On Wednesday, MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell said on his show “The Last Word” that Chief Justice John Roberts had “no idea of the pain and anguish, the cruelty, of his decisions.”
O’Donnell said, “You just heard chief justice stress, quote, ‘Our status as an independent branch of government under the Constitution’s Separation of Powers. And there he is trying to imply that the Congress of the United States is absolutely no right to legislate the ethics of the Supreme Court. But as the chief justice knows, the Congress has every right to do that, and has already done that in the most minimal ways.”
He added, “For example, John Roberts could not be paid a lecture fee for his speech yesterday because Congress made that illegal for Supreme Court justices. Congress did that, not the Supreme Court. No, we know it’s all worse than we thought, much worse. That’s what John Roberts proved last night. Until last night, John Roberts had enjoyed the public image of being possibly the most thoughtful Republican appointed member of the Supreme Court. The terrible truth might be that he is the most thoughtful Republican appointed member of the Supreme Court. We now know that he’s not just a Republican politician, he is a small minded thinker who has no idea of the pain and anguish, the cruelty of his decisions has inflicted on people, including ten-year-old girls. The only pain and anguish he seems to be capable of feeling, in his job, is when he gazes out his office window and sees the fence that he feels he was forced to erect to keep the sounds of the pain and anguish he has inflicted on other people as far from his tender ears as possible.”
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