72 Comments

My vote would have been for May the Fourth.

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While this might not have been the way to go about it, anything that opens up the deliberation process of the Supreme Court into the open cannot be bad. While their final decisions are easy (ish) to read and understand why the majority prevailed, how they got there needs transparency. During the height of the pandemic, they started broadcasting oral arguments and I thought it was enlightening. (Full disclosure - I'm not a lawyer, just a sad guy who likes to read court filings that pique my interest!)

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When I heard about the leak I was dismayed. The sanctity of the Supreme Court has been violated from within. But, I also got to thinking about the decision itself. At this point it might be best to leave the legal theory of stare decisis alone. I know, Roe is an example of the high court legislating from the bench but, flawed legal theory aside, look at what this will do to the country at a time when we are already divided on politics, Covid, immigration and whatever else comes up tomorrow. Is this really the time for upheaval in the legal field as well? I admit I'd like to see the leaker publicly flogged. Not for their political views but for tarnishing the sanctity of SCOTUS. Shame on him/her for taking it upon themselves to disrupt the honor and trust of a venerable institution.

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Perfect approach today. Thanks

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I love the way you handled this today. I really don't even care about the leak, it's the decision that is mind boggling! I love the way you said "there is nothing left to say". That about sums up what is happening.

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"We all know it's political..." Begging your pardon, Bill, but we don't. My take, and maybe I'm the only one, is that too often in the recent past, the Supreme Court, and even for that matter, jurists throughout the country, are now identified by members of the media as either "Trump-appointed", "Republican-appointed", "Democrat-appointed", etc. This is not something that has been traditionally an identifying part of our courts. If I consider myself John Q. Public, I've never looked up a judge to see who appointed him or her. Yet I now hear the media identifying jurists by their appointed official. How do we address the issue? Stop identifying judges based on who appointed them. Easier said than done, I know. But this contentiousness is led by a media ingraining itself in context of decisions by justifying/attacking decisions based on politics.

When I hear the most (or, my most) respected news source (NPR) taking this tack, I almost want to give up. Life imitates art, indeed.

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This fiasco at SCOTUS has already created what you suggested. It was the other guy and here's why. A conspiracy theorists holiday, but in my opinion the truth is that SCOTUS is now political and has caught the Trumplican propensity to not tell the whole truth when asked, i.e., hearings for the last three Justices, all Trump appointees (see - political?).

I can recall supposedly political appointments to SCOTUS over the past two hundred plus years that were supposed to be political that turned out to be the opposite, to the chagrin of the party that made the appointment, because they followed the essence of the Court which is supposed to follow precedence. Until now, the Court mostly followed this guidance, which is not in the Constitution. If I am not mistaken, they are to interpret laws, not make them - isn't that what it says in the Constitution? Probably too simplistic.

So, here we go again. Fox News is lauding SCOTUS while CNN and MSNBC are wondering how this could happen, but ain't it grand that it did? What war? All of this while Rome is still burning and Nero keeps fiddling, as our democracy goes down in flames with an American flag draped over a Christian cross while 30% of our population is saying amen and in control while the top 1% who have funded this fiasco rubbing their hands in glee. Wow, what a croc of BS!

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is it political or do we just have very real differences of what we feel is morally correct? And how do we get others to agree with our internal code? the past 40 years has seen a change in our moral code and while many feel we have gone too far an equal number feel that we need loosen them further. It is this divide that haunts the nation now. Your discussion on happiness was just the tip of the iceberg as we all peruse happiness in our own way and some are internal while others are external and they conflict. this may be more easily discussed in terms of when we seek happiness. Many want it now if at the expense of the future while others take less today figuring that they will have a better tomorrow. Live for today vs. prepare for tomorrow.

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Seems the legal basis of Roe vs Wade was flawed.

Even some prominent scholars who supported legal abortion derided the court’s opinion.

It’s “a very bad decision,” wrote Yale Law professor John Hart Ely, a former clerk to

Chief Justice Earl Warren, “because it is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense

of an obligation to try to be.”

Those critics included a young Ruth Bader Ginsburg. In the years before she became a justice,

she said the court made a mistake by going too far, too fast in its first ruling on the constitutionality of abortion. Ginsburg had been the leader of the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project in the 1970s, and later an appeals court judge in the 1980s. She gave several speeches criticizing the court’s handling of the abortion issue.

https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2022-05-03/how-roe-vs-wade-went-wrong-broad-new-right-to-abortion-rested-on-a-shaky-legal-foundation

Congress could pass a law guaranteeing the right to abortion, but I don’t see that happening.

It is only in the last two decades I have come to realize how political the Supreme Court

nominations are. My respect for them is diminished, and I expect it will stay that way. It is hard for me to wrap my head around what they rule can affect my life and the lives of all women so deeply.

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Wow, this has never and will never go away. Somehow, as a society we need to learn to live together with it. Frankly, I see both sides of the argument. I consider myself fairly liberal on most things, but I can understand the contention that life begins, etc….. And, I am not a woman so I feel like I cannot wade into the debate; let the women decide it. But then, what if “the life” was also half of me? In the end, the woman deals with the ton of issues, so as a man I’m deferring to the women in my life.

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Well, conspiracy theorists have been turning up right since the 2016 election. Hillary paid for the Steel Dossier and was colluding with the Russians, not Trump. Hunter Biden's laptop is a 'smoking gun' of information on his father's involvement in his business dealings. The FBI lied on the stand, etc. Don't mock your neighborhood conspiracy theorist, they may know more than you give them credit for.

The latest is that Biden met with Bill Clinton and Barack Obama on two different days, regarding the upcoming elections and the potential disaster being teed up. The next day there was a leak of a decision that could potentially have dire consequences for the GOP. We'll find out in November if it was well played or if regular Americans are more concerned about the issues Biden is ignoring: illegal immigration, Crime, Inflation, taxes, and the fact that every tax paying American might be on the hook for college loans, regardless of whether they paid their own off, ever took a loan themselves, or even went to college. Distract, distract, distract. We live in a very embarrassing time for our country.

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Why would you want to ruin what you have here? So far you have done a nice job of staying out of politics. Why change that? There are plenty of places for people to go to do their ranting. I think it is nice that we have a "quiet" place to go to without the ranting. Opening up a discussion on this is a can of worms that will destroy the fabric of the blog

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Great job Bill! You handled an extremely volatile subject brilliantly!

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As an extremely MODERATE pro-life person, (meaning do not ever overturn Roe-versus-Wade and do everything as a society and government to prevent pregnancy from happening in the first place) but still recognize that some sort of life does exist at conception, I know there is not any way to come to a consensus on abortion. Like a lot of you, I was alive before Roe-versus-Wade. I subscribe to Feminists for Life, a pro-life group of feminists.

I KNOW we were not supposed to wade into pro-life versus pro-choice but I did and Bill can delete my post if he wants to. It seems we are all painted as STRONG pro-life and STRONG pro-choice. But for a lot of us, the decision is heavily nuanced.

Our household has one pro-choice person and one pro-life person. Lets just say we NEVER discuss abortion issues. Its just not worth it.

I may be in denial on this whole SCOTUS leak and all the potential repercussions on it so I am focusing on the fact that Elon Musk took his beautiful model mother to the MET Gala.

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A man can have several hundred children per year. A woman can only have one. If there must be stopguards, put them on men. They contribute equally to pregnancy and yet this is considered a women's issue? It takes two, people. Yes, it happens in her body, but without him, it wouldn't happen at all. If we're going to police people's bodies, start with the most prolific perpetrators.

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As to suggestions on commenting about the mega-contentious, a few ideas/suggestions: 1) examine the mechanics of how each side has come to understand and view the issue (media, social media, historical events), 2) examine the mechanics/nature of discourse the discourse and how it is/isn't promoting any new understanding, or 3) looking at those that are profiting (money or power) from the generation or continuance of there being such contention. These can mostly skirt the underlying emotionally charged issues yet meaningfully add context and understanding from which most of us would benefit.

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