Supreme Court badass Ruth Bader Ginsburg has better things to do than show up to Trump's first State of the Union speech.

Courtesy of The Hill: 

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will not be in attendance at President Trump's first State of the Union address on Tuesday. 

Ginsburg is scheduled to be at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island for her speaking tour on Tuesday, according to The Associated Press. 

While Ginsburg has been critical of Trump in the past, her talk at the university was announced last August. 

Ginsburg did not attend Trump's address to Congress last year after attending all eight of former President Obama's addresses. 

Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas also did not attend Trump's address. 

Mandatory attendance of course is not expected of Supreme Court Justices, but they do typically make an appearance.

Of course Ginsberg and Trump have had a notoriously strained relationship.

Justice Ginsburg of the U.S. Supreme Court has embarrassed all by making very dumb political statements about me. Her mind is shot - resign!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 13, 2016

Personally I do not blame Ginsburg, you could not get me there at gunpoint.

And as it turns out there are a lot of other people with better things to do that night as well.

Such as hold their own Hollywood version of the SOTU for instance:   

Mark Ruffalo and a bevy of Hollywood fixtures — including director Michael Moore, “The View’s” Whoopi Goldberg, Rosie Perez and “Sex and the City’s” Cynthia Nixon — are participating in a star-studded counter-event to President Trump’s State of the Union. 

The so-called “People’s State of the Union” will be held on Monday, the night before Trump’s address to Congress on Jan. 30. 

Ruffalo, one of Trump’s most outspoken Hollywood critics, told People magazine that the alternative event will be “a better reflection of our state of the union based on a more populist point of view, based on the people’s point of view." 

"I think it’s important because we have a president who has a difficult time with the truth, who has a radical, divisive agenda, and spends an enormous amount of time focusing on the negative and hopelessness and despair,” the Oscar-nominated actor said. 

The function, hosted by We Stand United, MoveOn.org Political Action and Stand Up America, will also reportedly feature comedian Wanda Sykes, actress Kathy Najimy, singer Andra Day and rapper Common.

Oh yeah, that sounds like a lot more fun. 

Wouldn't it be a kick in the ass if Ginsburg managed to get out of her Rhode Island gig early and showed up to this People's State of the Union event?

Oh yeah the orange tinted Twitter fingers would certainly be maniacally tapping away then.

Donald Trump VS Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

You want a piece of me? Come and get some Cheeto Jesus.

Courtesy of CNN:

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's well-known candor was on display in her chambers late Monday, when she declined to retreat from her earlier criticism of Donald Trump and even elaborated on it. 

"He is a faker," she said of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, going point by point, as if presenting a legal brief. "He has no consistency about him. He says whatever comes into his head at the moment. He really has an ego. ... How has he gotten away with not turning over his tax returns? The press seems to be very gentle with him on that."

This is what Trump tweeted in response:

Justice Ginsburg of the U.S. Supreme Court has embarrassed all by making very dumb political statements about me. Her mind is shot - resign!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 13, 2016

"Her mind is shot?"

Fuck that noise. In a contest of intellect Donald Trump would be lucky if he could last even five seconds against Justice Ginsburg.

She is simply stating what should be obvious to anybody with half a brain, Donald Trump is a dangerous megalomaniac uniquely unfit to hold political office on ANY level, much less to take up residence in the White House. 

Some are criticizing RBG or suggesting that she has damaged her legacy with these remarks.

Once again that is just prime USDA horseshit.

RBG could proclaim in an interview that she likes to smoke crack and cruise downtown Washington for young hunky Latinos to take back to her chambers, and it STILL would not damage this woman's credibility or hurt her legacy.

If anything what she has said will only increase her status among patriotic Americans who do not want to see this country in the hands this orange ignoramus.

Religious leaders want certain Supreme Court justices to recuse themselves from the gay marriage case because they might "gasp" be FOR marriage equality.

Courtesy of The Hill: 

Religious leaders are calling on members of the Supreme Court’s liberal wing to recuse themselves from the blockbuster gay marriage case that the court will begin considering on Tuesday. 

Standing on the steps of the Supreme Court, Scott Lively, president of Abiding Truth Ministries, told reporters he’s filing a motion with the Supreme Court calling for the recusal of Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan. 

“Justices Ginsburg and Kagan, knowing full well that unique legal issues regarding the definition of marriage would soon come before them, deliberately officiated at so-called homosexual wedding ceremonies creating not merely the appearance of bias, but an actual and blatant conflict of interest,” he said. 

“In my personal view they have committed an unparalleled breach of judicial ethics by elevating the importance of their own favored political cause of gay rights above the integrity of the court and of our nation.”

"They have committed an unparalleled breach of judicial ethics." 

Interesting. 

Do you know what else is interesting?

Yesterday the Supreme Court struck down a ruling favoring the Affordable Care Act:

The Supreme Court on Monday gave new life to a lawsuit challenging ObamaCare’s contraception mandate, striking down a previous ruling in favor of the federal government. 

The justices asked an appeals court in Cincinnati to reconsider a legal challenge that the Catholic ministries in Michigan and Tennessee filed against an ObamaCare provision that requires employers to cover birth control for all workers. 

The justices asked the lower court to reconsider the case in light of last year's landmark ruling on the contraception mandate. That decision, issued last June, held that the arts-and-crafts retailer Hobby Lobby could opt out of the contraception mandate for religious reasons. 

So the case was brought by the Catholic ministries in Michigan and Tennessee? Hmm I wonder how many Catholics are currently serving on the Supreme Court?

There are six Roman Catholics currently serving on the court including Samuel Alito, Anthony Kennedy, John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Sonia Sotomayor, and Clarence Thomas. (Source.)

Well gee that sounds like a conflict of interest to me.

So if Justices Ginsberg and Kagan have "committed an unparalleled breach of judicial ethics" then what is to be said for the Justices who side with their church, over their government, on an issue pertaining to women's health care?

Yesterday's Supreme Court decision retreats somewhat from the Hobby Lobby case on Monday. The only three female Justices issue blistering dissent.

Courtesy of Politico:

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Wheaton College doesn’t have to abide by the Obamacare contraceptive coverage requirement as long as the Christian school tells the Obama administration that it has a religious objection to providing birth control to its employees and students. 

The order from a 6-3 court, and a scathing dissent, may foreshadow the second round of legal battles expected to take place in the Supreme Court later this year. On Monday, the court ruled in the Hobby Lobby case that closely held companies could be exempted from the contraception mandate if their owners had religious objections. 

This did not go over too well with three of the Supreme Court Justices. Sonia Sotomayor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Elena Kagen, who issued a frustrated response.  

“Those who are bound by our decisions usually believe they can take us at our word. Not so today,” Sotomayor wrote. “After expressly relying on the availability of the religious-nonprofit accommodation to hold that the contraceptive coverage requirement violates [the Religious Freedom Restoration Act] as applied to closely held for-profit corporations, the Court now, as the dissent in Hobby Lobby feared it might, retreats from that position.” 

Sotomayor also stressed the rarity of a Supreme Court emergency injunction, arguing that Wheaton’s potential for fines didn’t warrant the high court’s intervention. And she questioned whether the self-certification form that the Illinois college would fill out as part of that accommodation is a legitimate burden. 

“Let me be absolutely clear: I do not doubt that Wheaton genuinely believes that signing the self-certification form is contrary to its religious beliefs,” she wrote. “But thinking one’s religious beliefs are substantially burdened — no matter how sincere or genuine that belief may be — does not make it so.” 

Well it looks like Ruth Bader Ginsburg was dead right in her dissent to the Hobby Lobby ruling.

Not that any of us should be surprised.

The slippery slope created by the Hobby Lobby Supreme Court decision, threatens to knock new protections for LGBT Americans right off their feet.

Courtesy of The Atlantic:  

This week, in the Hobby Lobby case, the Supreme Court ruled that a religious employer could not be required to provide employees with certain types of contraception. That decision is beginning to reverberate: A group of faith leaders is urging the Obama administration to include a religious exemption in a forthcoming LGBT anti-discrimination action. 

Their call, in a letter sent to the White House Tuesday, attempts to capitalize on the Supreme Court case by arguing that it shows the administration must show more deference to the prerogatives of religion. 

"We are asking that an extension of protection for one group not come at the expense of faith communities whose religious identity and beliefs motivate them to serve those in need," the letter states. 

The Hobby Lobby decision has been welcomed by religious-right groups who accuse Obama of waging a war on religion. But Tuesday's letter is different: It comes from as group of faith leaders who are generally friendly to the administration, many of whom have closely advised the White House on issues like immigration reform. The letter was organized by Michael Wear, who worked in the Obama White House and directed faith outreach for the president's 2012 campaign. Signers include two members of Catholics for Obama and three former members of the President’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. 

"This is not an antagonistic letter by any means," Wear told me. But in the wake of Hobby Lobby, he said, "the administration does have a decision to make whether they want to recalibrate their approach to some of these issues."

In other words if the Hobby Lobby can use religion as protection from treating people equally then why do we have to?

In fact this is exactly what Ruth Bader Ginsburg predicted would happen in her dissent: 

“Would the exemption…extend to employers with religiously grounded objections to blood transfusions (Jehovah’s Witnesses); antidepressants (Scientologists); medications derived from pigs, including anesthesia, intravenous fluids, and pills coated with gelatin (certain Muslims, Jews, and Hindus); and vaccinations[?]

…Not much help there for the lower courts bound by today’s decision. [...] The court, I fear, has ventured into a minefield.”

I would predict that this is just the beginning.