Kavanaugh quoted Dennis Prager--without attribution--in a f*cking Supreme Court ruling.

[Soph0571]

Link to tweet

But legal scholar Michael Dorf of Cornell University, who blogs at Dorf on Law, pointed to one peculiar bit of phrasing Kavanaugh used in authoring the majority opinion that is worth examining:

It is sometimes said that the bigger the government, the smaller the individual. Consistent with the text of the Constitution, the state-action doctrine enforces a critical boundary between the government and the individual, and thereby protects a robust sphere of individual liberty. Expanding the state-action doctrine beyond its traditional boundaries would expand governmental control while restricting individual liberty and private enterprise. We decline to do so in this case. [Emphasis mine]
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Kavanaugh’s choice to use this phrase with no citation or discussion of its origins suggests two equally troubling possibilities: He was trying to conceal the blatantly right-wing nature of its origins, or he is so steeped in right-wing ideology that he assumes conservative truisms are essentially uncontroversial.

[link:https://www.alternet.org/2019/06/legal-scholar-tracks-down-the-bizarre-origins-of-the-right-wing-phrase-justice-kavanaugh-used-in-a-new-opinion/#.XQgtWwRZvLc.twitter|

Heh

[JI7]

1. Kavanaugh is like a mix of GWBush with the perversion of Trump

[empedocles]

2. Add some toxic cruz to the formula

[empedocles]

3. Good find. The Information Age is amazing - and can be helpful.

Thank you

[empedocles]

4. Kavenaugh may have been given by a 'patron', some nasty little law clerk

[anarch]

5. Just wait 'til they start openly quoting Goebbels, or Hitler himself

And just think about all the super fucked-up, hard-right judges that have been installed throughout the federal court system under this bunch...that's going to continue to be their main project over the next few years, I think...packing the courts with right-wing assholes.

[KY_EnviroGuy]

6. "Traditional boundaries"? Hypocrite!

Republican plutocrats respect and honor no traditional boundaries or norms that may limit execution of their master plan of government destruction and advancement of their personal wealth.

Liberty to them is the free and unfettered liberty to render all working people into serfdom and for them to own or control all the planet's common assets and resources. It's just that simple. Kavanaugh and Trump are just tools being used to achieve to that end.

Yes, Mr. Holland we are indeed royally screwed. Elections can have massive consequences.

KY.............

[FBaggins]

7. "Dorf" doesn't know what he's talking about

He decides that he hasn’t heard it before so the first similar formulation he finds on Google must be the source??

"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and for government to gain ground." Goes back to Jefferson... and libertarians and/or conservatives have been cribbing g it in different forms for at least decades.

The oddest notion in this piece is that the author accepts without challenge that Prager had an original thought.

[underpants]

8. Good point. Prager is a c-league joke

His Prager U productions on Facebook are just plain stupid. I look through them from time to time and find them at best incomplete but more often incompetent.