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Shocker: Strongly Divided Supremes Rule Unanimously on One Issue

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In a public rebuke to the city of Boston, the U.S. Supreme Court has unanimously ruled the city violated the constitutional rights of Camp Constitution, whose officials asked to fly a Christian flag at city hall through a program that already had allowed multiple private interest groups to fly their banners.

“We conclude that, on balance, Boston did not make the raising and flying of private groups’ flags a form of government speech,” wrote Justice Stephen Breyer, one of the court’s leftists, in the opinion. “That means, in turn, that Boston’s refusal to let Shurtleff and Camp Constitution raise their flag based on its religious viewpoint ‘abridged’ their ‘freedom of speech.'”

The case had been developing for years, and earlier this year WND reported when the justices heard arguments in the case, which focused on the city’s decision to make available to any private group one of the flagpoles at its city hall. The groups could schedule a time and then fly their banner for a short time.

That program was run without incident until Hal Shurtleff, whose organization is called Camp Constitution, requested to fly a Christian flag under the city’s program. Never before had city officials debated such a request, but this time, they refused to allow the banner to fly. . .

At that time, analysts concluded that the full bench of the court appeared to be united “in favor of Harold Shurtleff.” (Read more from “Shocker: Strongly Divided Supremes Rule Unanimously on One Issue” HERE)

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Man Dies After Lighting Himself Ablaze Outside Supreme Court on Earth Day (VIDEO)

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A Colorado man who set himself on fire outside of the Supreme Court on Earth Day has died from his injuries, police said.

In an incident report, the Washington, DC, Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) stated that 50-year-old Wynn Bruce of Boulder, Colorado, carried out the act at about 6:05 p.m. Friday, the Hill noted. The MPD, Supreme Court Police, and Capitol Police responded to the scene. After being conveyed to a local hospital via helicopter, Bruce died of his injuries.

“A Facebook page belonging to a person named Wynn Bruce said he was a Buddhist and a climate activist,” the New York Post reported.

“In 2020, Bruce left a cryptic Facebook comment that included a fire emoji and the date of his death, 4/22/2022,” according to the outlet.

(Read more from “Man Dies After Lighting Himself Ablaze Outside Supreme Court on Earth Day” HERE)

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SCOTUS Rules Against Military Officer Who Refused COVID-19 Vaccine

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The Supreme Court said it won’t get involved in a military vaccine mandate challenge brought by a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force Reserve who declined to be vaccinated against COVID-19 for religious reasons.

In an unsigned order, justices gave no reasons for their refusal to take the case, which is common in response to emergency requests. Three Republican-appointed members, Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch, gave their dissent but did not explain their decisions, according to court records.

The court’s order stands as an interim measure that denies relief while the plaintiff’s appeals proceed. Lt. Col. Jonathan Dunn was removed from his command following nearly two decades of service as a trainer and commander, arguing he was seeking “protection against further punishment, including a discharge.”

The Justice Department’s Solicitor General, Elizabeth Prelogar, said the Air Force had determined “that vaccination of service members is an essential component of military readiness and is critical to protecting the health and safety of service members.” (Read more from “SCOTUS Rules Against Military Officer Who Refused COVID-19 Vaccine” HERE)

Photo credit: Flickr

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Mad Grandpa: Biden Complains of ‘Vile’ Republican Questions of Ketanji Brown Jackson

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President Joe Biden on Friday unleashed criticism against Senate Republicans for asking tough questions about his Supreme Court Justice’s judicial record during her confirmation hearings.

The president said he knew that his Supreme Court nominee would be put through a “painful and difficult” confirmation process, but what he saw from Republican senators was worse than he had expected. . .

“What Judge Jackson was put through was well beyond that,” Biden said angrily. “It was verbal abuse. The anger. The constant interruptions, the most vile, baseless assertions and accusations.”

Biden was referring to Republican questions, such as those from Sens. Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Ted Cruz (R-TX), of Jackson’s judicial record, including her choice to reduce sentences for convicts guilty of child pornography. . .

Biden criticized the hearings for Jackson despite his own record of presiding over Senate hearings smearing Justice Clarence Thomas with accusations of sexual assault in his 1991 confirmation hearings.

(Read more from “Mad Grandpa: Biden Complains of ‘Vile’ Republican Questions of Ketanji Brown Jackson” HERE)

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Biden’s SCOTUS Nominee Sentenced Child Porn Offenders to Nearly 60% Less Time than National Average

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President Biden’s Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson sentenced those in possession of child pornography to nearly 60 percent less time than the national average, according to documents from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) reviewed by Breitbart News.

Furthermore, cases of child porn distribution in which Jackson was the presiding judge were sentenced 47 percent less than the national average. Jackson also sentenced the production of child porn 35 percent less than the national average.

In fact, in every single child pornography case she heard, Jackson sentenced the defendant below the sentencing guidelines, according to documents reviewed by Breitbart News. Similarly, in every single child pornography case, Jackson sentenced the defendant at or below the recommendation from the prosecutor. In all but one child pornography case, Jackson sentenced the defendant below or at the probation office’s recommendation.

Jackson has also been verbally sympathetic to those she has sentenced in recent years.

“[You’re] obviously aware of my policy disagreement. I just think it’s very, very hard to deal with number of images as a significant aggravator…” she said in relation to the 2019 case, United States v. Cane. (Read more from “Biden’s SCOTUS Nominee Sentenced Child Porn Offenders to Nearly 60% Less Time Than National Average” HERE)

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It Shouldn’t Be Hard to Condemn Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Leniency for Child Predators

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Joe Biden has nominated Ketanji Brown Jackson to be the newest Supreme Court justice, a seat held for life. Immediately, Sen. Josh Hawley brought forward concerns about Jackson’s history of leniency toward child predators.

National Review’s Andrew McCarthy weighed in to say that Republicans like Hawley are making a big mistake, and a big deal out of nothing. McCarthy correctly points out that if Republicans are so concerned about this issue, they should make sentences on child predators tougher.

But McCarthy wasn’t arguing for tougher sentences, just making a rhetorical point. He went on to compare child sexual abuse imagery to drugs, and claimed the only justification for making these materials illegal is “market theory”—that the consumption of these illicit materials drives the abuse of children in the materials, even though the persons viewing the materials supposedly aren’t abusers themselves. . .

In jumps fellow National Reviewer Ramesh Ponnuru with an article that says our child porn laws “might” be too weak. Ponnuru correctly points out how wrong the Supreme Court was in 2002 to allow “virtual” child sexual abuse imagery where real children aren’t being abused, and then quickly argues that McCarthy’s view is wrong because these materials certainly harm “our moral ecology.” (Read more from “It Shouldn’t Be Hard to Condemn Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Leniency for Child Predators” HERE)

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Ilhan Omar: Impeach Clarence Thomas Because Of Wife’s Texts

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Seizing on a Washington Post story by Bob Woodward and Robert Acosta, Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., has joined calls by her progressive allies for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to resign or be impeached.

The Post story follows a New Yorker report in February contending the political activism of Thomas’ wife – Virginia “Ginni” Thomas – poses a conflict of interest. Titled “Virginia Thomas urged White House chief to pursue unrelenting efforts to overturn the 2020 election, texts show,” the Post story is built on the assumption that Donald Trump had no justification for raising concerns about vote fraud and that he was not pursuing the constitutional process to validate the presidential vote.

Omar on Friday was commenting on a tweet by progressive podcaster Brian Tyler Cohen noting Clarence Thomas was the only no vote in an 8-1 decision to allow the release of documents related to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot showing plans to order the military to seize voting machines.

“Clarence Thomas needs to be impeached,” Omar wrote.

Featuring leaked texts obtained by the House Select Committee probing Jan. 6, Woodward and Acosta write that Virginia Thomas “repeatedly pressed White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to pursue unrelenting efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election in a series of urgent text exchanges in the critical weeks after the vote.”

(Read more from “Ilhan Omar: Impeach Clarence Thomas Because Of Wife’s Texts” HERE)

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How Can Ketanji Brown Jackson Rule In Sex Discrimination Cases If She Can’t Define ‘Woman’?

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. . .At Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation hearing on Tuesday, Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee asked a seemingly innocuous question: “Can you provide a definition of the word ‘woman’?” . . .

It might seem like a question that goes more to politics than to the job of a judge, but when sex discrimination is frequently before the court — including as recently as last year in Bostock v. Clayton County — it behooves a judge to have some inkling about what “sex” means.

Blackburn’s questioning began with a reference to the 1996 case of United States v. Virginia, in which the Supreme Court struck down the Virginia Military Institute’s policy of only admitting men by a 7-1 vote, with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg writing the opinion of the court. (You can watch the testimony here, beginning at about 13:10:00.) Blackburn quoted from that opinion, specifically to Ginsburg’s point that “[p]hysical differences between men and women, however, are enduring: ‘[T]he two sexes are not fungible; a community made up exclusively of one [sex] is different from a community composed of both.’”

“Do you agree with Justice Ginsburg,” Blackburn asked, “that there are physical differences between men and women that are enduring?” . . .

“I am not familiar with that particular quote or case,” she said, which strains credulity. Had she committed that line to memory? Probably not. But to be unfamiliar with a landmark case, the most consequential majority opinion Justice Ginsburg ever authored? United States v. Virginia was surely a topic of discussion in 1996, Jackson’s third year of law school, where she was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. It beggars belief to say she was unfamiliar with it entirely. (Read more from “How Can Ketanji Brown Jackson Rule In Sex Discrimination Cases If She Can’t Define ‘Woman’?” HERE)

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Democrats Try to Shield Ketanji Brown Jackson From Child Porn Questions

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Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson continued to dodge questions Wednesday from Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Josh Hawley (R-MO) about why she had given lighter sentences than those prosecutors had recommended in child pornography cases.

The questions about Judge Jackson’s sentencing record continued on the third day of her Supreme Court confirmation hearing. Democrats, who had tried to dismiss Hawley’s claims as factually incorrect, retreated to arguing that Judge Jackson had legitimate policy disagreements with the established federal sentencing guidelines, and blamed congressional inaction.

Republicans were not willing to let Judge Jackson off the hook. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) questioned Judge Jackson about why she seemed not to agree that prison was a deterrent against child pornography. (Read more from “Democrats Try to Shield Ketanji Brown Jackson From Child Porn Questions” HERE)

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Pro-life Activists Slam Biden’s SCOTUS Nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson (VIDEO)

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Dozens of pro-life leaders raised concerns about the nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court in a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee leaders Monday.

“Ketanji Brown Jackson’s record speaks loudly of the type of justice she would be on the Supreme Court,” read the letter, addressed to Democratic Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin and Republican Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley. “She has been handpicked by a pro-abortion president to satisfy the pressure campaign from pro-abortion, progressive activists.”

The coalition, which includes leaders of the American College of Pediatricians, Susan B. Anthony List, National Right to Life and numerous other organizations, urged the Senate to consider Jackson’s judicial record on abortion issues.

The letter focused on an amicus brief Jackson co-authored for the Massachusetts National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) regarding “buffer zones” which restricted protests outside abortion clinics.

“She portrayed pro-life sidewalk counselors as a ‘hostile, noisy crowd of “in-your-face” protesters,’” the letter read. “Jackson’s past writings strongly indicate that she may be unable to fairly consider arguments from those politically divergent from her own.” (Read more from “Pro-life Activists Slam Biden’s SCOTUS Nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson” HERE)

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