Category Archives: SCOTUS For The Average Joe

Libertarianism, SCOTUS For The Average Joe

Average Joe SCOTUS: Thompson v. Clark

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This is kinda interesting. So friend of dipshit Thompson, Camille Watson, who has what SCOTUSBlog described as “cognitive delays” was staying with her sister, Thompson’s wife. Thompson and company had an infant daughter.

Camille saw what later was confirmed as diaper rash, and mistook it for a bruise—signs of abuse. Trying to do the right thing, but potentially bordering on Karen territory, she called 911 to report the issue.

EMTs show up to examine the baby, but Thompson answers the door, blissfully ignorant that Camille had called them. So Thompson was like, “The baby is fine. Don’t know why you’re here, but leave in peace.”

Since it was an abuse concern, they weren’t so quick to take off without doing some kind of check. So they had cops come with them a second time, and asked Thompson to show them the baby.

While we here at Logical Libertarian are all about rights and shit, if I’m a parent, and cops are just trying to protect my baby, instead of fighting with cops and demanding to see a warrant, I’d probably just say, “let me go get the baby, so you can see she’s OK.

But Thompson isn’t me, and decided to go full blown hard core libertarian on them, asking for them to provide a warrant, or fuck right the hell off.

It may surprise you to know this, but cops are generally not receptive to invitations to fuck right the hell off, though. So they pushed Thompson down, handcuffed his dumb ass, and went on to check on the infant.

Again, I am libertarian, but before we go too hard on officers, let’s admit some truths. People fucking abuse their kids a lot in this country. It may not be as bad as it was 100 years ago, but it still happens often. So if you were a cop, and you had reason to believe someone was harming their infant, and you do nothing to stop it because “you don’t have a warrant”, and that infant dies…well, I think that’d be a hard thing to live with.

Anyway, cops took the baby to the hospital, and they were like, “It’s diaper rash, dude.”

While I definitely gave a little deference to the cops at first, now I’m taking that shit back.

Pagiel Clark, one of the responding officers, filed a complaint against Thompson for resisting arrest, because as I mentioned earlier, cops don’t respond well to being told to fuck off. Especially when a baby in danger could be in the balance. Cops could have just been like, “Hey, we were just protecting your baby. If you’re a loving dad, you should appreciate that. Now that we know you didn’t do anything wrong, let’s shake hands, and let bygones be bygones, brother…pal…friend.”

But, they didn’t. Instead, Thompson found himself in the pokey for a couple days, so he could meditate on his life choices.

Prosecutors offered Thompson a deal for a sealed record, if he confessed to the crime of resisting. But Thompson, having meditated for several days, decided that he’d done nothing wrong, officers violated his rights, and he wasn’t signing shit. Furthermore, he’d sue the officers for wrongful arrest.

After two days in Jail BNB, Thompson was released and his case was dropped by the prosecution “in the interest of justice.” That’s legal speak for the prosecutor saying, “These cops fucked up, and we’d like this to go away.”

A federal district court felt Thompson didn’t have cause, since they dropped the charges. So now SCOTUS is being asked if in order to have a successful claim, he has to have been found guilty when he was clearly innocent, or if it’s OK to make such a claim, when the end result where the state eventually agreed he was innocent.

In a 6:3 non-partisan decision, SCOTUS decided that Thompson made a pretty good fucking argument, overturning the lower court’s decision. They wrote that Thompson only needed to show that they didn’t get a conviction, which they didn’t.

Hear oral arguments or read about the case here https://www.oyez.org/cases/2021/20-659.

Libertarianism, SCOTUS For The Average Joe

Average Joe SCOTUS: Cameron v. EMW Women’s Surgical Center

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In what is expected to be a session where abortion is front and center, SCOTUS picked up this little gem from Kentucky.

In Kentucky, they typically use a procedure called Dilation and Extraction (D&E) to perform an abortion. You can read about the details of how it’s performed here, if you’d like. It basically stops the fetal heartbeat, and the fetus is removed after the fetus is deceased. This is the most common method for a 2nd trimester abortion. And while many states accept the Roe v. Wade decision, it’s worth nothing that 2nd trimester abortions are certainly more controversial than first trimester, as viability comes into play the closer to term the pregnancy becomes.

We here at Logical Libertarian support the system set forth in Roe v. Wade, giving the woman a right to choose in early stage pregnancies. But we also acknowledge that within days of conception, it’s a human life, and it’s being ended. I have written previously why the abortion debate is often fraught with lies and misrepresentation here, so I won’t rehash in this post.

Kentucky saw fit to ban D&E as a 2nd trimester procedure. But then, Kentucky went through gubernatorial changes, as well as a new Secretary for the Cabinet of Health in Kentucky. The new people, unlike their outgoing counterparts do not support the law, and were content to let it die on the vine after a Kentucky district court and the 6th circuit federal appellate court invalidated the statute.

In walks Daniel Cameron, a potential SCOTUS pick for Trump before he ultimately lost out to Justice Barrett. He is the Kentucky AG, and he was like, “If you assholes don’t want to defend the law, I will.”

So SCOTUS isn’t necessarily even opining on the Kentucky law. But they are looking to decide whether Cameron has the right to step in and defend a law that the governor, and the head of the agency who administrates it, have chosen not to defend.

While I obviously don’t know Cameron, this appears to be a staunch pro-life person looking to be a hero as a lone defender of fetal rights.

The 6th circuit shot Cameron down, because they were like, “If we let you jump in, then every asshole with an axe to grind, will sit and wait until a case has been decided to their disliking, then jump in after the fact like some two-bit Superman coming to save the day. It’ll be like dogs and cats—living together—mass hysteria.”

Cameron went to SCOTUS, and was like, “I’m the fucking states attorney general. It’s my job to defend state law, whether the governor chooses to or not. Let me in, bitches!”

He also made it clear, he didn’t wait in the wings for shit. He found out the piece of shit health secretary was refusing to do anything, and two days later, filed his motion.

EMW however, is like, “When we sued, we sued the Health Secretary and the AG. The AG was now governor Beshear at the time. Beshear stepped down from the case, and agreed to abide by the district court’s ruling. So basically EMW is like, “The AG at the time made a decision. So a new AG can’t just roll in dirty, and negate all the shit their predecessor did.”

In an 8:1 decision, with only Sotomayor dissenting, SCOTUS ruled with Cameron. In an opinion written by Justice Alito, there’s no law limiting the jurisdiction of the attorney general in the way the respondents want. If he wants to defend the law, it’s his job, whether the governor or state congress give a fuck or not.

Sotomayor dissented, arguing that the court is bending over backwards to allow this Jesus freak to jump on the bandwagon late in the game. As such, she thinks they opened the door for any new AGs around the country, to come in after a party change, and try to overrule decisions they disagreed with.

Hear oral arguments and read about the case here. https://www.oyez.org/cases/2021/20-601.

Libertarianism, SCOTUS For The Average Joe

Average Joe SCOTUS: Babcock v. Kijakazi

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This is a case about retirement benefits. But before you nod off, let me tell you about it.

David Babcock joined the National Guard back in 1970, served over 3 years, then went to flight school to become a pilot. But flying wasn’t his one true love, making planes flyable was. So he want back to the guard, and ended up as a technician who worked on planes for a civilian group, while he was still enlisted. He also spent a couple years in Iraq form 2004-2005.

When Babcock retired in 2009, he got money from the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) and from the military’s Defense Finance and Accounting Service. (DFAS)

Once he fully retired in 2014, Social Security was like, “Here’s your benefits fuckface. But we’re reducing them because you’re getting so much scratch from the CSRS and the DFAS.”

So Babcock was like, “Hold the fuck on, you assholes. According to the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP), I should be exempted from you not giving me full benefits. I was fucking active duty military. You aren’t supposed to be doing that shit to us.”

The Windfall Elimination Provision, is basically a rule SSI has to say, “Hey look, if you’ve got money falling out of your asshole, you don’t need full SSI benefits. So we’re going to steal the money you paid into the system, and give it to some other dumb fuck who did nothing to earn it. OK?”

But generally, they don’t do this to active duty military, because they fucking risked their lives for these assholes who send them to every war-torn shithole the president or congress doesn’t like. So that’s Babcock’s beef.

The state however, is trying to say that a “Dual Service Technician” which is what Babcock was, isn’t the same as other military. Yes, he was in the military, but he was essentially a private contractor. The government fucking loves a technicality it can use to fuck someone in the neck.

Well, anyway. SSI didn’t see fit to agree Babcock was the type of military personal that should be exempted, and despite Babcock’s appeal, an Administrative Law Judge (ASL) sided with the assholes at SSI.

So now SCOTUS is being asked to decide if a dual status employee is still military for purposes of the military exemption of the windfall provision.

According to 8 out of 9 justices, it is not. He was a friend of the military, but he wasn’t out there risking getting his ass shot off. As the law was written by congress, he’s unfortunately fucked. But thank you for your assistance in the effort.

Gorsuch, the lone dissenter was like, “You other eight justices are being dicks to this poor motherfucker. He was invaluable to the war effort, he deserves to get paid.”

Hear oral arguments and read about the case here.

SCOTUS For The Average Joe

Average Joe SCOTUS: United States v. Tsarnaev

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If the name Dzhokhar Tsarnaev looks familiar to you, it’s because it’s the dipshit who decided to blow up the Boston Marathon with his asshole brother. He killed three people, but hundreds were injured.

As you may know, his efforts earned him a justifiable one way trip to ride the lightning.

While on death row, the US Court of Appeals First Circuit threw out his death penalty ruling. Their argument was twofold. They believed that the courts didn’t do a good job scrutinizing jurors to see if they had watched any news about the bombing. But it was a national fucking story. The judge in the case screened a LOT of fucking jurors, and even spent 21 days with these nine angry fucks, probing the shit out of them to make sure that even if they had seen news stories, they exhibited signs they could be swayed by the evidence at trial, as opposed to having their mind made up before the trial even started.

Not sure where the hell you’d find nine people who hadn’t heard about it, unless you had nine homeless jurors from the midwest or something.

They also raised concerns about the fact the jurors didn’t hear about his scumbag brother Tamerlan who was also involved. Dzhokar and Tamerlan shot an MIT police officer in the head, then stole an SUV from a student. Somehow, Dzhokar managed to run over Tamerlan with the stolen SUV and killed him, saving the state from having to put both these fuckheads on trial. But the argument being made, is that Tamerlan may have been overly influential to Dzhokar, and Dzhoker somehow would have been an innocent little flower, had he not been influenced by Tamerlan.

Counsel for the US made a pretty compelling argument that since Dzhokar killed Tamerlan, it’s pretty convenient to throw blame on that prick, he’s fucking dead. He can’t cross examine anyone. He can’t deny the accusations against him. He’s the best fucking patsy you could ask for.

Curiously, despite Biden superseding Trump, having been on record as being in favor of ending the federal death penalty, apparently is keen to light this little piece of shit up like a Christmas tree. They are the ones pursuing it after all.

Tsarnaev’s counsel argues that in typical cases like this, the judge at the trial hearing would usually ask jurors what shit they’ve seen in the news about a case like this, to look for anyone who’s basically ready to pull the fucking switch on this little prick themselves, and the judge didn’t do that.

So now SCOTUS is being asked if the US Court of Appeals blew their load in vacation his death sentence, based on their insistence that the judge should have pursued more, whether these jurors were biased from the onset.

In a 6:3 partisan decision, SCOTUS ruled for the United States, arguing the 5th circuit, as usual, were a bunch of dumb fucks. The district court was well within their discretion, not to ask every juror to rattle off every fucking thing they heard on the news about this little prick. Instead, the court need only to assess the juror’s open-mindedness, or overwhelming bias, which they did.

The courts left three dissented, feeling that excluding the evidence about what a controlling dickhead his brother was, was unfair, and should have been allowed. If the jury had heard this shit, they might’ve chosen a lesser sentence.

But all for naught. Tsarnaev’s date with a needle is back on track. Good bye, you little prick.

Hear oral arguments or read about the case here.

SCOTUS For The Average Joe

Average Joe SCOTUS: Wooden v. United States

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Ever heard of the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA)? Well, there’s a provision in it that goes something like this:

(1) In the case of a person who violates section 922(g) of this title and has three previous convictions by any court referred to in section 922(g)(1) of this title for a violent felony or a serious drug offense, or both, committed on occasions different from one another, such person shall be fined under this title and imprisoned not less than fifteen years

Well, that whole “three previous” shit is going to come into play here.

You see, all around dipshit William Wooden decided to roll up on a storage facility in Georgia back in 1997, and see if he could find some shit he wanted to own, but didn’t currently own. He proceeded to take possession without consulting the current owners of the property. Probably stocking up for the impending Y2K.

Wooden may have been an idiot, but he didn’t lack ambition. This fuckhead broke into ten different units and robbed each one. See where this is going?

That’s right. Ten units equals ten separate burglaries. He may have had one helluva night, but in the eyes of the law, he committed ten subsequent crimes.

Anyway, part of the ACCA is you’re not allowed to own a fucking gun if you’re an Armed Career Criminal.

So in 2014, a plain clothes officer came to Wooden’s house looking for Wooden’s wife. No clue why—doesn’t matter. Wooden, not knowing he was a cop, let him in, while he went to get his wife. Dude knew Wooden was a felon, and he saw the rifle in plain sight. Knowing Wooden wouldn’t be allowed to own a gun, the cop arrested him on the spot.

The feds charged Wooden accordingly, which gave him ten years in the pokey, after he already served eight for the burglaries back in the day. But the feds were also like, “Hey, wait a minute, he has three or more burglaries in his past doesn’t he? We can hit this mother fucker upside his had with the old ACCA fifteen year minimum, too.

Wooden of course tried to appeal. He was like, “Come on, man. Maybe I hit ten units, but it was just one crazy night. And that shit should be one ‘occasion’ under your stupid fucking law.”

But the 6th circuit court of appeals told Wooden to eat a bag of dicks. Occasions can be one after the other, as in hitting ten units in a row.

So now, the question before the court, is if some dipshit goes on a crime spree in one outing, is each successive crime he/she commits while enjoying a night on the town a separate “occasion” for purposes of the ACCA?

Justice Thomas opened up questions, and queried Wooden’s counsel how much time he would argue has to pass before it’s a new “occasion.” Clearly, they don’t want this interpretation to be some subjective bullshit. Otherwise, it ends up being constitutionally vague.

Counsel argued that this was one stream of illegal activity, from the time he hit the first storage locker, to the time they hit the last, he never stopped burgling. So that’s one occasion, in his argument. So it could be a new day, it could be that he did one in the morning, broke for lunch, and did a second one in the afternoon. As long as it’s broken up, it’s a new occasion, otherwise not.

In a unanimous decision, SCOTUS agreed with Wooden. If you go on a spree, without pause, that’s one fucking occasion.

Hear oral arguments or read about the case here.

SCOTUS For The Average Joe

Average Joe SCOTUS: BP P.L.C. v. Mayor and City Council of Baltimore

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Back in 2018, the mayor of Baltimore, being the ambitious fuck that he is, decided that he was going to make his stand on climate change, and sue the major oil companies for damages he claims are their fault, as a result of climate change.

Such issues like sea-level rise, heat waves, and a ass-ton of rain, in his mind, are all these horrible oil manufacturer’s fault.

Never mind the fact that the biggest producers of climate change are actually animal farms with cows belching like your mom after her seventh beer on a Friday night. When there’s politicking to be done, and points to be scored with how woke you are to the left, going after “big oil” will make you a hero.

(For the record, the Logical Libertarian wholeheartedly concurs climate change is real, and is largely due to man-made activities. I just think politicians like this are being attention hounds, and aren’t actually doing anything worthwhile to make positive change)

Anyway, Baltimore sued in state court (Maryland), and the oil companies were like, “Woah, asshole. A lot of our work is done via agreements with the federal government, and therefore, we want this shit heard in federal court, not your punk ass little state court. Is Maryland even a fucking state? I’ve taken shits that were bigger than Maryland.”

But Baltimore, knowing the federal government is likely much less prone to put up with this dipshit’s political grandstanding, is fighting tooth and nail to keep that shit in Maryland.

So now SCOTUS has to decide who gets to hear this shit. State courts, or federal, and effectively rule on when such cases can be removed to federal courts vs. staying in state courts. They don’t even give a fuck about the beef these two assholes have.

In a 7:1 decision, where Sotomayor dissented, and Alito abstained, SCOTUS sided with BP. A federal appellate court can review an issue from a district court, and decide whether it should be removed from state court or not.

Hear oral arguments and read about the case here

https://www.oyez.org/cases/2020/19-1189

SCOTUS For The Average Joe

Average Joe SCOTUS: Lange v. California

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Arthur Gregory Lange is an odd motherfucker. Dude got crazy fucking drunk, like 0.245% fucking drunk, got in his car, and decided to have a rock concert on the drive home. Cranked his tunes up, opened the windows for all to enjoy, and even honked his horn randomly, so he could feel like he was part of the band.

Well, in comes detective Aaron Weikert, apparently not a music lover, who thought Lange’s behavior might be a little suspect. He was right. Did I mention this dumb fuck blew a 0.245%? That’s over three times the legal limit!

Anyway, Weikert followed this idiot, eventually flipped on the blues and twos, and attempted to pull Lange over. Lange, being drunk out of his god damn mind, didn’t even fucking notice Weikert, pulled into his driveway, opened the garage door, and pulled on in, Weikert in his drive way behind him, pretty confident at this point that Lange was ten kinds of fucked up.

So as Lange went to close the garage door, Weikert tripped the garage door detector with his foot, so it wouldn’t close, and walked into the garage to confront Lange. He noticed immediately Lange’s breath smelled like he drank all the alcohol on the west coast. So he took him to a hospital, where they obtained his blood alcohol level.

At the heart of this challenge, is whether Weikert had the right to step into Lange’s garage. At the time he did, Lange was listening to music loudly, and honking his horn at literally no one. Both are minor infractions, and not necessarily cause for an officer to enter someone’s home. So Lange and his attorney, doing their level best to protect Lange from being convicted of a felony he absolutely committed (drunk driving), by making a colorful argument that the officer didn’t have any lawful reason to enter his garage. I say colorful, because let’s not forget, Weikert flashed his lights and shit at Lange well before he got to his garage, and Lange was fucking oblivious to it. So Lange essentially has to prove it was reasonable he wouldn’t notice a fucking cop on his tail with lights and siren going, and thus wasn’t fleeing arrest, which would be a felony, and thus would be cause for the officer to follow him into the garage to affect an arrest.

Lange’s attorney tried to argue officer’s should have let him close the door, and simply knocked on the front door and confronted him in that way, versus entering his garage.

Roberts, being unimpressed by this argument, responded:

Mr. Fisher, I’m trying to figure out, going back to what Justice Alito was saying, what circumstance where there is a genuine hot pursuit do you think would not justify a police officer, just on the basis of the pursuit, believing that the person was trying to hide something, trying to perhaps destroy evidence, whatever the cause, why wouldn’t that justify a — wouldn’t the nature of the pursuit itself create a sense of urgency?

https://www.oyez.org/cases/2020/20-18

What I find most interesting in this, is that Lange is 100% guilty AF of what the officer suspected—that is inarguable. The officer, by any account, acted in a way I think most people would if they were a cop, and ran into this situation. But, as a libertarian, you have to worry a little about cops just walking into a part of your home without a warrant.

Lange’s attorney’s argument isn’t ridiculous though, if there was a dangerous situation, such as he was driving drunk, it ended when he parked in the garage. So the danger was over. Now the question was whether a crime was committed, and how may the cop investigate it. Basically saying, once he parked, and the immediate threat was over, it’s time to get a fucking warrant.

Justice Gorsuch offered up some rather libertarian thoughts:

Neil Gorsuch

Good morning, counsel.

I think my colleagues have kind of pointed out two difficulties with your argument.

First, Justice Breyer points out that different states have different rules about what a felony is and what a misdemeanor is, and it would seem odd that the Constitution would—in its meaning, would depend upon the happenstance of positive state law.

And, second, we live in a world in which everything has been criminalized. And some professors have even opined that there’s not an American alive who hasn’t committed a felony under some state law. And in a world like that, why doesn’t it make sense to retreat back to the original meaning of the Fourth Amendment, which I’m going to oversimplify but generally says that you get to go into a home without a warrant if the officer sees a violent action or something that’s likely to be—lead to imminent violence? That’s vastly oversimplifying, but why isn’t that the right approach?

https://www.oyez.org/cases/2020/20-18

Justice Roberts wasn’t through questioning the limits of what officers can do. He went on to ask a philosophical question as to whether a cop who sees what they presume is a teenager drinking a beer outside with his bros, the budding alcoholic decides to skidaddle when the fuzz comes on scene, and then runs into the house before the rozzers get to him. Can the cop bust into the home to verify he is both a teen, and it was in fact alcohol he was drinking?

The heart of his argument being, how bad must the thing the person is doing be before a cop can justify warrantless entry. So he gave a very benign example of a misdemeanor being broken, an d a severe example of a cop busting down the door, hoping for the counselor to offer some sort of line where it’s OK, if they’re to argue it’s ever OK. We all know that a felony could give probable cause, but at the point the officer followed Lange, remember, all he saw was that he was rocking out, and playing his horn to the beat. Which, let’s be honest, is probably a fair sign the person is drunk, but still. Not obviously, so.

Justice Thomas was curious as to whether this “Meandering pursuit” as he called it, qualified as a “hot pursuit” under the law, which then invokes the hot pursuit rule, which would have allowed the officer to enter the home. But Counselor Rice was adamant that this still qualified as hot pursuit. When Justice Breyer also pushed her on this, she responded:

Amanda K. Rice

Hot pursuit only allows officers to enter a home, Justice Breyer, when the suspect makes the decision to bring a public encounter inside a home.

So a suspect can always avoid any intrusion into a home by deciding not to flee inside, particularly in these sorts of silly cases.

I think, as Chief Justice Roberts suggested, if the suspect nevertheless decides to flee into a home, those might be the very cases where something worse is actually afoot.

https://www.oyez.org/cases/2020/20-18

Curiously, she’s arguing Lange chose to flee, even if it was at a snail’s pace. But that assumes he knew the cop was there and chose not to stop (you’ll occasionally hear that referred to as mens rea, knowing you’re doing something wrong, or your state of mind), when it seems he was fucking oblivious because he was hammered like a cheap prostitute.

In a unanimous decision, SCOTUS ruled for Lange. Pursuit of a fleeing misdemeanor suspect doesn’t create exigent circumstances that allow an officer to enter someone’s home without a warrant.

Hear oral arguments and read about the case here.

https://www.oyez.org/cases/2020/20-18