The Supreme Court vacancy, a minefield for Republicans

And yet another person who doesn't understand the tu quoque fallacy.

And yet another person who doesn't understand the tu quoque fallacy.

Dow Chemical just settled a suit saying Scalia's death made it unlikely they could win on appeal, so it is having an effect.

Earlier this week, the Supreme Court heard arguments in the case of the Texas abortion law (SB2) which effectively shuttered abortion clinics across the state.

In the transcript, the lady justices were fierce during argument, pointing out the hypocrisy of suggesting women could leave the state to go to clinics which weren't burdened with the same restrictions as Texas clinics.

Still, with an even number of Justices on the Court, it was possible that this could be one of those split decisions that left all of the Circuit Court decisions in place, even if in conflict with one another.

Today, the Supreme Court lifted a stay which allows Louisiana clinics to remain open, pending resolution of the same issues as the Texas challenges winding their way through the courts.

ThinkProgress:

The Supreme Court handed down a brief order Monday allowing four Louisiana abortion clinics to reopen after they were closed due to a recent decision by a conservative federal appeals court.

Last week, an especially conservative panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit handed down an “emergency” decision permitting an anti-abortion Louisiana law to go into effect. Under this law, physicians cannot perform abortions unless they have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital — an increasingly common requirement masterminded by an anti-abortion group that drafts model bills for state legislatures. A challenge to a similar Texas law is currently pending before the justices.

The Supreme Court’s order temporarily suspends the Louisiana law, effectively preventing the Fifth Circuit’s Wednesday decision from taking effect. Only Justice Clarence Thomas explicitly dissented from the Court’s order.

The order itself follows logic. The Texas case is pending, and the Louisiana case centers on the very same issues. There's no logical reason to allow a law to go into effect that might be struck down in another case.

But there might still be a glimmer of some handwriting on the wall there. With Justice Thomas as the sole dissent, it could be that they've already voted on the Texas case and found a majority that says it goes too far.

if you count Justice Stephen Breyer as one of history’s great feminists—and I do—then you can view the arguments in this term’s landmark abortion case, Whole Woman’s Health v Hellerstedt, as creating a neat 4–4 split. On one side, you have a group of testy male justices needling a female lawyer for Texas clinics about whether it was even appropriate for them to hear this appeal. On the other, you’ve got four absolutely smoking hot feminists pounding on Texas’ solicitor general for passing abortion regulations that have no plausible health purpose and also seem pretty stupid.

It felt as if, for the first time in history, the gender playing field at the high court was finally leveled, and as a consequence the court’s female justices were emboldened to just ignore the rules. Time limits were flouted to such a degree that Chief Justice John Roberts pretty much gave up enforcing them. I counted two instances in which Roberts tried to get advocates to wrap up as Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor simply blew past him with more questions. There was something wonderful and symbolic about Roberts losing almost complete control over the court’s indignant women, who are just not inclined to play nice anymore.

The case involves a crucial constitutional challenge to two provisions in Texas’ HB 2, the state’s omnibus abortion bill from 2013. The first requires doctors to obtain admitting privileges from a hospital 30 miles from the clinic where they perform abortions; the second requires abortion clinics to be elaborately retrofitted to comply with building regulations that would make them “ambulatory surgical centers.”

If these provisions go into full effect, Texas would see a 75 percent reduction in the number of clinics serving 5.4 million women of childbearing age.

The constitutional question is whether having 10 clinics to serve all these women, including many who would live 200 miles away from the nearest facility, represents an “undue burden” on the right to abortion deemed impermissible after the Casey decision.

Each of the female justices takes a whacking stick to the very notion that abortion—one of the safest procedures on record—requires rural women to haul ass across land masses larger than the whole state of California in order to take a pill, in the presence of a doctor, in a surgical theater.

Looming over most of the morning, of course, is Justice Scalia, who is three times larger in his absence than even his outsize presence used to be. Scalia, recall, once referred to clinics in an opinion announcement as “abortion mills.” Justice Alito seems exhausted trying to play both his own part, and Scalia’s, and Justice Clarence Thomas, silent today, chatters and laughs with Breyer. One senses that the chief justice, two weeks into this new post-Scalia era, is worn out just trying to keep the women at bay. And with today’s facts in hand, the pugilistic culture warrior Scalia would have been incomparable. Without him on the bench, the court’s conservative wing is reduced to demanding more and more proof that the closure of 11 clinics on the day HB 2 passed was really a result of the law. This is, as Scalia would never say, weak applesauce.

If the case is sent back to Texas on remand, we will play this out again in a few years with nine justices. But it’s hard to imagine President Obama conjuring up, from even the darkest, most devious underground lab, a new justice who would be half as fierce as the four-car train of whoop ass we saw today.

Oralloy has an extreme tunnel vision problem, ignoring facts which veers his viewpoint in any way is pretty much par for the course.

I usually try to avoid making personal comments (not successful too much) but I just find having any kind of dialogue so frustrating with him I have avoided it lately.

joefromchicago wrote:

And yet another person who doesn't understand the tu quoque fallacy.

Why is that whenever I bring up something that Obama has done and then someone of the liberal persuasion jumps in with a "But Bush did it too!!!" you and Setanta aren't jumping in with all the quoque talk? (See what I did there? hehe)

You know, logic isn't some proprietary system that Setanta and I cobbled together in our garage over a long weekend.