#republican conservative judges

[socialjusticeinamerica]

“Looking – as this court must – at the totality of the circumstances, it is stunning how completely the county extinguished the Black and Latino communities’ voice on its commissioners court during 2021’s redistricting,” Brown said in his decision.”

[she-is-ovarit]

The liberal culture of perpetually walking on eggshells, fearing that whatever you say might offend somebody, or (alternatively) feeling like you are always a victim to everybody's microaggressions is extremely unhealthy.

The conservative culture of perpetually being rude under the guise of "just saying it like it is", completely disregarding that what you say might offend somebody, or entering into conversations always on the defense is extremely unhealthy.

People in both left and right political groups who fit within these behavioral patterns seem to operate off of getting high from feeling righteousness.

These behavioral trends in both groups breed authoritarianism, paranoia, ignorance, aggression, ideological purity, and black and white thinking.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Recently unsealed court documents suggest that prosecutors in Donald Trump’s classified documents case have even more damning evidence that he tried to obstruct the government’s attempts to retrieve the documents.

According to supporting documentation for a motion filed by Trump’s legal team, the government subpoena for Mar-a-Lago’s security footage seemingly led Trump to try to cover up the relocation of the classified documents. Trump was notified of the subpoena in a June 2022 call with one of his attorneys, which probably prompted Trump to tell staffers to evade security cameras when moving boxes thereafter—or so concluded the district judge who oversaw the grand jury in the case.

“The government has provided sufficient evidence to demonstrate that the June 24, 2022 phone call may have furthered the former president’s efforts to obstruct the government’s investigation,” Judge Beryl Howell wrote in 2023.

The damning detail is just one of many revelations that have come out of hundreds of pages of court documents that were unsealed Tuesday. Howell’s opinion also described how four more documents with classified markings were discovered on Trump’s property, stashed away in his bedroom, even months after the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago.

Howell also found that prosecutors provided sufficient evidence that Trump had “intentionally concealed the existence of additional documents” in order to mislead the government and impede the FBI’s investigation.

Trump faces 42 felony charges in the case related to illegally retaining national security documents and conspiracy to obstruct justice. But the judge overseeing the case has been dragging her feet for months. Judge Aileen Cannon indefinitely delayed the trial earlier this month, purportedly over issues about how to handle classified evidence. Legal analysts worry that these delays could be the Trump-appointed judge’s way of surreptitiously dismissing the trial altogether.

[dontmean2bepoliticalbut]

[republicanidiots]

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[yeahiwasintheshit]

A month or so ago, there was a 17-year-old in Florida who petitioned the courts for permission to get an abortion without parental consent (as her parents are no longer in the picture). The judge, Jared Smith, took note of the petitioner's 2.0 GPA and decreed that she lacked the intelligence and maturity to make that decision. So, he denied the petition. For those keeping score at home, that's "not mature enough to choose abortion" but "more than capable of raising a child."

In short, Smith does not appear to be a top-flight representative of the judicial system. Even if one agrees with his ultimate conclusion, basing a ruling on GPA is both dubious and demeaning. And that isn't the only demerit against him. He's one of those judges who makes very clear that the main law book he follows is the Bible (which may explain why he's apparently unfamiliar with the First Amendment, as it's not in there). Further, Smith and his wife, Suzette, have both expressed the view that what Jews really need is... Jesus. Perhaps they are not aware that we already have a word for people who have embraced both the Old and New Testaments.

Anyhow, judges in Florida are elected, and Smith was up this year. In fact, he was on the ballot on Tuesday. The race between him and his opponent, Nancy Jacobs, was unusually nasty. Jacobs could not comment directly on Smith's decisions as judge, as that is against Florida law (again, what of the First Amendment?). However, she did make the case that he might not be the nicest fellow in the world, and she did post news articles about the abortion decision to her campaign website. For Smith's part, he suggested that Jacobs is definitely one of those Jews who needs Jesus.

As you can guess, given that this is a schadenfreude item, Smith hasn't had a great month. His decision on the abortion was overruled by a three-judge panel. And then, on Election Day, he was voted out of office. Nobody polls judicial races, of course, but folks with their fingers on the pulse of local politics (this was in Hillsborough County) said that it was the abortion ruling that did him in. In any case, see ya, Jared. Don't let the gavel hit you in the rear on the way out.

Incidentally, in case you think we've made an error, Smith was the judge who denied a parentless 17-year-old Floridian an abortion because of her alleged lack of intelligence. This is an entirely different story than the one about the parentless 16-year-old Floridian who was denied an abortion because of her alleged lack of intelligence. What a state!

https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2022/Senate/Maps/Aug26.html#item-6

[hyperfixatingonstephcurry]

Ngl I’m not real thrilled with what Steph had to say about abortion but I guess it could’ve been worse 😕

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

It pains me to say this, but the trump judge Aileen Cannon is gonna be on the Supreme Court someday. This is her conservative litmus test, and she's passing with flying colors. She is ignoring the law because nobody can make her enforce it. She's giving trump everything he wants and she's not even pretending to be impartial, she's just up and saying "I work for him. Whatever he asks for, he gets." He asks for a special master, she gives him a special master. The special master tells him he has to back up his claims, he says he doesn't want to, she tells the special master he doesn't have to. I guarantee you that whenever the special master finishes looking over the stolen documents and concludes trump stole them, she'll ignore all his findings and insist the DOJ planted them and ask SCOTUS to step in because the 11th circuit already decided against trump. Cannon is letting Republicans know that she will actively and unapologetically abuse her power to protect the party, and because she's less than 50 that means her name is at the top of their shortlist for SCOTUS nominees, I can feel it in my bones. If Trump wins in 2024, she'll be on the bench in January 2025. The next justice to retire or die will probablt be Thomas, but he's already the furthest right, so Republicans don't have much to gain from replacing him (they'd only encourage him to retire to prevent Dems from replacing him; he doesn't want to pull a Ginsburg). What I think is more likely to happen is Republicans "encourage" John Roberts to retore, a la Anthony Kennedy in 2018, because of the 6 conservatives he's the closest to the center, a potential swingvote that needs to be gotten rid of and replaced with someone who will vote the party line no matter what. Cannon has proven herself as a Republican asset, and trump or desantis or cruz will reward her as soon as possible. I'm getting mad over a hypothetical, I'm literally starting an argument in my own head and losing, this is madness, but I know in my heart of hearts it's gonna happen. It may not be exactly as I predict, maybe Roberts will stay on and Sotomayor or Kagan or Jackson will have an "accident," or maybe Republicans will expand the court just to rub salt in the Democrats' wounds and do what they were unwilling to. I don't know the specifics, I just know that we are going to be hearing Cannon's name again very soon. I had never heard of Gorsuch or Kavanaugh or Barrett before they were nominated, but Cannon is gonna be a familiar face. The system is so broken there really is no hope for fixing it; we would need a complete reboot, new constitution, new offices, new checks and balances, term limits, age limits, impartial appointments, enforcable codes of ethics, but even that's a fantasy because Republicans would do everything in their power to make it partial and only enforce it against judges they don't like. How do we mvoe forward without all our attritional war? They will never stop, even if we break their spirits. The Confederates broke, but they played the long game and eventually won. The Nazis broke, but they played the long game and now currently winning all around the world. Republicans aren't even close to breaking, they're still on top, they hold all the cards, so how do we possibly move forward when half the population is deadset on dominating the other half in an absolute monarchy? They are a cancer that is destroying our civilization from within, but they don't care because they're winning! The cancer doesn't think of itself as cancer, it thinks of itself as stronger tissue taking resources away from weaker tissue. How do you excise it when it's already spread to every vital organ? It's more cancer than host at this point, and you'd think the whole thing would eventually collapse and die, but no, it's evolved into The Thing and is spreading itself to other hosts, copying, assimilating, replacing, contagious cancer that will consume the world before eventually turning on itself when no healthy tissue remains.

[thedepressedjuggalette]

Trump is a war criminal. Vote blue.

[t3chkn1ght-blog]

Why don't we just kill the GOP?: World's easiest trolley problem.

I don't mean to sound like a tankie or a conservative or anything, but if Trump and the GOP are such big threats to democracy, beings of pure evil that have never done anything good for the world, only existing to lie, cheat, kill, and rape, then why don't we just kill them? It's the easiest trolley problem ever! We could either let them live, and risk America turning into a white-supremacist patriarchal ethnostate (even more than it already is), or we could pull the lever, and every problem women, ethnic minorities, LGBT+, disabled people, etc. have would be solved, as the people who cause those problems would be dead.

Imagine a world without the GOP: No bigotry, no racism, systemic or otherwise, no climate change, no capitalism, no greed, no war, no rape, no poverty, nothing terrible! It would be a utopia. Sure, it would have to be built on the graves of a couple-hundred nazis, but that's a small price to pay for trillions after us to live in a utopia.

It just seems so obvious, so why don't we pull the lever?

[cats-in-the-clouds]

my sister got engaged and we’re all really happy for her but my bitter rain cloud of a dad (who naturally she told last) is giving her a bit of passive aggressive grief about it despite her boyfriend being like the best man of our generation (presumably either because he’s not catholic or because my dad sees them as young dumb unemployed people who aren’t ready for marriage or because he’s mad he barely has any real love with his own wife or something). so like pray for us? i wish i knew what to do

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Barely a day after former President Donald Trump was indicted for the third time, some Senate Republicans are already trying to undermine the credibility of the federal judge who was randomly assigned to preside over his trial.

Here’s a detail they’re hoping you won’t notice: They unanimously voted to confirm her.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), speaking on his podcast on Wednesday, accused U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan of being “relentlessly hostile” to Trump and claimed that she has “a reputation for being far-left, even by D.C. District Court standards.”

But Cruz voted to put Chutkan into her seat on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in June 2014. So did every other Senate Republican when she was unanimously confirmed, 95-0.

That includes Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who nonsensically claimed Wednesday that “any conviction in D.C. against Donald Trump is not legitimate.”

“The judge in this case hates Trump,” Graham said in a Fox News interview. “You can convict Trump of kidnapping Lindbergh’s baby in D.C. You need to have a change of venue. We need a new judge. And we need to win in 2024 to stop this crazy crap.”

Aides to Cruz and Graham did not respond to requests for comment on how the senators square their votes to confirm Chutkan with their criticisms of her ability to be a fair judge.

Tuesday’s federal indictment of Trump accuses him of serious crimes related to the 2020 presidential election and the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection: conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights.

Chutkan, a Jamaica-born former assistant public defender and an appointee of former President Barack Obama, has already been overseeing cases related to the Jan. 6 attack. She’s handed out some of the most aggressive sentences yet to rioters who took part in the violence that day. Of the 11 cases that have come before her, she imposed tougher sentences than those sought by the Justice Department seven times and matched what the Justice Department was seeking four times, according to an Associated Press review.

In all 11 cases, Chutkan sentenced the defendants to prison time.

This is what is likely driving the GOP attacks on Chutkan: They know she’s not likely to go easy on Trump now.

Beyond trying to discredit the judge, some Republicans, like Graham, are parroting Trump’s absurd demand for a change of venue. The former president has called for moving his case to the “more diverse” and “politically unbiased nearby State of West Virginia!” (Virginia and Maryland are much closer to D.C., for what it’s worth.)

Not a single Republican raised concerns about Chutkan during her nomination hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee in February 2014. In fact, only one GOP member of the committee even showed up to the hearing: Sen. John Cornyn (Texas), who was only there to rave about a separate Texas judicial nominee on the schedule. He left before Chutkan was up.

Cruz and Graham were both members of the committee at the time.

Neither attended Chutkan’s hearing.

[dontmean2bepoliticalbut]

BREAKING: Court of Appeals GRANTS DOJ Motion To Expedite Appeal in Trump Mar-A-Lago Case

The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals has just granted the Department of Justice's Motion to Expedite its Appeal of Judge Aileen Cannon's Order asserting jurisdiction over the Mar-A-Lago search warrant matter. There will be no extensions of time and briefing will be done by mid-November. In essence, the Eleventh Circuit is sending a message to Trump: "No Delays!"

[carsonjonesfiance]

The willful misunderstanding of how Roe fell is truly a symptom of the wider issue that no one online seems to understand delayed gratification. The fall of Roe was a culmination of decades of conservative work to stack the lower courts with conservative judges, but understanding the idea of taking years to do something is outside the purview of a generation raised on instant gratification. The biggest vice of the Left is that many of them are de facto morally opposed to the very idea of playing the long game, but Republicans are more than happy to make gambits like the holding open of a SCOTUS seat in hopes a Republican president is elected no matter how hypocritical it makes them seem.

[liberalsarecool]

Trump is abusing the system. Posting pictures of children to intimidate a judge is dangerous and wrong. Republicans are no different from gangsters and violent abusers. No level of cheating is beneath conservatives. Take Russia's worst political crimes, and Republicans are on board 100%.