Judiciary
Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern hyped in a Wednesday item for Slate that "hard right" Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas's "fingerprints are all over" the Trump administration, due to the fact that many of his former clerks now hold "high places" there. Litchwick and Sterm played up that Thomas's "once-fringy ideas are suddenly flourishing," and touted that he is "close buddies with Rush Limbaugh...[and] fringe radio dogmatist Mark Levin."
As Saturday's CNN Newsroom with Fredricka Whitfield devoted a segment to the issue of women becoming more politically active after Donald Trump became President, CNN's Jodi Enda never applied a "liberal" label to the left-wing causes supported by recent women protesters even as she asserted that the current Congress is "quite conservative."
First Amendment cases are very much on the national mind these days, and the news from the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) is very encouraging for those who believe in strong protections for constitutional freedoms. The court delivered a First Amendment victory last week in a case involving religious free exercise, and kept alive hope for victories in two other cases where the hot button issues of same-sex marriage and abortion are involved.
The broadcast networks have refused to cover the conclusion of a massive defamation case involving one of their own. ABC News and Beef Products Inc (BPI) reached a confidential settlement which concluded a 5-year-old lawsuit as of June 27. BPI filed a $1.9 billion lawsuit against ABC News in 2012 for reports that the company’s lean finely textured beef (LFTB) as dangerous “pink slime.” ABC may have been liable for up to $5.7 billion if it lost the case because of South Dakota’s Agricultural Food products Disparagement Act.
Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch is “to the right,” the “far right.” CBS and The Washington Post on Wednesday conducted a collective freak out over the possibility that the new judge really is in the mold of the late Antonin Scalia. The two outlets collectively used the terms “right” or “far right” eight times.
When the Supreme Court of the United States released its latest batch of rulings on Monday, most eyes were on the court allowing partial implementation of the President’s travel ban on six Middle Eastern countries. The Big Three Networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) spent a lot of time hyper focusing on that ruling and the CBO report of the Senate health care bill. There was also a big win for religious liberty that got omitted from the reports of both ABC and CBS, while NBC simply tacked it onto the end of their travel ban report.
USA Today played up the Supreme Court's decision on Monday to hear the case of a bakery owner in Colorado who refused to participate in same-sex couple's wedding ceremony by baking the pair a cake. The newspaper spun the judicial branch's move in the lead sentence of their Monday article: "The Supreme Court agreed Monday to reopen the national debate over same-sex marriage." The publication also forwarded this slanted interpretation in a Monday post on their Twitter account.
Despite all the talk of civility in the wake of the congressional shooting on June 14, on Monday, MSNBC anchor Andrea Mitchell didn’t bat an eye as Democratic Hawaii Senator Mazie Hirono launched into a tirade against conservative members of the Supreme Court. The left-wing lawmaker actually accused the justices of ushering in the end of the world.
On Monday morning, even rumors about the possibility of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy retiring sent the network morning shows into panic mode. Reporters wrung their hands over the potential that President Trump could replace the high court’s “swing vote” and make it “solidly conservative for decades.”
On Friday, ABC’s Good Morning America could not contain its disgust over the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upholding a Mississippi religious freedom law that protects business owners with religious objections from being forced to participate in gay weddings, among other provisions.
Appearing as a guest on Sunday's Fareed Zakaria GPS on CNN, former New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson blamed a Republican "rage machine" for the level of political polarization that currently exists, and complained about how congressional Republicans are conducting business. She also oddly claimed that Democrats were not partisan in their reaction to President Donald Trump's nomination of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch -- even though Republicans had to change the filibuster rule to keep Democrats from blocking his confirmation to the Court.
Aziz Ansari’s Netflix show Master of None returned for a second season on May 12, which means another chance to sneer at conservative culture and white people. This time, among other sins, the worst of the worst centers on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.