DL Open Thread: Thursday, April 7, 2022

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson Set To Be Elevated To Supreme Court Today.  Hey, we dodged the Breyer nightmare.  That’s something:

A final vote on Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation is expected around 1:45 p.m. Eastern, Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) told his colleagues Wednesday night. President Biden’s nominee, who is expected to draw the support of all 50 members of the Democratic caucus and three Republicans, will replace retiring Justice Stephen G. Breyer at the end of the court’s term.

Supreme Court Uses ‘Shadow Docket’ To Revive Trump-era Anti-Clean Water Restrictions.  Too much for even Chief Justice Roberts:

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court issued a 5–4 shadow docket order reviving a Trump-era ruling that radically limited the ability of states and tribes to restrict projects, like pipelines, that will damage the environment. With their decision, the majority upended decades of settled law recognizing states’ authority to protect their own waters without bothering to issue a single sentence of reasoning.

Just two days earlier, Justice Amy Coney Barrett once again declared that the Supreme Court is not political during a speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library Foundation. Americans concerned that a particular ruling was “purely results-driven,” she said, should “read the opinion.” A close reading, Barrett asserted, would help the public decide if the ruling is “designed to impose the policy preferences of the majority” or an honest effort to “determine what the Constitution and precedent requires.”

But those upset by Wednesday’s decision, which strayed so far from all known law that even Chief Justice John Roberts was driven to dissent, cannot “read the opinion”—because there is none. If that logic-free attack on the Clean Water Act is not a “purely results-driven” attempt to “impose the policy preferences of the majority,” it’s hard to see what is.

Got that? Can’t read the opinion because there is none!

Voter Fraud Is Real. Rethugs Do It.  Candidate for office voted twice in 2016 primaries. In two different states. I, uh, guess it sorta proves their point.

There Should Be Limits To ‘Victims’ Rights’.  This unelected guy from Arizona demonstrates why:

When Josh Tate was sentenced in 2017 to 10 years in prison for getting caught with drugs multiple times, his wife, Claire Tate, tried not to dwell on the moments he would miss with their two young kids. She didn’t see the purpose in sending Josh — who had struggled with a meth addiction for years but never been convicted of a violent crime — away for so long.

“You can’t punish a drug addiction out of somebody,” Claire Tate said recently.

Last year, state legislation supported by prominent conservative groups seemed to offer Josh Tate a chance to serve a larger portion of his sentence at home after completing education and self-help programs.

One man had the power to delay their early reunion: Steve Twist. Twist has never held elected office. But over four decades the Arizona victims’ rights advocate, adjunct law professor and former assistant state attorney general has had an enduring impact on policies that created one of the nation’s most punitive state criminal justice systems.

Across the country, states both liberal and conservative have taken steps to reduce their prison populations. Similar efforts in Arizona have been incremental. The state established mandatory minimums for people who commit multiple and violent crimes; combined with a law that requires almost every prisoner to serve 85% of their sentence in prison — with the exception of people, like Josh, convicted of drug possession, who still serve 70% — this makes Arizona’s criminal justice system one of the harshest in the nation. Locking up so many for so long comes at a high price: Only four states spend a bigger share of their budgets on corrections.

In the 1970s, first as a lobbyist for Arizona police chiefs, then as a lawyer for the Arizona Legislature, Twist helped rewrite the state’s criminal code to make sentencing more punitive. Later, as an assistant state attorney general in the 1980s, he continued to push for harsher laws that kept people in prison even longer. In the 1990s, working for the National Rifle Association, he helped enact similar policies in other states, including requirements that people serve at least 85% of their sentenced time, imposing life sentences after a third conviction for a violent felony, enforcing the death penalty and allowing young people to be charged as adults.

In more recent years, those who have worked with Twist and observed him closely said he remains a gatekeeper for criminal justice policies in Arizona. This continuing influence comes not only from his past work but also his relationships with governors, lawmakers, state supreme court justices, county prosecutors and other victims’ rights advocates. When proposals threaten laws he helped enact, he draws on this network to pressure lawmakers to oppose reform legislation.

Those who have worked with Twist and observed him say it’s not clear what has driven his passion for criminal justice issues. He has said in previous interviews that his work as a prosecutor helped him understand “the plight of crime victims in our system.” And when Twist opposes changes to sentencing laws, he usually references crime victims. This work has made him a nationally recognized figure in the victims’ rights movement, including being honored by the Department of Justice in 2020 with a Victims’ Rights Legend Award. And it’s given him stature in Arizona’s political establishment.

The rights of crime victims and their families should not supersede everybody else’s rights.  Got that, Mrs. Faulkner?

Sounds exactly like Jane Brady’s terms as AG.  It took conservative senator Bob Venables, of all people, to sound the alarm that Delaware was spending an inordinate amount of its capital budget for building new prisons.  Read the entire thing–you’ll learn something.

Oh Noes. ‘Ye’s New Girlfriend Is From Delaware.  Goin’ out on a limb: No good will come from this.

What do you want to talk about?