SCOTUS Watch …
Until the term ends on June 30, the Supreme Court will be releasing opinions on Monday and Thursday mornings. SCOTUSblog will liveblog here today starting at 9:45 Eastern.
SCOTUSblog: October 2013 Term, major cases pending
McCullen v. Coakley, No. 12-1168 [Arg: 1.15.2014 Trans./Aud.]Issue(s): (1) Whether the First Circuit erred in upholding Massachusetts’s selective exclusion law – which makes it a crime for speakers other than clinic “employees or agents . . . acting within the scope of their employment” to “enter or remain on a public way or sidewalk” within thirty-five feet of an entrance, exit, or driveway of “a reproductive health care facility” – under the First and Fourteenth Amendments, on its face and as applied to petitioners; (2) whether, if Hill v. Colorado permits enforcement of this law, Hill should be limited or overruled.
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National Labor Relations Board v. Noel Canning, No. 12-1281 [Arg: 1.13.2014 Trans./Aud.]
Issue(s): (1) Whether the President’s recess-appointment power may be exercised during a recess that occurs within a session of the Senate, or is instead limited to recesses that occur between enumerated sessions of the Senate; (2) whether the President’s recess-appointment power may be exercised to fill vacancies that exist during a recess, or is instead limited to vacancies that first arose during that recess; and (3) whether the President’s recess-appointment power may be exercised when the Senate is convening every three days in pro forma sessions.
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Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. v. Sebelius, No. 13-356 [Arg: 3.25.2014 Trans./Aud.]
Issue(s): Whether the religious owners of a family business, or their closely held, for-profit corporation, have free exercise rights that are violated by the application of the contraceptive-coverage mandate of the Affordable Care Act.
Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, No. 13-354 [Arg: 3.25.2014 Trans.]
Issue(s): Whether the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA), 42 U.S.C. ยงยง 2000bb et seq., which provides that the government “shall not substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion” unless that burden is the least restrictive means to further a compelling governmental interest, allows a for-profit corporation to deny its employees the health coverage of contraceptives to which the employees are otherwise entitled by federal law, based on the religious objections of the corporation’s owners.
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Riley v. California, No. 13-132 [Arg: 4.29.2014 Trans.]
Issue(s): Whether evidence admitted at petitioner’s trial was obtained in a search of petitioner’s cell phone that violated petitioner’s Fourth Amendment rights.
More news …
Dick “Dick” Cheney and Iraq. Still wrong …
Jay Carney Takes A Dig At Dick Cheney For Iraq Op-Ed
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney took a dig at former Vice President Dick Cheney on Wednesday for his scathing Wall Street Journal op-ed on President Barack Obama’s handling of the situation in Iraq.
Carney was asked about the opinion piece, in which Cheney declared “rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many,” during his final White House briefing.
“Which president was he talking about?” Carney said with a straight face, drawing laughter from reporters.
“Look, it’s always good to hear from former Vice President Cheney,” he added. “It’s pretty clear that President Obama and our team here have distinctly different views on Iraq from the team that led the United States to invade Iraq back in 2003, so he’s entitled to his opinion.”
Reid: Obama Doesn’t Need Advice On Iraq From Dick Cheney
“If there is one thing that this country does not need, it’s that we should be taking advice from Dick Cheney on wars,” Reid said. “Being on the wrong side of Dick Cheney is to be on the right side of history.”[…]
“I have no doubt that president Obama and America will meet this threat head on without the advice of [former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul] Wolfowitz, Cheney, Kristol, the architects of the invasion of Iraq,” he said. “President Obama will meet the threat with the same smart foreign policy that has been the hallmark of his administration.”
Sen. Leahy: Don’t Go Back Into Iraq
Senate Judiciary Chair Patrick Leahy (D-VT) said Tuesday the United States should not send troops back to Iraq to quell the growing insurgency, arguing that there’s little the U.S. can do given the grim realities on the ground. He said proponents of restarting military operations in Iraq are reusing old arguments that incubated the war.
“The mistake was going into that war in Iraq in the first place. You know, we were told that we had to go there because they weapons of mass destruction. Of course, they didn’t have any. When Dick Cheney and others came up and told us that, they knew they didn’t have any,” Leahy told reporters in the Capitol. “We wasted $2 trillion, thousands of lives, ended up with a country worse off than it was to begin with. And then the leader in the country, [Nouri al-]Maliki told us to get out. Some would say we ought to say ‘thank you.’ He told us to get out, we’re out.”
Senator Leahy voted against the 2002 Authorization to Use Military Force Against Iraq and has not been a fan of Cheney.
Charles Blow: The Gall of Dick Cheney
As we weigh our response, one of the last people who should say anything on the subject is a man who is partly responsible for the problem.
But former Vice President Dick Cheney, who was in the administration that deceived us into a nine-year war in Iraq, just can’t seem to keep his peace.[…]
I know that we as Americans have short attention spans, but most of us don’t suffer from amnesia. The Bush administration created this mess, and the Obama administration now has to clean it up.
Polls and “the end of the Obama presidency” …
Steve Benen: Overreacting to polls is folly
There’s an unfortunate pattern when it comes to the political world’s erratic fascination with polls. The pattern looks like this: if survey results offer bad news for President Obama, they’re extremely important. If the numbers look good for the White House, they’re meaningless.
Not quite two weeks ago, for example, a Washington Post/ABC News poll showed Obama’s approval rating climbing from 41% to 46% – the biggest one-month jump for the president in three years. This poll, naturally, was deemed unimportant. (To underscore the point, look at the Washington Post headline from late April when Obama’s numbers looked bad, as compared to the same paper’s headline from June when Obama’s numbers looked good.)
Twelve days later, the political world is extremely excited about the new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll.
Just when our NBC/WSJ poll from April showed President Barack Obama bouncing back a bit after the surge of enrollment in the health-care exchanges, then came the crisis in Ukraine. Then the VA hospital controversy. The controversial Bowe Bergdahl release. And now the current instability in Iraq. And they’ve knocked Obama back down to where he was during the HealthCare.Gov woes – or even worse.
Our brand-new NBC/WSJ poll shows Obama’s overall job-approval rating at 41%, a three-point drop from two months ago.
[…]
As for Republicans excited to see Obama’s support falter, at least in this one poll, I’d encourage them to take a closer look at the details: the president is still vastly more popular than the GOP and Congress.
Smartypants: A question for the lazy media
Today we’re hearing a chorus of folks commenting on the latest NBC/WSJ poll with hysterical statements like “the Obama presidency is over.“[…]
President Obama’s pen and sword strategy is nothing like a heavyweight fighter hanging on to his opposition out of exhaustion. In the last couple of weeks, the President has announced the most ambitious action against climate change in our country’s history, brought the last POW home from Afghanistan, provided protection to one million LGBT employees who work for federal government contractors, expanded the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument from almost 87,000 square miles to nearly 782,000 square miles and captured the ringleader of the Benghazi attack. Exhaustion??? Pffttt.[…]
So while the media obsesses over President Obama’s poll numbers, I have a question for them: what’s the big issue the Republicans will rely on to get their voters out to the polls in November – which is still over 4 months away? My guess would be immigration reform (as in: against it!) – which means a lot of ugly nativism and the eventual demise of the Republican Party as we know it today.
Editor’s Note: Feel free to share other news stories in the comments.
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