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by stillrobertpaulsen » Tue Feb 16, 2016 7:29 pm
by Iamwhomiam » Tue Feb 16, 2016 7:58 pm
by Iamwhomiam » Tue Feb 16, 2016 8:01 pm
by stillrobertpaulsen » Tue Feb 16, 2016 9:29 pm
Iamwhomiam » Tue Feb 16, 2016 6:58 pm wrote:Hi Robert, someone's mistaken. But it is understandable.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/02/14/scalia-death-presidio-ranch-poindexter/80379846/
"The "El Presidente" suite where Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was found dead .... Residents in this city that overlooks Mexico just across the Rio ..."
by 82_28 » Tue Feb 16, 2016 9:59 pm
by Joe Hillshoist » Tue Feb 16, 2016 10:10 pm
Of all that’s been written about the ramifications of the unexpected death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia – from its effect on upcoming cases before the court to Senate races in November and even to the presidential race, to which Ted Cruz ’92 is now referring to as a “referendum on the Court” – comparatively little has been said about its effect on other legislative issues that would have otherwise dominated this year. On the domestic side, the President’s final year was supposed to be spent on criminal justice reform, which just a few months ago seemed like a real bipartisan possibility, and lobbying for congressional approval of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a massive free-trade deal that covers 40 percent of the world’s GDP that the administration signed last year. Instead, the year will now be consumed with what The New York Times is already calling a “battle royale” for the soul of the court for a generation. As Scalia was a reliably conservative vote, if President Obama is able to successfully fill his seat with a liberal, the Court’s balance would shift 5-4 in favor of Democratic appointees, reversing its decades-old conservative majority.
To most Americans, the Supreme Court’s role is mostly seen as one of importance to domestic affairs. Almost all of the ‘textbook’ Supreme Court cases – Dred Scott, Plessy v. Ferguson, Roe v. Wade, et cetera – deal with issues of domestic policy and constitutional rights in the United States. Rarely do people outside of the legal realm think of the Court as having much to do with foreign policy and, in truth, the Court is less frequently involved in foreign policy than Congress or the presidency. However, even if the Court never would have been involved in the TPP with Justice Scalia alive, in his death he just might be the one to kill the deal.
Obama has called the TPP the top remaining item on his foreign policy agenda and the “most progressive trade deal in history” at a recent press conference; in his year-end press conference last year, he expressed cautious optimism that the United States would ratify it during his presidency, in no small part due to support from Senate Republicans. When the President barely won Trade Promotion Authority last summer (under which Congress agreed to vote on a trade deal up-or-down, without offering amendments or changes), he did so thanks almost entirely to a Republican caucus that remains pro-free trade. Democratic support has evaporated due to a dislike of the North American Free Trade Agreement and other trade deals seen as having killed union manufacturing jobs in America. As a result, any strategy for winning congressional approval of the deal itself will have to rely on a similarly Republican-heavy vote-count.
This seemed reasonable to expect just a few months ago, even though it would still be an election year: Republicans not only agreed with the President on trade, but they also would have leapt at the opportunity to create a wedge between the President and the Democratic party going into November. Republicans had further incentive to approve the deal with Obama in office, since Clinton and Sanders have come out against it, and the GOP presidential candidates, while in favor of free trade, have not campaigned about it and must still play to the overwhelmingly populist sentiment dominating this election cycle.
Now, however, the entire year will be spent on the nomination fight, period. The battle to fill Scalia’s seat, which Obama has vowed to do despite the Mitch McConnell’s, Senate Majority Leader, promise not to even consider whoever he ends up nominating, will be so intense, brutal and prolonged that it will deplete all the oxygen in the legislative atmosphere for the rest of this year. This fight will be historic and unprecedented in modern history – Elizabeth Warren has even predicted that the ensuing obstructionism over the nomination will be a “threat to our democracy itself.” It is hard to see how there will be any remaining appetite among congressional Republicans to work with the President on anything at all for the rest of his term.
Additionally, the people Obama was specifically relying on to pass TPP – the Republican caucus – are now the most inclined to work against him on his entire agenda, in order to remain united in stonewalling his predicted appointment. It therefore seems that in one final act of defiance towards a Democratic president whose agenda he voted against at every turn, Justice Scalia in death will deal a fatal blow to the President’s last major opportunity for a legacy-making achievement.
Ryan Dukeman is a Wilson School Major from Westwood, Mass. He can be reached at rdukeman@princeton.edu.
by divideandconquer » Wed Feb 17, 2016 10:09 am
by stillrobertpaulsen » Thu Feb 18, 2016 5:24 pm
Why Justice Scalia was staying for free at a Texas resort
By Mark Berman and Jerry Markon February 17 at 7:45 PM
The Texas resort spans 30,000 acres.
Feb. 14, 2016 One of the ponds outside the suite where Justice Antonin Scalia was found dead at Cibolo Creek Ranch, the West Texas resort that stretches over 30,000 acres. Matthew Busch/Getty Images
Justice Antonin Scalia’s sudden death over the weekend at a West Texas ranch raised questions about the nature of his travel, who paid for the trip and whether justices are subject to the same disclosure guidelines as other judges or federal officials.
Where did Justice Scalia die?
Scalia was at the Cibolo Creek Ranch, a resort tucked away in the Big Bend region of Texas about 30 miles from the border with Mexico.
The ranch is 30,000-acre getaway that is home to John B. Poindexter, according to the website of J.B. Poindexter & Co. It is a remote location that has reportedly attracted the likes of Mick Jagger, Jerry Hall and Bruce Willis. When Tommy Lee Jones directed a movie more than a decade ago, he filmed several scenes at the ranch, according to the Houston Chronicle.
Who paid for his trip?
All of which raises the question: Who pays for a Supreme Court justice to make this kind of trip?
Not Scalia, it turns out. Poindexter told The Washington Post that Scalia was not charged for his stay, something he described as a policy for all guests at the ranch.
“I did not pay for the Justice’s trip to Cibolo Creek Ranch,” Poindexter wrote in a brief email Tuesday. “He was an invited guest, along with a friend, just like 35 others.”
Poindexter added: “The Justice was treated no differently by me, as no one was charged for activities, room and board, beverages, etc. That is a 22-year policy.’’
However, Poindexter said he did not pay for Scalia’s charter flight to Texas.
A person familiar with the ranch’s operations said Poindexter hosts such events two or three times a year.
Poindexter, who would not identify Scalia’s friend, is a Texas native and decorated Vietnam veteran who owns Houston-based J.B. Poindexter & Co., a manufacturing firm.
The company has seven subsidiaries, with combined annual revenue of nearly $1 billion, according to information on its website. Among the items it manufacturers are delivery vans for UPS and FedEx and machine components for limousines and hearses. The company has 5,000 employees, the site said.
One of Poindexter’s companies was involved in a case that made it to the high court. Last year, the Supreme Court declined to hear a case involving an age discrimination lawsuit filed against one of these companies, court records show.
The nature of Poindexter’s relationship with Scalia remained unclear Tuesday, one of several lingering questions about his visit. It was not known whether Scalia had paid for his own ticket to fly to the ranch or if someone else picked up the tab, just as it was not immediately clear if Scalia had visited before.
It is also still not known who else was at the Texas ranch for the weekend, and unless that is revealed, there could be concerns about who could have tried to raise an issue around Scalia, said Stephen Gillers, who teaches legal and judicial ethics at the New York University School of Law. He compared it to unease that arises when judges and officials from major companies are invited to seminars or educational events that bring them together for periods of time.
“People worry at those kinds of things; there’s a creation of access on the part of people with an interest in the courts, and that is unfair,” Gillers said Tuesday.
How do justices disclose their gifts and investments?
Much the same way other federal judges do: by filing reports outlining their outside income, gifts and times they are reimbursed for things.
The 1978 Ethics in Government Act, passed in the wake of the Watergate scandal, states that all federal judges — up to and including the chief justice and the associate justices — are required to report certain gifts. It also requires them to identify and describe when someone who is not a relative gives them “transportation, lodging, food, or entertainment” worth a certain amount.
A review of Scalia’s recent financial disclosure reports posted online by OpenSecrets.org shows that, like his colleagues, he regularly filed for unspecified reimbursements from universities, legal societies and other organizations like the conservative group the Federalist Society after making trips for lectures and speeches. Scalia was among the court’s most active travelers. However, these disclosure forms offer scant details about who else attends events with the justices.
Judges must report reimbursements related to travel totaling $335 or more, according to filing instructions posted by the group Judicial Watch. And judges are not allowed to accept anything of value from a person who has a case in their court, the document notes.
These instructions include an exemption for “food, lodging or entertainment received as a personal hospitality,” which includes a stay at a property owned by a person. As a result, it is unclear if Scalia’s stay would have ultimately been reported, said Gillers. (Travel, however, is not exempt.)
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. devoted part of his 2011 report on the state of the federal judiciary to the topic of disclosures. He also made sure to note that it was not entirely clear, in the court’s eyes, whether Congress could even extend such disclosure requirements to the justices.
“The Court has never addressed whether Congress may impose those requirements on the Supreme Court,” he wrote. “The Justices nevertheless comply with those provisions.”
Are there other ethical questions regarding justices?
The biggest ethical questions involve when justices should recuse themselves from cases, says Gillers.
“Is [the justice] the final arbiter of whether or not he has to recuse himself? And the answer is yes,” he said. “Every other federal judge below the Supreme Court, every other federal judge’s decision about whether or not he should be recused is potentially subject to the review of a higher judge or other judges on his court. But no one reviews the decision of a justice.”
He pointed to perhaps the most famous case involving a justice and recusal, which involved Scalia himself. Scalia joined then-Vice President Richard B. Cheney on a hunting trip while Cheney was the subject of a lawsuit over his energy task force, and in response to calls that he sit out the case, Scalia issued a highly unusual 21-page argument explaining why he refused to do so.
There are also calls for recusal stemming from things justices did before they joined the bench. Justice Elena Kagan, who served as the Obama administration’s solicitor general before her appointment, dismissed suggestions to recuse herself from decisions on health-care reform. Kagan had said that while in the administration she was not involved in preparations for legal challenges the act would face.
For his part, Roberts has defended the court’s policy allowing justices to decide for themselves if they should step away from certain cases, defending the court’s members as capable of making this decision themselves.
In his 2011 report, Roberts noted that while lower courts can substitute for one another, there is only one U.S. Supreme Court, “and if a Justice withdraws from a case, the Court must sit without its full membership.” The justices have “an obligation to the Court” before making the decision on recusal, he wrote.
Roberts issued his report at the end of a year in which more than 100 law professors nationwide asked Congress to give the Supreme Court an ethical code of conduct after it emerged that Scalia and Justice Clarence Thomas had attended private political meetings sponsored by billionaire conservative donors David and Charles Koch. That same year, Kagan was called on to recuse herself from hearing challenges to health-care reform, and a watchdog group said Thomas had failed to report his wife’s income from a conservative think tank before he amended his financial forms.
While Roberts did not specifically mention those issues, he said it would not be wise for justices to review the recusal decisions made by their peers. He said that “it would create an undesirable situation” enabling justices to play a role in determining which others get to weigh in on cases.
“I have complete confidence in the capability of my colleagues to determine when recusal is warranted,” he wrote. “They are jurists of exceptional integrity and experience whose character and fitness have been examined through a rigorous appointment and confirmation process.”
"Why was a man on vacation with a "friend" found dead in his bed by the resort staff and not by said friend? Did the friend not bother checking in to see if Scalia was ok?
Am I the only person who thinks that Scalia died while in bed with his mistress and that she scampered off right after he fell over?
I mean the man was a "family values - against contraception" right winger. He was also allegedly very corrupt. Since when do guys like that just drop dead on a free vacation at a resort?
Surely I am not the only one who thinks too much Viagra did old Scalia in?"
by seemslikeadream » Thu Feb 18, 2016 5:27 pm
Am I the only person who thinks that Scalia died while in bed with his mistress and that she scampered off right after he fell over?
by Iamwhomiam » Thu Feb 18, 2016 5:42 pm
by Nordic » Fri Feb 19, 2016 3:35 am
by seemslikeadream » Sun Feb 21, 2016 7:39 pm
by chump » Mon Feb 22, 2016 12:48 am
http://www.larryflynt.com/video-politic ... eme-court/
From RT America
PoliticKING Video: Larry Flynt Denounces Scalia’s ‘Damaging’ Supreme Court Legacy
On RT America’s February 15th episode of “PoliticKING”, Larry Flynt sat down with television host Larry King to discuss the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s “damaging” legacy.
Scalia passed away on February 12/13th, 2016, at the age of 79. Appointed to the Supreme Court by Ronald Reagan in 1982, he served there as a justice for close to thirty years. Of Scalia’s death, Mr. Flynt said, “It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.”
Of course, his politics were a different beast—and the implications of his death have spurred further controversy for the Court. Just half an hour after the news broke, Republican majority leader Mitch McConnell urged conservatives to block Obama’s rightful appointment of a new justice, arguing that it should be the next president who chooses. Meanwhile, Democrats contended that such a delay would be unconstitutional. With less than a year left in Obama’s term, the debate is unlikely to end soon.
Watch Larry Flynt tell Larry King what he thinks of Scalia’s legacy—and one presidential candidate who hopes to nominate the justice’s successor:
by cptmarginal » Mon Feb 22, 2016 9:33 am
Cordelia » Tue Feb 16, 2016 9:02 am wrote:Wonder if he's related to another John Poindexter.
"He was Deputy National Security Advisor and National Security Advisor for the Reagan administration. He was convicted in April 1990 of multiple felonies as a result of his actions in the Iran–Contra affair."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Poindexter
His wife, Linda Poindexter, was an Episcopal priest for 13 years, but retired from the clergy when she converted to Catholicism. They have five children, including the late Alan G. Poindexter, a NASA astronaut, Space Shuttle pilot on the STS-122 mission to the International Space Station, and the commander of STS-131.
by lunarmoth » Mon Feb 22, 2016 1:50 pm
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