Republican-fascist judges on the 8th circuit, one appointed by Bush II, the other by Trump BOTH LOSERS OF THE ELECTIONS THAT MADE THEM PRESIDENT, ONE PUT IN BY REPUBLICAN FASCISTS ON THE SUPREME COURT, have ruled,in Minnesota that valid ballots delayed by the Trump-Dejoy tampering with the vote, cannot be counted if the crippled U.S. Postal Service has not delivered them. Not only are they obviously meddling in an election to prevent valid votes from being counted, they are doing so in opposition to the long-standing practice against courts fucking with elections this close to election day. These Republican-fascists on the 8th district have even acted as advocates for the Minnesota legislature which was not a party to the action, acting as advocates and judges in the same case on behalf of plaintiffs who had no standing to represent the legislature:

Thursday’s decision involved yet another dispute over state election law—a dispute that should never have landed in any federal court in the first place. A Minnesota statute requires voters to return mail ballots by Election Day. In May, a voting rights group sued the state to block this rule; it alleged that the deadline is unconstitutional in light of the pandemic, which has placed extraordinary pressure on the state’s vote-by-mail system. Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon chose not to fight the lawsuit. Instead, he entered into a consent decree (essentially a settlement) with the plaintiffs, approved by a state court, that halted enforcement of the Election Day deadline. The Minnesota Legislature has expressly authorized the secretary of state to “adopt alternative election procedures” whenever a law “cannot be implemented as a result” of a court order. Pursuant to that law, Simon extended the ballot deadline by one week and informed every voter that their ballot would be counted so long as it is mailed by Election Day and received by Nov. 10.

And because I think judges and "justices" shouldn't be allowed to not have their outrageous, criminal actions pinned to them, here's the paragraph that names these scumbags:

By a 2–1 vote, a panel of judges for the 8th Circuit reversed Brasel. The majority consisted of Bobby Shepherd, a George W. Bush nominee, and L. Steven Grasz, a notoriously unqualified Trump nominee. Jane Kelly, Barack Obama’s lone nominee to the court, dissented. Shepherd and Grasz blew past the standing problem, holding that the plaintiffs would suffer “a concrete and particularized injury” if late-arriving ballots were counted because they would create an “inaccurate vote tally.” Shepherd and Grasz then ruled that the secretary of state likely exceeded his powers under state law and infringed on the Legislature’s constitutional rights by changing the deadline. They directed the state to segregate ballots that arrive after Nov. 3, and strongly implied that they will soon declare these “invalid” and order them “removed from vote totals.”

Just in case anyone thinks I'm being too hard on that corrupt branch of government.

I hope elections officials in Minnesota and other places where these fascists in black robes try to rig the election of Republican fascists counts those votes and announces how they were cast so that if the fascists manage to reimpose Trump and a Republican-fascist congress on us, the level of their illegitimacy can be measured.

For those of us old enough to remember back when the Republicans who were fascists, and back then there was something of a distinction, there are deep ironies in it turning out that it's Republicans who have sold us out to the Russians, the other various anti-democratic gangsters. And the right-wing media, the ideological and corporate descendants of Red Channels and the media that were all anti-commie back during that period Hollywood presents with such romantic unreality in the post-war period.

But there is no greater irony than the role that Republicans on courts have played in ratfucking things for the effort to sell us to Putin and the others, in that they have broken every single stand of (yeah, right) "principle" that American conservatism is allegedly based in. The alleged opposition to courts playing a political role, of "judicial activism" of the concentration of power in not only the federal government but in the hands of the president, all of the old lines that they used to pull in the 1960s and which I'm sure they still repeat like a Chatty Cathie doll even as their actions prove they only favor that when it's a Democrat who is doing it or if it's a liberal majority (like we've ever had one of those) on the Supreme Court doing it.

There are Constitutional amendments that need to be put into place along with supporting law, those have become all too obvious as the courts have both been gamed and, with obvious knowledge of the judges and "justices" have not only enabled the crimes of the Trump regime, they have been an active part in those crimes. The chief "justice" on the court has twigged onto the fact that the Supreme Court had pretty much blown the game and he's joined in a few politically motivated concurrence with decisions that have not gone the way with the Republican-fascist majority - Roberts wants to preserve the court as it is with all of its outrageous privileges and its usurped powers, I suspect most of all he wants the Court to remain the one branch of the federal government that has resisted anti-corruption measures such as reporting the financial interests of the members of that stinking cesspool of corruption. I wonder what would happen if the Congress passed and a president Biden signed a law that required a sitting "justice" and a prospective "justice" to reveal things such as that. You want to bet the putrid court would not find some lame "constitutional" argument that they could not be subject to those clearly less than needed starts at anti-corruption? 

 

Some of the commentators I've read are calling what these two criminals have done the "Amy Coney Barrett effect" theorizing that the fascists on lower courts are going to be testing to see just how far the fascists on the Supreme Court will allow them to go in the most anti-democratic actions. 

 

There has to be an amendment to the damned Constitution that removes any judge or "justice" for violating the  right of qualified voters being able to cast a vote and having it counted.  The whole judicial branch of the government has gotten out of hand, it's one of the greatest dangers to equality and democracy, made so by the evil contained in the Constitution, against which we will have to fight as long as such language remains in it.   The place to identify what will present current and future fascists in black robes to do that is in their rulings and dissents as well as the legal writings of those in the law schools who present them with the excuses they then use.  That language used against equality and democracy will be there for them to use until it is removed and changed to make it more specific.  

If we are extremely unlucky, the arming of fascist under the "Second Ammendment" by the Roberts and other fascist courts will soon prove how dangerous it is to allow those things to remain in that document.  THAT WE EVEN HAVE TO CONSIDER THE POSSIBILITY OF TRUMP FASCISTS WITH AUTOMATIC WEAPONS KILLING PEOPLE RESISTING HIS RE-IMPOSITION ON US IS AN OUTRAGE THAT FLOWS DIRECTLY FROM THE SUPREME COURT AND THE REPUBLICAN-FASCIST PARTY THAT THEY MADE THOSE RULINGS ON BEHALF OF.  

Even if Trump and the Republicans are soundly rejected, this is another bullet we may have dodged, what seems like a long time ago, now,  I was warning of the consequences of not quite dodging it the next time.  We're dead.  

Here, I'll post it again:

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

WHAT IF WE DODGE THE BULLET?

What if they lose? What if the congress investigates the crimes of the Bush regime and those are stopped? What if things go back to normal? After what we've seen the past forty years, if things can go back to normal it won't be a blessed relief, it will be a disaster. Our recent history proves that we have fatal problems in the foundation of the American government.

Our elections have to be fixed, not just returned to c. 1964. We have to secure the vote, from before it is cast to counting to reporting the results to their fulfillment. No elections official, secretary of state, or judge can ever be allowed to prevent another legal ballot being cast or counted or made to count. The sleazy behavior we've seen from every level from elections clerk to Supreme Court and the Executive wouldn't be tolerated in a real democracy. A democracy needs it to be an impeachable crime for a Supreme Court Justice to say that a Citizen of the United States does not have a right to vote. That is a fundamental contradiction of the role of the court in a democracy. Anyone who believes that has no place on our court or in our government.

The media, and today that means the electronic media, have to have their self-interested biases exposed and it's pollution scrubbed out of our politics. They have to be forced to perform the public service they promised, including standards of fairness. Broadcast stations must provide real news, including local news, which has to be unbiased and fair. And as a comment here yesterday said, without diverse ownership of the media, they won't serve the entire public.

The cable "news" channels have betrayed the public's trust even more flagrantly than broadcast, spreading lies effective enough to start the most idiotic and dangerous war of our history. We will pay the cost of their lies for decades, in blood as well as money.

They also aided the Bush putsch of 2000 and the earlier scheme to remove a genuinely elected President on trumped up charges and lies. Pretending that a rogue cable industry isn't a danger to freedom has to stop. Anyone who defends them on their crimes against democracy is a dupe or a profiteer. Put them under the same public service requirements as broadcast media. Media passes itself off as the voice of the people, then let them show it by putting the public before their investors and owners.

Recent history proves that self-government can't depend on leaving it to chance. Laissez faire democracy dies and the death is never a natural one. It lets the powerful and wealthy swamp the People's voice almost all of the time. In the same comments mentioned above, it was pointed out that the Supreme Court rulings making corporations artificial people made that all the more true.

Our government is always presented as having three branches, those are where almost all of the pitiful efforts at reform are concentrated. And that hasn't worked, we have the most dishonest government of our lifetimes. Putting patches on the process to make it a level field is unrealistic to the level of willful blindness. Powerful interests have power. They will always win when they have equal access to the process and own the media. The handful of examples where individuals or small groups win over the big guy make for sentimental TV movies, using them as proof that the system works is calculated dishonesty.

If the People are neglected then it all goes wrong. They won't even show up to vote. That step isn't a naive social studies lesson that you stop thinking about after the test in fourth grade. You don't go on to the higher study of civics and leave it behind. There is nothing higher in a democracy that the People, there is no act of government more important than their Vote. Abraham Lincoln, one of the real founders of the country we live in today, gave the formula for it. You know it by heart. He didn't mention the congress, the executive or the high church of the judiciary. He said that the enormous sacrifice of the American People in the Civil War was so that government of the People, by the People, and for the People shall not perish from the earth.

Any aftermath of the Bush II disaster that doesn't include changes to these laws will be just the beginning of the next time. Not securing the Vote, the will of the People; and forcing their own chosen responsibilities on the media, the only guarantee of an informed and realistic Vote, is a welcome mat for the next would-be dictator. Any liberal, leftist, Democrat, independent, even "moderate" Republican who lets two years go by without enacting real electoral and media reform had better beware. It's just a matter of waiting before the same coalition of corporate interests, bigots, oligarchs and haters tries again. They might be as slow and stealthy as they were this time, buying up media, using it to spread lies that "more speech" can't drown out, but they'll make a come back.