SCOTUS: No longer content with stacking, they're now dealing from the bottom of the deck

[@DCGoldPants]

 

 

 

Curious way to say "Yeah, it was Alito and we aren't going to out him for being the leaker like he's been more than a few times"

[The Evil Genius]

Aka the call is coming from inside the house. 

[Larry]

What I'm finding significant about this, is that they're investigating it in the first place. 
 

It's not like somebody leaked nuclear launch codes. They leaked a Supreme Court decision, that had already been made, at a time that wasn't the ideal political time (for the folks who wanted to reveal it at a different time). 
 

In short, the leak, and the outrage, are merely over political stage management. 
 

Somebody wanted it revealed at Time X, because politics. And somebody else wanted it revealed at Time Y, because politics. 

And the only reason to investigate it, is because Team X figures they can get a member of Team Y kicked off the team. And the reason to drop it, is because they figured it wouldn't work. 
 

----

 

Well, another reason for the show, is to try to control the news coverage. Make it about the leak, less about what the embedded agents actually did. 

 

Edited January 19, 2023 by Larry

[tshile]

13 minutes ago, Larry said:

It's not like somebody leaked nuclear launch codes. They leaked a Supreme Court decision, that had already been made, at a time that wasn't the ideal political time (for the folks who wanted to reveal it at a different time). 

well. Kind of. They leaked a draft opinion. And apparently it’s not unheard of for them to draft opinions that never actually pass and go to public. So it wasn’t a leaking of a final decision. If that even makes a difference. Not sure. 

[Larry]

50 minutes ago, tshile said:

well. Kind of. They leaked a draft opinion. And apparently it’s not unheard of for them to draft opinions that never actually pass and go to public. So it wasn’t a leaking of a final decision. If that even makes a difference. Not sure. 

1). Pretty sure that if the final decision significantly differed from the leak, that would be being loudly shouted. In fact, Team X would be loudly yelling that the leak was Liberal Fake News. 
 

2). If, OTOH, the outrage is "yeah, we were intentionally gunning to completely, explicitly, retroactively overturn Roe.  But, we were planning on throwing in a lot more Latin, to make it look like that wasn't our intent to do, just the instant we had the votes", then that's not exactly a defense. 

Edited January 19, 2023 by Larry

[The Evil Genius]

Scotus is just mad they got pantsed before they had the time to expose themselves properly.

[PokerPacker]

10 hours ago, The Evil Genius said:

Scotus is just mad they got pantsed before they had the time to expose themselves properly.

Bodily autonomy is a serious subject and nobody should have theirs taken away.  They should have a right to expose themselves when they are ready rather than have someone else force them to expose themselves when they are not ready.

Edited January 20, 2023 by PokerPacker

[Fergasun]

Got it, so it was Alito or one of the Thomas'.... 

[Cooked Crack]

 

 

 

[LadySkinsFan]

Cowards, won't stand up for exposing a decision that undermines females' right to bodily autonomy. 

[China]

The Supreme Court is weighing a theory that could upend elections. Here's how

 

Some watchers of the U.S. Supreme Court breathed a sigh of relief last month after most of the justices sounded skeptical during oral arguments about a once-fringe legal theory that could upend elections across the United States.

 

Still, many legal scholars and voting rights advocates remain on alert for a court ruling by this summer on what's known as the "independent state legislature theory." It claims that under the U.S. Constitution, state legislatures have the power to determine how federal elections are run, without any checks or balances from state constitutions or state courts.

 

While the court may end up issuing a narrow ruling that broadly rejects this widely disputed idea, a court endorsement of the theory is still possible. And the court's adoption of even a limited version of it could usher in a wave of instability to the country's already beleaguered election system, including during next year's presidential race.

 

Here's what could happen if a majority of the justices endorse some version of this controversial theory:

• It could lead to more lawsuits and bring uncertainty to upcoming elections
• It could make it easier for state lawmakers to ignore voting rights protected under state law
• It could spark a legal challenge over recent reforms to the Electoral Count Act

Click on the link for the full article
 

[China]

Exclusive: Supreme Court justices used personal emails for work and ‘burn bags’ were left open in hallways, sources say

 

Long before the leak of a draft opinion reversing Roe v. Wade, some Supreme Court justices often used personal email accounts for sensitive transmissions instead of secure servers set up to guard such information, among other security lapses not made public in the court’s report on the investigation last month.

 

New details revealed to CNN by multiple sources familiar with the court’s operations offer an even more detailed picture of yearslong lax internal procedures that could have endangered security, led to the leak and hindered an investigation into the culprit.

 

Supreme Court employees also used printers that didn’t produce logs – or were able to print sensitive documents off-site without tracking – and “burn bags” meant to ensure the safe destruction of materials were left open and unattended in hallways.

 

“This has been going on for years,” one former employee said.

 

The problem with the justices’ use of emails persisted in part because some justices were slow to adopt to the technology and some court employees were nervous about confronting them to urge them to take precautions, one person said. Such behavior meant that justices weren’t setting an example to take security seriously.

 

The justices were “not masters of information security protocol,” one former court employee told CNN.

 

In a statement attached to the final report, the court called the leak a “grave assault” on the court’s legitimacy and the marshal of the court issued a road map to improve security.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Supreme Court Justices Reportedly Can’t Figure Out How To Adopt Ethics Code Amid Controversies

 

The Supreme Court has been actively discussing adopting a code of conduct for at least four years but so far can’t agree on how to do it—and it’s unclear when they will—the Washington Post reports, as pressure on the justices to follow a binding ethical code ramps up amid a series of controversies that have raised questions about potential conflicts of interest.

 

The court “has failed to reach consensus” on a code of conduct despite years-long internal discussions about adopting one, the Post reports citing anonymous sources, though the topic remains “active.”

 

The court’s legal counsel presented a “working document” highlighting what issues such a code could address, the Post reports, but there’s no timeline on when the court could actually make a decision on whether or not to adopt an ethics code or what it would look like.

 

Supreme Court justices are not bound by the same code of conduct that lower federal judges are, which prohibits judges from “impropriety and the appearance of impropriety in all activities” and has a complaint process in place that can lead to punishment if the code is violated.

 

Justices have said they consult the federal judges’ code of conduct, but without being actually bound by one, there aren’t any consequences in place if they choose not to follow it.

 

Legal scholars, judicial ethics activists and lawmakers have all called on the court to adopt a code of conduct as a result, particularly as justices have come under fire for a series of controversies, particularly Justice Clarence Thomas’ wife’s conservative activism.

 

Click on the link for the full article

 

Ethics...what's that?

[China]

Alito, Kagan Top Justices in Supreme Court Recusal ‘Black Box’

 

US Supreme Court justices recused themselves in roughly 3% of appeals since 2018, with Samuel Alito and Elena Kagan doing so most often, a Bloomberg Law analysis shows.

 

Virtually all of the more than 750 recusals identified in a review of court orders lacked an explanation of why the justices avoided participating. Neither they nor the court are required to give reasons. But financial disclosures, orders, and case records provide insight into their decision-making.

 

The period covers a changing court with advocacy groups, ethics scholars, and lawmakers from both parties pressing for more transparency about how the justices do their work behind closed doors. Legislative proposals and other calls for a code of conduct applicable to the justices have sought more openness about recusal.

 

“Recusal explanations would help the public understand the justices’ entanglements so we’d have a standard by which to hold them to and a way to see if the nine are following the recusal law in a consistent manner,” said Gabe Roth, executive director of Fix the Court. The non-profit watchdog also compiles recusal data, and some of its analysis was included in this report.

 

Nearly all recusals involved petitions that were denied review. A small number occurred at the merits stage and off the so-called shadow docket, leaving the nine-member bench shorthanded when deciding those matters. The court hears about 70 cases each term.

 

Alito’s stock holdings appear to account for dozens of recusals, while Kagan’s stint as US solicitor general in the Obama administration are likely related to most of hers.

 

Justice Clarence Thomas almost never recuses, despite outside pressure to do so. Most recently, Thomas faced calls to sit out a Jan. 6-related case because his wife, Ginni, lobbied the White House to overturn the 2020 election.

 

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

On 10/11/2022 at 6:26 PM, China said:

A Supreme Court Case Could Decide the Fate of the Modern Internet

 

In October 1959, the Supreme Court heard the story of Eleazer Smith, a Los Angeles bookstore owner. Smith was convicted and given a 30-day jail term for the possession in his bookstore of a hardcover book, Sweeter Than Life. It was an erotic novel—which was illegal. Smith was convicted under a Los Angeles ordinance that says if you merely sell obscene materials, even if you haven’t read them and you don’t know about them, you can go to jail. Fortunately for him, a civil liberties attorney took his case all the way up to the Supreme Court, which held that the Los Angeles ordinance violated the First Amendment.

 

That ruling set the stage for the creation of a law, Section 230, that has shielded internet giants and social media companies from legal liability for what users say on their platforms, in the same way that Eleazer Smith wasn’t liable for what was inside a book in his store. But now, the Supreme Court is set to hear a case on Section 230, one that could fundamentally alter big tech’s business model.

 

On Friday’s episode of What Next: TBD, I spoke with Jeff Kosseff, a law professor who wrote the book on the most important law underpinning the modern internet: Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

 

Lizzie O’Leary: You are probably sick of this, but you did write a book with the title The Twenty-Six Words That Created the Internet. Can you read them for me?

Jeff Kosseff: Sure. “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”

 

How would you characterize the role that those 26 words had in setting the stage for the modern internet?

They’ve allowed companies of all sizes to build internet businesses around content that users create rather than content that the companies create. It’s really a risk-shifting strategy. It’s saying any legal risk of defamation or anything else is going to be put on the people who post the content, and it won’t be placed on the platform that hosts it.

 

To understand the landscape in which Section 230 was written, you have to remember the internet of the early 1990s. Back then, services like CompuServe or Prodigy hosted forums and message boards where people posted all sorts of things. But the companies took very different approaches to what users said on their sites. CompuServe didn’t do much moderation of the content on its service, while Prodigy did. This being the internet, users invariably said some offensive things, and both companies got sued, but it was CompuServe’s hands-off approach that was the more successful legal strategy. Why?

They’re able to get the case dismissed. The judge says, “You are just like Eleazer Smith’s bookstore. You didn’t know about this content, you had no reason to know, so we’re not going to hold you liable for defamation.” Now, a few years later, Prodigy tries the same thing, and its efforts are rejected. The judge says, “You’re different than CompuServe. Because you do all of this [moderation], you’re more like a newspaper than a newsstand, and just like a newspaper, you are liable for every single thing in your pages.” This is in 1995. It starts to get a lot of attention from Congress and in the media because it stands for the proposition that, if you moderate content, you actually can increase your liability.

 

In 1995, Congress rewrote the telecommunications law for the first time in 60 years. A lot of people, including lawmakers, thought the internet was a terrifying place full of weirdos and pornography. The older, less tech-savvy Senate attached the Communications Decency Act to their version of the telecom bill. The CDA made it illegal to knowingly send or show minors indecent content online, but over in the House, members were taking a very different approach.

You have a Republican, Chris Cox, and a Democrat, Ron Wyden, and they want to come up with an alternative. That’s Section 230. What Section 230 does is it solves this Prodigy problem by saying that if you’re an interactive computer service provider, you won’t be treated as the publisher of content that someone else provides. Rather than have the government criminalize certain types of constitutionally protected speech, we’re going to put it in the hands of these online services and also of the user.

 

In some sort of congressional magic, both the Communications Decency Act and Section 230 get put in the same part of the telecom bill, even though they conflict with one another. But the day that President Clinton signs it into law, you have civil liberties groups challenge the constitutionality of the Senate’s bill. That goes, within a year and a half, up to the Supreme Court, and they strike the CDA down. So basically all that’s left of this internet part of the telecom law is Section 230.

 

As tech platforms have grown in their influence in power, Section 230 has become a pretty popular target for politicians on both the left and the right. But the courts have pretty vigorously upheld the law and ruled that it gives companies a broad liability shield, which is why the Supreme Court’s recent decision to even hear a 230 case is so significant.

This case, Gonzalez v. Google, centers on a young American law student, Nohemi Gonzalez, who was killed in a 2015 ISIS attack in Paris. Her family sued Google, claiming that YouTube, which is owned by Google, violated the Anti-Terrorism Act when its algorithm recommended ISIS videos to other users.

Now, the plaintiffs in the Gonzalez case said, “We’re not just seeking to treat YouTube as a publisher. What we’re going after YouTube for is the targeted promotion of certain content.” If people are searching for things related to ISIS, at least at the time, YouTube will then, at least according to the complaint, recommend similar content. This is part of the radicalization and propaganda process. What the plaintiffs in the Gonzalez case are saying is that it’s that sort of algorithmic promotion of terrorist content that is not within the scope of Section 230.

Now, courts—including the 9th Circuit, where this came from, and the 2nd Circuit—have rejected that. They say that’s part of the editorial and curation process that Section 230 protects. There have been some judges who have dissented, including in this case in the 9th Circuit, who have said, “No, this is different, and YouTube and other social media sites really contribute to the harms in how they target the content.”

 

Usually when the Supreme Court takes a case, it’s because you have what’s known as a circuit split. But on this issue, Section 230 really has not been read in different ways by different courts.

 

Click on the link for the rest

 

Big Tech's future is up to a Supreme Court that doesn't understand it

 

The firestorm over Big Tech and content moderation is coming to a head at the Supreme Court — but some experts fear it's a job the court simply isn’t equipped to do well.

 

Why it matters: The court has historically not been great at grappling with new technology. As it dives into the political battle over social-media algorithms, there's a real fear that the justices could end up creating more controversies than they solve.

 

Driving the news: The court is set to hear arguments this week in two cases involving Section 230, the federal law that says tech platforms aren’t liable for what their users choose to post.

 

Both lawsuits — one against Google, and one against Twitter — argue that while tech companies may not be liable for the content of users’ posts, they should be liable for what their algorithms promote or suggest.

The implications of such a decision may not be fully apparent for years, even to the engineers who work on those products.

“The court might think it's doing one thing and it's actually doing something very different,” said Evelyn Douek, a law professor at Stanford who specializes in tech law. “It’s ill-matched to the problem.”

 

The concern within the tech industry isn’t just that the court might rule against them — every party in a Supreme Court case has to worry about that — but that a Supreme Court ruling limiting Section 230, unlike a law limiting Section 230, could cause unforeseen issues down the road that even the law’s critics may not necessarily be happy about.

 

Even if Google and Twitter win, there’s a realistic scenario in which “the court still says problematic things ... that end up weaponizing the legal system against court moderation,” Berin Szóka, president of libertarian-leaning think tank TechFreedom, said during a roundtable with reporters last week.

"There is a valid concern that the Court may simply not understand nor appreciate the technical complexities that drive the modern web," wrote Jess Miers, a lawyer for the pro-tech Chamber of Progress.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[Larry]

Yahoo:U.S. Supreme Court spurns challenge to Arkansas law against contractors boycotting Israel

 

Quote

 

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to revive a newspaper's challenge on free speech grounds to an Arkansas law requiring state government contractors to pledge not to boycott Israel, a policy the publication's lawyers called a threat to a constitutionally protected form of collective protest.

 

The justices turned away an appeal by the Arkansas Times, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, of a lower court's ruling dismissing its lawsuit that claimed that the measure punishes participation in political boycotts based on the viewpoint expressed in violation of the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment guarantee of free speech.

 

The Arkansas law, passed in 2017, requires public contracts to include a certification that the contractor is not engaged in a "boycott" Israel, which includes "actions that are intended to limit commercial relations" with Israel or "Israeli-controlled territories." It applies to contracts worth at least $1,000.

 

 

 

I know I'm going to have a hard time not coming across as antisemetic.  But how the **** do we get American legislators to pass laws that literally state that the economic interests of a foreign country outweigh the constitutional freedoms of American citizens, in America?  

 

And have the USSC and the federal court system, agree?  

[PokerPacker]

3 minutes ago, Larry said:

Yahoo:U.S. Supreme Court spurns challenge to Arkansas law against contractors boycotting Israel

 

 

 

I know I'm going to have a hard time not coming across as antisemetic.  But how the **** do we get American legislators to pass laws that literally state that the economic interests of a foreign country outweigh the constitutional freedoms of American citizens, in America?  

 

And have the USSC and the federal court system, agree?  

[The Evil Genius]

A challenge to Florida's stupid fetal personhood law.

 

 

[skinsmarydu]

Woah.  For as much thought as I've given the topic over the decades, I never thought of that one. 

[PokerPacker]

3 hours ago, skinsmarydu said:

Woah.  For as much thought as I've given the topic over the decades, I never thought of that one. 

"it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer."
- Benjamin Franklin

[China]

 

[China]

On 2/22/2023 at 9:41 AM, The Evil Genius said:

A challenge to Florida's stupid fetal personhood law.

 

 

 

Florida court dismisses pregnant inmate’s petition to be released over fetus’ being ‘deprived of liberty’

 

A Florida court has dismissed an 8-months-pregnant inmate's emergency petition to be released from custody based on the claim that her fetus has been denied adequate medical care, in a case that raises questions about how such arguments could be interpreted in court as anti-abortion activists seek to give legal rights to fetuses.

 

The 3rd District Court of Appeal dismissed the petition without prejudice to be decided in circuit court, arguing, in part, that it is unclear whether the fetus of Natalia Harrell, 24, has the right to file the petition in the first place, and that its unborn status makes it too difficult to determine the facts in the case.

 

"Among other things, we do not believe we can properly resolve whether the unborn child has the standing to file the petition before us given the inadequate record in this matter," the Friday opinion said.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[PokerPacker]

They're just punting until she gives birth so they don't have to make a ruling.

[Larry]

9 minutes ago, PokerPacker said:

They're just punting until she gives birth so they don't have to make a ruling.

 

Nah.  

 

They want to "mumble mumble standing something".  

 

But they don't want to RULE that a fetus doesn't have standing to sue.  Cause they might want to use that, some day.  

[PokerPacker]

14 minutes ago, Larry said:

 

Nah.  

 

They want to "mumble mumble standing something".  

 

But they don't want to RULE that a fetus doesn't have standing to sue.  Cause they might want to use that, some day.  

Doesn't sound like we're disagreeing.  If they rule that the fetus doesn't have standing, it throws their personhood into question, which they can't have.  If they rule it does have standing, it opens them up to a whole bunch of suits on that precedent.  If they punt, they get to keep status quo until suddenly babby is formed and now it doesn't challenge their personhood laws.  There's only 9ish month period anyone can bring a suit like this, so the courts are going to weaponize the slow wheels of justice to make sure every single one gets the clock run out so they get to continue their hypocrisy.