Category Archives: Supreme Court

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Another victory for normal people! The Supreme Court did the right thing, but the left will never see it that way.

On this last day of ‘Pride month,’ the United States Supreme Court voted that common sense and normal behavior were inshrined in our laws and Constitution. Naturally, the left are aghast. From NBC News:

Supreme Court upholds bans on transgender athletes in girls’ and women’s sports

In the latest of a string of losses for LGBTQ rights, the high court allowed states to bar transgender athletes from girls’ and women’s sports.

by Lawrence Hurley | Tuesday, June 30, 2026 | 10:04 AM EDT | Updated: 10:08 AM EDT

WASHINGTON — Delivering another major blow to LGBTQ rights, the Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld state laws that ban transgender athletes from participating in girls’ and women’s sports.

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Supreme Court Rules POTUS Has Authority To Remove “Independent Agency” Heads

How can an agency in the Executive Branch be “independent” from the president?

Justices Overturn 1935 Precedent, Backing President’s Power to Remove Agency Heads

The Supreme Court on Monday handed President Trump a sweeping victory over the administrative state, ruling that Congress cannot shield the heads of independent regulatory agencies from presidential removal, and overturning a landmark 1935 precedent that had underpinned the modern regulatory framework for nearly a century.

The 6-3 decision in Trump v. Slaughter arose from the President’s firing of two Democratic-appointed Federal Trade Commission commissioners, Rebecca Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya, at the start of his second term. Trump cited his constitutional authority under Article II rather than any cause recognized by the FTC’s governing statute, which permits removal only for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.”

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts concluded that the FTC’s for-cause removal protection is incompatible with the Constitution’s vesting of executive power in a single President. Officers who exercise executive power, the Court held, must remain accountable to the President — and accountability requires the ability to remove them at will.

The ruling explicitly overturned Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, which had carved out an exception to presidential removal authority for agencies exercising so-called quasi-legislative and quasi-judicial functions. The Court found that characterization had never made sense and had become increasingly untenable as the FTC’s powers expanded to cover virtually every corner of the American economy.

The decision’s reach extends well beyond the FTC, potentially exposing the leadership of dozens of independent agencies — including the SEC, CFTC, and NLRB — to at-will presidential removal.

If the POTUS doesn’t have control of an agency that what is the POTUS? The only way to shield these people is to pass a law out of the Legislative Branch and have a POTUS sign said law. Or refuse to sign but not veto, allowing it to become law with no action. The above article does briefly mention that SCOTUS held that the president has less power to fire a member of the Federal Reserve in a companion ruling, but, mostly because Lisa Cook was not given time to respond. More on that here.

And another big ruling that Trump lost

SCOTUS Rules 5-4 to Permit Counting of Mail-In Ballots that Arrive After Election Day

The Supreme Court (SCOTUS) ruled that state laws allowing for the counting of mail-in ballots after election day are not in violation of federal law, a blow to the Republican National Committee and President Donald Trump’s administration.

On Monday, SCOTUS issued a 5-4 ruling that permits states to count mail-in ballots — sent on or before election day — that are received by state election officials after election day.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote the majority’s opinion, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts as well as Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

“Two principles are important here. First, post-election-day receipt, considered on its own, does not conflict with the election-day statutes,” the Court writes:

Well, I kind of agree. If they were postmarked, and there really must be a clear, real postmark, then they should be counted per state law, since the Constitution gives states this power to set laws. I also understand this point by Alito

But if that is all that the election-day statutes require, there is no sense in which the electorate as a whole can be seen as making its choice on election day. Rather, the electorate’s choice would be made piecemeal over an extended period prior to election day, and that prospect is blatantly contrary to what the election-day statutes demand. [Emphasis added]

Election day is a specified date, not a span of multiple days. The election-day statutes require that federal elections occur on that date. Under the challenged Mississippi law, however, the collection of ballots continues for five more days, and therefore the “election” is not held until the end of that period. Because federal law requires that the election occur on election day, it preempts Mississippi’s statute. [Emphasis added]

But, unless the Court wants to rule to kill vote by mail and early voting, the laws, federal Constitution, and state Constitutions allow mail in. This will allow for challenges over postmarkes.

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Some common sense concerning the Louisiana v Callais decision. This might not be quite the result for which Republicans hoped

The two pages of the Congressionally-signed original of the Fourteenth Amendment in the National Archives, written with iron gall ink on parchment. It was last publicly displayed in 2013. As of 2025, it is stored in the research wing of the archives inside a boxed book of Acts of Congress from its 39th session.

Our good friends on the left, who have been so supportive of the Fourteenth Amendment’s provision that “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside” must grant automatic citizenship to the “anchor babies” of people in our country illegally, they have not been nearly as thrilled with the Equal Protection Clause, “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws,” when that clause says, essentially and throughout dozens of decisions, that Americans may not be treated differently based upon their race. Oh, the left certainly doesn’t want white Americans to be given a legal advantage, but legal “remedies” to “past discrimination” to assist black Americans meet with their approval.

After a Supreme Court ruling that was an affront to history, some states can’t wait to turn back the clock on voting rights | Editorial

After long ago overcoming racist efforts to dilute the power of voters of color, the conservative justices have unreasonably made it more difficult to challenge discriminatory legislative maps.

by The Editorial Board | Monday, May 11, 2026 | 5:01 AM EDT

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. — George Santayana

Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of the U.S. Supreme Court giving its seal of approval to Republican attempts to turn back the clock on voting rights in America is that, after long ago overcoming racist efforts to dilute the power of voters of color, we now see similar vipers slithering past the corroded gates of hell that were supposed to hold them in check.

The court defied reason with an opinion that, in essence, neutered the 1965 Voting Rights Act by ruling government efforts to remedy past racism, which tipped the scales in favor of white political candidates, are also racist — unless those remedies can be tied to specific acts of past discrimination that made them necessary.

The decision has opened the door for states to attempt to invalidate any congressional district lines drawn to favor candidates of color.

Note what appalls The Editorial Board, that they might lose “congressional district lines drawn to favor candidates of color.” The Board are specifically asking for districts which favor non-white candidates. This would be the same Editorial Board which wrote last January:

The president has also successfully lobbied some Republican-controlled states to remake congressional maps to favor the GOP, regardless of their potential illegality. In Texas, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed 2025 redistricting maps to be used for the upcoming election, even as a legal challenge moves forward over racial gerrymandering.

It seems that the Board approve of racial gerrymandering, an attempt to create, again in their words, “congressional district lines drawn to favor candidates of color,” but are diametrically opposed to district boundaries which favor Republicans.

There is a strong bias on the part of the Board. It would seem that black Americans, in their view, can only be represented by black representatives, but if anyone were to suggest that black representatives cannot represent white Americans, they’d be among the first to scream that’s racist. If someone stated that only a white candidate could reasonably represent a majority white district, they’d also claim such was racist.

Conservatives have long fought against the reverse racism which has been used, but electorally, the Louisiana v Callais decision might not be the win they think. Blacks are the Democrats most loyal voting Demographic, frequently giving 90% of their ballots to Democrats. Creating majority black districts had the effect of making neighboring districts safer for Republican candidates. If those majority black districts are phased out, spreading heavily black areas back into other districts, Republican candidates might fare more poorly, and close races more likely to elect the Democratic candidates. The Editorial Board might be appalled if fewer black Democrats were elected, but I’m sure that they’d trade black Democrats for white Democrats if it meant fewer Republicans of any color were in office.

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The President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund argued that Louisiana voters, exercising their free choices, were not voting correctly She also argued against the foundational guarantees of our representative democracy.

In 1986, Robert Cortez “Bobby” Scott, then a state Senator in Virginia, ran for election to the Commonwealth’s First Congressional District seat against incumbent Representative Herb Bateman (R-VA), losing in a landslide, 56% to 44%. In the redistricting which followed the 1990 Census, the state legislature, at the direction of the federal Department of Justice, reapportioned the Third District into a “majority-minority,” meaning majority black, district, just for Mr Scott. The new Third District ran along the James River, from Newport News to Richmond, packing in heavily black areas. It worked: Mr Scott stomped Republican Dan Jenkins 79%-21%. Mr Scott is still in the United States House of Representatives, having served since January 3, 1993, 32 years, 9 months, and 13 days ago.

But, there was another election result in 1992. Mr Bateman barely won re-election in the reconfigured First District against newcomer Andy Fox, with barely over 50% of the vote. Mr Fox ran against Mr Bateman in 1992, but his time the Republican won in a landslide, because so many solidly Democratic voters had been peeled away from the First and placed into the Third District.

It’s simple: A Republican congressman who was at least subject to a strong Democratic challenger now had his seat in the “safe Republican” category, and Mr Bateman held that seat until his death on September 11, 2000. My family and I were living in Hampton, Virginia, in the First District, during all of this, which is why I remember it so well.

Now comes Louisiana v. Callais, a case before the United States Supreme Court concerning how much legislatures can use race in consideration of redistricting. The Louisiana state legislature, seeing the previous result in Allen v Milligan, 2023, believed that a second majority black district needed to be created to comply with the provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, 52 USC §10301. But, to do that, the state came up with a district shaped like a snake, wholly unlike any definition of being compact.

Naturally, some state residents sued. Allen v Milligan allowed this kind or racial gerrymandering, but Louisiana v Callais threatens to undo that. Naturally, the left are up in arms, and Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson went so far as to claim that black Americans are “disabled” when it comes to voting.

Jackson noted that the majority opinion in a 2023 Supreme Court ruling — which found Alabama unlawfully diluted the voting power of black people in the state — “used the word ‘disabled’” to describe voters subject to “processes [that] are not equally open.”

There is an interesting point that is being mostly ignored in all of the debates. Janai Nelson, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, argued before the Court:

(Associate Justice Samuel) Alito suggested that racially polarized voting could easily be identified through statistical analysis, and it could be seen whether White Democrats vote for Black Democrats at a lower rate, for instance.

At which point Miss Nelson stepped right into the trap.

Nelson told him that White Democrats were not voting for Black candidates — whether they were Democrats or not. She said there was no question that even if there is some correlation, that race was the driving factor.

In other words, Miss Nelson was arguing that Louisiana voters, exercising their free choices, were not voting correctly. In a partisan climate in which the Democrats have been arguing about racial ‘equity’ in terms which seem very much like a zero-sum game, the arguments for black empowerment seem to be made in terms in which gains for black Americans concomitantly entail losses for white Americans. But whatever their partisan and philosophical reasons, our system is predicated upon a secret ballot and the right of the voters to choose to vote however they wish.

There is another, even more pernicious assumption behind all of this. In a country which the equal protection of the laws is guaranteed under the Fourteenth Amendment, the arguments of Miss Nelson are, in effect, that black citizens cannot be represented by white congressmen, and that includes the notion that white citizens cannot be represented by black congressmen. Our system of representation, in our cities and states as well as in Congress, is that our representatives represent all of the people withing the bounds of their districts; the president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund argued against the foundational guarantees of our representative democracy.

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Harvard admits to anti-Semitism on campus The real question: what will the University do about it?

When I don’t have a good photo for an article, perhaps just a picture of my morning coffee being made will suffice!

We noted, just three weeks ago, how Harvard University, the oldest and most prestigious institution of higher learning in our great nation, rather than at least negotiate with the Trump Administration over policies to end blatant anti-Semitism on campus, was choosing to double-down on discrimination instead.

Harvard is, of course, a private school, so the government cannot order it to comply, but as a private institution the government is not obligated to fund it, either. But that doesn’t mean that the university doesn’t have to address its problems. From The Atlantic:

Harvard Begins to Confront Its Anti-Semitism Problem

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Sometimes you just have to be an [insert slang term for the rectum here] to do things right President Trump tries to break the 'anchor baby' chain.

According to Wikipedia, the term “anchor baby” is defined as:

Anchor baby is a term (regarded by some as a pejorative[1][2]) used to refer to a child born to non-citizen parents in a country that has birthright citizenship which will therefore help the parents and other family members gain legal residency[3] or avoid deportation. In the U.S., the term is generally used as a derogatory reference to the supposed role of the child, who automatically qualifies as an American citizen under jus soli and the rights guaranteed in the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.[4][5][6] The term is also often used in the context of the debate over illegal immigration to the United States.[7] A similar term, “passport baby”, has been used in Canada for children born through so-called “maternity” or “birth tourism“.[8][9]

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The Justice Department said that pardons do not mean innocence . . . when it comes to the J6 defendants. The same must hold true for those pardoned by Joe Biden

After Donald Trump won the 2024 election, with an open promise to pardon the Capitol kerfufflers, the Department of Justice, under President Joe Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland, a man who hates Republicans for denying him a seat on the Supreme Court, wanted to let the January 6 political prisoners that the acceptance of a pardon on their part was an admission of guilt. Continue reading →

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A junior judge takes a stupid decision

Just in case I couldn’t thing of a good subject on which to write today, my good friend Robert Stacy McCain gave me some direction!

Judge dismisses gun charge against convicted felon; ruled as unconstitutional

by Natalia Martinez | The Ides of March, 2024 | 11:47 AM EDT

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WAVE) – Prohibiting a convicted felon from possessing a gun is unconstitutional, according to a Jefferson County Circuit Court Judge’s ruling.

Judge Melissa Logan Bellows filed the order this week, dismissing the possession charge against a convicted felon and persistent felony offender, Jecory Frazier.

The motion to dismiss was filed by Louisville Attorney Rob Eggert in October on behalf of his client. Eggert claimed the state’s law does not trump the Second Amendment. Bellows agreed, making the first ruling of its kind in Jefferson County.

Trisha Lister, an attorney at Eggert’s office, wrote the motion.

She believes Bellows’ opinion was well-written.

She told WAVE News Troubleshooters the Second Amendment does not single out convicted felons. She said the charge has been not been equally enforced and is used as a way to keep people of color from having guns. Lister stated over 70% of those prosecuted on that standalone charge are minorities.

And there we have it: the attorneys for the defendant were concerned that “over 70% of those prosecuted on that standalone charge are minorities,” so naturally, the lawyers assumed that such a statistic was generated by racism rather than the possibility that “over 70% of those prosecuted on that standalone charge are minorities” because over 70% of the violations of KRS §527.040 were committed by minorities. That statistic is not addressed in Judge Bellows decision.

The .pdf file of Judge Bellows decision is here, and it is fairly brief, only eight pages.

The Judge based her ruling on District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), which established that the Second Amendment’s guarantee of the right to keep and bear arms is an individual right, not one restricted to the militia, and New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, 142 S. Ct. 2111 (2022), which set the standard that restrictions on our Second Amendment rights must have a significant history based on the original understandings of our rights, rather than something novel.

The Court held that “when the Second Amendment’s plain text covers an individual’s conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct” and the Government must demonstrate that the regulation is consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.

The Judge then launches into an argument I find strained:

In Heller, the Court stated that “nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons . . .” 554 U.S. at 627. The majority opinion in Bruen makes no mention of Heller’s reference to felon in possession laws. Instead, the admonition appeared in a concurring opinion. 142 S. Ct. 2162 (Kavanaugh, J., concurring).

A curious argument, given that Heller specifically stated that felons could be barred from owning weapons, and Bruen did not overturn that part, because Bruen made no mention of that particular part, the Court must not have meant for it to continue. This alone is a point of contention that I suspect the Commonwealth will appeal.

But, to me, the oddest part of the Judge’s argument is that, other than one sentence in which she noted that the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified in 1868, she ignores it completely. Perhaps the Commonwealth’s Attorney for Jefferson County did not bring it up, even though it is through the Fourteenth Amendment that the Court ‘incorporated’ the individual right to keep and bear arms to the states, in McDonald v. City of Chicago, 561 U.S. 742 (2010). The Fourteenth Amendment specifically states, in part:

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Emphasis mine.

It’s simple: the Fourteenth Amendment specifically allows the states to deprive a person of his constitutional rights if due process of law is followed, and the felony convictions of Jacory Frazier were obtained through the due process of law.

Let me state clearly here: I am not an attorney!

So, who is Judge Bellows? She was elected Judge of the Kentucky Circuit Court for Circuit 30, division 7, in 2022, in a non-partisan race, to an eight-year term. People unfamiliar with the Bluegrass State’s judicial system might jump to the conclusion that she was appointed by either Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) or the evil President Trump, but neither is the case.

Defense Attorneys make all kinds of outlandish arguments to try to get their clients off, and in most cases, those arguments don’t work, even though judges do have to take such arguments seriously. In this case, a junior judge took an outlandish argument very seriously, and actually agreed with it.

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In which Corey Jackson tells us that non-white ethnic groups just aren’t equal to white Americans

Assemblyman Corey Jackson, from his official biography page, and is a public document.

California state Assemblyman Corey A Jackson is not someone you would ordinarily think believed that non-white persons simply aren’t equal with whites, but darned if that isn’t exactly what he believed. Elected in 2022 to represent the 60th Assembly District, his main concern seems to be race. He was aghast, appalled, and definitely clutching his pearls when the Supreme Court ruled that yes, discrimination on the basis of race was unconstitutional in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, as well as the 2020 rejection of the Pyrite State’s Proposition 16, by the huge margin of 57.2% to 42.8%, which sought to overturn the 1996 state constitutional amendment which banned discrimination on the basis of race, sex, national origin and ethnicity as a factor in public university admissions and other state programs.

Think about that: in the ‘bluest’ of our blue states, an attempt to reinstate racial preferences, in which the proponents outspent the opposition by roughly 14-to-1, the attempt was defeated by a landslide margin. Continue reading →