Supreme Court

This the second in a series of action alerts about the fundamental willful and pernicious errors underlying the decision by 5 agenda driven right wing judges on the Supreme Court to gut all restraints on corporate meddling in our elections. Each of these successive alerts will analyze additional derelict aspects of this shameful and truly dangerous decision, to further demonstrate why we the people must speak out and act to reverse it.

In the first alert we made the triable case (which no attorney has written us to dispute) that failing to even bother to distinguish between domestic and foreign owned corporations, and knowingly leaving America vulnerable to the latter BY their ruling, was de facto an act of treason by The Supreme Court 5.

This alert will focus on their abandonment of every prudent rule of judicial review, in favor of haste and the most extreme form of judicial activism, again with specific page number references to the opinion itself.

Because of the grave crime against the Constitution committed by gang of 5 right wing judicial outlaws on our Supreme Court yesterday, we are launching two critical action pages at once

Action Page: Corporations Are Not The People http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum1029.php

Action Page: Impeach The Supreme Court 5 http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum1030.php

By any fair legal definition, the decision yesterday by The Supreme Court 5 constitutes nothing less than an act of TREASON against the people of the United States. Having read and analyzed the entire 183 page decision and all of its concurring and dissenting opinions ourselves, we are fully prepared to support this accusatory conclusion.

By Dave Lindorff

You know, the year 2009 started out kind of nicely. We watched Barack Obama take the oath of office, serenaded by the awesome Aretha Franklin (wearing her awesome hat), after first hearing Pete Seeger sing the real Woody Guthrie verses to "This Land Is Your Land" on the steps of the Lincoln Monument.

By Dave Lindorff

I don’t know at this point whether Judge Sonia Sotomayor is a good choice for Supreme Court Justice or a bad one.

She certainly is a lousy judge for writers and other creative
people, having ruled (and been overruled by an appellate court and
then, when that reversal was upheld, by the US Supreme Court in a case
called New York Times Inc. v. Tasini) that the Times and periodical
publishers could reprint, without any additional compensation, any
freelance works they contracted on the basis that they had a general
copyright on each entire issue they publish.

Justice David Souter's retirement gives President Obama the opportunity to replace him with a true progressive - the mirror opposite of Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, and Alito.

Sure rightwingers will scream, Republicans will threaten a filibuster, Democratic Corporatists like Ben Nelson will threaten to join them, and The Washington Pundits will insist they are Absolutely Right. But who cares? We elected President Obama, not them. And the majority of Americans support our populist agenda, not their corporatist one.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg is the only progressive now on the Court. As progressives, we must not settle for more Corporatists like Stephen Breyer.

By Dave Lindorff

Back in the early days of the seemingly interminable Afghan
conflict, a young American, trapped in Afghanistan by the US invasion
of that country, was captured along with Taliban fighters and, after a
bit of captivity and “enhanced interrogation” at the tender mercies of
US troops, was transported back for trial in the US, where then
Attorney General John Ashcroft excitedly labeled him the “American
Taliban.”

But John Walker Lindh, railroaded into a 20-year jail sentence and
slapped with a gag order that bars him from talking about how he was
tortured for the entire length of his incarceration in Afghanistan, is
not the real American Taliban. That title surely belongs to our new
Republican vice presidential candidate, Sarah Palin.

By Dave Lindorff

Is America at the mercy of an invasion of the pumpheads?

The bizarre behavior of Bill Clinton during this campaign season, which has seen this once smooth-talking and politically uber-sophisticated campaigner repeatedly stick a foot in his mouth and undermine his wife’s struggling campaign, raises the issue of whether he is suffering from postperfusion syndrome—a now recognized cognitive impairment common in patients who have undergone heart bypass surgery.

Is Governor Freudenthal (D-WY) actually required to pick a Republican to replace Sen. Craig Thomas (R-WY)?

State law says so, but it may violate the U.S. Constitution. So says University of California law professor Vikram Amar writing for findlaw.com. Professor Amar is also a former clerk to Justice Harry Blackmun.

See the arguments, vote in a poll, and participate in the discussion at
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/6/6/71141/06254

You will also find a sample letter there to send to Governor Freudenthal to ask him to consider all of his options.

TELL CONGRESS TO REMOVE GONZALES BY CONSTITUTIONAL FORCE IF NECESSARY

ACTION PAGE: http://www.millionphonemarch.com/impeach_gonzales.php

You can call toll free at 800-828-0498, 800-459-1887 or 800-614-2803 and ask for your own House member and Senators.

For an administration in which utter smirking defiance of law and the will of the American people is the only operational mode, IMPEACHMENT is the only remedy.

How bad can it possibly get before Congress will act? In explosive testimony this week before the Senate, the former number two official in the Justice apartment, James B. Comey, testified that Alberto Gonzales tried to bully a deathly sick John D. Ashcroft into signing off on a secret and massive domestic wiretap scheme which had already been determined to be profoundly illegal. Even the Washington Post was compelled to editorialize on Wednesday as follows:

NOW's outstanding President Kim Gandy speaks for me:

Today the Supreme Court upheld this nation's first abortion procedure ban—a ban enacted by George W. Bush and conservatives in Congress. Five justices, including Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito—both installed by Bush and a Republican-majority Senate—ruled that the law does not violate a woman's constitutional right to abortion.

Not since Bush v. Gore has the Supreme Court made such a political decision, or one that so completely distorts the law and disregards the U.S. Constitution.