High court justice has another bike accident by Cambridge home
Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer might want to give up riding his bicycle around his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, or at least be more careful.
Over the Memorial Day holiday weekend, the 72-year-old Breyer broke his right collarbone from a spill while riding his bike near his Cambridge, Mass., court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg said.
Breyer missed Tuesday’s court session, but that was unrelated to his mishap, she said, adding that he did make a previously scheduled appearance in speaking to a New York City historical event Tuesday night.
In 1993, Breyer, then a judge on the U.S. court of appeals based in Boston, suffered broken ribs and other injuries when he was hit by a car while riding his bike across Harvard Square in Cambridge. The former Harvard law professor was appointed to the Supreme Court the following year.
- Photo credit: Pool photo (Breyer with Britain’s Prince Charles during a recent visit to Washington)
from Environment Forum:
Cows, climate change and the high court
If you took all the cows in the United States and figured out how much greenhouse gas they emit, would you be able to sue all the farmers who own them?
That interesting legal question came from Justice Antonin Scalia during Supreme Court oral arguments about whether an environmental case against five big U.S. power companies can go forward.
At issue is whether six states can sue the country's biggest coal-fired electric utilities to make them cut down on the climate-warming carbon dioxide they emit. One lower court said they couldn't, an appeals court said they could and now the high court will consider where the case will go next. A ruling should come by the end of June.
For now, though, the question was cows.
Attorney Barbara Underwood argued that the five power companies were the largest emitters of carbon dioxide in the United States, making up 10 percent of U.S. emissions. No other company comes close, she said.
Scalia then leaped into the fray.
"You're lumping them all together," he said of the five big power companies. "Suppose you lump together all the cows in the country. Would that allow you to sue all those farmers? I mean, don't you have to do it defendant by defendant? ... Cow by cow or at least farm by farm?"
The only load is the garbage coming out of Justice Scalia’s mouth. It would be interesting to see our Supreme court Justice’s investment portfolios. Cows and humans are living beings, power plants are not. Burning fossil fuels are not the only way to generate power.
JDoddsGW, you have hit on the truth of the matter. Greenhouse gases absorb and retain light(radiation) from the Sun. The Earth’s atmosphere can only absorb so much light energy(photons)in any given time period. At some point available light energy for photosynthesis diminishes as agriculture and greenhouse gases increase in the biosphere. The result is climate change/ global warming.
An increase in human population means an increase in livestock production and power generation. As most power generation comes from burning fossil fuels it becomes clear that we are producing a double whammy. More livestock generates more methane and CO2. More gas and coal fired electric generators more CO2.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Breyer on Twitter
The U.S. Supreme Court does not have an official Twitter account, but this just in — Justice Stephen Breyer is on Twitter and Facebook. But he is not revealing details of arguments or rulings.
He told a congressional hearing on the Supreme Court’s budget that he has a Twitter account because of his interest in the protests in Iran after the 2009 presidential election. Twitter represented one of the best ways of learning what was happening in that country.
Since then, Breyer said he has received requests to follow him on Twitter, but has turned them down. The same applies to Facebook.
“It’s probably not a good idea,” he said of making public comments on social media sites. Breyer said judges generally should be anonymous and that he only communicates with his children through Twitter and Facebook.
At the hearing, Congressman Steve Womack, a Republican from Arkansas, brought up the issue of social media and asked whether the justices can tweet if they wanted to.
Justice Anthony Kennedy did not answer that question, but said he had the sense that the Supreme Court’s work was discussed in social media. “That’s good,” he said.
Congresswoman Jo Ann Emerson, the appropriations subcommittee chairwoman, said the questions showed how the times have changed. “I never thought we would ask Supreme Court justices about their tweeting,” she said as the hearing ended.
Oops! Justice Clarence Thomas forgot wife on financial forms
It has turned out that U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has amended his annual financial disclosure forms dating back more than 20 years to add his wife’s employment.
“It has come to my attention that information regarding my spouse’s employment required in Part III B of my financial disclosure report was inadvertently omitted due to a misunderstanding of the filing instructions,” he wrote in a letter to a committee handling financial disclosure reports.
During the 20-year period, his wife, Virginia Thomas, held a number of jobs, working for the U.S. Labor Department, then-U.S. House Republican Leader Dick Armey, The Heritage Foundation conservative think tank, and Hillsdale College.
Thomas amended his annual financial forms the same day that the group Common Cause issued a news release saying he had failed to disclose his wife’s income.
“Common Cause is concerned about omissions in Justice Thomas’s annual financial disclosures,” the group’s president, Bob Edgar, said in a statement.
The group cited records filed with the Internal Revenue Service that Virginia Thomas had been paid $686,589 by The Heritage Foundation for her work from 2003 to 2007.
Last year, Thomas announced she was resigning as head of Liberty Central, a non-profit conservative advocacy group that she founded in 2009, but said she would remain a consultant to the group.
Yeah, “Oops.” Tea Partiers, Republicans, and protectors of public morality are right about corruption in government. The only problem is they are looking in the wrong place. Their real target is closer to home when when they find Republicans openly flaunting the law and thumbing their noses at regulations.
Not only do we have Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices using their offices to promote ideological political agendas, but also hiding their politically-funded income from public view.
Antonia Scalia is the latest to cross the line with an announcement that he plans to address the Tea Party Caucus in the House of Representatives. This isn’t Scalia’s first breech of court practices. Scalia also spoke at a Koch Industries retreat, sponsored by two billionaire brothers who support extreme right-wing positions that promote libertarianism, pollution, deregulation of all markets, abolition of income taxes, as well as sponsoring attacks on climate change theory. The Koch brothers are well-known financiers of right-wing groups such as the Tea Party and benefactors of the recent Supreme Court decision, FEC vs Citizens United.
Thomas’s breaches of judicial ethical practices are worse. Thomas’s wife received almost $700,000 from the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank that attacks welfare, taxes, government regulations, civil rights, social security, unions, and government assistance.
Additionally, Ms. Thomas founded Liberty Central, a radical Tea Party group dedicated to ousting Obama and defeating health care reform, and received $550,000 from the group. She refuses to disclose who provided the funds, raising the question that the money could be used to influence Thomas’s decisions in Court cases.
With prison looming, DeLay looks to Citizens United and the Supremes
Tom DeLay stands eyeball-to-eyeball with the prospect of years in prison. But he figures he still has friends in high places. Like the U.S. Supreme Court, maybe.
That would be the majority of justices who authored the 2010 campaign finance ruling known as Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which has been decried by Democrats and reformers as a danger to U.S. electoral integrity.
DeLay, whose hard-driving style as a congressional powerbroker earned him the nickname “The Hammer,” was sentenced this week to three years in prison on money laundering and conspiracy charges. A Texas jury said he helped funnel money illegally to Republican candidates in the state in 2002.
But DeLay’s lawyer Dick DeGuerin believes the Supreme Court altered the landscape a year ago when it ruled in a 5-4 decision that corporations can spend unlimited sums of money on political campaigns that advocate or oppose candidates for office.
“The underlying crime was that corporate money was spent on political races in Texas and that’s not true,” DeGuerin explains to NBC.
“However, the Supreme Court says that corporations have a right to participate in the political process and that’ll be part of our appeal.”
The attorney did not say whether he intends to appeal all the way to the Supremes. It’s also not clear how directly Citizens United would apply to DeLay’s case, since it preserves federal limits on direct contributions to political candidates.
I’ll be surprised if this guy ever serves a day in jail. Not only does he have the 5 Supremes if it gets that far but he has the huge super majority of Republicans in the Texas legislature who are clamoring for him to be given a full pardon. Since this trial was in a state court the governor, Rick Perry, could issue a pardon.
Wasn’t it in the movie, History of The World Part 1, that the lines “It’s good to be the king” were spoken. That’s how sure DeLay is to avoid serving a lick behind bars. Republicans always know how to take care of their own.
Washington Extra – Question of Constitution
Constitutional or unconstitutional? That is the question the U.S. Supreme Court eventually may get to decide on President Barack Obama’s landmark healthcare law.
(By one definition, constitution can also refer to one’s health — just throwing that in.)
A judge in Virginia declared unconstitutional a provision that requires individuals to buy health insurance or face a fine, backing arguments by the state that Congress exceeded its authority.
The White House begged to differ. “We disagree with the ruling,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said. “We’re confident that it is constitutional,” he said.
If it does go to the highest court in the land, there are 4 liberals (Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan), 4 conservatives (Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas) and one moderate conservative (Justice Anthony Kennedy) who often controls the outcome.
My colleague Jim Vicini, who covers the Supreme Court, points out that the healthcare law issue which involves the power of Congress and interstate commerce may not fit strict conservative/liberal lines, so it would not be easy to predict the outcome if it comes to that.
Much is being made today of House Speaker-to-be John Boehner’s propensity for crying in public, but if Obama ends up with an adverse ruling on his cornerstone issue, healthcare, the president would actually have something to cry about.
Al Franken’s moment of backsliding…
It was one of those moments Al Franken seems to work hard to suppress.
The comedian-turned-politician has kept a mostly straight face through his first year as a senator — listening seriously to hours of committee testimony and posing pointed questions with only the flicker of a smile crossing his face. Thursday’s Senate debate over Elena Kagan was evidently too much for the clown in him to bear.
As Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell argued that Kagan was too inexperienced and political to be confirmed as a justice of the Supreme Court, Franken couldn’t contain himself.
The liberal Democrat from Minnesota, who was presiding over the Senate at the time, rolled his eyes, let out his breath and finally began to shake his head, a Senate Republican aide said.
He swiveled his head from side to side, threw his head back and showed other signs displeasure during McConnell’s 10-minute speech, the aide said.
McConnell was distracted enough by Franken’s behavior that he approached the Senate dais afterward to complain to him privately.
“This isn’t ‘Saturday Night Live’ Al,” McConnell told him, referring to the NBC television show where Franken worked as a comedy writer for nearly two decades.
Franken has stood up for the truth more than the party line since he entered the senate. Imagine having to sit in a session of the senate and listen to the partisan bull@#%$ that prevents anything meaningful from getting done. I dare say that if you got all the past writers and actors form SNL together for a week they could probably get more done to help this country than the congress has under Obama and Bush together. It takes brains to be a comedian but any idiot can be a politician.
‘Twilight’ falls at Kagan hearing
There is no escaping the “Twilight” juggernaut. Not even on Capitol Hill.
The teen vampire romance saga that’s captivated a gazillion youthful fans managed to seep into Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan’s confirmation hearing Wednesday, thanks to a probing question from Senator Amy Klobuchar.
Before inquiring about Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts, Briscoe v. Virginia and other cases that have come before the U.S. Supreme Court, the Minnesota Democrat raised the burning question in the great “Twilight” debate: Edward or Jacob? Kagan declined to weigh in on the topic. The senator quickly moved on.
After three days with members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Kagan appears to be on a path to confirmation by the full Senate sometime after the July 4 holiday.
When Chairman Patrick Leahy announced the nominee was close to wrapping up that other witnesses would be called on Thursday, Kagan drew laughter by asking, “You mean I can’t come back?”
Kagan, who told senators the hearing had been one of the highlights of her life, frequently displayed a nimble wit and disarming manner that clearly impressed some Republicans.
“As it said in the paper today, you kind of ‘light up the room,’ and I agree with that,” said Republican Tom Coburn, one of the Senate Judiciary panel’s most conservative members.
Traders put their money on Kagan to be Supreme Court pick
Traders are betting that there is a 75 percent chance that President Barack Obama will decide on U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan for the Supreme Court and that she would be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
That’s up 15 points from yesterday, according to the online market Intrade, which means that Kagan is by far the odds-on favorite to be the next Supreme Court justice.
Obama is expected to announce soon, probably early next week, his selection for the Supreme Court vacancy that will be created by the retirement of liberal Justice John Paul Stevens at the end of the term in June. The president wants whomever he picks confirmed by the Senate before the high court reconvenes in October after its summer break.
Kagan, 50, the U.S. government’s top appellate lawyer and chief advocate before the Supreme Court, has been considered a leading candidate, along with appeals court judges Diane Wood and Merrick Garland.
White House aides have been extremely tight-lipped about the selection process, though wagerers, some legal experts and some Washington, D.C., pundits are predicting it will be Kagan.
There has not been a lot of public controversy about Kagan as Obama weighs his options. If he goes with her, is he making a safe choice?
- Photo credit: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst (Supreme Court building)
U.S. Supreme Court advice for Obama
Someone experienced in making hard decisions with the imagination to understand how rulings affect the lives of Americans.
Those words of advice came from Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Stephen Breyer as President Barack Obama searches for a replacement for retiring Justice John Paul Stevens.
Testifying before Congress on the Supreme Court’s budget request, they gave their views about the type of person Obama should select, without getting into judicial philosophy. The U.S. Senate must confirm the nominee.
Congressman Jose Serrano, a Democrat from New York who chaired the House Appropriations subcommittee hearing, asked what legal or other experiences the nominee should have and whether it should be a judge or an elected official.
“I don’t think it matters as much what the experience is as long as it’s experience making decisions and hard decisions,” Thomas said. “It helps us if someone is from a different part of the country.”
On the current court, Thomas grew up in Georgia, Breyer previously lived in Massachusetts, and Stevens came from Chicago. Other justices were from New York, New Jersey and California, among other places.
Although all nine of the current Supreme Court members had previously been U.S. appeals court judges, Thomas said they had different backgrounds and perspectives.
I’m glad he’s alright and I hope I can ride a bicycle at his age. Besides not to worry he’s a lawyer he’ll probly sue the bike manufacturer