#Scalia

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Chuck DarwinThrough his role in securing the nominations of Clarence <a href="https://c.im/tags/Thomas" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#Thomas</a>, John <a href="https://c.im/tags/Roberts" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#Roberts</a>, and Samuel <a href="https://c.im/tags/Alito" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#Alito</a> to the Supreme Court, <a href="https://c.im/tags/Leonard" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#Leonard</a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Leo" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#Leo</a>’s political cachet began to grow. An avid networker, he cultivated friendships with other members of the court, spending a weekend in Colorado hunting with Judge Antonin <a href="https://c.im/tags/Scalia" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#Scalia</a> — himself a devout Catholic and, like the Corkerys, close to <a href="https://c.im/tags/Opus" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#Opus</a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Dei" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#Dei</a>. Surrounded by such religious zeal, it didn’t take long for their example to reawaken his own Catholic faith, and Leo soon began tapping his network of <a href="https://c.im/tags/darkmoney" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#darkmoney</a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/backers" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#backers</a> to support religious causes. He twice bailed out the <a href="https://c.im/tags/Becket" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#Becket</a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Fund" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#Fund</a>, a nonprofit named after a twelfth-century English martyr, that officially worked to protect religious freedoms, especially those that were important to conservative Catholics. He reveled in his reputation as the financial savior of this important community. Soon afterwards, President Bush picked Leo as his representative to the "United States Commission on International Religious Freedom," a federal agency set up to police religious freedom around the world. Despite its lofty aims, the commission had a tiny budget and its commissioners were unpaid. Within Washington circles, many saw it as nothing more than an office for amateurs who meddled in foreign policy. Undeterred by the skeptics, Leo made the most of his time at the commission to push his own Catholic agenda — traveling to places like Iraq, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, South Sudan, and Vietnam to investigate allegations of religious persecution. His own faith seemed to grow during that time, with Leo occasionally reprimanding his staff for putting him in a hotel too far from a church, making it difficult for him to attend Mass. Some colleagues began to note a particular bias in the way he carried out a role that conflicted with the commission’s stated aim of championing the freedom of all religions. He became embroiled in a lawsuit after one former colleague accused him of ❌firing her because she was Muslim. Several staff members resigned because of the controversy, and Leo was fired not long after. Despite the scandal, his time at the commission deepened Leo’s faith and helped him cultivate his image as a serious political figure. By the time of the <a href="https://c.im/tags/Federalist" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#Federalist</a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Society" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#Society</a>’s twenty-fifth anniversary dinner in November 2007, his influence was clear. Leo shared the stage with the president and three sitting Supreme Court Justices — Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito. Chief Justice John Roberts sent a video message. “Thanks in part to your efforts, a new generation of lawyers is rising,” President Bush told the assembled members. At the time of this dinner, Leo was still recovering from the sudden death of his daughter Margaret just a few weeks before her fifteenth birthday — an event that had a profound impact on him. Margaret had been born with spina bifida and used a wheelchair. Events around her death had reinforced Leo’s faith. The previous summer, during a family vacation, Leo had promised Margaret that he would try to go to Mass more regularly. Over the years, Margaret had developed an obsession with anything religious, and would nag her parents to take her to Mass. She especially loved angels — and priests, insisting on a hug every time she saw one. The day after they returned from vacation, Leo got up early to go to Mass — as promised — and looked in on Margaret. As he was walking down the hall, she started gasping for breath and died shortly afterward. “I will always think that she did her job,” he later said. “She did her job.”

Chuck Darwin<a href="https://c.im/tags/Leonard" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#Leonard</a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Leo" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#Leo</a> was born on Long Island in the mid-sixties. When he was only a toddler, he lost his father — a pastry chef — to cancer. At the age of five, his mother remarried, and the Leos moved to New Jersey, where he attended Monroe Township High School. Leo was chosen as the “Most Likely to Succeed” a distinction he shared with classmate <a href="https://c.im/tags/Sally" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#Sally</a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Schroeder" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#Schroeder</a>, his future wife. In the yearbook, the two were shown sitting next to each other, holding wads of cash and with dollar signs painted on their glasses. He was so effective at raising money for his senior prom that his classmates nicknamed him the “Moneybags Kid.” Throughout his life, he remained steeped in the deep Catholicism of his grandfather, who had emigrated to the United States from Italy as a teenager; his grandparents attended Mass daily, and encouraged the young Leonard to follow their lead. After high school, Leo went to Cornell University, studying under a group of conservative academics in the university’s department of government and with the wider national backdrop of iconoclastic scholars led by Yale University’s <a href="https://c.im/tags/Robert" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#Robert</a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Bork" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#Bork</a> and the University of Chicago’s <a href="https://c.im/tags/Antonin" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#Antonin</a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Scalia" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#Scalia</a>, who were building the case for a novel legal doctrine known as <a href="https://c.im/tags/originalism" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#originalism</a>. He got a series of internships in Washington, D.C., during the final years of the Reagan administration, then returned to Cornell to join the law school, where in 1989 he founded the local chapter of a student organization called the <a href="https://c.im/tags/Federalist" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#Federalist</a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Society" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#Society</a>. That group had been set up by three conservative-leaning students from Yale, Harvard, and Chicago seven years earlier as a way of challenging what they saw as the dominance of liberal ideology at the country’s law schools. After graduating, Leo married Sally, who had been raised as a Protestant but who used to go to Catholic Mass five times every weekend because she played the organ. She decided to convert not long before her marriage. The couple moved back to Washington, where Leo clerked for a judge on the court of appeals and became close with another appellate judge who had recently been appointed to the D.C. circuit — a man from Georgia called <a href="https://c.im/tags/Clarence" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#Clarence</a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Thomas" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#Thomas</a>, who had toyed with becoming a Catholic priest. Despite being ten years older and from much more humble origins, Thomas shared Leo’s conservative outlook, and the two soon developed a deep friendship that would endure for many years. During this period, Leo was asked by the Federalist Society to become its first employee — although he delayed his start date so that he could help his good friend Thomas through his contentious confirmation process for the Supreme Court. Despite accusations of sexual harassment hanging over him, Thomas won Senate confirmation by a slim margin. It would be the first in a series of fights in which Leo would have to put aside the teachings of his Christian faith as he focused on the greater goal of pushing through a conservative revolution of the courts and of society at large. <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/opus-dei-leonard-leo-supreme-court-moneybags-kid-1235115538/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no">https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/opus-dei-leonard-leo-supreme-court-moneybags-kid-1235115538/</a>

Chuck DarwinFederal Judge <a href="https://c.im/tags/Aileen" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#Aileen</a> M. <a href="https://c.im/tags/Cannon" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#Cannon</a>, the controversial jurist who tossed out the classified documents criminal case against Donald Trump in July, ⚠️failed to disclose her attendance at a May 2023 banquet funded by a conservative law school.Cannon went to an event in Arlington, Va. honoring the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, according to documents obtained from the Law and Economics Center at George Mason University. At a lecture and private dinner, she sat among members of Scalia’s family, fellow Federalist Society members and more than 30 conservative federal judges. Organizers billed the event as “an excellent opportunity to connect with judicial colleagues.”⭐️A 2006 rule, intended to shine a light on judges’ attendance at paid seminars that could pose conflicts or influence decisions, requires them to file disclosure forms for such trips within 30 days and make them public on the court’s website.It’s not the first time she has failed to fully comply with the rule.❌In 2021 and 2022, Cannon took weeklong trips to the luxurious Sage Lodge in Pray, Montana, for legal colloquiums sponsored by George Mason, which named its law school for <a href="https://c.im/tags/Scalia" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#Scalia</a> thanks to $30 million in gifts that conservative judicial kingmaker <a href="https://c.im/tags/Leonard" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#Leonard</a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Leo" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#Leo</a> helped organize.<a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/judge-aileen-cannon-trump-documents-case-travel-disclosures" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no">https://www.propublica.org/article/judge-aileen-cannon-trump-documents-case-travel-disclosures</a>

Chuck DarwinLeonard Leo typically operates in the background and goes to considerable lengths to cover his philanthropic tracks. Each year, his groups send millions through <a href="https://c.im/tags/DonorsTrust" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#DonorsTrust</a>, which markets itself as a “principled philanthropic partner for conservative and libertarian donors” and a means to anonymously fund “sensitive or controversial issues.”Deep-pocketed benefactors like Leo can tell DonorsTrust where they want their money to ultimately go. Its board of directors will “always respect grant requests that fall within the DonorsTrust mission and purpose,” per its website.DonorsTrust declined to discuss the specifics of any contributions identified by The Intercept. “We do not release to the general public either the names of our accountholders nor specific grants that they may have recommended,” said Lawson <a href="https://c.im/tags/Bader" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#Bader</a>, its president and CEO. Bader noted that some of the contributions listed on DonorsTrust’s tax filings may have originated from multiple donors.But Leo’s funding vehicles — especially the <a href="https://c.im/tags/Marble" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#Marble</a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Freedom" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#Freedom</a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Trust" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#Trust</a> and the <a href="https://c.im/tags/85Fund" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#85Fund</a>, which he rebranded in 2020 and likely bankrolls via yet another donor-advised fund — are among the biggest contributors to DonorsTrust.In 2022, the 85 Fund sent $92 million through DonorsTrust, more than a quarter of all contributions to DonorsTrust that year. Marble Freedom Trust has distributed more than $41 million via DonorsTrust, according to a filing for its 2020 fiscal year. The Rule of Law Trust, also run by Leo, gave $5.8 million via DonorsTrust in 2020.Beside Leo’s groups, other top contributors to DonorsTrust include <a href="https://c.im/tags/Rebekah" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#Rebekah</a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Mercer" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#Mercer</a> of Cambridge Analytica and Parler fame, whose Mercer Family Foundation gave $31 million in 2022. Mercer and other top contributors to DonorsTrust did not respond to The Intercept’s questions for this article.Whether from Leo or other sources, conservative money has been already flowing to law schools via DonorsTrust for years, mostly to premiere programs. Since 2019, <a href="https://c.im/tags/Yale" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#Yale</a> Law School has received $250,000 per year for the “Diversity in Democracy Professorship Fund”; Yale declined to explain the purpose of this fund or say whether these contributions came from Leo. New York University Law School received $350,000 in 2021 and $300,000 in 2022 for a libertarian research institute. <a href="https://c.im/tags/NYU" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#NYU</a> also declined to provide additional details about the source of these contributions. And since 2020, <a href="https://c.im/tags/Stanford" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#Stanford</a>’s student chapter of the Federalist Society received $25,000 per year. Stanford referred questions to the Federalist Society and DonorsTrust.There were also millions sent to George Mason University’s <a href="https://c.im/tags/Scalia" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#Scalia</a> Law School, which Leo helped make one of the gravitational centers for conservative legal academia. Since 2017, Scalia Law School received at least $4 million each year via DonorsTrust, much of it earmarked for its Law & Economics Center, which puts on often lavish doctrinal bootcamps for judges, one of which was held in Leo’s literal backyard. <a href="https://theintercept.com/2024/05/29/leonard-leo-donor-law-schools/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no">https://theintercept.com/2024/05/29/leonard-leo-donor-law-schools/</a>

Jonathan EmmesediHow ‘History and Tradition’ Rulings Are Changing American Law - The New York Times<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/29/magazine/history-tradition-law-conservative-judges.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no">https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/29/magazine/history-tradition-law-conservative-judges.html</a> Changes in the prevailing sound of Kpop girl groups help me understand US conservative constitutional and statutory interpretation. So a couple of years ago I would go onto YouTube and hear tropical house and girl crush shouting; these days, it's the Y2K sound. Similarly, conservatives used to wax eloquent about "originalism" and "textualism"; now it's "history and tradition".* In both domains, any search for an overarching explanatory principle beyond group interest is futile.*No, Antonin Scalia is not turning in his grave, because he too was devoid of principle or decency.<a href="https://c.im/tags/USPolitics" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#USPolitics</a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Jurisprudence" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#Jurisprudence</a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/USJudiciary" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#USJudiciary</a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Conservatism" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#Conservatism</a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Scalia" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#Scalia</a>

Chuck DarwinThe Republican Party, thirsting for more voters in the 1980 Reagan vs Carter election, realized that Southern Baptists had helped give the White House to Carter in 1976 (he’s a Southern Baptist). If they could just peel those voters away from Carter and the Democratic Party, they believed they could win big. The issue the Reagan campaign decided to use to bring religious voters to Republicans in that election was <a href="https://c.im/tags/abortion" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#abortion</a>, a topic Jesus never discussed. Up until that election, both former Governor Reagan and former CIA Director Bush had been open supporters of a woman’s right to choose; in the run-up to the primaries Reagan became an unabashed foe of abortion, and George H.W. Bush changed his position on the issue when he joined the ticket in 1980. The legacy of those decisions has brought us Trump, Qanon, and badly damaged large parts of what’s left of Christianity in America (church attendance is collapsing). It’s turned both religion and politics into armed camps. At the founding of our Republic, if there was any one topic that the Framers of the Constitution were mostly in agreement about, it was 👉 the importance of keeping religion separate from government. More recently, even uber-Catholic Antonin <a href="https://c.im/tags/Scalia" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#Scalia</a> wrote, in the 1990 Employment v Smith case rejecting Native Americans’ petition to overrule federal regulations and legally use peyote (an outlawed substance) for religious purposes:“The rule respondents favor would open the prospect of constitutionally required religious exemptions from civic obligations of almost every conceivable kind ranging from compulsory military service to the payment of taxes; to health and safety regulation such as manslaughter and child neglect laws, compulsory vaccination laws, drug laws, and traffic laws; to social welfare legislation such as minimum wage laws, child labor laws, animal cruelty laws, environmental protection laws, and laws providing for equality of opportunity for the races. The First Amendment's protection of religious liberty does not require this. … “To permit this would be to make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and in effect to permit every citizen to become a law unto himself.”Don’t tell today’s Republicans that’s a bad thing, though: 👉 Scalia’s list is a good summary of many of the realms they’re currently targeting. The six Catholic extremist Republicans on the Court appear anxious to overturn any final semblance of secular primacy in law, using religion as their excuse.<a href="https://hartmannreport.com/p/what-would-the-christian-america-e80" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no">https://hartmannreport.com/p/what-would-the-christian-america-e80</a>

NH-Lycan13 February -Better Off Dead:Suppose for a moment that you were a bloviating religious nut who believed that minorities, women, LGBTs and non Catholics were inherently lesser and undeserving of protection under the Constitution. Then layer on a love of cruelty. Got it?Now imagine you're US Supreme Court judge Tony Scalia. Wasn't that a short hop? He really believed that everyone had equal rights to be white, male, Christian and straight, so what's the problem? Oh, and gay people didn't exist until the 1980s. Because the Founders!This sociopathic slob was so lazy that he argued that actually innocent people about to be executed should have the courthouse doors slammed in their face. He didn't want to be bothered. His devotion to the Federalist Society party line was absolute. His contempt for his fellow jurists was legendary. He set the pattern for shameless conflicts of interest and partisanship. His every decision was designed to maximize cruelty by the state. All of our lives are measurably worse today because of his life. On this date in 2016, he was visiting maybe the creepiest vacation camp imaginable. A Texas "hunting" club where you'd get to shoot tame animals. Then they'd come back to the compound, put on robes, form a circle and chant. Not making this up.After a day of active brutality, he went back to his room and grabbed his chest. And surprised everyone by having a heart. Happy belated Anniversary<a href="https://c.im/tags/Scalia" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#Scalia</a>

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