Replacing Scalia

5 Dramatic Changes that will happen if the Liberals Replace Scalia

Abortion

A liberal replacement for Scalia would guarantee almost unlimited abortion rights, probably far into the future. Many Texas abortion clinics could close, an outcome that may have happened anyway with Scalia on the court.

The court next month will hear the most significant abortion case since 1992, when the justices ruled states could legally impose restrictions on abortion that did not put an “undue burden” on access to the procedure. This term’s abortion case, which centers on restrictions Texas placed on providers and clinics, will again test how far states can go to limit abortion.

The court is expected to be divided along familiar partisan lines, with Justice Anthony Kennedy serving as a possible swing vote. A 4-4 decision in the case, Whole Woman’s Health v. Cole, would leave in place a lower court ruling that upheld the restrictions on clinics.

The debate over whether or not abortion should be a legal option continues to divide Americans long after the US Supreme Court’s 7-2 decision on Roe v. Wade declared the procedure a “fundamental right” on Jan. 22, 1973.

Proponents, identifying themselves as pro-choice, contend that choosing abortion is a right that should not be limited by governmental or religious authority, and which outweighs any right claimed for an embryo or fetus. They say that pregnant women will resort to unsafe illegal abortions if there is no legal option.

Opponents, identifying themselves as pro-life, contend that personhood begins at conception, and therefore abortion is the immoral killing of an innocent human being. They say abortion inflicts suffering on the unborn child, and that it is unfair to allow abortion when couples who cannot biologically conceive are waiting to adopt.

Variations exist in arguments on both sides of the debate. Some pro-choice proponents believe abortion should only be used as a last resort, while others advocate unrestricted access to abortion services under any circumstance. Pro-life positions range from opposing abortion under any circumstance to accepting it for situations of rape, incest, or when a woman’s life is at risk.

Freedom of Religion

Kiss your religious liberties goodbye. A liberal replacement for Scalia would probably be the fifth vote to overrule the 2014 Hobby Lobby decision and require religious employers and other groups to provide health insurance including free contraceptives and take other actions that they say violates their freedom of religion.

The separation of church and state doesn’t mean “the government cannot favor religion over non-religion,” Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia argued during a speech at Colorado Christian University on Wednesday, according to The Washington Times.

Defending his strict adherence to the plain text of the Constitution, Scalia knocked secular qualms over the role of religion in the public sphere as “utterly absurd,” arguing that the Constitution is only obligated to protect freedom of religion — not freedom from it.

“I think the main fight is to dissuade Americans from what the secularists are trying to persuade them to be true: that the separation of church and state means that the government cannot favor religion over non-religion,” the Reagan-appointed jurist told the crowd of about 400 people.

Historically, freedom of religion has been used to refer to the tolerance of different theological systems of belief, while freedom of worship has been defined as freedom of individual action. Each of these have existed to varying degrees. While many countries have accepted some form of religious freedom, this has also often been limited in practice through punitive taxation, repressive social legislation, and political disenfranchisement. Compare examples of individual freedom in Italy or the Muslim tradition of dhimmis, literally “protected individuals” professing an officially tolerated non-Muslim religion.

Freedom of religion or freedom of belief is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or community, in public or private, to manifest religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance. It also includes the freedom to change one’s religion or belief.

Freedom of religion is considered by many people and nations to be a fundamental human right. In a country with a state religion, freedom of religion is generally considered to mean that the government permits religious practices of other sects besides the state religion, and does not persecute believers in other faiths.

Gun Rights

A liberal replacement for Scalia might be the fifth vote to cut back on or overrule the 2008 Scalia majority opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller and subsequent Supreme Court decisions recognizing a constitutional right to keep and bear arms.

After going virtually unchallenged for more than one hundred years, Americans’ right to own guns is one of the hottest political topics of the second half of the 20th Century. The issue has calmed somewhat in the early days of the 21st Century, but if history is our guide, the debate is going nowhere until an inevitable and definitive ruling is handed down by the nation’s courts: does the Second Amendment apply to individual citizens?

The right to keep and bear arms fundamentally is the assertion that people, either individually or collectively as a militia, have a personal right to possess weapons. Often, but not always, the arms at the forefront of the conversation are firearms, though other kinds of weapons are involved as well. Debates about the right to keep and bear arms also usually involve issues such as the right of individuals to defend themselves, their families and their property as well as issues such as the right to protect oneself even against one’s own government.

Although much of the history of the laws in the United States have their basis in English common law, the United States and the United Kingdom have very different approaches to the issue of the right to keep and bear arms. The right to keep and bear arms is recognized in the United States Bill of Rights and has been enacted as the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution. In contrast, in the United Kingdom, neither English law nor Scottish law discusses the right to bear and keep arms. Although they may carry pepper spray or a side baton, even police officers in Great Britain do not routinely carry firearms. Further, the Prevention of Crime Act 1953 prohibited individuals from carrying offensive weapons, such as firearms and knives, without lawful authority or reasonable excuse. Moreover, the Firearms Amendment No.) Act 1997 effectively banned in Great Britain the private possession of all modern pistols, even for competitive sporting purposes.

Death Penalty

A liberal replacement for Scalia would insure invalidation of more death penalty laws, although not necessarily complete abolition of the penalty. The court has already struck down various death penalty provisions while narrowly upholding others, such as a 2015 decision allowing use of execution drugs that were alleged to cause excruciating pain. That decision, among others, could be overruled or pared back to its specific facts.

Back in 1994 conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia voted against a petition asking the Supreme Court to review the case of one of those men, Henry McCollum. That man became North Carolina’s longest-serving death row inmate after he and his half-brother Leon Brown were convicted of raping and killing an 11-year-old girl.

This news brings to mind Scalia’s insistence that the Supreme Court has never ruled the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who later convinces a court of his innocence, as

Slate points out.

“This Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is ‘actually’ innocent,” Scalia wrote in a 2009 document of the Court’s order for a federal trial court in Georgia to consider the case of death row inmate Troy Davis. “Quite to the contrary, we have repeatedly left that question unresolved, while expressing considerable doubt that any claim based on alleged ‘actual innocence’ is constitutionally cognizable.”

The first established death penalty laws date as far back as the Eighteenth Century B.C. in the Code of King Hammaurabi of Babylon, which codified the death penalty for 25 different crimes. The death penalty was also part of the Fourteenth Century B.C.’s Hittite Code; in the Seventh Century B.C.’s Draconian Code of Athens, which made death the only punishment for all crimes; and in the Fifth Century B.C.’s Roman Law of the Twelve Tablets. Death sentences were carried out by such means as crucifixion, drowning, beating to death, burning alive, and impalement.

Campaign Finance Regulation

A liberal replacement for Scalia would probably work a sea of changes on campaign finance regulation. The 5-4 Citizens United decision in 2010, a target of liberal disdain for upholding corporations’ First Amendment rights to spend unlimited amounts on campaigns, would almost surely be overruled.

The court would also likely sweep away other precedents upholding unlimited “independent” campaign spending. This would gratify Democrats and to a large extent protect incumbent elected officials.

But it would be seen by many Republicans as designed to solidify the Democratic advantage that, they say, comes for free from campaign coverage and commentary the unregulated, predominantly liberal mainstream news media. Congress has exempted media corporations from restrictions on spending in support of candidates.

Efforts to limit political contributions and spending are extremely popular. Yet there is no serious evidence that campaign finance regulation has achieved or will achieve its goals of reducing the influence of money, opening up the political system, and lowering the cost of campaigns. Indeed, since the 1974 amendments to the Federal Election Campaign Act, spending has risen sharply, the number of political action committees and the amount of PAC spending are up, and incumbents have increased both their reelection rate and the rate at which they outspend their challengers.

Efforts to limit contributions and spending have been based on faulty assumptions. Although it is often said that we spend too much on political campaigns, total spending for candidates for all offices is less than $10 per eligible voter every two years. Money is of much greater value to challengers than to incumbents, so higher spending opens up the political system to new people and ideas. Contrary to the assumption that large contributions are undemocratic is the reality that most challenges to the status quo and most working-class political movements have been financed by wealthy donors.

Our current campaign finance regulations favor incumbents, stifle grassroots activity, distort and constrict political debate, and infringe on traditional First Amendment freedoms. There is little reason to believe that still more regulation and public funding will yield positive results.

The framers of the Bill of Rights provided for the First Amendment to keep the government from attempting to limit political debate and criticism. We should recognize the wisdom of that decision and return to the system of campaign “regulation” that the Founders intended: “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech.”

http://conservativeamerica-online.com/5-dramatic-changes-that-will-happen-if-the-liberals-replace-scalia-campaign-finance-regulation/

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Energy Cost

The most serious threat to our economy is energy costs.  State filed cases are moving through the system asking for a Supreme Court opinion regarding the federal regulators’ authority to impose draconian EPA Regulations.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party LeaderEner