Today's Must-Read: Rogue Court: A Twofer

While the continuing circus of the shenanigans of the occupant of the White House and Congressional investigations are hogging the news, the Supreme Court is taking us back to barbarism:

On Monday, five justices of the Supreme Court authorized Missouri to torture a man to death. In the process, they appear to have overruled decades of Eighth Amendment precedents in a quest to let states impose barbaric punishments, including excruciating executions, on prisoners. The court’s conservative majority has converted a once-fringe view into the law of the land, imperiling dozens of decisions protecting the rights of death row inmates, as well as juvenile offenders. Its ruling signals the end of an Eighth Amendment jurisprudence governed by “civilized standards”—and the beginning of a new, brutal era in American capital punishment.

I don't want to paint with too broad a brush, but Gorsuch's decision as described in the article seems to reflect the attitude of the "Christian" right. It's difficult to excerpt, but essentially, Gorsuch has adopted an interpretation of the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of "cruel and unusual punishment" that not only ignores sixty years of precedent, but ensconces the interpretations of Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, which the Court has previous found "dangerously extreme", in the law.

That's bad enough, but when you add religious discrimination into the mix, it paints a pretty nasty picture:

Domineque Ray died at 10:12 p.m. Thursday night, by lethal injection at the Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Alabama. The execution was allowed to proceed after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to stay it earlier in the day on Thursday. The request for the stay came via a religious argument — the prison’s policy only allowed a Christian chaplain into the execution chamber. Ray’s attorneys argued this policy violated his religious freedoms—Ray was Muslim.

(Emphasis added.)

If this isn't a clear-cut violation of the Establishment Clause, I can't think of anything that would be. The Court's conservatives, however, did not address that issue: they thought it was all about the timing. But the timing wasn't really left to Ray's discretion:

The Alabama statute in fact provides that both the chaplain of the prison and the inmate’s spiritual adviser of choice “may be present at an execution.” The prison refused to give Ray a copy of its own protocols—so he only learned about the Christian chaplain rule on Jan. 28 and petitioned five days later. Too bad, says the court, the state’s urgent need to carry out the execution overcomes Ray’s religious freedom. Kagan concludes, pointedly: “Ray has put forward a powerful claim that his religious rights will be violated at the moment the State puts him to death. The Eleventh Circuit wanted to hear that claim in full. Instead, this Court short-circuits that ordinary process—and itself rejects the claim with little briefing and no argument—just so the State can meet its preferred execution date.”

Just remember: "Elections have consequences."

Read them both.

With thanks to commenter billbear1961 at Joe.My.God.