The Open Sewer that is Now the Supreme Court
Let’s just say it right up front – the current majority of the Supreme Court doesn’t give a flying fuck about the Constitution, the Rule of Law or you. Given opportunity after opportunity to be the last line defense of The People against a continuous onslaught on the rule of law and common decency the Court has failed miserably time after time. John Roberts has presided over the biggest abortion (no pun intended) of jurisprudence in US history, and appears to have lost what little control he had over what can now only be termed the Trump-Thomas Court of Law by and for the Highest Bidder, bought and paid for by Leonard Leo and the billionaire class.
Over the last two decades the Court has unraveled decades (sometimes centuries) of well established constitutional precedent, ruling that money equals speech (for billionaires and corporations), money doesn’t corrupt, gun safety laws are inconvenient to criminals and gun manufacturers, the EPA is a waste of time, political gerrymandering that destroyed state and federal legislatures is OK, unions that protect workers’ rights are tiring for corporations, separation of church and state is a quaint concept, state funding of religious schools is fine, public health policy to protect the health of the nation is unconstitutional, law enforcement can’t be held accountable for abusing the rights of the accused or wrongly convicted, access to reasonable healthcare is not a right, and state funding of campaign to counter billionaires’ money is illegal. Added to this long list of disasters are the most damaging rulings, which were the gutting of the Voting Rights act and the reversal of Roe v. Wade, which is the first time in United States History that a personal right was taken away. As I write this, the Trump-Thomas Court is now actually considering reversing the long established principal that US agencies can implement US law (Chevron Rule) and if a bump stock, which turns a rifle into a machine gun actually turns a rifle into a machine gun. During oral argument Alito remarkably mused that bump stocks should be allowed so people with arthritis can easily fire off 400 rounds a minute. Finally, Alito and Thomas have already sent the signal that marriage equality and contraception are on the chopping block as abhorrent as that idea is.
On top of all that, the Court is now actively helping TFG avoid prosecution by slow walking his ridiculous claim that a US president has absolute immunity from any criminal prosecution, even for murder. So get this – in December, US Attorney Jack Smith, so he can get the election interference trial before the People before the next election, begged the Court to hear TFG’s claim that he has absolute immunity . Oh, NO, says the Court, being all law and order, let it go through the appeals process first. OK, so Smith does that and the DC Circuit quickly handed down a unanimous ruling that Trump’s claim is nonsense with an opinionthat legal experts say was “masterful”. Of course, TFG then appeals to the Court, and then, after sitting on it for 16 days, decides that oh, we want to hear the case anyway, even thought there are no legal issues left undecided, pushing their hearing off to late April. In other words, the Trump-Thomas Court is actively running cover for TFG to get him through the election for the highest office in the land without going to trial for trying to overthrow the US government. If TFG is elected, it’s then game over for all the federal cases including the one for election interference and the stolen classified documents case. It’s not just likely, but damn certain that the Court will then step in again and stay the state court cases against him until they carry him feet first out of the White House (whenever that happens) since he’ll never voluntarily leave office if ever handed it again.
And there you have it. The United States Supreme Court, which is supposed to be the last line of defense against corruption, criminals, bad law, insurrection, and the stripping of constitutional rights is doing just the opposite, throwing The People to TFG and his goons. And they’re doing it while failing to police themselves against blatant corruption. As Steven Colbert put it last night, for the election case hearing, Thomas will put his tip jar out for that one. And Sam will be whining about how unfair Americans are toward him. I mean, he’s just doing his job taking away rights and pandering to religious zealots and gun nuts, right?
Amen
1The supremes are the federalist society’s arm of government. We don’t even have a vote in it. As I said yesterday, we are all screwed (f…ed).
2With each subsequent case Kavanaugh seems to say to no one in particular, “hold my beer.”
3A Friday image:
https://nitter.unixfox.eu/pic/media%2FGHjZjg1XUAAKTWN.jpg%3Fname%3Dsmall%26format%3Dwebp
4And the saddest part of all this SCOTUS and lower court packing by savvy Republicans has been that Democrats have been asleep at the wheel for the last forty-five+ years in regards to the total importance of shaping the US judiciary [amongst many other issues].
Democratic ‘leadership’s’ blindness, inaction, a stupid and fanciful belief in a non-existent ‘bi-partisanship’ and ‘collegiality’, with an almost total lack of tactical and strategic planning* and action against a true, but always underestimated, enemy, has put our nation in extreme risk [time and again, but never like today].
One of President Obama’s greatest failures was allowing the Republicans totally allied against him to stymie his many appointments to the judiciary. President Biden has allowed this to continue.
The Democratic Party continues to fail almost totally in all tactical and strategic planning and actions against sworn enemies*. They have yet to even recognize the Rethugs as actual enemies, which they have been in fact and reality for many decades.
And the woefully gullible Democrats never even anticipate that the Rethugs always act in bad faith and devious manner, without fail.
.
* I constantly study military history, and have for decades, from all sides. Such military leaders, and, sad to say, Republicans, exhibit tactical and strategic skills that are rarely revealed as possessed by Democrats.
It’s got to be changed very rapidly, or we are all doomed.
.
[for an example of nearly flawless tactical and strategic planning and actions in the face of the IJN enemy in WWII, read this account of DesRon 23’s ‘Battle of Cape St George’:
COMINCH – Secret Info Bulletin #16-Battle Experience, Battle of Cape St George, New Ireland, 11/24-25/1943-Surface & Air Attacks on Nauru Island, 12/8/1943
https://catalog.archives.gov/id/78559162?objectPage=76
5]
A big PLUS ONE to Sandridge for his comment.
6Mike @6, Thanks.
It really is a major issue with our Democratic ‘leaders’ being so damned shortsighted and ‘accommodating’ with people who want to bury them.
The same with ordinary Democrats, liberals, progressives, who still think that ‘we can get along’ and ‘take the high road’. Bull!
.
I went into the weeds with the historical stuff, and got the link wrong. To start at the beginning with the gripping account of DesRon 23, it’s actually a shortened URL:
https://catalog.archives.gov/id/78559162
An incredible sea story of intelligence [all meanings], planning, execution, effort, boldness, seizing opportunities, near total destruction of the enemy, and complete victory [with no causalities].
7Sandridge,
Right on!
8Note: as far as I can tell, the link Sandridge gave for the WW2 Pacific battle gives the pages of the report in reverse order. If you want to read it, start at page 75 and work backwards to page 1.
9SCOTUS AKA SCOTGOP
10slipstream @8&9, Thanks, I gave the corrected link @7.
It starts at the beginning of the report [which is easy to get to anyway, just scroll the right side of the page thumbnails].
Go to the Archives home page and you have almost all American history available.
Here is the Desron 23 account, plus the Nauru task force one [2 action accounts in 1 report, both very interesting] :
https://catalog.archives.gov/id/78559162
Keep in mind that it was apparently written by flag officers far from the scene a short time later, based on the actual deck logs, war diaries, and action reports [which I also have] written by the USN shipboard combatants.
11It also has some racism and wrong assumptions about the Japanese military ‘mind’.
And now for a really good errrm great news story:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/3/2/2226897/-MAGA-faithful-lose-millions-to-fake-Trump-debit-cards-from-North-Macedonia
“…MAGA marks are repeatedly conned by organized fraudsters using Telegram encrypted channels, deepfake videos, networks of fake “commercial” websites, anonymized credit card processors, and a foreign-owned payment platform operating in Florida. ”
LUV IT! And it looks so easy.
12Hoping that even more scam artists bilk millions of gullible MAGAot cretins of their last dollars, clean out their bank accounts and most of their SS payments. Let them starve.
Hell, if Komrade Donnei finds out about this he’s going to be pissed that he missed this chance to grift his minions yet again. Every dollar those furriner fraudsters abscond with is a dollar not in his wallet.
Or maybe iDJiT’s set it up, or licensed the scam, gets a cut? Nahh, he’d want it all.
El Jefe, I agree with your angst. But as for “first time in United States History that a personal right was taken away”, there was the SC decision that put habeas corpus in abeyance during the Civil War, and the SC approval of herding US citizens into concentration camps in WWII.
But this is the first time without the fig leaf of “during war time conditions”.
13Sandridge,
You bring up a lot of great points. For my two cents, I think at least a significant portion of the Democratic Party is owned by the same corporate interests as the Republican Party. They function as an opposition party in name only, giving us the illusion that we have a choice. Both parties have conspired to ensure that no third party can ever become more than a nuisance or a spoiler in an election. Ever since FDR saved capitalism from itself by wealth distribution, the wealthy have been steadily clawing it back and then some.
We are in the new gilded age. As Jimmy Carter said in 2015, we are an autocracy with unlimited political bribery brought on by Citizen’s United.
90% of the media is owned by 6 conglomerates. They are in business to make money and they will not bite the hand that feeds them. They focus on divisive social issues like immigration, abortion, LGBTQ rights, and the criminal justice system to pit one side against the other. While the populace obsesses over these issues and vilifies those they don’t agree with, the distraction allows the wealthy to hoover up more wealth at the expense of the rest of the population.
The wealthy will never have enough. Most of them pay comparatively little in taxes through tax shelters, offshore accounts and legislation they wrote and got passed by their ownership of the levers of power. Next on the chopping block will be Medicare and Social Security. Some of my Republican friends contend it is rhetoric and they wouldn’t dare go after those programs so they will continue to vote for them. Caveat emptor.
I’ve always heard that politics are cyclical and once the pendulum goes too far to one side that it stops and returns to the opposite side. I’m not sure how that works when the wealthy own the pendulum and apparently the law of gravity.
14A big PLUS ONE from me too, to Sandridge for his comment.
15… and another big PLUS ONE from me, to Mark@14.
16Doonesbury today (Sunday). My sister and brother in law. It makes me crazy because they are really good people who I love.
17Thanks Sandridge, Mark and everyone!
May I again be reminded of the Powell Memo. The Conservatives blueprint for destroying Liberalism once and for all by controlling the Courts, Education and the Main Stream Media.
They all (including MSM) promote outwardly and secretly propagandize a strict Conservative Agenda.
https://www.alternet.org/2018/01/time-overthrow-kings
and …
https://reclaimdemocracy.org/powell_memo_lewis/
18Jace, I read that this morning and thought the family depicted, mother, father and kids, were maggots masquerading as reasonable people. That’s how the next generation of maggots are getting groomed by brainwashing from their parents.
19Also, agree with FrauFree on Mark and Sandridge comments. So frustrating.
Mark @14 & FrauFree, Thanks. We ALL need to start stirring up the political pot, radically. At the pace the Dems are setting, glaciers move faster.
The media you mention is critical, totally stacked towards the Republics.
But the Democrats and the Biden campaign have got to come up with ways to combat that. They’d’ve been drifting along for decades, it’s time to put the pedal to the metal [it’s going to be the last chance].
President Biden just has to AMP IT UP, watching him and the usual media visuals of him is painful.
I get it, he’s pretty old, you do slow down [I’m only a few years younger, almost exactly the same age as Komrade Donnei].
We know that’s pretty misleading, he’s far sharper than TFFG, he’s doing the job quite well. He just isn’t LOOKING the part lately. Komrade Donnei is constantly showing serious cognitive deficiencies, but the media glosses it over, or just cuts it out.
[I’ve watched Biden on TV news, like the PBS Newshour, for many decades, he was always the ‘foreign policy’ go-to guy, having just returned from some overseas trip; and was fairly animated].
Fix it guys!.. Biden’s event producers [whatever they’re called] have just got to do a much better job of presenting the President.
He deserves it, we deserve it.
Just look at the recent dueling border visuals*, tRump won hands down.
Not what he said, which was pure bullshit, but how it LOOKED! That’s what counts..
tRump was surrounded by forceful looking people and lots of steely imagery, the river, barbed wire and giant fencing, etc. A positively masterful stage production.
That stuff gives MAGAots woodies, and impresses even the ‘average Joes’.
President Biden haltingly strolled along with just a couple of ICE uniforms, one a very dowdy-looking female officer, and a couple of SS agents who looked like they just signed on from a day labor camp [check out their seedy ‘suits’].
Biden was in some brush, gesticulating aimlessly, presumably near the river, a broken live oak for a prop. Then a speech where the people behind him looked fairly unhappy, WTF?
Jeeese, what a lame ass presentation by his crew [handlers? they’re so bad you wonder if Joe’s not being sabotaged from within].
But even for a while, the campaign season, Biden needs to REV IT UP a bit. Does he drink coffee or tea? He needs a couple of more cups. Don’t care if they slip him a little coke or meth…anything to speed up his pace.
Puulleeeeze…
.
* I used to live a few miles from the Rio Grande, I know the area. The little road that passed my house ran due south a couple of miles until it reached the river. Nearly every morning, and often during the day, bands of illegal aliens would walk north past my kitchen and living room windows, having just crossed the Rio Grande a short time before, carrying duffels and suitcases. Heading a half mile up to a US highway [US-83], where they would be picked up or catch a bus.
Many thousands did this years ago, with some noise from the Repubs.
But Clinton, and other Dems were the ones who increased the manpower at the Border Patrol and Customs.
But never got the credit, another example of the Democrats’ media ineffectiveness.
And I’ve voted and been a Democrat since the late 1960s, voted for very few Rs, and not in decades [the last was a JP that I knew to be a good guy, I don’t even vote for him anymore].
20Edit: “Many thousands did this years ago,”
should read: ‘Many hundreds of thousands did this years ago, all up and down the Valley,’ .
This was in the ’70s, 80s, and on, not even counting the ones who crossed earlier.
Those numbers you keep hearing [for the last thirty+ years, the exact same numbers!] about there being ~11 million undocumented people in the US, are utter bullshit. There are at least 50-60 million of them here.
21Are Biden’s handlers even aware that he is not motivating voters? If their idea of stepping up his image is to say the “F” word once in a while, it ain’t resonating. I’m generally skeptical about polls, but they’re getting scary for Democrats. I’m getting concerned.
22And then the supremes will join TFFG’s campaign (they already have).
Y’all hear me ranting about how the Hispanic voters are inexplicably slipping away from the Democrats.
Here’s some scary proof, using Texas as an example, although some other states are worse [FL].
IIRC, my US House District [the first below], TX-15, is a prime example.
It slipped from D+3 in 2020, to R+9 in 2022.
A loss of 12 points in 2 years, in a 75% Hispanic [voting #s=~300K, pop is 10-15% higher] place in S TX, —-after 4 years of DJT.
And the Texas Democratic Party just snoozes along…
From ‘Americas Society/Council of the Americas’, “Chart: How U.S. Latinos Voted in the 2022 Midterm Election”:
https://www.as-coa.org/articles/chart-how-us-latinos-voted-2022-midterm-election
2022 versus 2020 elections:
23TX-15 Republican +9 Democrat +3 74.9% 300,588
TX-23 Republican +17 Republican +4 48.0% 265,466
TX-28 Democrat +13 Democrat +19 58.3% 303,399
TX-34 Democrat +8 Democrat +14 70.8% 350,458
Link above from this:
A huge Wake-up Call !:
24https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/3/3/2227202/-A-huge-Wake-up-Call
Like I said, I’m skeptical of polls but this has been consistent and troubling-
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/3/3/2227271/-CBS-Poll-2-28-3-1-2159-people-Margin-2-8-Make-of-it-what-you-will
And tomorrow at 7am pacific time the supremes will announce a ruling to help the orange Donald.
25And how the MSM perpetuates the “legitimacy” of criminal trumpf. Got rid of Chuck Todd only to have a worse Meet the Press moderator. WTF?
26https://www.rawstory.com/trump-nbc-allegedly-welker/
Putin sleepeth not.
27Thanks Steve from Beaverton @26
28but this proves what I’ve been trying to make everyone aware of. About 80% of the MSM are promoting a Conservative agenda under the guise of ‘fair and balanced’ BS. They purposely promote, thru many conniving ways, their radicalized Conservative views.
My locale ABC/NBC Hearst Broadcasting News, in a Liberal town and Liberal state, political coverage is yuugly Conservative in their coverage. Then I discovered their Programs Manager and many of the staff are Christian Nationalists which is why they promote Conservative agenda and downplay Liberal agenda. It’s subtle, unlike Fox News, but it’s your basic ‘Lie and Blame the Democrats’ propaganda message.