Jeffrey Toobin, a former CNN analyst who continues to make appearances on the liberal network, lashed out at U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas Tuesday for daring to question the Biden Department of Justice's uneven application of the law.
By calling the highly esteemed constitutionalist a "disgrace," Toobin exposed himself once again to criticism over his less than sterling public record.
The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments Tuesday in Fischer v. United States, which concerns the application of a federal obstruction statute against Jan. 6 protesters.
The controversial law in question, Section 1512(c)(2), makes it a felony to obstruct or impede an official proceeding and carries a maximum penalty of 20 years. The law has been weaponized by the Biden Department of Justice for use against more than 350 Jan. 6 protesters.
CBS News highlighted that the felony charge is among those former President Donald Trump faces in the case brought in Washington, D.C., by special counsel Jack Smith in 2023.
America's Future and the Conservative Legal Defense and Education Fund noted in their amicus brief on the behalf of the petitioners that the DOJ has "indicted hundreds, including [former police officer Joseph W. Fischer], for a crime that carries a sentence twice what Congress provided for insurrections," on the basis of a "strained reading" of an obscure provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and a "fabricated January 6 narrative."
"Allowing this strained reading to stand can be expected to lead to further weaponization of the Justice Department," said the brief.
During oral arguments Tuesday, Jeffrey Green, who represented Fischer, noted that the law was created with the intention of addressing acts that impact the "integrity or availability of evidence," not acts that serve as inconveniences without affecting evidence, reported The Hill.
Conservative justices appeared interested in the selective and potential expansive application of the law, which the DOJ conceded serves as a "classic catchall."
Justice Neil Gorsuch asked, "Would a sit-in that disrupts a trial or access to a federal courthouse qualify? Would a heckler in today's audience qualify or at the State of the Union Address? Would pulling a fire alarm before a vote qualify? And for 20 years in federal prison?"
U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, arguing on behalf of the government, suggested the statute would apply in cases of "meaningful interference" and that "minor disruption[s]," determined by partisan prosecutors, would be safe.
Gorsuch responded with a thinly veiled intimation that New York Democratic Rep. Jamaal Bowman's fire alarm pull and Portland radicals' sit-in would qualify as federal felonies.
Prelogar insinuated that perceived interference or obstruction regarded by partisan prosecutors as "mostly peaceful protests" are exempt.
Supreme Court Justice Gorsuch nukes Joe Biden's DOJ over January 6th sentences:\n\nGorsuch lists multiple cases of folks who "obstructed a Congressional proceeding" without receiving a 20 year sentence.\n\n1. Sit-ins at a trial (Kavanaugh protests)\n2. Pulling a fire alarm (Rep.\u2026— (@)
Justice Thomas also risked the ire of statists and other champions of government overreach, highlighting the DOJ's uneven application of the law.
"There have been many violent protests that have interfered with proceedings," said Justice Thomas. "Has the government applied this provision to other protests in the past, and has this been the government's position throughout the lifespan of this statute?"
Prelogar refrained from answering the question directly, prompting Thomas to ask again, "Have you enforced it in that manner?"
"I can't give you an example of enforcing it in a situation where people have violently stormed a building in order to prevent an official proceeding, a specified one," answered the solicitor general.
Prickled by Justice Thomas putting questions of substance to the state, Toobin denounced the Supreme Court justice online.
The frequent CNN guest, who once had a job at the network, wrote in an X post, "In oral argument today, Justice Thomas is minimizing the severity of the 1/6 insurrection at the Capitol. Perhaps that's because his wife was part of the conspiracy. What a disgrace that he's sitting on this case."
Toobin quickly learned he was not the only critic on the platform.
Megyn Kelly responded, "Hi Toobin - fyi you waived your right to use the term 'disgraced' about other lawyers when you took your dick out of your pants and jerked off in front of your colleagues."
Hi Toobin - fyi you waived your right to use the term \u201cdisgraced\u201d about other lawyers when you took your dick out of your pants and jerked off in front of your collleagues— (@)
Mike Davis of the Article III Project, among the many who clearly appreciated Kelly's response, said, "Has anyone reported this murder yet?"
Sean Davis, CEO of the Federalist, similarly noted, "It always amuses me when a man who got caught beating his meat on a Zoom call thinks he's in a position to call other people disgraceful."
Toobin worked as a writer at the New Yorker and CNN's chief legal analyst until he exposed himself to colleagues on an October 2020 zoom call. People familiar with the matter told CNN that in a disgraceful display, Toobin began masturbating during the call.
Toobin acknowledged the incident occurred and claimed, "I thought no one on the Zoom call could see me. I thought I had muted the Zoom video."
CNN, which initially sidelined the flasher, apparently waited until August 2022 to confirm Toobin's departure from the network.
While various critics referenced Toobin's 2020 incidents, others went for deeper cuts, referencing his sordid extramarital affair.
The New York Post reported that the father of two had an affair with his former CNN colleague's daughter, 14 years his junior. After getting her pregnant, Toobin allegedly offered Casey Greenfield "money if she'd have an abortion."
Toobin reportedly denied paternity of the baby but was later confirmed by tests to be the father, prompting Greenfield to take Toobin to court over custody and financial support issues.
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Joseph Kennedy, the Washington state public high school football coach who was suspended seven years ago for praying with players after games — and who won a U.S. Supreme Court case on the matter this summer — is to be reinstated, ABC News reported, citing court documents.
"Kennedy is to be reinstated to his previous position as assistant coach of the Bremerton High School football team on or before March 15, 2023," according to a joint stipulation filed in Washington state district court Tuesday by attorneys representing Kennedy and lawyers for the Bremerton School District, the network said.
ABC News added that it reached out to both sides for comment.
Kennedy had been praying at the 50-yard line after games for years until Bremerton School District in 2015 told him to stop. When he refused, Kennedy said the district suspended him and then fired him.
In 2019, the court declined to take up Kennedy's case, the the Associated Press said — but only four conservative justices were on the court at that time. Amid a new conservative majority, Kennedy's lawyers in January announced that his case finally would be heard. The high court heard arguments in late April, and the words of some justices signaled that the court would side with Kennedy.
In June, the high court ruled 6-3 for Kennedy, the AP said, adding that the conservative justices voted in favor of Kennedy, while the liberal justices voted against him.
“The Constitution and the best of our traditions counsel mutual respect and tolerance, not censorship and suppression, for religious and nonreligious views alike,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the majority, the outlet noted.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a dissenting opinion that the court's decision in favor of Kennedy “sets us further down a perilous path in forcing states to entangle themselves with religion,” the AP said, adding that she was joined in her dissent by Justice Stephen Breyer and Justice Elena Kagan.
Kennedy didn't see it that way.
"This is a right for everybody. It doesn't matter if you're this religion or that religion or have no faith whatsoever," Kennedy told ABC News during an interview earlier this year, the network said. "Everybody has the same rights in America."
Players often joined Kennedy in prayer despite not being asked to do so, but the school district still asked him to stop, as it considered him still “on duty” as a coach after the game, the AP said.
"Just hours before what would be my last game as coach, the school district gave me an ultimatum: If I prayed after that night’s game, they would suspend me," Kennedy wrote last year in a Fox News op-ed. "As a proudly retired U.S. Marine, something inside me stirred. I would have given my life defending the religious freedom of any American, and yet that very right was denied to me. That just seemed wrong and unjust."
He added, "I did pray on that chilly October night, leading to my suspension and termination. My only recourse at that point was to seek legal action to vindicate my rights of free speech and free exercise of my religious beliefs."
Here's a report on Kennedy's Supreme Court victory:
Supreme Court sides with football coach who wanted to pray on the field l ABC7youtu.be
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to take up a challenge to the Trump-era ban on bump stocks, a gun accessory that allows semi-automatic firearms to shoot more rapidly.
The decision comes after a federal appeals court in August upheld the bump stock ban, which was enacted by the Trump administration in 2018 in response to the 2017 Las Vegas massacre. Then-president Donald Trump vowed to ban bump stocks after it was reported that the gunman used the rifle accessory in his deadly rampage that killed 60 people and injured more than 500 others at a music festival on the Vegas strip.
The Trump administration rule classifies guns equipped with bump stocks as machine guns, which are prohibited by the National Firearms Act and the Gun Control Act. A Utah gun rights advocate and the pro-Second Amendment group Gun Owners of America brought separate challenges to the law, which the Supreme Court declined to hear. The high court did not issue comment on its decision.
Gun Owners of America slammed the court's decision in a statement.
"This decision sets a horrible and dangerous precedent, one that will allow the ATF to further arbitrarily regulate various firearms. This very same precedent is already being abused by Joe Biden to ban millions of lawfully purchased pistols even without an ACT of Congress!" the group said.
"This just underscores the importance of We the People holding our elected officials accountable and reminds us why we can’t simply rely on politicized judges with lifetime appointments to restore constitutional government," added Erich Pratt, senior vice president of Gun Owners of America.
\u201cThis just underscores the importance of We the People holding our elected officials accountable and reminds us why we can\u2019t simply rely on politicized judges with lifetime appointments to restore constitutional government.\u201d— Erich Pratt (@Erich Pratt) 1664809625
The gun rights groups argued in court that bump stocks do not make firearms machine guns because of differences in how the trigger and barrel operate. But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejected that argument.
"By this logic, we would no longer characterize even the prototypical machine gun as a 'machine gun,' given the extent of rearward pressure on the trigger required to operate it," Circuit Judge Robert Wilkins wrote. "That cannot be right."
Before Trump directed that bump stocks be banned, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives had considered bump stocks and in 2010, under President Barack Obama, found they should not be classified as "machine guns."
Gun rights advocates have called the ban illogical and argued the government's redefinition of bump stocks will lead to more regulations on firearms.
“Because virtually all semiautomatic weapons can be bump fired, and because that technique can be aided by myriad common household products or clothing items, ATF’s definition is necessarily overbroad and would eliminate statutory distinctions between less-regulated semiautomatic rifles and handguns, and more-regulated machineguns,” the Firearms Policy Coalition argued in a brief to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
“Bump firing, whether aided by a bump stock, a rubber band, or merely a well-controlled finger, is not shooting automatically and the ease with which any given weapon can be bump fired does not turn semiautomatic firearms into heavily regulated machineguns,” the group said.
A federal injunction blocking South Carolina's fetal heartbeat law was permanently lifted Thursday, the state attorney general's office said.
"This is a victory for life," Attorney General Alan Wilson declared after the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit vacated its previous decision blocking the Fetal Heartbeat Act.
The court said it reconsidered the injunction after the Supreme Court issued its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, a case that determined there is no constitutional right to an abortion and upheld Mississippi's 15-week abortion ban.
"... in light of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ... the court vacates its previous opinion in this case, vacates the district court’s preliminary injunction, and remands the case to the district court," the court said.
Wilson's office described what this means in "layman's terms": "When the Fetal Heartbeat Act was signed into law in 2021, the Court blocked it with an injunction because it went against Roe v. Wade. When Roe was overturned, a federal district court stayed that injunction, or removed the 'block,' which meant the law went into effect. But a 'stay' is temporary. Today, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals lifted that injunction permanently. So first the law was blocked, then it was temporarily unblocked, and now it’s permanently unblocked."
South Carolina's law restricts abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected, which occurs around six weeks of pregnancy.
Though the federal case has been sent back to district court, where it is likely to prevail because of the Supreme Court's ruling, a lawsuit brought by Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, Greenville Women's Clinic, and two doctors against the law will proceed in state court.
The abortion clinics claim that the heartbeat law violates South Carolinians' right to privacy and equal protection under the state constitution. They filed a lawsuit on July 13 seeking to block the six-week ban from taking effect.
“With today’s state court challenge, we are once again seeking to block this harmful law that cruelly denies South Carolinians the power to make their own personal medical decisions," said Jenny Black, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood South Atlantic after the lawsuit was filed.
"This fight is not new to us, and we know what’s at stake: Without court intervention, South Carolinians will continue to suffer in a state with dangerously high rates of maternal mortality and infant mortality, particularly among Black women and babies. We urgently need this court to reject Senate Bill 1 for what it is: a direct assault on our health care, our lives, and fundamental human rights,” she added.
Wilson's office responded to the lawsuit in a 27-page filing arguing the heartbeat law does not violate the state constitution, WLTX-TV reported.
Specifically, the attorney general says Section 10 of the South Carolina Constitution, which was adopted in 1971, was written to protect citizens from improper surveillance of electronic devices and computer data banks, the outlet reported.
"The committee simply did not intend or understand the provision to extend any further," Wilson says. "It certainly did not intend to confer a state constitutional right to abortion."
The case will be heard in Richland County court on Tuesday.
Whoopi Goldberg lied repeatedly and outrageously Wednesday morning on "The View" when she asserted that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has called for an end to interracial marriage.
Despite pushback from her co-hosts, Goldberg stubbornly insisted that Thomas "brought up" taking away the right that people have to marry someone of a different race or ethnicity in his concurring opinion for the Supreme Court's Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision. She made her comments during a discussion on the Democratic message for the upcoming midterm elections after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and ended the constitutional right to abortion.
Joy Behar interjected, pointing out that Thomas, a black man who is married to a white woman, "is not gonna move on that one."
"Well, let's find out. He's the one who sort of brought it up," Goldberg claimed.
"Well, he didn't bring that one up," Behar responded, but Goldberg ignorantly insisted "yes he did!"
\u201cWhoopi Goldberg falsely claims the Supreme Court is looking to abolish interracial marriages and that Justice Clarence Thomas is leading the charge.\n"Yeah, he brought that one up," she ignorantly declared. "Yes, he did! Yes, he did!"\n#ABCStandards\u201d— Nicholas Fondacaro (@Nicholas Fondacaro) 1658329762
Sunny Hostin, a lawyer, went to Thomas' concurring opinion for Dobbs to clear up what he actually said. The justice agreed with the majority's argument that Roe was wrongly decided because the text of the Constitution is silent on abortion and the right is neither "deeply rooted" in the nation's history nor an essential component of "ordered liberty." But while the majority explicitly stated, "Nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion," Thomas would have gone further.
He wrote that the court should "in future cases ... reconsider all of this Court's substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell." The cases Thomas cited established a constitutional right to privacy that broadly protects contraception access, sodomy, and gay marriage, respectively.
Importantly, Thomas did not write that these cases were wrongly decided. He took issue with the legal principle of substantive due process, which has been used by courts to establish protections for rights that are not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution. Thomas called this principle "an oxymoron" that "lack[s] any basis in the Constitution," and said the reasoning of the cited cases should be reconsidered using other legal principles.
Hostin did not mention Thomas' argument regarding substantive due process, but she did point out that the justice did not suggest reconsidering Loving v. Virginia, the landmark civil rights case that declared laws banning interracial marriage unconstitutional.
Nevertheless, Goldberg persisted.
"I'm telling you, when he spoke about all the things that could go, this was one of the things he brought up," she wrongly asserted.
After a cut to commercial break, Goldberg doubled down on her false claim.
\u201cComing back from a commercial break, Whoopi doubles down on her lie.\u201d— Nicholas Fondacaro (@Nicholas Fondacaro) 1658329762
"This is what Clarence said, he said is concurring opinion is 'we should reconsider all of the court's substantive due process precedents, including Griswold'' ... and then he went on to name them," Goldberg said. "When you say 'all', I think you're talking about 'all' and you're not playing."
SCOTUS left in place a ruling that allows 'naked' ballot 'do-overs,' and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court blocked a decision that would let improperly dated ballots count.
'This Court has serious concerns with the Secretary’s application of the election code’s restrictions to Dr. West.'
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Biden’s ‘Hail Mary’: Threatening to REFORM the ‘extreme’ Supreme Court
Joe Biden may have dropped out of the 2024 presidential race — but that doesn’t mean he won’t try to take the country down with him on his way out.
In a speech on Monday at the LBJ Presidential Library in Texas, Biden outlined his plan to get back at Trump and “reform” the Supreme Court, and he railed against the “extreme positions” he believes some of the justices hold.
“I’m calling for a constitutional amendment, called ‘No one is above the law amendment,’” Biden mumbled. “No immunity for crimes former president committed while in office.”
“That already exists. They can’t actually commit crimes on purpose,” Pat Gray of “Pat Gray Unleashed” comments. “If the president, if he was about to go strangle one of the reporters there and kill them, he would be held responsible and accountable for that.”
Biden continued his barely intelligible speech, telling the audience that he believes “we should have term limits for Supreme Court Justices of the United States as well.”
“The United States is the only major constitutional democracy that gives lifetime seats in their high court. Term limits would help ensure that the court membership changes with some regularity,” Biden said, proposing an 18-year-term limit.
“That would help ensure the country would not have what it has now, an extreme court,” he continued, noting that those on the court have “an extreme agenda.”
“They’re always following the playbook of socialists and Nazis and fascists,” Gray says, after Keith Malinak notes that Cuban American congressmen and women said the first thing Nicholas Maduro did in Venezuela was change the Supreme Court.
However, Speaker Mike Johnson claims that the plan would be “dead on arrival.”
When reporters asked Biden about Johnson’s claim, Biden retorted with “he is,” as in Johnson is “dead on arrival.”
“Isn’t that violent rhetoric? Is that a threat?” Gray asks, shocked.
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