What’s the connection between the personhood of a fertilized egg and the personhood of corporations? It’s the Citizens United case and it is accelerating the erosion of women’s rights.

Written by Jodi Jacobson for RHRealityCheck.org – News, commentary and community for reproductive health and justice.

If our nation were to return to “core” founding principles today as contemplated by Liberty Central, many of our individual freedoms would be taken away.

The new SCOTUS term began yesterday. Here are brief summaries of a few cases worth keeping an eye on….

Noted Conservative Hack Jonah Goldberg posted a little article tearing into the idea that the Supreme Court is the place where we define what is and is not constitutional. He is defending the new radical Republican talking point that all legislation should have a constitutional justification attached to it. This is the Tenther’s (folks who think that the powers of the Federal Government are completely enumerated in the Constitution and the Tenth Amendment gives all other powers to the states individually) favorite meme.

They would use this thinking to end the Federal minimum wage, Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare. All the big Tea Party faves have this idea, with Joe Miller, Sharon Angle and Christine “I am not a witch” O’Donnell really leading the charge.

This idea is nuts on the surface but it is packed full of nutty goodness as you get deeper as well. The whole push for “constitutional fealty” by the Right is a ruse and always has been. The reason that they want to return to so called original intent it so wipe out two centuries of case law that does not suit their radical agenda.

After months of intense debate over the Obama administration’s efforts to revamp our immigration system, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has made a decisive, though piecemeal, move on immigration reform by adding the Development, Relief and Education of Alien Minors (DREAM) Act as an amendment to the defense authorization bill.

The Supreme Court’s considering a case that might wipe away 90+% of civil rights and consumer class actions. This blog argues that the Court would have to ignore the consensus of lower courts and invent new law to issue such an activist decision.

The Obama administration had been cleared to effect the deportation of cleared Guantanamo prisoner Abdul Aziz Naji by no less than the Supreme Court, who rejected a lower court order blocking the action. What hasn’t been reported thus far is the role of Congress, who was mandated to have advance notice of the transfer. Meanwhile, in Algeria, Naji told the press about torture and the drugging of prisoners at Guantanamo.

The DISCLOSE Act…I ask you…

The “Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light On Spending in Elections” Act was passed by the House in late June, and is now up for debate or consideration in the Senate. The bill is a Democratic response to the Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v FEC (Federal Elecetions Commission). I was vocal about that decision and shaken by how silly the Court’s opinions were over the matter; in essence calling corporations citizens and having the same rights as citizens, such as free speech. What it all boils down to is money. Corporations want the same rights that charities have to influence elections through contributions and ads. The DISCLOSE Act aims to force any person or corporation to identify themselves as the contributor behind the ad or donation. Republicans, surprise, surprise, have decided to filibuster.

In an editorial posted by the New York Times on Saturday afternoon, the editorial board condemned the Obama administration’s involuntary deportation of a Guantanamo prisoner to Algeria. The prisoner, 35-year-old Abdul Aziz Naji, was cleared of any charges in a wide-ranging review of Guantanamo prisoner status last year. Naji begged not to be sent back to Algeria, a country he fled after being attacked himself at age 17 or 18 by extremists. Naji feared the Algerian government could not protect him against the Islamic fundamentalist rebels that have been fighting the somewhat more moderate Islamic government for some twenty years now. Now he has disappeared, and the Algerian ambassador says the government cannot protect him against extremists.

The D.C. Circuit federal appeals court, backed by the Supreme Court’s inaction, continues to threaten the independent judiciary’s role in checking the Executive’s unilateral imprisonment of suspected non-citizen armed conflict participants – this time by allowing the immediate rendition to Algeria of an unlawfully-detained Guantanamo prisoner against his wishes, though he fears for his life if sent to Algeria, a nation he left behind more than fifteen years ago.