Out With a Whimper

The Supreme Court just ruled that Trump has the ability to fire and civil service agency director he wants to.

One hundred and forty-three years of the precedent of the Pendleton Civil Service Act - signed by President Chester Arthur, a one-time political hack - just went out the window.

But they did hold Trump accountable for raping Elizabeth Jean Carroll, even as they upheld birthright citizenship - by one vote! 

And so ends the 2025-26 U.S. Supreme Court term.

I can't comment any further, except to say that the only thing I like about the Supreme Court . . . 

. . . is the building.

Which, by the way, should have room for six more justices.

Kings and Knaves

Britain's King Charles III could have, as many people wished he would have, stayed home and not visited the United States to celebrate this sorry excuse for a nation for its semiquincentennial (doesn't that word make you want to throw up??).  But it was good that he did.

The king addressed a joint session of Congress last week with a speech citing the American government's foundation on English common law and how the Supreme Court preserved the separation of powers by constantly citing the Magna Carta that King John was forced to agree to back in 1215 to limit his powers.  It was the ultimate humiliation for These States - it took a king, and the descendant of the very king we revolted against 250 years ago, to teach Congress about American democracy.

Charles scored another coup with Trump, bequeathing him a bell for display on, say, the narrow elevation of the dining room of the White House or Mar-a-Lago, or on the stern of the yacht . . .a bell end, which is British slang for "dickhead."  What more would you expect from a king who, as Prince of Wales, was a big fan of and also a close friend of comedian Spike Milligan?

All of this obviously went over the heads of the bell-enders in MAGA, who likely think that Magna Carta is a credit card and Spike Milligan is that black guy from Brooklyn who makes all those movies sermonizing about racism.  And it certainly didn't move the Republicans manipulating the congressional district maps in the South, with most of the Southern states redrawing their U.S. House districts to get rid of as many black-majority districts - and as many Democratic-majority districts, which are the same thing down in Dixie - as possible.  Democrats in the one Southern state where a redistricting plan worked out to benefit their own party - Virginia, which is so full of transplanted Northeasterners (including the New Jersey-born Abigail Spanberger, the state's governor) that it's not even a Southern state anymore (hey, it is north of 36°30′) - got a serious blow to their efforts when the state Supreme Court threw out the referendum that allowed gerrymandering to maximize Democratic U.S. House representation from the state, striking it down on a technicality.  Now the Democrats are at a disadvantage in being able to win back the House.  It can still be done, but this revolting development makes it far more difficult.

The Attorney General of Virginia placed a stay on the state Supreme Court's decision to see if he can appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court on the basis of a constitutional violation.  Not because he believes that the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court will side with him, but to use a delay tactic, which could work if he can take his time to make sure that the Court hears the case too late for the old district maps to be used in time for the November elections.

Meanwhile, the effort to redraw that U.S. House district maps in Louisiana has prompted Governor Jeff Landry to suspend primary elections even after people have voted early.

Pundits and activists like Steve Schmidt and Sarah Longwell keep saying that we have to get through a very difficult and destructive period, but we can wait out Trump, and as soon as a Democratic President is in office on January 20, 2029 (and just how do they know that will come to pass?), we can start the long, arduous work of rebuilding what Trump has torn down.  No.  There will be no more waiting - at least not for me.  The United States has demonstrated quite clearly that its experiment in representative government of this sort has failed.  And thanks to issues like the war in Iran and tariffs, the U.S. has also demonstrated with equal clarity that it can no longer be trusted or taken seriously in the international community as a responsible actor.  Our "President" has been too much of an irresponsible actor - a "reality" show actor who, since 2004, has been playing a parody of himself - for there to be anything left to rebuild and for any international trust to be regained by the time he does leave the scene.  That is why I still support the dissolution of the Union.  That is why I am still a secessionist.  

The VRA Is DOA

Let's play make-believe.  Pretend you're a professional music critic.  You've written a column saying that rap. a predominantly black pop form, is not music.  A civil rights lawyer sues to have you fired from the music magazine you work for, citing a racist subtext in your column and implying that you are a bigot.  But you've also written numerous reviews heaping all sorts of acclaim and praise on numerous black musical artists, none of whom are rappers.  The judge throws out the civil rights lawyer's suit, saying that he can't prove racial bias on your part.  Now, here's the clincher - you in fact are a bigot.  You love black music, but you would never seek black friends, live next door to a black family,  or let your son marry a black woman, not even Iman.  You are a total racist, but no one can prove it because you're very good of keeping your bigotry to yourself.

Well, apply that same idea to the standard the Supreme Court in limiting the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to the point where it's just a meaningless piece of paper enshrined in the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library, and you understand why it's so odious and viciously cruel.  The Court ruled in Louisiana v. Callais this past week that a plaintiff charging the the voting rights of a minority group have been violated because minority voters have been gerrymandered across districts that make it impossible to elect one of their own to the state legislature or the U.S. House of Representatives has to show direct evidence that the gerrymandering was racially motivated.  The plaintiff can't do that.  The gerrymandering can always be explained away as being a need for bipartisan balance or some rubbish like that.  But the truth is that Republicans gerrymander districts to ensure that as many Democratic voters are spread out over as many districts as possible to keep a Republican legislative or U.S. House majority in a state; and in the Deep South, most Republican voters are white and most Democratic voters are black.  

And there are several Republican-dominated states elsewhere, like in the Rust Belt, where Democratic-leaning minority voters are confined to a handful of urban and inner suburban districts while Republican-leaning white voters dominate the more numerous districts elsewhere.  Black people can still vote - poll taxes and literacy tests have pretty much gone the way of the Studebaker -  but whom they vote for, usually a black candidate, is a lot less likely to win.  This is even assuming they can remain on the registration books, as many jurisdictions that no longer need preclearance to secure minority voting under the Voting Rights Act have purged black voters with impunity. 

In that spirit, Louisiana, the victor in the Supreme Court case, canceled primaries for its U.S. House elections pending a redistricting that will likely eliminate one of its two black-majority districts.

U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts (above) is no stranger to the conservative desire to eliminate the Voting Rights Act.  He has been working to eliminate it since 1980, the year Reagan was elected President and a 25-year-old Roberts was clerking for the then most conservative justice on the Supreme Court, William Rehnquist, whom Roberts succeeded as Chief Justice.  Roberts and other conservatives have been playing the long game to push a conservative agenda for decades, and their long hard work has pretty much paid off.  The only people who get screwed are the innocent.  Because if black people get thrown off the voter rolls, can vote but may not vote knowing they their votes could get canceled out, or are denied representation or political power, there's no one in Congress or the legislature to represent their own interests - some which likely overlap with those of white voters.

Democratic states are likely going to redistrict their own House seats to counteract Republican states gerrymandering their minority, Democratic-leaning districts out of existence to cancel any advantage Republican states get from their own shenanigans, and New Jersey is looking at doing so.  Governor Sherrill has suggested that two of the three GOP districts in the state could be gerrymandered out of being.  But New Jersey and several states may not get to do so until 2028 or 2030, and the census in 2030 might move even more House seats to Republican-leaning states in the Sun Belt (a trend that has been unstoppable for seventy years).  If Democrats can compete more effectively in these Sun Belt states - states Democrats gave up on years ago - they might be able to stanch the bleeding, and they might be able to elect a more progressive Democratic President and Congress in 2032 - without a Voting Rights Act, and largely on the strength of white voters - and accordingly restore the Voting Rights Act while dealing with other right-wing decisions handed down by the Roberts Court.

Like Citizens United. 

If we have to, we can elect a progressive Congress and administration without guaranteed voting rights for all citizens no later than 2032.  After all, Americans managed to do that in 1932.

And by the way, if anyone is wondering . . . no , I don't like rap, of course, but no, I'm not racist.  I think I've proven that many times on this blog.  And come on, if I were racist, do you think I would have written such a long post bitching about the gutting of the Voting Rights Act??  

Trumpety Bumpety

Trump got a rude awakening when the Supreme Court rule 6 to 3 against Trump trying to establish tariffs unilaterally, based on a 1970s law that allowed tariffs to be established by the executive branch for  national security reasons.  Chief Justice John Roberts gave Trump a chance to dial back the tariffs, but Trump apparently found a loophole to declare a comprehensive 10 percent tariff on all imported goods.  Hours later, he increased it to 15 percent. 

Whatever.  I'm sick and tired of following Trump's import-tax antics.  

Anyway, I'm sure he'll explain his stupid tariffs - and how the 2020 election was rigged in favor of Joe Biden - when he gives his State of the Union address to Congress tonight.  Al I can think of is how I wish my state of the Union, New Jersey (see what I did there? double meaning) would secede from it.

I can't be bothered to watch.  I have to finish a video for my YouTube channel about a topic having nothing to do with Trump.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to get a nice, chewy piece of salt water tariff. 😝

Darkness Falls Across the Land

The Supreme Court handed down its ruling on presidential immunity.

It's not good.

The court's conservative majority pretty much said that a President is immune from prosecution of official acts but not from personal or unofficial acts.  Good news on the surface, until you dig below the crust and realize that Donald Trump did so many dastardly things in the guise of official business when in the White House that the indictments against him still pending - especially the federal cases being prosecuted by Jack Smith - have been gutted to the point where Smith might as well pack up and go home.

With the Biden campaign hobbled by last week's debate performance and Trump actually leading in the polls (remember this is the same country that gave Richard Nixon a landslide re-election victory in 1972), We could very well be seven moths away from the second coming of the Third Reich.  With one key difference - the Weimar Republic in Germany didn't grease the wheels for Adolf Hitler before he assumed power.

Trump will likely use his power to gut the bureaucracy, fire people in federal agencies who are opposed to him, prosecute and incarcerate his opponents, and possibly execute people for treason once the definition of treason is expanded to include opposition to the Exalted Leader.

And then in February 2025 . . .

The only bright side to this ruling is that Judge Tanya Chutkan might be able to have an evidentiary hearing to determine which charges and evidence can be considered and which cannot.  (She's not likely to get it before August 5.)  As for recourse in response to this ruling . . . actually, there's very little whatsoever.   The Supreme Court ruling is the law of the land, and this decision is grounded in an interpretation of the Constitution that any law passed by Congress would likely fail to meet.  The only way to change this decision is to pack the Supreme Court or pass a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to prosecute a President for illegal acts.  Neither is likely to happen any time soon.

It looks more and more like the thousand-year Reich is to be reborn when the voters go to the polls in November 5, which is my fifty-ninth birthday.  And after everything I've said about Trump on this blog - which will be saved for all eternity in Blogger.com's server even if I delete it - I doubt I will live to see my sixtieth birthday. Unless I sell my house and high-tail it with my kittens to Toronto.

So, it makes perfect sense that this decision was handed down on Canada Day.

There's still one thing I like about the Supreme Court - the building itself.  Isn't it nice?

Run With the Pack

 I'm not referring to the Bad Company song.

The last attempt to expand the Supreme Court was made in 1937, when President Franklin Roosevelt sent a bill to Congress that, according to a formula encouraging but not requiring Supreme Court justices to retire once reaching a certain age, would allow the President to appoint six additional justices.  Roosevelt tried unsuccessfully to expand the Court to appoint enough justices to counterbalance the conservative majority under Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, which had overturned various New Deal programs.  Ironically, Roosevelt ended up appointing justices for all nine seats, including the promotion of Associate Justice Harlan Fiske Stone to replace Chief Justice Hughes, and Hugo Black - who served into the early 1970s - was his first appointment.  Black was appointed a few months after the Court-packing effort failed.

Yeah, well, its time to revisit the idea again.

The current Supreme Court demonstrated that it is all about power and not about jurisprudence.  Its idea of originalism is being taken to the extreme as the conservative majority has been overturning precedents they feel were wrongly decided because the specifics in those precedents are not reflected in the text of the Constitution.  The conservatives advocate judicial restraint but have shown no restraint in overturning decisions they felt were overreaches.  You don't correct what you perceive to be overreach with overreach of your own.

As we're waiting for the final rulings from the Courts 2023-24 term (including the Trump immunity decision) tomorrow, I could go on and on and on and on until I run out of bandwidth about the flurry of its most recent decisions, but I should focus on the overturning of the Chevron principle, which was a unanimous Supreme Court ruling in the mid-1980s declaring that agencies, not courts, should decide the ambiguities in government regulations.  It was a victory for Chevron, the oil company that brought the suit before the Court, when lower courts had tried to set the standards for how Environmental Protection Agency regulations should be administered to Chevron's detriment in extracting oil from the earth.  Anne Burford, the pro-business EPA administrator that President Ronald Reagan had installed in 1981, agreed that the courts should not tell agencies how to do their jobs - and her agency, at least, was accused of doing its job more to help business than people.

As it turned out, the Chevron principle worked out wonderfully, for it allowed career agency workers - civil-service employees who did not answer to presidential administrations - to uphold the spirit of regulations and statutes even when a presidential administration did not.  Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia thought the decision was prudent on the issue of resolving ambiguous rules because it would curtail the power of federal judges who would overreach to threaten private interests based on personal politics and not the law.

Justice Scalia, for all of his faults, was largely a man of integrity and a serious legal scholar - that's why he was unanimously confirmed by the Senate in 1986 with one member absent.  He was not a hack like today's conservative jurists.  They overturned the Chevron ruling with the three liberal justices in dissent.  Federal agencies, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, "have no special competence in resolving statutory ambiguities. Courts do." That may be, but federal agencies do have special competence in the areas of expertise that statutes govern.  Anne Burford certainly would have agreed with that, saying of criticism of her handling of the job of EPA administrator, "Nobody can be that wrong, all that much, all the time." 

Justice Neil Gorsuch agreed with Chief Justice Roberts, writing in concurrence that this ruling "returns judges to interpretive rules that have guided federal courts since the Nation's founding."  It is extremely significant that Justice Gorsuch would side with Roberts and would not have sided with Scalia, whose seat he took, and especially not with Anne Burford, who died in 2004, because, well, before Burford married her second husband in 1983, she went by her first husband's name - Gorsuch.

Yes, Neil Gorsuch is the son of Anne Burford.  

The little snot.

Ironically, Gorsuch himself turned out to be the poster boy for why the Chevron ruling that Scalia and, later, generations of environmentalists championed was actually a good idea.  In writing in favor of pausing a Biden Administration program to curb smog being generated in one state and wafting over another, he confused nitrogen oxide, a harmful gas, with nitrous oxide, a harmless gas.  Justice Gorsuch clearly demonstrated that judges are not the ones who should be resolving ambiguous text in federal statutes. He also demonstrated with equal clarity that he's as dumb as the President who appointed his mother to run the EPA.  Campaigning for the Presidency in 1980, Ronald Reagan also confused the two similar-sounding gases with each other and based on his confusion the suggestion that trees caused more pollution than cars.  

Ladies and gentlemen, here's the only Sequoia that ever caused more pollution than my VW!

House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries lamented that, until the reversal is reversed,  Congress will have to write more clear government regulations less prone to ambiguity and multiple interpretations.  The only problem is that Congress keeps demonstrating its inability to do so.

And that's why we have to run with the idea of packing the Court.

And if we don't, I'm leaving here.  You won't even see me, no, no . . . for dust. 

Movin' on . . . movin' out . . .  

And He Wound Up On the Wrong End of an Opinion

The Supreme Court ruled yesterday that, yes, of course a law meant to keep domestic abusers from purchasing a gun was constitutional and that gun rights did not extend to anyone known to commit abuse against spouses or children.  Even Samuel Alito wasn't going to say otherwise.

The ruling was 8-1.

Who was crazy enough to dissent?

This guy.

Clarence Thomas, who most likely did sexually harass Anita Hill despite his assertions to the contrary, demonstrated once again his lack of concern for women not his wife.  Solid and steadfast in that the Second Amendment is absolute - especially the second clause, which does not mention a well-regulated militia - he offered a dissenting opinion that made his majority opinion declaring the ban on bump stocks an unlawful interpretation of machine-gun regulatory laws seem positively Periclean.

Recently, an attempt has been made - primarily by historian Jon Meacham, but also by others - to rehabilitate George Herbert Walker Bush's record as the forty-first President of the United States because of his low-key diplomacy and his actions to get the U.S. to make the transition out of the Cold War, among other things.  None of these efforts, however, will ever succeed, as it was he who put Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court for purely political reasons (the second black Supreme Court justice, he repealed Thurgood Marshall, the first black Supreme Court justice).   There was no bus big enough to hold the judges who in 1991 were more qualified for the Supreme Court than Thomas, whereas you could have counted Thomas' qualifications for the Court on one hand with three fingers to spare.  The first qualification was that he is black.    

The second qualification was that he had a pulse. 

Oh yeah, about the ruling on presidential immunity . . ..  The Supreme Court secretary who schedules releases of rulings is Helen Waite.  If you're waiting for the ruling on presidential immunity, go to Helen Waite. 

Tomorrow Thomas turns 76, an age when most jurists have long since retired.

Female Hispanics Causing Judicial Panic

Numerous Democratic members of Congress are calling for Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor to step down from the Court and follow Stephen Breyer into retirement so as not to give Donald Trump a chance to possibly name a fourth Supreme Court member, which should give one an idea of how confident Democrats are in a Biden re-election victory (they're obviously not!). 

Sotomayor, the only Roman Catholic member of the Court who's not a stooge of Leonard Leo, is only 69, younger than some of the justices in the conservative bloc.  But she is diabetic, and some folks in Washington suspect that she won't live too long beyond the biblical threescore and ten and thus want to to go gently into that good night now.  This angered commentators on MSNBC, who said that you should never tell an Hispanic woman what to do.  

I'm glad they feel that way, because now they have to eat their words when they realize that they can't tell Judge Aileen Cannon - who was born in Colombia - what to do with regard to the Trump classified-documents case she's "overseeing."

Judge Cannon ruled that, given the sensitive nature of some of the documents to be offered as evidence in the government's case against Trump and some other technicalities a more experienced judge could handle in days, the trial in the classified-documents case should be postponed indefinitely.  That ended any hope of the most important and most slam-dunk case against Trump going to trial before Election Day.  And if Trump wins in November, he'll handle the case against him the same way he plans to deal with his opponents in government and the media - he'll make it go away permanently.  

Justice Sotomayor, a stalwart of the Supreme Court's ever-shrinking liberal wing, has shown no sign of slowing down after fifteen years on the High Court and shows no sign of her diabetes getting the best of her - even as fears of a second Trump Presidency are getting the best of her fair-weather friends in Washington.  They should leave her alone.  As for Judge Cannon, they have to leave her alone - because there's no recourse for handling her incompetence and obvious and odious pro-Trump favoritism.  We're stuck with her.

One good thing has come out of Judge Cannon's service on the federal bench - it proves what bunk race-based and ethnicity-based diversity is.  (Most people probably don't even know she's Hispanic, given her Scotch-Irish surname.)  Because Judge Cannon proves that women and people of racial and ethnic minorities can be just as stupid and dangerous as white men, as U.S. Senator Tim Scott (R-S.C.), who is black, proves every day with his sycophancy to Trump.  Justice Sotomayor has spoken of the value of the perspective of a "wise Latina."  All good and fine, but what about the perspective of a dumb Latina like Judge Cannon?

Supreme Disaster - 2024 Edition

Just when we thought it was safe to turn MSNBC back on, because it looked like Donald Trump was finally going to face justice courtesy of special prosecutor Jack Smith in the January 6 election interference case, the Supreme Court has decided to hear Trump's appeal to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals' decision that a former President has no immunity from prosecution. 

As the Eagles once sang, lay down your law books now, they're no damn good.

Some legal experts have suggested that the Supreme Court feels the need to re-affirm the idea that no ex-President should be immune from prosecution to head off possible challenges to indictments in the classified-documents case and the two state cases, while others suggest that the election interference case involves actions Trump may have done that were not germane to his duties as President, as the President does not preside over election and therefore the rules have presidential conduct have to be clarified.  Yeah, so why didn't the Supreme Court take this case ahead of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, which Smith wanted them to do?      

There is no reason why the Supreme Court should accept this case - except for the possibility that the zealots in the conservative majority want to tip the scales in Trump's favor.  Though oral arguments will take place on April 22, the Court doesn't have to decide the case as soon as April 30 - it could wait until the end of June to decide, which would cause the trial to begin either just before Election Day or some time in late autumn.  

And if Trump wins back the White House on November 5, he, once he's sworn in again, can make the case disappear.

That's not all he's going to make disappear.  Ever hear of what happened under the 1976-1983 military dictatorship in Argentina?

Give it up, fellow anti-Trumpers.  The courts are not going to save the Republic.  If you don't want the United States Secret Police - currently known as the Oath Keepers - to arrest you in the middle of the night for the crime of disliking Trump after January 20, 2025, if you don't want to be sent to a labor camp and worked until exhaustion for said crime, and you if you don't, so as to take your mind off your utter exhaustion, want to be executed, you'll not only vote for Joe Biden on Election Day, you'll do what you can in the weeks and months leading up to Election Day to make sure Biden wins.  

It's do . . . or die.

I rest my case. 

The Right Reigns Supreme

In just few short days, the ultra-conservative Supreme Court ended affirmative action in colleges, stopped President Biden's student-loan debt plan dead in its tracks (with the New York Post gleefully celebrating the outcome), and allowed creative businesses to deny service to non-heterosexuals.

President Biden is scrambling to find some way to help people with their outstanding college debts while colleges and universities are looking at possible affirmative-action programs without emphasizing race.  Chief Justice Roberts and the other conservative justices cited the need to emphasize the individual rather than a group based on race or ethnicity (remember when I mentioned that philosophy in a previous post?) in the former case and the separation of powers in the latter.  Any student-loan debt plan has to be approved by Congress - a Congress in the deep pockets of creditors who don't give a damn about debtors.

As the ruling protecting the creative speech of folks like Web site designers who don't want to bother with folks they find objectionable?  Well, it is a victory for black Web site designers who are offended by racist symbols.  Now they don't have to create a Web site for a Lynyrd Skynyrd fan club. 

That aside, it shows that elections have consequences and it should fire up the Democrats in 2024.  Yeah, right.  President Biden is still underwater on the issue of the economy - the one issue we materialistic Americans always care about on the first Tuesday after November 1 (and every other day as well), and polls show Donald Trump still very competitive with President Biden and in a position to edge him pout in a couple of swing states.  Because Americans don't care about the Supreme Court even after it's too late.  If they care about about anything else, they care about the deficiencies of the Democratic presidential candidates they reject.

The American people didn't care about the Supreme Court in 2016 when they chose to take a chance on Trump over Hillary Clinton (not that nominating Hillary Clinton for President was a smart thing for Democrats to do) because of her e-mails, allowing Trump to name Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett to the Court.  They didn't care about it in 2004 when they chose George W. Bush over John Kerry because Kerry was a pretentious, windsurfing fop whom no one trusted to keep us safe from al-Qaeda after 9/11, and then we got Roberts and my hometown's Samuel Alito (I'm sure progressives spit on the floor every time they're passing over my hometown in an airliner).  And voters were happy to send Bush's dad to the White House in 1988 when Michael Dukakis was a loser who failed in his one most important job as governor of Massachusetts - making Willie Horton clean up Boston Harbor while reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.  And thus we got Clarence Thomas.

As for the most recent consequential election involving the Supreme Court . . . well ,those who want to blame Jill Stein for peeling away voters from Hillary Clinton and insist that Hillary would have gotten Merrick Garland into Justice Antonin Scalia's seat as President and also appointed Ruth Bader GInsburg's replacement forget that some Republican senators, including the sainted John McCain, vowed to block all of Hillary's judicial appointments, including Supreme Court appointments, in a Republican Senate, as the Senate was expected to stay in Republican control as early as October 2016.  Of course, with a stronger Democratic presidential nominee at the top of the ticket, things could have been different . . . 

But hey, it's all good, innit?  Especially when the Court has affirmed that the Constitution is a colorblind document.  Just ignore that clause from the original Constitution legally making the Negro slave three-fifths of a person.  Really.

Democrats and progressives are urging the joining of a battle against the Supreme Court that they have no chance of winning.  "We have to fight back!"  the scream.  "We have to fight back!"  No, guys - you have to fight back.  I've already surrendered.  The Supreme Court has spoken, and there's no way anyone can undo their rulings any time soon.  So when you say you're going to fight . . . 

. . . count me out. 

A Big Little Victory

The news about the assault on voting rights and democratic institutions has been bad for so damn long that any good news on the subject is welcome.  And the Supreme Court delivered a small but important victory in the Moore v. Harper case out of North Carolina that proposed what reactionaries call the "independent state legislature theory," a theory that is the legal equivalent of supply-side economics.

North Carolina House Speaker Timothy Moore, a Republican, filed suit claiming that the state legislature, in redrawing U.S. House districts, had the right to decide the rules for electing federal officers in any way, shape or form that they wanted to - without oversight from the state Supreme Court.  The U.S. Supreme Court ruled, 6-3, that Moore's theory violated the system of checks and balances and declared that state judiciary has every right to counteract the state legislature to curb excessive partisan gerrymandering.  Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, joined by conservative justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett and the entire liberal wing - Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.  This decision not only allows the judiciary to intervene in state redistricting cases involving U.S. House of Representatives; it also negates a more sinister idea, that states can reject the majority popular vote for one slate of presidential electors and instead allow the slate voted down by the people to cast ballots in the Electoral College.  It was an idea that Trump tried to get Democratic electors rejected in states that Joe Biden carried in the 2020 presidential election.  

Chief Justice Roberts (above) seems to have forged a consistent view regarding voting from a conservative standpoint.  He opposes the Voting Rights Act as it was written in 1965 because he sincerely believes that making racial preferences for voting based on past racial discrimination treats voters of a particular race as part of a group and not as individuals and that the rights of the individual must always come before the rights of a collective group based on skin color or ethnicity.  It's not a stupid idea; it's just wrong.  But while rejecting group rights in favor of the individual, the chief justice also believes that the only way individual rights can be preserved is through the checks and balances that Timothy Moore so blatantly ignored. 

Because of his ideological consistency, Roberts saved the principle of free elections from an extremist minority hell-bent on overturning the will of the people.  Alas, that minority, besides Justice Neil Gorsuch, also includes noted billionaires' bitches Samuel Alito (who, as a former resident of my hometown, continues to make my hometown a laughingstock) and Clarence Thomas.     

Medication Abortion Whiplash

The medication abortion issue is to hard for me to keep up with, and quite frankly, I don't even try to.  But here's what I've gleaned so far from this whole mess.  

After finding a federal judge in Amarillo, Texas who was prone to ruling in their favor, a Christian anti-abortion group sued in his court to have Food and Drug Administration approval of an abortion pill overturned, which the judge did, while a judge in Washington State handed down a contracistory ruling demanding that the pill be available in all of the states where abortion is still legal.  The Justice Department appealed the Texas ruling, and now Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito - who, ironically, wrote the infamous Dobbs decision that started all of this - has halted the order handed down in Amarillo, allowing the pill while the Supreme Court figures out what the hell to do about all this.  The Court will make a decision on Wednesday.

I'm sorry, I just don't care anymore.  Also, I am dead certain that the abortion pill, even if it is allowed this time, will be taken off the market some way, somehow, because the MAGA Republicans who still rule this country with an iron fist despite the presence of a Democratic President are too daunting an enemy to fight.  Also, the Republicans control the House, the staggered Senate electoral map favors them in 2024, and President Biden is a weak incumbent who could go against a formidable opponent in a presidential election that the GOP can win in the electoral college without having to win the popular vote. 

My attitude from a year ago still stands, despite recent victories for progressive movements such as abortion rights, when a pro-choice judge won election to the state Supreme Court in Wisconsin.  I'm tired of losing, I don't want to get involved in losing causes with occasional (and negligible) upward blips in an otherwise downward trajectory, and so I don't want to bothered,  Go get someone else to join the fight.

I'm as neutral as Switzerland, a country I wish I could move to right now. 

Doubting Thomas

Trapped in the house during the third month of the COVID pandemic and with nothing else to watch on TV, I watched a documentary on the life of Clarence Thomas on public television (!).  The second of only two black male Supreme Court justices, who was interviewed for the documentary, explained what he likes to do for fun.  During the three-month summer break from the Court, Thomas said, he likes to head out to the backwoods and backwaters of America in his recreational vehicle and stops at campgrounds and big-box-store parking lots to meet real Americans, the sort of folks he insists his reactionary judicial philosophy benefits the most. 

That may be so, but, contrary to what Justice Thomas was implying, he hasn't spent all of his vacation time in the heartland.  It seems he's taken junkets to Indonesia on the dime of right-wing billionaire real estate developer Harlan Crow, prompting accusations of Thomas selling his judicial integrity to a rich bastard with deep pockets who's buying influence.  It looked like Justice Thomas's critics finally had him dead to rights.

Nope.  Thomas just flicked away the issue like a speck of calcified lint, explaining that he was assured when he first joined the Court that as long as someone did not have any business before the Court gave him free vacations, there was no conflict of interest.  Except how could anyone have been certain in 1991 that Crow was never going to have any business before the Court?  Well, then, it's not like right-wing real estate developers take cases based on seizing power all the way to the High Court, is it? 

Oh, wait, one of them has already.  Here's his lawyer.

And so Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), still under the illusion that she has any relevance in a Republican-controlled House, has called for Clarence Thomas' impeachment.  Even if the House did impeach the bastard, the Senate would still need a two-thirds majority to convict him - not gonna happen - and besides, no Supreme Court justice has been impeached since Samuel Chase in 1805 (who was acquitted). 

But, on the other hand, Samuel Chase was never known to have a cozy relationship with a rich landowner who liked to collect late-sixteenth-century Russian artifacts that used to belong to Ivan the Terrible, though Justice Thomas' rich-boy buddy Harlan Crow is known for collecting Hitler and Third Reich memorabilia.

Bet that would be an interesting topic of discussion in those Wal-Mart parking lots in the summertime.

Get Used To It

The investigation into Trump meddling in the 2020 Georgia elections looked to be picking up steam.  U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) was ordered by a federal appeals court to honor a subpoena and testify over what he knew bout Trump's plan to overturn the presidential election results in Georgia based on phone calls Graham had made at the time.  Graham, insisting hat these phone calls were related to his legislative work, appealed to the Supreme Court, which convinced me that he would get a reprieve of some sort - because he wouldn't have appealed to the highest court of the land if he didn't think the Court would help him.

It did - in the form of Justice Clarence Thomas blocking Graham's subpoena temporarily.

Now why would Thomas do such a thing?  It's not because he, born and bred a Georgia man, just cannot believe that Trump would try to corrupt his (Thomas') native state by trying to overturn an election, is it?

No, of course not.  It's more likely because his wife, a conservative activist, was trying to help get the election overturned herself.

This is just the latest in a series of right-wing extremist rulings form the justice, whose reactionary jurisprudence was once explained by his supporters as the result of anger of women pushing sexual-harassment charges against him during his 1991 U.S. Senate confirmation hearings that left him bitter and vindictive.      

In other words, it's Barbara Boxer's fault.

Yeah, right.

Lindsey Graham will likely have to testify in the grand-jury investigation of Trump in Georgia.  But if Clarence Thomas can't recuse himself when the situation calls for it, how can we be assured that, in a ruling in which he speaks for the majority, justice will be done? 

In response to those who objected to his mere presence on the bench when he first joined the Supreme Court, Justice Thomas is said to have offered these two sentences, each comprised entirely of monosyllabic words - "I'm on the Court.  Get used to it."

Power Failure

The Supreme Court's ruling on the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) regulation of coal-fired power plants designed to get electric utilities to consider alternate, environmentally friendly ways of generating power such as solar and wind, pretty much says that the EPA can't do that and has to let Congress - the same Congress that is so dysfunctional it can't even pass a non-controversial resolution honoring soccer (not that it's tried, that was sarcastic commentary) - either pass a law or allow the EPA that authority.

In her dissent, Justice Elena Kagan wrote, "The stakes here are high. Yet the Court today prevents congressionally authorized agency action to curb power plants' carbon dioxide emissions. The Court appoints itself — instead of Congress or the expert agency — the decision-maker on climate policy. I cannot think of many things more frightening."

I can.

Anyway, that pretty much is the first step in the next Republican President taking us out of the Paris Agreement again, possibly (likely?) as early as 2025.  As for the need to fight climate change, well, I'm ised to having climate change already.  Which reminds me - severe thunderstorms are forecast for my area today, and I expect an outage.

How ironic!

No Mo' Roe

Look. We all knew that the Supreme Court was going to overturn Roe v. Wade because of the leaked opinion draft from Justice Samuel Alito from last month.  But certainly the final draft wasn't going to be nearly or even remotely as harshly worded, right? 

Well, the decision was just handed down officially, removing a constitutional right handed down nearly fifty years ago, and it turns out that the only changes from Alito's first draft were largely commas and conjunctions.

I'm just glad that Justice Alito no longer lives in his New Jersey hometown and doesn't commute to Washington on the air shuttle,  Because his hometown . . . is my hometown!

And who's to blame for this overruling?  Susan Sarandon.  Because she told us to vote for Jill Stein for President in 2016 instead of Hillary Clinton.  She also failed to codify Roe in 2009 when she had the power . . . oh, wait, that was the filibuster-proof Democratic-majority Senate of the 111th Congress!

Of course I was being facetious when I said Susan Sarandon was to blame.  Look, you stupid Twitter twits, Susan Sarandon is not a witch - she only played one in the movies!  (Now, Christine O'Donnell - she was a witch!)

So thirteen states automatically ban abortion as a result of this ruling, with another thirteen ready to do so.  And a federal abortion ban is not out of reach, lest any woman who lives in a illegal-abortion state like Iowa to go to neighboring Illinois, where abortion is legal.  And then women will either have to carry their babies to term - even if her child was fathered by a criminal or a family relative - will have to travel to Canada . . . and then the Supreme Court will decide there is no constitutional right for a woman to travel to another country to get an abortion. Then someone will decide that there is no constitutional right for anyone to travel to another country for anything . . . and the Canadian and Mexican borders become the new Iron Curtains under President-For-Life Ron DeSantis.   (It will be like the old Soviet Union; the only Americans who will be allowed to travel abroad are Olympic athletes and ballet dancers.)

Justice Alito said that this opinion should not be read as an attack on other rights rooted in privacy.  So Justice Clarence Thomas, who would not be sitting on the Court if a certain Colorado Democrat who shall remain nameless had not invited a comely blonde and future evangelical Trump supporter to his townhouse in 1987, wrote that decisions such as on contraception and gay marriage are definitely on the table.  And so folks opposed to such things will not stop at abortion.

President Biden urged pro-choice activists to come out and vote in November.  Right.  As long as inflation and gas prices remain big issues, this issue is not going to have a major impact on the 2022 midterms, least of all in the elections for the state legislatures that will now decide on abortion.  There's only one Democrat who even focuses on state legislative elections, and Martin O'Malley is only concerned with his wife's bid for Maryland Attorney General this year.  

I wish well all of those who fight to get this overturning overturned.  But, as I indicated three months ago, I want to be counted out.  Besides, I expect to be busy . . . checking out Irish real estate.

Odor In the Court

I know a man . . . he came from my hometown . . .. These are the very words he uses for what's going down . . ..

"[Roe v. Wade] was egregiously wrong from the start. Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences. And far from bringing about a national settlement of the abortion issue, [Roe v. Wade] and [Planned Parenthood v. Casey] have enflamed debate and deepened division . . ..  We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled.  It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people's elected representatives."

Thus spake Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, Jr., of my hometown in New Jersey, in his draft opinion on Dobbs vs. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which will likely obliterate a woman's right to abortion on the basis of the lack of a constitutional right to privacy.  This was despite his assurances when he first joined the Court in 2006.  This decision even surpasses his deciding vote in the Citizens United decision of 2010 that recognized corporations as people and money as free speech.

When this opinion gets handed down, it will likely be toned down, but the effect will be no different.  Abortion will be legal in only a few states, not all of them, and a Republican Congress and a Republican President as early as 2025 will no doubt criminalize abortion nationwide, with no exceptions for rape or incest - after the filibuster is done away with. 

And how many other countries have completely outlawed abortion?  About a couple dozen - mostly in Africa and Latin America.  European countries? One - Andorra, a country between Spain and France, which is so small the Rhode Island state militia could invade and occupy it in an hour.

The draft opinion was leaked in a breach of protocol that keeps Supreme Court drafts private, even as the right to privacy is, ironically, in jeopardy.  MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell interestingly pointed out that while Congress routinely puts out drafts of bills in progress, the Supreme Court - which apparently writes first drafts by painting them with broad brushes of dismissive language - refuses to be transparent. Chief Justice John Roberts, who loves the Court and his open to a ruling that preserves legalized abortion but allows for some restrictions - has demanded an investigation into the leak.  Too little, too late; this draft shows how reckless the justices can be in private and are.

And if the right to privacy is nullified through this ruling, what other rights could fall by the wayside?  Gay marriage? Interracial marriage?  If women in states where abortion is outlawed can't travel to states where it's legal to get one, the lack of the right to travel could be applied to anyone trying to leave the country once Trump comes back and establishes der Amerikanisches Reich.

The Democrats expect abortion to be a major issue that improves their chances in the 2022 midterms.  Uh, no, it won't be.  Yes, I still think it.  Inflation and the economy will remain the biggest issues going into November.  Abortion won't even make a distant third place - not as long as immigration and COVID remain potent issues.  The problem is that not enough Democrats and independents who are motivated by the overturning of Roe will tip the balance for Democratic candidates, and besides, the people most likely to vote on abortion are . . . pro-lifers.

Of course, if I had a black wife and we were having trouble making ends meet, we, knowing that our marriage could be nullified by a Supreme Court ruling, wouldn't likely base our electoral choices on the economy.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson

With her confirmation as a Supreme Court Justice by the full United States Senate, Ketanji Brown Jackson made history.

She's the first Protestant to join the Court since 1981. 😃

Oh yeah, and the first black woman to join the Court, as well as the third black justice overall (unless noted Oreo cookie Clarence Thomas doesn't count).   I'm sure she will be a very prudent justice and offer wise counsel and opinions for years.  For much of that time, though, she'll be in the minority, as that six-member conservative bloc is bound to come down on the side of corporations, polluters (the same thing as corporations, really), evangelicals, gun-rights advocates, homophobic bakery owners, and transsexual-haters with an iron fist (although Chief Justice John Roberts will likely surprise us, though Clarence Thomas won't).  She'll only have two women on her side, and neither one of them will be Amy Coney Barrett.  The 47 Senate Republicans who voted against Mrs. Jackson (and walked out of the Senate chamber once Mrs. Jackson was confirmed) have promised to deny President Biden a nomination to fill a second Supreme Court vacancy if the GOP wins back the Senate in November, and they plan to ensure a right-wing majority that will be set in concrete.

And a Republican Congress will likely try to impeach and remove Mrs. Jackson.  

Come October 3, she will have a rocky road ahead of her.

The Scariest People in the World

I saw as much of the Ketanji Brown Jackson Supreme Court confirmation hearings as I could take.  After a few minutes of it, it became apparent that the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee were doing what comes naturally too them - trying to railroad a black woman for being responsible for  all of the cultural and societal failings of the world by, including but not limited to, representing terrorists in court, going leniently on child-porn offenders, being soft on crime overall, and possibly buying Mary J. Blige records when she was in college. 

Many of these GOP senators, in addition to a couple of current and former governors and a former President, are hoping to run for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, and they used these confirmation  hearings to show the right-wing base just how much they hate black women too.   Among the senators expected to run, along with a current governor and the previous President, are:  

Tom Cotton

Ted Cruz

Ron DeSantis

Josh Hawley

Marco Rubio

Donald Trump

I didn't have to think long for a list that was just as scary as that. It was the VIP list at the 1934 Nuremberg rally, which reads as follows:

Hans Frank

Joseph Goebbels 

Hermann Göring

Rudolf Hess

Heinrich Himmler

Adolf Hitler

When people talk about fascism taking over America, this is what they mean. And if - when? - America's homegrown Nazis goose-step their way down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, being the smartest person on the Supreme Court won't help Justice-to-be Jackson much. 😨

My apologies to Joe Queenan for ripping off his joke comparing the Nuremberg Rally VIP list to the cast of St. Elmo's Fire. 

Who You Callin' a Pedophile Lover?

You wouldn't call you mama that!

Sorry, I got carried away trying to emulate a sista when I'm not even a brutha, and as I am being politically incorrect, I'll stop there.  But black women won't, now that U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) has labeled Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson as being too lenient on child pornographers.

"Judge Jackson has a pattern of letting child porn offenders off the hook for their appalling crimes, both as a judge and as a policymaker," Hawley said on Twitter. "She's been advocating for it since law school. This goes beyond 'soft on crime.'  I'm concerned that this a record that endangers our children." 

Hawley took out of context some comments that Judge Jackson made when she was on a commission looking at sentencing guidelines a decade ago.  She professed to being "surprised" by the Justice Department's assertion at a hearing that child-sex offenders may not actually be pedophiles but rather people looking for company among people who are interested in child pornography. "

"So I’m wondering whether you could say that there is a — that there could be a — less-serious child pornography offender who is engaging in the type of conduct in the group experience level?" she asked at the hearing. "They're very sophisticated technologically, but they aren't necessarily that interested in the child pornography piece of it?"

As Will Weissert and Calvin Woodward of the Associate Press wrote, "Being surprised by an assertion and wanting to know more are not the same as endorsing it."

Hawley also accused Judge Jackson being a supporter of terrorists because she represented Guantánamo Bay detainees as a public defender and in private practice.  She did so because they were suspected of being terrorists and every suspect is innocent until proven guilty.  At least that was the thinking until then-Attorney General Edwin Meese explained otherwise in 1985 when asked if he thought criminal suspects should have legal protection from being coerced into confessing to a crime they're being accused of: 

"Suspects who are innocent of a crime should. But the thing is, you don't have many suspects who are innocent of a crime. That's contradictory. If a person is innocent of a crime, then he is not a suspect."

Yes, this man was actually the chief law enforcement officer of the nation for three and a half years.

Meese seems like Louis Brandeis compared to Josh Hawley, whose attacks on Judge Jackson only had one effect - he picked a fight with a black woman, something Messe was smart enough never to do.

And Hawley should know that you should never, never, ever do that, especially if you're accusing a black woman of having an amoral mindset or cheapening and coarsening popular culture.  Because an attack on one black woman is an attack on all of them, and they respond like angry birds of prey on the attacker.  Ask white guys who went after Beyoncé on the cultural issue and ended up needing emergency medical care.

Okay, I'm kidding about the ER bit, but I'm sure there are a lot of honkies whose ears are still ringing from the screams they got from black women after bashing Beyoncé - louder than any sexually charged heavy-metal song they've ever listened to.  Hawley has ensured that black women will be shouting him down as he walks toward the Capitol (looks like he won't be pumping his fists in solidarity with them), they'll jam his Senate office's switchboard with angry calls, and they'll flood his Twitter account with so many negative comments that his account will crash, and possibly Twitter as well.   

The Jackson Supreme Court confirmation hearings begin today.  Expect an entertaining show but not something enlightening.  As for Josh Hawley . . . well, man, I feel sorry for you.  No, not really, I really don't.   Remember - you asked for it!