Roberts Denounces Schumer for Talking About Kavanaugh the Way Kavanaugh Talked About the Senate

[babylonsister]

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/03/john-roberts-denounces-chuck-schumer-whirlwind-brett-kavanaugh.html

Roberts Denounces Schumer for Talking About Kavanaugh the Way Kavanaugh Talked About the Senate
By Dahlia Lithwick
March 04, 2020
7:11 PM


On Wednesday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer had a message for Donald Trump’s two nominees to the Supreme Court as the court heard oral arguments in a landmark abortion case that threatens one of the underpinnings of Roe v. Wade. “I want to tell you, Gorsuch. I want to tell you, Kavanaugh. You have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price!” Schumer warned of the pair’s jurisprudence since arriving on the bench. “You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.”

By Wednesday afternoon, Chief Justice John Roberts had the Supreme Court’s press office issue a stunningly rare and stinging rebuke under his signature:

Justices know that criticism comes with the territory, but threatening statements of this sort from the highest levels of government are not only inappropriate, they are dangerous. All Members of the Court will continue to do their job, without fear or favor, from whatever quarter.

If Schumer’s repudiated words sounded at all familiar to you, or to the chief justice, it might be because at his confirmation hearing, then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh turned to the Senate Democrats on the Judiciary Committee and pledged as follows:

Since my nomination in July, there’s been a frenzy on the left to come up with something, anything, to block my confirmation. You sowed the wind for decades to come. I fear that the whole country will reap the whirlwind.*

snip//

Still, it beggars belief that the same chief justice who stood by silently at Trump’s direct attacks at federal judge after federal judge, and hit snooze last week at presidential attacks on Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor and on Amy Berman Jackson as she is poised to sentence Roger Stone, is going to fire up the creaky old Supreme Court teletype machine to rebuke Chuck Schumer for saying the same thing Brett Kavanaugh said a little more than a year ago.

Maybe the whole threat of whirlwinds is somehow less threatening when it’s coming from a federal judge and directed at Senate Democrats than it is in a speech coming from a Senate Democrat directed at federal judges. Or maybe a threatening speech from a judge is somehow less threatening after he wins lifetime tenure? Anyone else in America could be forgiven for not recognizing that Kavanaugh’s threats in 2018 were almost word for word repeated by Schumer on Wednesday. But for a chief justice who prides himself on minimalism, humility, and a robust grasp of both history and the long game, the choice to rebuke only one judicial critic in this context puts the lie to the whole project of soaring neutrality and the grim calling of pitches. Threats are threats, whirlwinds are whirlwinds, and judges remain in daily fear of public revolt. All of them, male and female, district court, and the guy who sits next to you. Singling out only the threats that happen on your front steps doesn’t make you neutral—it makes you parochial, and in the worst possible way.

[struggle4progress]

1. ... "We will tell President Trump and Senate Republicans who have stacked the court

with right-wing ideologies that you’re going to be gone in November, and you will never be able to do what you’re trying to do now ever, ever again” ...

Schumer spokesman Justin Goodman accused critics of deliberately misinterpreting the senator's remarks.

“Sen. Schumer’s comments were a reference to the political price Senate Republicans will pay for putting these justices on the court, and a warning that the justices will unleash a major grassroots movement on the issue of reproductive rights against the decision," Goodman said in a statement ...

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/486007-schumer-warns-kavanaugh-and-gorsuch-they-will-pay-the-price

Justice Roberts merely exhibits his own dishonest partisanship

[maxrandb]

2. They're not even hiding it anymore, which means the fix is in

No more pontificating about "balls and strikes" and "independent judiciary following the law".

This is full on "yeah we're a bunch of right-wing hacks from the Federalists Society, so eff you, what are you going to do about it?".

They'll rule whichever way their corporate, religious nut owners want them to rule, or paid them to rule.

Eff your court precedents. Eff your rule of law. Eff you!

The day is here!

We're going to see them rule in favor of Retrumplicans in the morning, and then in an identical case, rule against the Democrats in the afternoon.

We're going to learn what it's like to live in a country where your political ideation is considered criminal.

Butter emails!!

[BigDemVoter]

3. Chief Justice John Roberts can just. . .

I better not write it, as this post would definitely be removed. I loathe him almost as much as I despise Brett Kavanaugh.

Roberts has no credibility or integrity-- none, whatsoever. Have we heard Roberts say anything in particular to Pussy-Grabber? I do recall ONE comment about judges not being partisan or some bullshit like that coming out of Roberts' stinking pie hole, but he knows, and we know that that's a fucking LIE as evidenced by Brett Kavanaugh's cringe-worthy performance during his confirmation hearings in which he blamed Democrats in general and Bill and Hillary Clinton specifically. It was unheard of and it disqualified that drunk, raping frat boy, but Roberts? No problem for him at all.

In my humble opinion, every single judge named by Pussy-Grabber should be removed from office, as Pussy-Grabber is an illegitimate prez, and we all know it.

[NCjack]

4. When DEMs gain control, Kav will be removed for lying in his Senate hearing. nt

[FBaggins]

8. No he won't

Democrats will never have the 2/3 majority needed to kick out a SC justice.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

5. Take WH, House, Senate and then expand SCOTUS. Render the 4 RWNJs impotent.

Roberts, Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh are all political hacks. The latter is unfit to be on SCOTUS.

[mitch96]

6. So Schumer does not get away with the same thing the prez did....

tRump lashed out at the two liberal justices and Roberts said shit...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/25/us/politics/trump-supreme-court.html
m

[FreepFryer]

7. Excellent troll by Schumer. This Court is nakedly partisan and Roberts took the bait.

Stack that court sky high.