U.S. And International Politics

[Tom Scully]

That is the case in my home state of Ohio. Governor Mike DeWine. a long time RINO, has created a moratorium on executions. He is on record as opposing the death penalty. There are currently 116 prisoners on death row. Vivek Ramaswamy, the favorite to win the governorship this fall, has said he will unblock the back log of death sentences. I doubt he will get the chance. I'm betting DeWine will commute all of those death sentences on his way out the door. Governors in other states have done that in the past and I fully expect DeWine to follow suit.

The Supreme Court only hears about 100 cases per annual session. After the least educated 29 of 30 states' voting majorities voted for
some more Trump in the White House, in November, 2024, Trump monopolized the Supreme Court docket with the best frivolous appeals
OPM could buy, along with his numerous attempts to have DOJ lawyers or the Solicitor General represent him personally in Supreme Court arguments
 in a parade of attempted unitary executive power grabs than he had during his first term in the White House. Imitating Trump,
"No one thought I could monopolize the Supreme Court's docket as 47th POTUS to an even greater degree than I managed to do,
2017 - 2021.

[Richard Smith]

That is the case in my home state of Ohio. Governor Mike DeWine. a long time RINO, has created a moratorium on executions. He is on record as opposing the death penalty. There are currently 116 prisoners on death row. Vivek Ramaswamy, the favorite to win the governorship this fall, has said he will unblock the back log of death sentences. I doubt he will get the chance. I'm betting DeWine will commute all of those death sentences on his way out the door. Governors in other states have done that in the past and I fully expect DeWine to follow suit.

Imagine if some republican governor signed a moratorium on abortions because in his subjective opinion it was wrong.  Thereby prohibiting all such abortions in the state regardless of the law or will of the citizens.  That's an incredible abuse of power.  Absent some specific evidence of innocence or unfairness, the death penalty should be carried out once the appeals process has been exhausted.  And the appeals process should not be allowed to be drawn out for decades in an attempt to undermine the death penalty. 

[Lance Payette]

I see that the Supremes upheld birthright citizenship. As with so many things, no one way back when could have anticipated the problems and abuses of today. The notion of wholesale birthright citizenship strikes me as absurd. I will be curious to see if the SCOTUS decision rests on substantive grounds (i.e., birthright citizenship is sacred) or procedural ones (i.e., Trump lacked the authority). I gather from the headlines it was something less than a complete endorsement of birthright citizenship, so possibly there is room for Congress to scale it back with something short of a constitutional amendment.

It's always amusing to me when SCOTUS Justices don't vote "the way they were supposed to" according to those who appointed them, as though the SCOTUS were just another political branch. (Off-topic, but one of my absolute favorite quotes is about Justice Hugo Black, who had been a member of the KKK but became a champion of civil rights on the SC: "Justice Black used to go around in white robes scaring Black people. Now he goes around in black robes scaring White people.")