Sean O'Driscoll, Senior Crime and Courts Reporter - Newsweek
Stephan:
I have seen a number of media sources reporting that on Monday Biden is going to put forward a proposal to significantly alter the Supreme Court to make it 13 justices, and an 18 year tenure. No other developed democracy in the world has a court with lifetime tenure and, as this report describes the court structure has been altered seven times in the last 200 years, so there is nothing novel about this. I absolutely suport a 13 justice court with 18 year tenure. The MAGAts in Congress will, of course oppose these changes. But I think Harris will get strongly behind what Biden proposes, and if she wins and the Democrats get a majority in the House and Senate it will happen. It is going to be up to you and me and those we know to vote only for Democrats. This election is not about partisan politics, it is about continuing democracy, or becoming a country like Hungary.
Supreme Court justices posing for their official photo in Washington, D.C., on October 7, 2022. Democrats want to expand the number of judges by four. Credit: Olivier Douliery / Getty
Democrats have renewed calls to add four more seats to the Supreme Court as a way of diluting its conservative majority.
On Thursday, Massachusetts Senator Edward J. Markey and Georgia Representative Hank Johnson, a member of the Judiciary Subcommittee, held a news conference to call for an expansion of the court and highlight the Judiciary Act, which would create a 13-justice Supreme Court.
Markey, the lead author of the legislation, told reporters in Washington, D.C., that the bill is intended to overcome the court’s swing to “extremist” far-right politics.
“The court’s recent decisions on presidential immunity, Chevron deference and overturning Roe v. Wade laid bare that a far-right, extremist majority has been fully captured and plunged the court into a crisis of confidence and legitimacy,” he said.
The Supreme Court has become so corrupted that even the ethical justices are calling for change. Here is what Associate Justice Elena Kagan has just publicly said.
Supreme Court Associate Justice Elena Kagan participates in a discussion at the George Washington University Law School, in Washington, D.C. Credit: Mark Wilson / Getty
On Thursday, Supreme Court Associate Justice Elena Kagan signaled support for the creation of an independent body to oversee the High Court’s ethics rules.
Despite clear conflicts of interest, neither of the two justices have agreed to recuse themselves from key cases where their biases could influence them.
The G20 nations is a group of19 countries (Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Republic of Korea, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Türkey, United Kingdom and United States and the European Union. The wealth inequality of the G20 nation has become obscene, with the United States leading the pack. OxFam, a global organization that “fights inequality to end poverty and injustice,” has just issued a report on this inequality saying, “…the $42 trillion figure was nearly 36 times more than the wealth accumulated by the poorer half of the world’s population. Despite this, billionaires ‘have been paying a tax rate equivalent to less than 0.5 percent of their wealth’ across the globe.”
The world’s richest one percent increased their fortunes by a total of $42 trillion over the past decade, Oxfam says. Credit Ader Berry
The world’s richest one percent increased their fortunes by a total of $42 trillion over the past decade, Oxfam said Thursday, ahead of a G20 summit in Brazil where taxing the super-rich tops the agenda.
Despite this windfall, taxes on the rich had plummeted to “historic lows”, the NGO added, warning of “obscene levels” of inequality with the rest of the world “left to scrap for crumbs”.
Brazil has made international cooperation on taxing the super-rich a priority of its presidency of the G20, a group of countries representing 80 percent of the world’s GDP.
At this week’s summit in Rio de Janeiro, the group’s finance ministers are expected to make progress on ways to raise levies on the ultra-wealthy and prevent billionaires from dodging tax systems.
The initiative involves determining methodologies to tax billionaires and other high-income earners.
The proposal is due to be fiercely debated at the summit on Thursday and Friday, with France, Spain, […]
KATHERINE SCHAEFFER, Research Analyst - Pew Research Center
Stephan:
The leading cause of death for children 17 and under is a bullet in their body. It is one of the most outstanding manifestations of America’s gun psychosis. A mentality distinct from any other country in the world. No other nation not in active war has the kind of killing that goes on in the United States. What are the real facts about how Americans currently look at guns. It is hard to get objectively verifiable data on this subject because of the emotions it evokes. Pew Research, a reliable fact-based research organization, however, provides us with some real answers.
Guns are deeply ingrained in American society and the nation’s political debates.
The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees the right to bear arms, and about a third of U.S. adults say they personally own a gun. At the same time, in response to concerns such as rising gun death rates and mass shootings, the U.S. surgeon general has taken the unprecedented step of declaring gun violence a public health crisis.
Here are some key findings about Americans’ views of gun ownership, gun policy and other subjects, drawn from Pew Research Center surveys.
Aboutfour-in-ten U.S. adults say they live in a household with a gun, including 32% who say they personally own one, according to a Center survey conducted in June 2023. These numbers are virtually unchanged since the last time we asked this question in 2021.
There are differences in gun ownership rates by political affiliation, gender, community type and other factors.
Rachel Leingang and Stephanie Kirchgaessner, Reporters - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan:
The Heritage Foundation is a christofascist organization closely intertwined with the MAGAt cult. Opus Dei, similarly, is a secret — they don’t release the names of it members — radically conservative cult within the Roman Catholic Church. Both are obviously against abortion, but they are also against birth control. They are very right wing and highly political about their views. Is it any surprise then that Kevin Roberts the president of the Heritage Foundation, is deeply involved with Opus Dei and, as this article describes, also the architect of Project 2025? This 900 page screed is the text book of the policies criminal Trump and his Frankenstein J.D. Vance espouse although they are publicly backing away from being identified with Project 2025.
Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation. Credit: Scott Applewhite / AP
Kevin Roberts, the Heritage Foundation president and the architect of Project 2025, the conservative thinktank’s road map for a second Trump presidency, has close ties and receives regular spiritual guidance from an Opus Dei-led center in Washington DC, a hub of activity for the radical and secretive Catholic group.
Roberts acknowledged in a speech last September that – for years – he has visited the Catholic Information Center, a K Street institution headed by an Opus Dei priest and incorporated by the archdiocese of Washington, on a weekly basis for mass and “formation”, or religious guidance. Opus Dei also organizes monthly retreats at the CIC.
In the speech – which he delivered at the CIC and was recorded and is available online – Roberts spoke candidly about his strategy for achieving extreme policy goals that he supports but are out of step with the views of a majority of Americans.
Outlawing birth control is the “hardest” political battle facing conservatives in the future, the 50-year-old political strategist said, but he urged conservatives to pursue even small legislative victories – what […]
Josh Marshall, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Talking Points Memo - Talking Points Memo
Stephan:
If you are a woman how would you feel about your state government, or even the federal government, monitoring your menstrual cycle? Criminal Trump’s Frankenstein signed a bill
This spring, HHS finalized new regulations under HIPAA to limit law enforcement access to medical records tied to reproductive health. The rule was first proposed in the aftermath of the Dobbs decision as a way to limit the ability of state and local law enforcement agencies to access medical records to stymie or criminalize access to legal reproductive health services, most specifically abortions, but not only abortions. It also applies to contraception and the full range of other endangered reproductive care.
So for instance, consider the ability of a woman from an abortion-ban state to travel to another state to get a legal abortion, or her ability to receive legal abortion drugs through the mail. The news has been filled with proposed or actual laws which would attempt to restrict travel to receive abortions in other states, charge those who travel or criminalize those who might facilitate such travel or facilitate the legal shipment of prescribed abortion drugs […]
