9 days after #Trump won the 2016 election, …the Mayflower Hotel, blocks from the WH,…[was] abuzz w/the possibilities of a future that changed overnight. #HillaryClinton, the woman the anti- #abortion movement feared more than perhaps anyone, failed to win…. And #LeonardLeo & the #conservative#legal movement that he worked for yrs to create were about to reclaim #power. With that power would come the chance to do what seemed unthinkable until this moment: strategize to take down #RoeVWade.
As Heather Cox Richardson reports, the Supreme Court just signed off on a South Carolina congressional map that dilutes Black votes by gerrymandering.
And Samuel Alito wrote the majority opinion. She writes,
"Almost exactly 70 years after the Supreme Court unanimously decided Brown v. Board, it appears that the framed timbers designed to reverse the expansion of minority rights are falling into place."
"The conservative court on which Alito sits is largely the product of right-wing dark-money overlord Leonard Leo, and — wouldn’t you know it — Leo flew the same 'Appeal to Heaven' flag outside of his house in Maine.
Murray Ngoima, a Bar Harbor resident, provided Rolling Stone with a photo she took of the flag hanging outside of his house on Feb. 25."
"In this case, the Republican majority that includes Justices Alito and Thomas ruled consistently with the views of powerful people from whom they have accepted favors. Inevitably, that means people will question the decision. Is it fair? Is it about following the law in a difficult case? Or is it about favoritism and the return of favors?"
Another Provocative Flag Was Flown at Another Alito Home
The justice’s beach house displayed an “Appeal to Heaven” flag, a symbol carried on Jan. 6 and associated with a push for a more Christian-minded government.
"The American law system is becoming increasingly broken in two key ways. The perennial problem, always there but now magnified by Trumpish impunity, is that there’s one legal system for the poor and another for the rich. Trump might well be convicted of felony fraud, but with money for lawyers and appeals, he’s unlikely to face punishment anytime soon, if ever."
"The second crisis is newer and more menacing: the Supreme Court and a swath of the lower federal judiciary have been infiltrated by militant Catholics, trained by Leonard Leo, a knight of the religious Sovereign Military Order of Malta and billionaire dark money purser. …
The real emergency in our legal system is the militant Catholic takeover of the federal court system, led by Leonard Leo, K Street’s Knight of Malta."
"All six Republican-appointed justices reached the Court with the backing of the Federalist Society, with a billionaire-funded, religious-right-backed mandate to 'make America great again' – that is, to take us back to the America of the 1920’s, when capitalism was unrestrained and racial and gender hierarchies were uncontested."
The fact that I know more about Hunter Biden’s private parts than I do about the numerous crimes committed by Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas and their wives shows exactly what is terribly wrong with today’s political mainstream media.
Greg Olear continues his valuable reporting on the coterie of hard-right Catholics who have such influence on our federal government and who control the Supreme Court as a bloc. The coterie includes Leonard Leo, who is the kingmaker for the court, Kevin Roberts of Heritage Foundation, and Robert P. George of the Federalist Society.
As Greg Olear notes, many of us may look at the blastocyst in the test tube and have trouble seeing the baby in the test tube — looking at you, Alabama Supremes. But that does not stop Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society and Robert P. George, a hard-right Catholic closely aligned with Leo, from their determination to impose on all of us by force of law the assertion that a blastocyst is a person.
"Donald Trump’s new 'let the states decide' position on abortion rights is a ploy. The real plan being cooked up by the Leonard Leo crew is to have the Supreme Court rule 'that a fetus qualifies as a "person" under the due process and equal protection clauses of the 14th Amendment,' which would make federal law the rightwing fairy tale that any abortion is equivalent to murder."