united colours of vruz

by Peter Hardin, GavelGrab

Former presidential candidate Ralph Nader is targeting five Supreme Court justices with sharp criticism, and he is urging impeachment action.

Justice at Stake has consistently cautioned against impeachment calls based on disagreement with specific rulings. JAS Executive Director Bert Brandenburg warned in a statement last October:

“Almost every American, liberal and conservative, has been angered by particular legal rulings, but that’s because we ask courts to settle tough legal disputes. It is reckless to threaten judges with ouster simply because we don’t like a particular decision.”

Nader declares in a commentary distributed by OpEd News, “Five Supreme Court Justices–Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, Alito and Kennedy are entrenching, in a whirlwind of judicial dictates, judicial legislating and sheer ideological judgments, a mega-corporate supremacy over the rights and remedies of individuals.”

“Taken together,” he writes, “the decisions are brazenly over-riding sensible precedents, tearing apart the state common law of torts and blocking class actions, shoving aside jury verdicts, limiting people’s ‘standing to sue,’ pre-empting state jurisdictions–anything that serves to centralize power and hand it over to the corporate conquistadores.”

Nader concludes: “Never have I urged impeachment of Supreme Court justices. I do so now, for the sake of ending the Supreme Court’s corporate-judicial dictatorship that is not accountable under our system of checks and balance in any other way.”

by John Nichols, The Nation

… In 1994, when he was mounting a serious challenge to Democratic incumbent Edward Kennedy in a Massachusetts U.S. Senate contest, Romney tried on a number of issues to position himself as a reasonably liberal alternative to the veteran senator. This was especially true on the question of abortion rights, where Romney did not merely offer a soft pro-choice line like “Roe v. Wade is settled law” or “I support the current law.”

“I believe that abortion should be safe and legal in this country,” Romney declared in a debate with Kennedy. “I have since the time that my mom took that position when she ran in 1970 as a US Senate candidate. 

The reference to his mother is significant, as she was in her day a definitionally pro-choice Republican. When Lenore Romney sought a Michigan U.S. Senate seat in 1970, her literature declared: ”I support and recognize the need for more liberal abortion rights…” while endorsing ”greatly expanded programs of providing adequate family planning services to all those who want but can’t afford them.” 

The position taken by Lenore Romney was, like that of many women who came of age in an era when restrictions on abortion rights endangered the life and health of women, was influenced by personal experience. According to Mitt Romney, his mother’s stance was inspired by the death of her son-in-law’s teenage sister from an illegal abortion. “My mother and my family have been committed to the belief that we can believe as we want, but we will not force our beliefs on others on that matter,” he said of his own pro-choice stance. “And you will not see me wavering on that.”

As it happened, Romney did waver.

— read more —