Tag Archives: politics

The Supremes Über Alles

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In my two previous columns (here and here) I detailed some of the winners and losers resulting from the opinions issued during the Supreme Court term just ended. Now let us look at the biggest winner of them all, the Supreme Court itself. In the last three weeks of the term, the Supreme Court transferred much of regulatory and administrative authority and rulemaking to itself. The federal courts were not authorized and are not equipped to serve as roving regulators of last resort for hundreds of federal agencies. According to the Court:

  • Judges know more about science than scientists.
  • Judges know more about medicine than doctors.
  • Judges know more about structural safety than engineers.
  • Judges know more about climate change than meteorologists.
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The Supreme’s Trainwreck

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Every summer professors at the nation’s law schools huddle to discuss what, if any, changes should be made to their teaching curriculum after the Supreme Court term just ended. This year, they are scrambling to deal with the train wreck for constitutional law that was the Court’s 2023-2024 term.

I am not a lawyer. But after fifty years as a journalist, I am spending my emeritus years in part teaching a course titled “Media Law and Ethics for Journalists” in the UCLA Extension program. This is a required course in the school’s journalism certificate program and is available online.

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Form and Substance

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There is no sugar-coating it. President Joe Biden had a train wreck in his first 2024 debate with Former President Donald Trump. Fifty-one million watched. I wrote that I had concerns because Biden had seemed physically feeble during some appearances in the last year. Right as he walked out on the debate stage, I saw those signs, Biden walking slowly and speaking slowly and in a soft scratchy voice. I did not expect to see him ramble and become incoherent, but he did that more than once. At other times he was clear, combative, and effective, defending his administration and listing his accomplishments. But you could not fail to notice the other moments.

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Debating the Debate

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The chattering class had a field day over the weekend pontificating on the presidential debate scheduled for Thursday, June 27, at 9pm ET on CNN. As usual when the Know-It-Alls get together, there was a lot of noise but little substance. I never expected there would be any debates between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, and I still have a thought that this event might be called off. If not, it should be quite a spectacle, more entertaining than reality TV.

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Birds of a Feather

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Last week The New York Times published a photograph it had acquired that showed an upside-down American flag flying on the pole at the home of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito. This incident occurred in January 2021, just days after former President Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol. The flag is associated with Trump’s false claims of election fraud.

Alito says he had no involvement whatsoever in the flag flying. The flag, he said. was briefly placed by his wife, Martha-Ann Alito, in response to a neighbor’s use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs. Alito also claimed he did not participate in the decision to display the flag. Sounds to me like Alito is throwing his wife under the bus.

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The Supremes Vote, Again

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There is no doubt anymore. The conservative majority on the United States Supreme Court is dedicated to electing Donald Trump to a second term.

The Trump justices made that clear last week as they considered his extraordinary claim that a president has an absolute immunity from criminal prosecution. The idea seems absurd on its face. A fundamental principal of the United States is that it is a nation of law. The framers of the Constitution, having overthrown one monarch, had no desire to create a new one. There is no evidence in the historical record that they believed a president should be immune from criminal prosecution. Two lower courts carefully considered Trump’s claim and rejected it completely.

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Prayer Trumps Policy

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(Speaker Mike Johnson leads GOP Members of Congress in prayer on the House floor – CSPAN)

Critical assistance for Ukraine, which was approved by the Senate, is languishing in the House. The same is true for assistance for Israel. The impending budget crisis which threatened to shut down the government was punted down the field again with an agreement that keeps operations going until the end of the fiscal year in September but threatens to come back in full force two months before the election.

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