So Long 8th Amendment: Cruel and Unusual Punishment is the Law of the Land
I really cannot exaggerate how radical and how significant the opinion Gorsuch handed down today is. It completely rewrites the Court's understanding of a provision of the Bill of Rights -- and it portends similarly revolutionary opinions in the future.https://t.co/0qpXBBizRg
— Ian Millhiser (@imillhiser) April 1, 2019
Legal Experts Aghast as 'Bloodythirsty' Right-Wing Supreme Court Sanctions Torturous Executions
The ruling, warned one expert, "legalizes torture and effectively reverses 60 years of progressive precedent. It transforms a barbaric view of the 8th Amendment into the law of the land. It is horrific.
Critics on Tuesday said the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in a case brought by a Missouri death row inmate fundamentally erodes protections against torture enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.
Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the opinion for the court's right-wing majority in the 5-4 decision, ruling that Russell Bucklew can be executed by lethal injection despite his medical condition, cavernous hemangioma. The disease, warn his legal team and medical experts, will cause Bucklew to choke for several minutes on his own blood before dying as the tumors growing in his throat and elsewhere in his body rupture.
"The Eighth Amendment does not guarantee a prisoner a painless death," wrote Gorsuch.
The decision was denounced as "atrocious," "blood-thirsty" and "barbaric" by death penalty abolitionists and other critics, with some saying the high court's approval of Bucklew's execution is tantamount to nullifying the Constitution's Eighth Amendment—the law banning cruel and unusual punishment.
As far as I can tell the only Amendment that remains untouched is the Second. The 1st, 3rd, 4th and 5th especially have been overwritten enough that they are basically worthless.
I am almost speechless about this or just having difficulties wording what's in my brain. Either way, this is an appalling decision
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We can thank Obama and his fellow democrats for not fighting every way possible to make McConnell give Garland a vote. They just rolled over when there were many procedures they could have used to bring congress to a halt until he did.
And it's going to get much worse. Schumer has been doing everything he can to make Mitch's job easier to appoint extreme right wing and qualified judges to the federal courts. DiFi and Manchin and other democrats have been voting for them also. Now Mitch is going to nuke the filibuster which is something the democrats could have done any time to get their legislation passed. That they didn't.....
The mask is fully off and shows that the government is one in name only. It's a farce that we have a representative government and has been for some time. But it's now longer hidden behind a charming mask. People are going to take to the streets to get the Mueller report released in full to congress. What do you think they will do about this? I'm betting quite a lot of the country cheers this decision.
Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.
Not surprising.
We are a brutal society made more brutal by our conservative brothers and sisters. Let's all hope the rest of the SC members do not die or leave until a new president is in place - unless it is worse than the current occupier.
"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11
This comment is one I wish
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
I hope we can turn it around, gg.
I think we can. I think we will.
"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11
We are NOT a cruel and bloodthirsty people.
We are not a cruel and bloodthirsty people. Rather, we have cruel and bloodthirsty masters.
Or, as another c99er put it:
But yes, Neil Gorsuch is one cruel and bloodthirsty motherfucker!
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
...
Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.
supreme ct
Hi snoopy,
"We can thank Obama and his fellow democrats for not fighting every way possible to make McConnell give Garland a vote. They just rolled over when there were many procedures they could have used to bring congress to a halt until he did."
Pretty sure the Obama admin hubristically assumed Clinton would win the presidency and they would then just re-nominate Garland. No need to cause a fuss. Just wait for her inevitableness.
Words fail me
I cannot fathom the mindset of someone capable of legalizing the act of killing another human being, much less justifying that by saying fellow human beings are not "entitled" to a painless death.
Only the unconscionable can rationalize this kind of obscenity and call it reasoned Law.
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
I'm surprised that Gorsuch didn't just shout out
'Kill them all and let God sort them out.'
Good old Christian values.
(Edited)
Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.
RWNJ'S brought to us by her heinous
Frederick William Robertson
I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish
"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"
Heard from Margaret Kimberley
The legalized murder of citizens by the State
...is already so unspeakably obscene and barbaric, that it is difficult to draw distinctions within such depravity.
The purpose of incarceration is to remove the criminal from free society, for the protection and correction of that society. The length of that term is the punishment.
But in the US, the punishment only begins after the criminal is behind bars. Then, punishment is heaped upon punishment. People are maimed and die. They are denied health care. Dentistry consists of teeth pulling only. I won't recite the atrocities here. If citizens were interested in such matters, their reality is not a secret. Few have such concerns. While the highest rate of suicide in the nation — perhaps the world — is among those who have been deployed in a recent US war (one per hour), the second highest is among prison guards. Humans cannot really survive exposure to such moral filth.
I think that says all we need to know about the United States and the kind of outcomes it promotes for its citizens. It is the poisoned tree.
I didn't know that
I remember from history learning that back in the day in Merry Old England, if you were sentenced to have your head cut off, you'd make damn sure to get enough money together to tip your executioner so that his aim was sharp and his swing was clean. Meaning he'd make an effort to make sure the blade sliced through your neck bone the first time he swung his axe.
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
It wasn’t uncommon for executioner to be drunk while
performing their duties. That’s how hard it is to kill someone.
"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"
There are some things that should not be seen.
The guillotine was an historic technological achievement of the day, right up there with Facebook and the iPhone.
High near the top of the suicide list are small farmers in America. What did they see, I wonder.
small farmer suicides
[video:https://youtu.be/Me-YOqjTf9M]
-- John Cougar Mellencamp
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
@Pluto's RepublicHigh near the top of the
Abuse, isolation and addiction, mostly. Here's a Twitter thread on the subject:
https://twitter.com/SarahTaber_bww/status/1102961386873896960
(My mom is a victim of that culture; can confirm.)
This shit is bananas.
This is horrible
And it's going to be getting a lot worse with all of the farms in Nebraska under water because of the extreme flooding. I visited my aunt today and watched MSDNC for over an hour and did not see one report on the floods.
Here's an article on just one aspect of them.
Catastrophic Flooding In Midwest Could Last "For Months", Threatens US Food Production
Zero Hedges has been covering them if anyone is interested in seeing how bad this is.
Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.
It won't be just Nebraska that's affected
Watch out, Old River Control Structures - this could be the last straw that takes you down, and then bye-bye New Orleans, bye-bye US oil and gas import/export, bye-bye US world supremacy.
All flowing away down the Atchafalaya - where the Mississippi has been trying to go for 500 years.
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
Another perfect example of epistemologically void
jurisprudential reasoning.
By the "logic" involved, it would be perfectly constitutional to "execute" a prisoner by simply locking him up in a cell and forgetting about him until he died of either thirst (if water was not available) or starvation.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Maybe they forgot to read up on
Kant's categorical imperative?
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
maybe they forgot about oubliettes, which
they appear to have just legalized.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
I had to actually look that word up
Lol.
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
ain't i too precious?
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
jurisprudential logic
It is my understanding that one method actually under consideration is to gradually remove the oxygen in the room of the condemned one, who would simply fall asleep and die, at which point his organs could be harvested and re-oxygenated for transplants.
Can I have a eewwwww??
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
The Dems let this sadistic bastard skate onto SCOTUS...
when they had undeniable evidence of what a "corporations are people, but people aren't people" person Gorsuch is.
No surprise this thug likes torture.
We are a barbaric country. The Constitution is dead.
Great example of profits over people
That it took 7 effing years for this case to be settled really says something doesn't it? Add in that criminal charges weren't brought against the government in Flint puts our banana republic in more perspective. That a bunch of greedy bankers weren't prosecuted for crashing the global economy says another. That they were the only ones who got relief afterwards says even more. Obama sat on his ass while millions of people lost their homes while the banks continued to commit fraud....
Then there's our wars of aggression and war crimes and, and, and.... But don't you dare disrespect the flag before some game is played and especially if you are protesting against police brutality and the fact that they rarely get prosecuted for killing unarmed civilians here. Gawd, this list could probably go on forever, but this is life here in the good ole US of A goll durn it!
The constitution has been in its coffin for some time. The coffin just gets more nails pounded into it.
Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.
Jason Melanovski and Clara Weiss
at wsws.org have provided a hella lot more to the barbaric ruling, so many details that it's hard to know what to bring, including detailed horrors of his extremely rare cancer (four known cases?).
but their long section beginning w/ this is horrifying in its sociopathy:
#DeathPenaltyExecutionPorn, jeebus you fuquewad.
u
thanks for bringing this evil news, snoopy. of course there should never be death penalty executions, including due to the fact that so many people of color are disproportionately executed, so many barriers to re-opening cases with exculpatory evidence, and the need for 'the innocence project'.
Gorsuch is proving to be exactly what we all tried
to warn people that he was: a man without a conscience.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Gorsucks is a vindictive asshole
Accept his fate? Sure just accept that the country wants to kill you. Accept that now! Because of course there are lots of cretinous Americans that are cheering this.
I'm sure that Gorsucks considers himself a Christian and yet he blatantly disregards the Thou Shalt not Kill in the 10 Commandments. It's not a suggestion you dickwad. This is why it's called a Commandment.
Lots of Christians say that it's bad for women to have an abortion, but then they turn around and take away money from the social programs that the kids and families need to rely on because they are poor and can't afford another kid. Not only that, but they also refuse to give us decent health care which would let women get prenatal care and $$$ for higher quality food to make sure the kids are healthy.
I guess in Gorsuck's mind it doesn't matter that many innocent men and women have been innocent when they were killed. How many innocents would it take for people to see that just one is too many?
Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.
yeppers, he's such a
good catlick. i knew his mother, anne, head of the mountain states legal foundation (doing everything she could to trash proposed wilderness area, like one just to the east of us here, and was later was later appointed by President Ronald Reagan to be the first female Administrator of United States Environmental Protection Agency in 1981 (wiki).
but of course no right to lifers give a fuck about helping those babbies later in life. #ReligiousWhenInterferingWithPragmatism.
on the other hand, i'd remembered one of obomba's choices, elena Pfffft kagan, who helped gut miranda, which to me is another seriously big deal. ‘Elena Kagan and the Death of Miranda’, huffpo, May 25, 2011
i'm not sure they described it quite right, but i gotta scoot; our son's on the phone.
Ahh yes, Kagan and Monsanto Sotomeyer
Two great centrist picks by Obama. I remember when Kagan signed on to that roasted pig. Why did he choose them? "He had to nominate them because they are the only ones who can get through congress." BS! Trump has been sending the worst candidates for judgeships on the federal courts and many of them are not even qualified to be Dawg Catchers and yet DiFi, Manchin and other democrats have had no problems voting to confirm them. Schumer has done everything possible to make it easier for Mitch to get all of the positions that he refused during Obama's tenure on the court.
"But you have to vote because it's the Supreme Court stupid!" Well that excuse has gone out the window for a generation hasn't it? Kavanaugh should never have been confirmed and he wouldn't have if the democrats had fought against him using his past history. But no...let's just try to derail him with the poor woman that the democrats used as their .... You can supply the word here.
Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.
Lmao! This is funny
Someone wrote that democrats are always sending republicans a sternly written letter and whoboy did that go over like a brick. Here's one response..
We can complain about wimpy Democrats just as soon as we stop being so fickle and start supporting our party consistently, in every race, at every level, in every election (like the other side does).
Who was it that said that people in the DP always blame the voters instead of the candidate who lost? This person must have forgotten how many times democratic voters have done just that and got the democrats in charge of congress so they could start kicking buttocks. But they never do because of reasons. But then this is what the kos kids still think is going to work.
This is such a head fake between Schumer and McConnell. The picture that goes with the diary shows Charles and Mitch with their heads together like they are BFFs. Which of course they are. Every time democrats are out of the public eye they are best friends who love to joke about how they keep fooling people into believing that their parties are separate from each other's.
But if you think that congress will look at one more DK petition and then act on it I have an extraordinary bridge I'll sell you.
bigly!
The diary talks about how one republican put a block on one of Obama's ambassador appointee for years just because she was a friend of his. Now if one republican can hold up a person's appointment then why can't democrats do that back? Probably because it's just kabuki BS! The democrats had many ways to force McConnell to do things he doesn't want to do. Or they could have put holds or other congressional procedures to stop the republicans' tax bill or Or or......!
Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.
Jeezus
This makes my blood run cold. Now would be a good time for the UN to do something.
This shit is bananas.
It sure would
but I think if they pushed back against not just that, but on the many things our country does Trump would just pull out of it like they have other organizations. The Human Rights Council to name one. Bolton has threatened the ICC if they dare come after us for war crimes or Israel for theirs. Bolton literally threatened someone with physical violence last time he was in a position to do so.
"What stinking rules? We don't follow anyone's rules but our own." - Bolton's Mustache.
Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.
Yeah well, fuck Bolton.
This shit is bananas.
No thanks
I'll pass on this.
Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.
We never said we would guarantee painless death
Constitutionally, is accurate, strictly according to that damn piece of paper. (George Bush).
What just sends me up the wall, makes me cling to the ceiling, is the sudden wipe out of "unusual".
A person with a physical condition that makes the customary method of killing them an unusual way of killing them should have stopped the execution.
People commenting have mentioned the trauma suffered by the executioners.
I was friends with the son of the man who pulled the lever on "Sparky" in Hunstville, Texas. His son said the State supplied him with whiskey and that he never pulled the lever when sober.
Since then, I have known 2 prison guards who did that escort to the death chamber. The first one has gone nuts, is homeless. The second one is a current client that I monitor often. He needs the medical insurance, and has not gone crazy so far.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
painless is one thing.
excruciating is something else.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
I agree.
Drowning in one's own blood, taking several minutes, while in pain, is now pronounced neither cruel or unusual. It could happen to anybody. WTF.
Pain is not protected, but unusual is.
I hope to leave the US.
I want a better and safer life than what is offered here.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
tragically, your characterization,
"it could happen to anybody" reminded me of those improvs that billy crystal and christopher guest did on SNL, where each of them would relate a story about some horrifying experience involving an improbable sequence of appalling physical injuries and disfigurements, concluding with the tagline, "I hate when that happens."
as happens so often nowadays, the reality of the unapologetic psychopathy of our elites makes satire impossible.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Nazis.
They are fucking Nazis. And all nazis have to be put down like rabid dogs.