Clarence Thomas: "Clerical error? Too bad, you rot in jail anyway" Talk about "enemies, domestic."

From the NYT on a recent Supreme Court decision (5-4, obviously):

"Mr. Bowles, an Ohio inmate, challenged his conviction in federal district court and lost. The court told Mr. Bowles that he had until Feb. 27 to appeal. He filed the appeal on Feb. 26, and was ready to argue why he was wrongly convicted. But it turned out the district court made a mistake. The appeal should have been filed by Feb. 24.

"The Supreme Court ruled, 5 to 4, in a majority opinion written by Justice Clarence Thomas, that Mr. Bowles was out of luck, and his appeal was invalid. So much for heeding a federal judge.

.................
The four dissenters distilled this case perfectly when they said, “it is intolerable for the judicial system to treat people this way.”
-------------------

Even for one who has seen countless wrong decisions by the Reagan-Bush court since December 2000, this shocked me.

OK, so the right wing of the Supreme Court is known for its heartlessness and disregard for individual rights,
but this goes even beyond that. This is just plain smug meanness. The Reagan-Bush Five will leave their chambers
and go to their cocktail parties and clubs and chummy dinners while this guy rots in jail for....ever? How I wish
that just for once the tables could be turned, and give us the chance to sing the last verse from Dylan's "Positively
4th Street" to the Reagan-Bush Five rotting behind bars:

"Yes, I wish that for just one time
You could stand inside my shoes
You'd know what a drag it is
To see you"

The Oaths of Office of so many in Washington require them to swear to protect the USA and the Constitution
against "all enemies, foreign AND DOMESTIC." If these five aren't "enemies, domestic," I don't know who are.

from this court, thanks to everyone who voted for Bush, or said there is no difference between Gore and Bush and didn't vote.

I think I'm going to remind them of this....

It was somebody else's error, but they won't overturn it? This is stupid even for Thomas.

:grr:

:argh:

:wtf:

:rant:

Funny.

Guess there's no accountability there either.

Kennedy or Souter?

From the NYT:

By refusing to do so now, Justice David Souter argued for the dissenters, the court was saying that “every statement by a federal court is to be tagged with the warning ‘Beware of the judge.’ ”

The four dissenters distilled this case perfectly when they said, “it is intolerable for the judicial system to treat people this way.”

Unlike the rest of the Republican appointees.

he consistently votes the way we would want him to...he has turned out to be a big disappointment to Poppy Bush who appointed him and I say good on you Justice Souter....

for example he was on the correct side of Bush v. Gore - shame on you Sandra Day O'Connor.....

that there really was a difference between Bush and Kerry. Alito and Roberts are a direct result of that election it doesn't get simpler than that. Elections have consequences, even when we lose.

no difference between Bush and Gore.....



that cost us bigtime.

But they were not just like everything Bush* and Company has asked for and received for the last six years. Tell me the difference between Democrats and Republicans when Bush* wanted his first big Tax Cut for the wealthy..Seems to me like it passed overwhelmingly..How about the big ruckus that erupted when Bush* decided he did not have to follow Congressional Law over Presidential Papers Act.. Oh that's right there was no ruckus..How about when Bush* cronies were driving a nuclear submarine and killed a bunch of japanese Students..Democrats sure raised Holy Hell on that one didn't they.. The list just goes on and on and on and on. Yep Big difference...

Never, as in not one single solitary time in the history of the United States, a period of over 200 years, has a Supreme Court Justice been filibustered without ethics issues being involved. Never, not one, single solitary time. The one and only reason those men are on the Supreme Court is that elections have consequences. Kerry lost, Bush won. That, and only that, is why those men are on that court.

because they considered him "too liberal"

Fortas had accepted payment for a college course and that was the reason given for the filibuster. I am sure that his liberalism was the real reason but it was ethics which did him in.

Fortas became the first sitting associate justice, nominated for chief justice, to testify at his own confirmation hearing. Those hearings reinforced what some senators already knew about the nominee. As a sitting justice, he regularly attended White House staff meetings; he briefed the president on secret Court deliberations; and, on behalf of the president, he pressured senators who opposed the war in Vietnam. When the Judiciary Committee revealed that Fortas received a privately funded stipend, equivalent to 40 percent of his Court salary, to teach an American University summer course, Dirksen and others withdrew their support. Although the committee recommended confirmation, floor consideration sparked the first filibuster in Senate history on a Supreme Court nomination.

http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/Filibuster_Derails_Supreme_Court_Appointment.htm

We had no such fig leaf with either Roberts or Alito. If you have doubts of the need for that look at Thurgood Marshall. If there were ever a person who would be filibustered for ideology it would have been him but they didn't do it.

He can't appeal because THEY made a mistake on the date? That's so so so wrong.

if someone didn't want someone to be able to appeal, they could give them the wrong date on purpose hoping they wouldn't get the appeal in on time.

appeal.

That was awhile ago...its a procedural issue, as this is.

:grr: :puke:

where a guy sentenced to death was denied a retrial (his lawyer slept through some of the proceedings) - as I recall, they thought that was just peachy-keen too

God knows we have plenty of judges here who haven't quite entered the 20th century let alone the 21st; but this is REALLY extreme!

And how did that idiot Clarence Thomas ever pass his law degree, let alone get onto the Supreme Court!

We are within inches of a kangaroo court, aka, SCOTUS.

Clarence Thomas is stuck in the early 18th century.

He has not lost any of the bitterness he acquired during his
emotional and controversial confirmation hearings, and he
appears to want to take out his revenge on every individual
over which he can now exercise power, which as you see in
this case and the other one where Scalia wrote the opinion,
he does with equal doses of fervor and a cold dispassion.

Where he may be intellectually equipped to serve as a judge,
he is certainly not intellectually equipped to serve as a Supreme
Court Justice, and at any rate he is more emotionally equipped to
serve as a commander of a firing squad.

"Where he may be intellectually equipped to serve as a judge,"...

He is not intellectually capable of being the guy who scoops dog crap out of the gutter. The man is a cretin, plain and simple. The few cases he's written opinions on, are almost indecipherable, (caveat, I have yet to read this new gem).

Clarence Thomas is not fit to be anywhere near a court, a clerk, or anything else to do w/the law. He is a monument to precisely what NOT a USSC judge should be. Thomas is a perfect example of the "dumbing down of America".

But....Limbaugh says he is one of the "most brilliant Judges the USSC has ever had"...I actually heard that w/my own two ears! FWIW, Limbaugh was "married" to the "lovely Marta", wife #4 I believe, by Thomas. I wonder if Thomas presided over the divorce as well?...shrug:

Which is why I say "may." The guy did apparently graduate law school on his own.
Look at Cheney. Evil isn't always stupid, it's just never good.

Of course, Limbaugh calling anyone "brilliant" is in itself reasonable grounds for
assuming the opposite, barring any evidence submitted to the contrary.........

I'm not against Equal Opportunity, but from what I've seen of the man, he couldn't open a can of beans w/o someone else's help; the man truly is an idiot. So I'm figuring, he must have been a nice guy, and a lot of students/instructors helped him along the way. Not saying that because he is black he got any preferential treatment, but the case against him being smart is so powerful, it is a wonder he ever made it through HS, much less college.

The few things by him I have read, border on elementary schoolbook level. Eng 101/102 must have eluded him completely, and the thought he might use, much less know what a dictionary of thesaurus is, is beyond my scope of comprehension.

He is a classic ignoramus, a knuckle-dragging buffoon, that somehow got to a position of incredible power. I am sure that he will be a footnote in the history of the USSC, an anomaly at best.

Can anything be done? Have we become a fascist state or what? We need a huge public outcry. I think I heard on Thom Hartman that it is a black defendant and a black judge who issued the original decision to ignore the clerical error.

Neither does the phrase, "I/we screwed up, I/we'll rectify it."

Unfortunately, they tend to follow the "if all the 't's are crossed and all the 'i's are dotted, then it meets requirements" school of justice, which is the lowest common denominator. I think the only recourse would be for Congress to amend the appropriate federal law(s) to allow for such bureaucratic screwups, but they've got more important things (cocktail dinners and meetings with lobbyists come to mind) to attend to.

opinion on something as horrendous an abuse like this?

Any thinking human being would not hold it against an individual that a clerical error was involved. This case should have gone on to further review, and the court issuing the false information should have been reprimanded for its dereliction.

One of the reasons lawyers and law clerks are taught to "dot their 'i's and cross their 't's is so that their case wil be spared a review that may follow because of questions that will arise.

Dates are in a class by themselves...if someone misses a date because of their own fault or omission, they can be held liable for that error. But if the error is made by another, said error cannot be challenged? Only an idiot, (think Thomas and RW ideologues on the Court), could hold this against a defendant. Figures that the USSC gave this "decision" to Thomas...it fits his idiotic personna. The man is a moron, and should be impeached, removed from the USSC and then pilloried while fruit and vegetables are in full rot stage. He can then be drawn across the nation as a symbol of how horrid things can become when an idiot has power. I'd toss large amounts of produce at the fool.

Thomas is little more than the Court

I think you're right, Ras. They gave it to Thomas so that he could make his one and only point - activist judges no good -- again.


:puke:

glc

:D

The whole "activist judges" squeaL is bs anyway. They want "activist judges", just as long as their "activism" RW. bush I tried the soft well w/Thomas, I actually heard chuckles in newsrooms when ghwb described him as, "the most capable judge there is to fill the position". With a quick Google search, almost any other "benchman/woman" would have been a better choice. Whole thing was, it was designed to placate black voters and others who would complain about Thurgood Marshall's seat be taken over by "another white man". They found the ONLY conservative black judge they could find, and it was Thomas.

During the hearings, I was in NYC visiting family and friends. One of my old black friends was sitting there watching this charade w/his wife beside him, and looked at me and said, "If people are watching this, and they see this guy make it to the SC, everyone who doesn't interact with blacks will think we are all stupid!" I told him I thought Americans were smarter than that, but he told me that most people who don't interact w/blacks on a regular basis, might think this this guy, "is the smartest of the group." Looking back, and seeing his face, and his wife's face, I can honestly say I believe him now, and that is very sad to me.

Out here in NE, people really do think Clarence Thomas is the smartest black man, simply because he's on the SC. None of them think he is good at that, so a lot of them think that blacks are stupid, and that offends me to no end. God, being a caucasian , straight male is getting to be a tough thing to carry.:D

The impeachment shouldn't stop with Bush & Cheney!

That would be like putting a band-aid on cancer that has spread.

did you think that they would make INTELLIGENT decisions?

They are just piles of paid off pieces of shit~~~~

Someday, all of this will come to fruition.

THIS IS THE SUPREME COURT TODAY

Star Chamber
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For other uses see Star Chamber (disambiguation).
The Star Chamber (Latin Camera stellata) was an English court of law at the royal Palace of Westminster that sat between 1487 and 1641, when the court itself was abolished. Its primary purpose was to hear political libel and treason cases.

In modern usage, legal or administrative bodies with strict, arbitrary rulings and secretive proceedings are sometimes called, metaphorically or poetically, star chambers. This is a pejorative term and intended to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the proceedings. The inherent lack of objectivity of any politically motivated charges has led to substantial reforms in English law in most jurisdictions since that time.

Bush should pardon the guy. Don't hold your breath.

:wtf: moment indeed..


"Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached." --U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia
Herrera v. Collins 506 US 390 1993

That one need to be inscribed in marble in DC somewhere.

A side note--I saw a post on a board where right wingers are
tolerated if they don't go off the deep end (most do), some
libertarian type posting that because the man was surely
guilty, that he surely deserved the judgment he got. He
totally ignored the fact that a judgment from the Supreme Court
becomes the law of the land. The disallowing of the clerical
error as grounds for redress is not just this man's bad luck,
it is now the WHOLE COUNTRY'S BAD LUCK.

Of course, Clarence Thomas and Nino Scalia could also be
considered the whole country's bad luck, and only meet
with dissent from Rush Limbaugh, Dick Cheney, John Roberts
and Sam Alito, with Anthony Kennedy recusing himself.

Conservatism is dehumanizing.

Governments and the judiciary have been made to atone for their mistakes before. There are countless precedents. Look at the Miranda law.

Court orders and deadlines should be taken as sacrosanct. And if the court is in error, there should be grounds for immediate appeal or reschedule.

I'd like to see exactly what this "majority opinion" is.

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=000&invol=06-5306

glc

He could have filed an appeal within 30 days of the denial of habeas relief. He ignored that. He then had another 14 days to file when the district court granted him an extension. I don't know if he had a lawyer but if he did, under the law, it would have been the lawyer's responsibility to know the correct date - not the court. Since this was a habeas case he may not have had a lawyer. Whatever you think of the decision the court is correct when they said they could not create jurisdiction -- only Congress can do that.

This man was told by his dist. court that he had 17 days. He took the word of the judicial authority which was telling him what the deadline was. (What a nut, eh?) That is the problem here.

If it were as simple as you say, the vote wouldn't have been so close and the dissenting justices wouldn't have been so disgusted with Thomas and Crew.

This court could've intervened as it was an extraordinary situation. (Man takes word of court, finds that he has then missed deadline.) This court isn't about helping anyone.

Was the guy pro se? I don't know. Seems that way.

glc

will be a logjam of shitty decisions!!

Why doesn't the "Supreme Court" do some good for the nation instead of validating the "RW" diseased spot in the human brain.

SHILLS!!!!

I will not have "clerical errors" with my appeal.

That guy should sue for misinformation and misrepresentation.

Isn't that called the "bait & switch", an unfair business practice?

And isn't the "govt.". "buisness"?

We certainly don't "have to get used to" any barbaric behavior from our SC . . .
which is an embarrassment throughout the world.

The 2000 appointment of Bush should have resulted in impeachment.

The longer we wait, the worse ALL of these problems become.

I understand that he rarely has the privilege of actually penning one. Wonder why, and wonder why they let him do this one? Could it be because the decision is so extreme that none of the other righties want their name top the list of the signatories?

there's very little difference between some of the dems and republicans. I'm still waiting for subpoena power to mean anything also.

...

I think this indicates that's not true. What they really believe is "I don't care. I don't have to."

You're wrongfully in jail? I don't care. I don't have to.

You're about to be executed for a crime you didn't commit? I don't care. I don't have to.