Stephen Lendman ~ Supreme Court Rules for Big Money

SteveLendmansBlog  April 6 2014

steveLendmanIt didn’t surprise. It’s supremely pro-business. It’s always been this way. It’s more than ever now.

It supports Big Monied interests. It does so over democratic governance. It’s on the wrong side of most issues mattering most.

On April 2, it repeated a familiar pattern. Its McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission decision ruled one dollar = one vote. It struck down federal campaign contribution limits. It did so disgracefully.

It gave monied interests more power. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts referred to the landmark 1976 Buckley v. Valeo ruling saying:

“We conclude that the aggregate limits on contributions do not further the only governmental interest this court accepted as legitimate.”

“They instead intrude without justification on a citizen’s ability to express the most fundamental First Amendment activities.” Continue reading

Hobby Lobby And The Supreme Court

BATR  December 2 2013

For a country founded upon the purpose of establishing religious freedom, the state worship establishment deems that their Supreme Court tribunal will announce its papal bull in the lawsuit, Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc.

The SCOTUSblog explains the Issue: Whether the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA), 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000bb et seq., which provides that the government “shall not substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion” unless that burden is the least restrictive means to further a compelling governmental interest, allows a for-profit corporation to deny its employees the health coverage of contraceptives to which the employees are otherwise entitled by federal law, based on the religious objections of the corporation’s owners.

The first words in the Bill of Rights Amendment I, states: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”. Somehow, the barrister bar sees fit to ignore the highest law of the land, because robe magistrates deem that their rulings are a flowing and living privilege that easily conflicts with a dictionary reading of language.

Understanding the context of this case starts with an analysis by Lyle Denniston from the official SCOTUS blog.

“This time, the Court will be focusing only on whether the pregnancy-related care coverage can be enforced against profit-making companies – or their individual owners, when that is a very small group – when the coverage contradicts privately held religious beliefs.”

Jeremy Weber from Christianity Today reports that – Hobby Lobby explained in a statement that its Green family owners “have no moral objection to providing 16 of the 20 FDA-approved contraceptives required under the HHS mandate and do so at no additional cost to employees under their self-insured health plan.”

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Mike Adams ~ Did NSA Already Use Its Massive Surveillance Apparatus To Hijack The Supreme Court Decision On Obamacare?

NaturalNews June 11 2013

“Any analyst at any time can target anyone. Any selector, anywhere… I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authority to wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge, to even the President…” – NSA spy grid whistleblower Edward Snowden.

And so it begins: the power to tap the private phone calls of a federal judge or even the President. All at the fingertips of young NSA analysts who sift through masses of private data collected through the government’s back doors into the servers of Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Apple, Skype, AOL and others. (Here’s the proof.)

But if a 29-year-old working for the NSA could wiretap a federal judge, he could also wiretap a U.S. Supreme Court justice. Anything he found that was embarrassing or even incriminating could be used in a simple blackmail threat to force that justice to change his or her decision on a key issue…

… like Obamacare.

What we’ve learned today forces us to re-examine events of 2012

Back in July of 2012, news headlines were ablaze with the revelation that Supreme Court Justice John Roberts suddenly and unexpectedly changed his decision on Obamacare, siding with big government instead of protecting individual liberties. Many facts surrounding this sudden change of decision raise huge red flags when viewed in the context of the NSA being able to wiretap anyone’s emails, phone calls and private files — including a Supreme Court justice.

As CBS news reported in 2012, “Chief Justice John Roberts initially sided with the Supreme Court’s four conservative justices to strike down the heart of President Obama’s health care reform law, the Affordable Care Act, but later changed his position and formed an alliance with liberals to uphold the bulk of the law, according to two sources with specific knowledge of the deliberations. Roberts then withstood a month-long, desperate campaign to bring him back to his original position, the sources said.”

Regardless of the strength of the supporting evidence brought to Roberts during his time of consideration for the decision, nothing caused him to budge. Roberts was inexplicably immovable, even though he was now siding against nearly everything he had argued and decided in previous court cases.

No one could satisfactorily explain the decision… until the NSA PRISM scandal erupted. Now, we all of a sudden have a viable explanation for what really goes on behind the public headlines.

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Jonathan Turley ~ The Rise Of The Fourth Branch Of Government

Jonathan Turley May 26 2013

CongressBelow is [May 26th’s] column in the Washington Post’s Outlook Section on the dangers of America’s growing administrative state. Ask any elementary student and you will hear how the Framers carefully designed a tripartite, or three-branch, system to govern the United States. This separation of powers was meant to protect citizens from tyranny by making every branch dependent on each other to carry out the functions of government. These three branches held together through a type of outward pressure – each holding the other in place through their countervailing forces. Add a fourth branch and the structure begins to collapse. That is precisely what is happening as federal agencies grow beyond the traditional controls and oversight of the legislative and executive branches. The question is how a tripartite system can function as a quadripartite system. The answer, as demonstrated by the last two decades, is not well. The shift from a tripartite to a quadripartite system is not the result of simply the growth in the size of the government. Rather, it is a concern with the degree of independence and autonomy in the fourth branch that led me to write this column.

There were times this past week when it seemed like the 19th-century Know-Nothing Party had returned to Washington. President Obama insisted he knew nothing about major decisions in the State Department, or the Justice Department, or the Internal Revenue Service. The heads of those agencies, in turn, insisted they knew nothing about major decisions by their subordinates. It was as if the government functioned by some hidden hand.

Clearly, there was a degree of willful blindness in these claims. However, the suggestion that someone, even the president, is in control of today’s government may be an illusion.

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Chief Justice Says States Have Compromised Their Sovereignty

Jack Kenny | The New American | March 29 2012

Chief Justice John Roberts said Wednesday what has long been known but seldom spoken. During the third and final day of Supreme Court hearings on whether the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 is unconstitutional, Roberts said  states have been compromising their sovereignty for decades through increased reliance on the federal government for money and accompanying directions on the governance of state affairs.

“It seems to me that they have compromised their status as independent sovereigns because they are so dependent on what the federal government has done,” the chief justice said during Wednesday’s nearly three hours of hearings on the controversial health insurance law.

The final day’s arguments had to do with whether the law could stand if the justices find the mandate for uncovered individuals to purchase health insurance is unconstitutional — something the court’s conservative majority appears ready to do. Another feature of the law called into question by lawyers opposing the act is the expansion of Medicaid, the federal-state program that provides health care for low-income families. Under the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid is expanded to include a larger number of parents, as well as low-income adults with no dependent children. Half of the 32 million who would get new health insurance coverage under the law would receive it through Medicaid. Starting in 2014, the federal government would pay 100 percent of the cost of newly eligible participants. The federal share would be scaled back to 90 percent by 2020. States would still have the right to opt out of the program, but would stand to lose all of the federal funding, including the money they are already receiving. Currently all 50 state participate in the program.

“Obamacare is going to expand Medicaid, and the taxpayers absolutely can’t afford it,” Dr. Alieta Eck said at a rally against the law outside the Supreme Court. Thomas Miller, a resident fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, agreed, telling the Public broadcasting Service: “The states say, we can’t even afford the current Medicaid program, and this would in effect give them no flexibility to make any adjustments that are reasonable adjustments, and say maybe can cover some more people in a certain way, but not under the rigid federal rules.”

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