important, which means it should be as accurate as it can reasonably be made; and that plenty of data show that asking the citizenship question suppresses the real count of people in the country, which makes it less accurate than it needs to be; and that there is no compelling reason to ask the question.

There will also likely be a fair amount of evidence found during the discovery process that the motives for adding such a question were, shall we say, less than honorable.

It is also important to note that the language of the Constitution stipulates a count of all the PEOPLE, not all of the citizens.

Sure, but they’re not threatening not to count non-citizens.

Yes, but they’re also (cynically) counting on households with undocumented non-citizens keeping quiet about them, so places with a large number of such people get fewer resources and less congressional representation.
I know the conservative justices traditionally don’t look to predictable de facto real world consequences, though. If they’d been in the majority in 1954 we wouldn’t have gotten Brown v Board.

They may not be saying so, but the broad assumption appears to be that that is what would happen, which only benefits the Republicans.

Yes, if course. But will the Roberts gang see it that way? They don’t seem to care much about transparent motivations as long as they aren’t officially expressed.

Now Clarence Thomas wants to make it easier for public figures to sue for libel. In other words, Trump wants to start suing people and publications.

Would this guy just go away already?

Trump isn’t going to sue anyone for defamation, because that would open him up to discovery.

And cut down on his publicity.

Thomas: Corporations are people and have rights, but people shouldn’t have rights. That’s what the Founders intended.

Well, at least they give us a blow against civil forfeiture

Not sure if anyone had mentioned it, but Roberts sided with the left leaning judges again to rule against a Texas execution of a guy who was on the edge of being mentally disabled.

I’d like to hope that this wasn’t really about civil asset forfeiture, which should be wholly illegal. This is more about fines for actual crimes that the government has proof of.

The limit for civil asset forfeiture, that is, taking property from people not convicted of any crime, should be $0.