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    Mike Sacks

    Mike Sacks

    Host/Producer, HuffPost Live

  • The Long, Corrupt History Of The Corporate Person

    The Supreme Court today heard the case of Hobby Lobby, Inc., a company owned by Christians who argued that requiring it to follow health care laws with regard to contraceptive coverage violated religious liberty. The case, in many ways, is the logical if absurd extreme of the corporate personhood movement, which holds that companies are entitled to rights and liberties in a way similar to people. WASHINGTON -- Of all the Occupy Wall Street refrains, one of the most memorable is, "I refuse to believe that corporations are people until Texas executes one." But, clever as it is, the quip looks to the wrong end of the life cycle: The only thing more corrupt than the legal concept of corporate personhood is the way a Gilded Age judge birthed it.

  • Justices Rule On Gay Marriage Case

    The Supreme Court on Wednesday left for dead California's same-sex marriage ban, Proposition 8, but the question of gay and lesbian couples' constitutional right to marry remains very much alive. “We have never before upheld the standing of a private party to defend the constitutionality of a state statute when state officials have chosen not to,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion. Roberts was joined in his majority opinion by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Antonin Scalia, Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan.

  • Key Provision Of Voting Rights Act Struck Down By Supreme Court

    The Supreme Court struck down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act on Tuesday, the provision of the landmark civil rights law that designates which parts of the country must have changes to their voting laws cleared by the federal government or in federal court. The 5-4 ruling, authored by Chief Justice John Roberts and joined by Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, ruled in Shelby County v. Holder that “things have changed dramatically” in the South in the nearly 50 years since the Voting Rights Act was signed in 1965. The court’s opinion said it did not strike down the act of Congress “lightly,” and said it “took care to avoid ruling on the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act” in a separate case back in 2009.

  • Supreme Court Affirmative Action Decision: Sends UT-Austin's Race-Conscious Admissions Back For Review

    The decision is a provisional victory for Abigail Fisher, a white woman who claimed that UT-Austin unconstitutionally discriminated against her after the state's flagship university rejected her application in 2008 under its race-conscious admissions program. UT-Austin will now have a much more difficult job of proving its program constitutional under the standard the Supreme Court clarified on Monday. Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority, endorsed the Supreme Court's prior decisions establishing affirmative action as constitutional to further states' compelling interest in fostering a diverse student body.

  • Supreme Court Questions Whether It Can Even Decide DOMA Case

    A majority of Supreme Court justices on Wednesday morning appeared skeptical of the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which defines marriage for federal purposes as between a man and a woman. At issue Wednesday in United States v. Windsor was whether it was constitutional for the U.S. government to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages that had been recognized by the states. Justice Anthony Kennedy, who said Tuesday that the children of same-sex couples “want their parents to have full recognition and legal status,” seemed troubled by the fact that DOMA refuses to recognize even those same-sex unions that are already recognized by states.

  • '8' Expectations: Arguments Cast Doubt On Gay Marriage Ban

    Justice Anthony Kennedy on Tuesday called the prospect of same-sex marriage “uncharted waters” during oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court on Proposition 8, California’s gay marriage ban. Prop 8 was the California ballot referendum passed in November 2008 that banned same-sex marriage, reversing by popular vote the state Supreme Court's decision just months earlier to recognize marriage equality.

  • Justice Thomas Breaks 7-Year Silence

    On Monday morning, Justice Clarence Thomas broke nearly seven years of silence at Supreme Court oral arguments. Really -- the court's official transcript didn't catch his words. What we do know is that Justice Thomas was speaking to a lawyer representing the state of Louisiana.

  • Supreme Court Looked Better For Affirmative Action Foes

    Chief Justice John Roberts may have switched his vote to join the Supreme Court's liberals in last term's blockbuster health care case, but on Wednesday morning he proved that he remains a rock-ribbed conservative when it comes to affirmative action. With retired Justice Sandra Day O'Connor looking on from the audience, Roberts and his fellow conservative justices savaged the rationale she put forward in her landmark 2003 opinion upholding race-conscious admissions practices. Although the conservatives did not have the numbers to prevail nine years ago, they may very well have them in the current challenge to the University of Texas at Austin's affirmative action program.

  • WATCH: Michael Steele Calls War On Drugs The 'New Segregation'

    The drug war is a failure, but we'll be hard pressed to hear any national leader pushing meaningful reform. As part of HuffPost Live's Shadow Convention coverage, former RNC chairman Michael Steele and former DNC chairman Howard Dean joined me to discuss the politics of the drug war. Steele characterized the drug war as "new segregation" for its disproportionate effects on African Americans, but suggested Republicans won't take any steps until the Democrats do first.

  • Supreme Court Denies Janet Jackson 'Wardrobe Malfunction' Case

    The Supreme Court on Friday morning officially relieved CBS of a $550,000 fine over Janet Jackson's infamous "wardrobe malfunction" during the 2004 Super Bowl Halftime Show. The justices denied the government's petition in Federal Communications Commission v. CBS to review a lower court's decision that the hefty penalty for the brief moment when cameras caught Jackson's accidentally exposed breast constituted an unlawfully arbitrary departure from the FCC's prior policy of looking the other way when network censors failed to catch fleeting expletives. Last week, the Supreme Court had dodged a First Amendment challenge brought by Fox and ABC against the Bush administration's more aggressive policing of broadcast indecency, instead throwing out the fines because the FCC had given "no notice to Fox or ABC that a fleeting expletive or a brief shot of nudity could be actionably indecent." The decision in FCC v. Fox Television Stations came as a surprise, with some high-court observers suggesting it was a compromise solution for a court that may have been deadlocked 4-4 over the free speech issues.

  • JUSTICE: OBAMACARE LIVES

    The individual health insurance mandate is constitutional, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday, upholding the central provision of President Barack Obama's signature Affordable Care Act. The controlling opinion, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, upheld the mandate as a tax, although concluded it was not valid as an exercise of Congress' commerce clause power. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joined in the outcome.

  • Supreme Court Says It's No Crime To Lie About Military Honors

    In striking down the Stolen Valor Act, the majority rejected the government's argument that the law, passed in 2006, was written narrowly enough to avoid chilling protected speech. The decision in U.S. v. Alvarez affirms the ruling of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which had invalidated Xavier Alvarez's conviction for introducing himself at a 2007 public meeting as a Medal of Honor recipient for his service in the Marines. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the plurality opinion, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor.

  • Supreme Court Delivers Split Decision On Arizona Immigration Law

    The Supreme Court on Monday delivered a split decision in the Obama administration's challenge to Arizona's aggressive immigration law, striking multiple provisions but upholding the "papers please" provision. Monday's decision on "papers please" -- Section 2(B) in S.B. 1070 -- rested on the more technical issue of whether the law unconstitutionally invaded the federal government's exclusive prerogative to set immigration policy. The justices found that it was not clear whether Arizona was supplanting or supporting federal policy by requiring state law enforcement to demand immigration papers from anyone stopped, detained or arrested in the state whom officers reasonably suspect is in the country without authorization.

  • Justices Strike Down Life Without Parole For Teens Convicted Of Murder

    The Supreme Court on Monday abolished the imposition of mandatory sentences of life without parole for all juveniles convicted of murder. The ruling that such sentences violate the Eighth Amendment continues the juvenile justice reform movement's streak of victories at the high court over the last decade. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the majority opinion both times, joined by the court's four-justice liberal bloc.

  • Supreme Court Reverses Anti-Citizens United Ruling From Montana

    Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, decided in January 2010, struck down federal limits on campaign spending by corporations and unions as violations of the First Amendment. In December 2011, the Montana Supreme Court disagreed.

  • Conservative Business Group Undefeated At Supreme Court This Term

    The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is undefeated at the Supreme Court this term, continuing to improve its success in securing business-friendly judgments since Chief Justice John Roberts took the bench in 2005. This term's "string of seven straight victories brings the chamber’s overall win/loss rate before the Roberts Court up to 68 percent (60 of 88 cases)," wrote Neil Weare, the center's litigation counsel and Supreme Court fellow.

  • Supreme Court Overturns Fleeting Expletives Ruling, Ducks Larger Issues

    The Supreme Court ruled Thursday against the Federal Communications Commission's policy on fleeting expletives over the airwaves, vacating the lower court's decision on due process and fair notice grounds. It ducked the larger First Amendment issues about regulating broadcast indecency in Fox v. FCC. The Court took issue with the fact that the FCC did not fully articulate its rule against fleeting expletives until 2004 -- after the Fox and ABC incidents at issue.

  • Live Discussion: Is Obamacare Living On Borrowed Time?

    The only thing we know for sure is that the Supreme Court will tell us one way or the other before June is over. During oral arguments in late March, the court's five Republican-appointed justices appeared to lean strongly toward invalidating the Affordable Care Act's individual health-insurance mandate.

  • Supreme Court Brushes Off New Gitmo Cases

    The Supreme Court on Monday denied review in the cases of several Guantanamo Bay detainees, likely closing off for good the prospect of continued oversight of the executive branch's handling of the prison camp that had been held out in a landmark decision four years ago. The cases came up from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, whose judges at times have been openly contemptuous of the Supreme Court's June 2008 ruling in Boumediene v. Bush. The D.C. Circuit judges have refused to order the release of a single detainee brought to Guantanamo in the months and years following al Qaeda's Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York and Washington, D.C.

  • Supreme Court Finds Dick Cheney's Secret Service Agents Immune

    Secret Service agents who arrested a man after he disparaged and then touched Dick Cheney cannot be sued for violating the man's free speech rights, the Supreme Court ruled on Monday morning. When then-Vice President Cheney visited a Colorado mall in 2006, Secret Service agent Dan Doyle overheard Steven Howards say that he was "going to ask [the vice president] how many kids he's killed today." Howards then got in line to meet Cheney and, when he reached the vice president, told him that his "policies in Iraq are disgusting." As Cheney moved along, Howards touched him on the shoulder, prompting the supervising Secret Service agent, Gus Reichle, to accost and arrest Howards for assault.