Amy Coney Barrett's playing of the game of not answering Democrat's questions on the phony and transparent dodge that such things might impinge on cases that the Supreme Court deigns to hear, to the extent that the liar and credentialed "constitutional expert" wouldn't say that Trump can't delay the date of an election or refuse to leave office when his term ends without trying to keep it through violence forces the question of why a candidate for the court can get away with playing that charade when, from what Sheldon Whitehouse revealed about the enormously valuable career help she got from the Federalist Society and two of the other parts of the front group it is, she could accept the help of people who not only might but rig things to get business before the court.
That presentation of Supreme Court corruption, with more than a mere implication that "justice" Alito is acting in concert with them, was a real eye opener but I think this part of it wasn't explored and it should be for its relation to the dance of "no comment" that Amy Coney Barrett played as exposed so well by Diane Feinstein, Amy Klobuchar and Kamala Harris among others.
Since a sitting judge on the 7th Circuit could claim she didn't know I suppose a mere mortal such as myself can be pardoned for not knowing that in their devotion to justice and the rule of law, so they say, the "justices" of the Supreme Court have made themselves the beneficiaries of the lowest requirements of ethics of any part of the federal government. Though Barr and Republicans have put Trump in their class of those few, those very few who are exempt from such good-government measures, no doubt the present Republican-fascist Supreme Court helping them to do that as far as they dared.
When Senator Whitehouse was giving us his quick course in the Supreme Court and the dark money that the Supreme Court has given free reign in our politics and, now we found out the judicial, allegedly non-political branch has self-permitted itself such un-illegalized graft, my mind went back to the memory of reading of "justice" Antonin Scalia accepting a hunting trip, I believed it was, from a party who either had recently or would probably have business before the court. And, from remembering that in a period of sleeplessness worrying about the future of the United States, I find this morning that I remembered right.
Justice Antonin Scalia was taking a free vacation at the exclusive Cibolo Creek Ranch in West Texas when he was found dead inside a guest room Saturday. The trip, the Washington Post reports, was a gift from the ranch’s owner, who just last year obtained a favorable result from the Supreme Court.
The 30,000-acre hunting ranch, located around 30 miles from the Mexican border in the West Texas town of Shafter, is also the home of owner John B. Poindexter, who owns the Houston-based manufacturing firm J.B. Poindexter & Co.
The two men already had a tenuous connection outside of the ranch. Last year, an age discrimination suit filed against the Mic Group, a subsidiary of J.B. Poindexter & Co., reached the Supreme Court, which declined to hear the case.
In an email to the Post, Poindexter said Scalia, who was invited to the ranch as a personal guest, was not charged for his stay. A person “familiar with the ranch’s operations” tells the paper Poindexter typically hosts these free events two to three times a year.
“I did not pay for the Justice’s trip to Cibolo Creek Ranch,” Poindexter wrote in a brief email Tuesday. “He was an invited guest, along with a friend, just like 35 others.”
Poindexter added: “The Justice was treated no differently by me, as no one was charged for activities, room and board, beverages, etc. That is a 22-year policy.’’
Poindexter explicitly denied paying for Scalia’s charter flight to the ranch and declined to identify the friend who accompanied Scalia or any of the other guests on the trip.
I wonder what a full accounting of such items of value come the way of the Supreme Court justices would show. I believe Alito and Tomas have also accepted such items of value while sitting on the court and I wouldn't be surprised if others have as a regular thing. What is clear from the exposure of Scalia's corruption in this regard - he suffered little to no repercussions from it, we've got a bought Supreme Court.
It's in every way past time that that branch of the government is looked at for the rot it brings to the rest of the government, it's been pretty rotten from the time that it was packed with slave owners who regularly propped up slavery to their own benefit. The deified slave owner - not one of the "nice" ones, either - the man who invented "judicial review" all on his own without a word in the Constitution creating that Court created power, John Marshall - certainly didn't intend to let justice to slaves impinge on his personal fortune. And the corruption has gone on from there. Oh, and like the lawyer-liar he was, he found verbal fig-leaves to ensure that his scrupulous qualms never got in the way of the institution he so well benefited from. In the way that history is sometimes mal-practiced (and biography generally is) there are those who take a more permissive view of such evil but some take a more exigent view of the matter.
The greatest flaw in the government that Marshall influenced to such a high degree was its failure to effectively deal with the question of slavery, and this flaw would lead to confrontation and Civil War. The Chief Justice, a Virginian slaveholder, was well situated to impact law on this issue. One biographer, Albert Beverage, states that Marshall regretted the existence of slavery but saw no way of getting rid of it. Another, Charles Hobson, opined that he had a personal distaste for slavery but was reluctant to second-guess legislative determinations that slavery was lawful. Moderation on the slavery question was a key component of Marshall’s judicial philosophy. Not everyone holds such a positive opinion of his conduct. Historian R. Kent Newmyer believes that Marshall found no moral fault with slavery, and that he "showed little interest in the subject." This disinterest had consequences, as Marshall’s Court manifested no appreciation for the constitutional nature of slavery. When Mima Queen v. Hepburn, 11 U.S. [7 Cranch] 290 (1813) gave the Court a chance to place human rights before property rights, Marshall decided for property rights.
When it comes to slave owning, slavery enabling "justices" count me on the side of those who aren't willing to overlook them violently holding people in bondage. For slavery is inescapably an act of violence because no one would be a slave without the threat of violence and death being constantly held over them. Such is the morality of the "founders" and the legal profession that was such a big part in permitting slavery, habits the profession has not shed with the Emancipation Proclamation.
To read more about how Marshall's influence influenced a gullible fellow "justice" who started out as an abolitionist, the fine historian Paul Finkleman's book on the topic Supreme Injustice: Slavery In The Nation's Highest Court is a real eye opener. As the never voter or legislature ratified word of these slave owners on the Court still govern us through the Court and its traditions, I think nothing could be more relevant. Neither are the items such as the Electoral College and the anti-democratic constitution of the Senate which were placed there to protect the slave owners, whose ideological and in some cases actual descendants use them to rig elections with the help of the Court. I fully expect we may see the Roberts Court do what he, Kavanaugh and Barrett did in the disgusting 2000 Supreme Court putsch that put the loser of the election in the presidency.
You can read part 1 of Paul Finkleman's paper on the topic and part 2. I may be alone in it but reading about this it is far less surprising to me what evil has been done with his extra-Constitutional power grab for the court, judicial review, the famous claim backing up Marbury v Madison lived on to do even more evil such as it will soon with Obamacare. It is no surprise to me that the formerly rarely used self-granted power of the court was used for its second time five decades later to issue the infamous Dred Scott decision that declared Black People didn't have the status of human beings under the Constitution and that the intellectual descendants of the slave-power, the Republican-fascists find it so useful. For those in New England who love to imagine that John Adams, about the only "founder" who never owned a slave, was some paragon of virtue, he was the one who appointed Marshall to be Chief "Justice".
Note: This again was posted in draft form instead of final form, I'm having eye trouble exacerbated by allergies. Though I've been editing on the fly, I hope when my vision clears up I don't find too much to be embarrassed over - no, that's a lie, I'm shameless. I never feel embarrassed over it.
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