Saturday Night Radio Drama - Two Plays Starring Charles Laughton The Fountain and Wet Saturday

I don't like  most of the so-called golden-age radio drama but I have admire Charles Laughton's acting, he's my favorite actor from the period.   Lots of people like the old style stuff so I'll try to post a little more of it in the future.

If We Don't Make The Roberts Court The Last Corrupt Court American Democracy Is Dead

THE ABSURD, NOW, DISGUSTING DEFERENCE and pseudo-religious reverence that the Supreme Court has traditionally been given in the United States is belied by the history of that court.   From the period when it was upholding and expanding slavery, through the period up to and including the Taney Court and when it was upholding American apartheid, white supremacy after the abolition of de jure slavery, "justices" who had a direct or family interest in slavery and the Jim Crow system and who certainly had a social caste interest in them continuing ruled in support of their own, financial interest.  It is ironic that one of the cynical Bush I appointees was a rare Black man who was prepared to promote its revival as he racked up a record of overt corruption graft and grift to match the financial corruption of even the most highly regarded of the slave-owners on the court before the Civil War.  Only the cynicism that put Clarence Thomas on the court has marked appointments to that court throughout its history.  Their support of wage slavery, corporate abuse and even murder (Gorsuch on truckers being forced to choose their job or freezing to death, for example), financial corruption and overturning any effort to reform government to make it do the will of most Americans is the actual majority history of that court.   

The Roberts Court taking that corruption to new depths in its recent rulings such as the one that legalized bribe taking by government officials (such as Thomas and Alito and certainly others are guilty of), taking the right of the destitute to have a place to lay their heads, destroying the voting rights act and on behalf of Republican-fascist states to suppress votes and rig congressional districts, and turning the most corrupt, vulgar and stupid man to have ever gotten the presidency into a monarch worse than George III was permitted to be under British law are merely part of the worst of that Court's history, perhaps its current lowest point.  I doubt even Roger Taney and his corrupt colleagues would have legalized corruption and made the likes of Buchanan immune from prosecution for crimes related to the core functions of the presidency.  John Roberts' name along with those who concurred with those rulings should go down as the most corrupt "justices" in our history for the old fashioned reason that they earned it.  They should be treated with the same regard that Matt Gaetz, Lauren Bobbert, and Marjorie Taylor Green are treated because, despite their Ivy League credentials and their absurd black robes and the putrid legal temple they work in, they are trash.  There is no more obvious instance of sworn public officials violating their oaths of office than those who overturned, not only legitimately adopted and enacted laws but parts of the Constitution, the structure of the government set up under it and even the rejection of a despot with royal powers that was the absolute substance of the Declaration of Independence.  And they did it while lying through their teeth in legaleese.  

In the aftermath I've been curious to hear lawyers on different sides and how many of them can't face the reality of what was done.  Those who like Sonia Sotomayor in her dissent have grimly faced the real meaning of the immunity decision in its full potential to allow presidents to commit even murder and get away with it, a power argued for by Trump's lawyer that the Court majority certainly didn't reject in their decision.  They would certainly have rejected that as too far on that basis unless they intended for a president of their liking having that power.  A power which it is impossible to believe any of those who wrote and ratified the Constitution would have approved, even tacitly.  The royal power they had rejected stopped somewhat short of that.  But not the well-manicured, affluent, Ivy League lawyers on the Roberts Court.  Roberts' public routine of judicial aloofness is as phony as Alito's "christianity."

I've read things like what is described here from law professors at elite universities, one of Coney Barrett's colleagues at that shameful institution, Notre Dame's law school,

University of Notre Dame law professor Derek Muller said the decision makes it harder to prosecute presidents but does not give them a pass.

“It definitely gives more protection to the president, but I think there are pitfalls for future administrations if they were to rely too heavily upon it,” Muller said.

The lines between official and unofficial acts can be blurry, as they are in Trump’s case, Muller said. The decision leaves open the possibility that Smith’s charges against Trump over the election can continue, and it provides some protections to President Biden if he loses to Trump this fall, Muller said.

“It prevents President Trump from prosecuting former president Biden, if that’s the case, on a great many things,” he said. “So there is a way in which it will de-escalate rhetoric about a president or a candidate threatening to prosecute a former president for official acts.”

He called the hypothetical example of an assassination plot absurd. To start, others would likely be loath to carry it out because they would fear they could be prosecuted, he said.

Much more has to play out in the Trump case in the lower courts, and the case could easily return to the Supreme Court, he said. In short, the precise details of when presidents enjoy immunity remain unclear.

Keeping it from playing out in the lower courts is exactly what the decision does, you'd have to be a pretty stupid law professor to not see that, though apparently many are so stupid as to think we'd believe they are that stupid.

I'm going to point out here that this idiot Muller seems to not have watched TV on January 6, 2021 when Trumps insurrectionists were hunting down Nancy Pelosi, TRUMP'S OWN VICE PRESIDENT!, and other members of Congress to murder them on his order.  They forget Trump's demand that metal detectors be inactivated because his insurrectionists weren't going to use any guns they brought with them on him.  AND THAT WAS AT A TIME BEFORE THE ROBERTS COURT HAD GIVEN TRUMP IMPERIAL POWERS OF IMPUNITY.   Anyone who thinks a Trump couldn't get members of the military who were AOK with murdering officials of civilians is too stupid to bus tables at a fast food joint.   Especially given that he has already promised pardons to those who do his bidding.  Many of those involved in the insurrection had held jobs in the military and on police forces, they'd sworn to uphold and defend the country against just such as Donald Trump wanted to be.  
I've listened to even some anti-Trumpists take that belief that there are limits as foolish comfort, forgetting, as apparently law professor Muller does, that presidents are stupidly given the absolute power of pardon in the Constitution.  Trump, himself has said he'd pardon anyone who committed violence on his behalf, and he has pardoned many of his henchmen, as, in fact, Bush I did with the collusion of such of them as Bill Barr.  And they forget that it's the Roberts Court and its like in, no doubt, future Republican-fascist packed courts that will be deciding any challenge to any criminality on the part of a Republican-fascist president and the legitimacy of any pardons granted.   I heard Harry Litmann point out that even the hoped-for evidentiary hearing the Court ordered the trial court judge to conduct will be ratfucked by its ban on the use of evidence of intent.  I can imagine they included that as an excuse for them to quash any attempt to introduce TO THE PUBLIC evidence that might hurt Trump's chance that his worst criminality will be hidden from voters.  The depths of vileness in that decision are only, now becoming evident.  I have no doubt that future Republican-fascist courts enjoying the same ability to do so, will drive things even lower.   

I would bet that three years ago no one would have believed a Supreme Court, even the worst in our history would have done things that the Roberts Court has done for the past several years and certainly plans on doing in the next term.  Anyone who would bet on them not going farther than they have is an idiot.  

The Supreme Court will, as I'm already hearing some predict it will, extend similar emanations of immunity to themselves, I can't believe them legalizing bribery and financial corruption for government officials was done without regard to the financial scandals the Court has been confronted with this year.  If there is one thing we know from the history of that court, from "justices" like the legendary John Marshall, they are fully capable of rendering decisions that benefit their worst financial motivations.  He repeatedly ruled to support slave-holders and even slave-importing pirates after the importation of slaves was made a capital crime by the Congress.  The depths of corruption tied to the financial interests of the "justices" cannot be excluded from the actual history of that court as it is understood by those indoctrinated into the often corrupt secular theology of legal scholarship.  

The Supreme Court has so abused, not only its legitimate powers but such powers as it gave itself in Marbury v. Madison too badly and too dangerously to allow that to continue.  If, by a miracle, we get a strongly Democratic Congress and president, they must legally overturn the usurped power-grab of the Court, put binding, effective and removing ethics requirements on the Court - Clarence Thomas and likely Alito should be investigated criminally for what we already know and imprisoned if they are convicted.  Unless there is a Democratic super-majority in the Senate to impeach them - which I doubt we'll see in our or any ones' lifetimes - we should face the fact that impeachment and conviction of Supreme Court members and presidents is a constitutional mythological entity which will never happen.  The stupidity of an anti-democratic Senate guarantees that.  Impeachment and removal from office as a guarantee of safety from an imperial president or an imperial court is a dangerous myth.  If it were not, it would have worked by now.  

But there is nothing saying that a member of the Court who is convicted of a crime could not be given a twenty-year term without possibility of parole, their office not being any impediment to their imprisonment.  And that should include their colluding spouses, such as Ginny Thomas and any others who made common cause with Trump's insurrection.  I would include in the corruption that would be banned the extremely lucrative career of Roberts' wife in head hunting for law firms that either do or potentially could do business before the Court.  

Those taking such an appointment to such powerful positions should be held to a far higher ethical standard than those for those without such power.  They and their families should understand that is one of the conditions of them accepting such an office.  The talk about that, about a spouse being able to have a career despite its high potential of creating a conflict of interest is wrong.  When it comes to a spouse having a position of great power such as an official in the federal government, the potential for corruption should always outweigh the seeming fairness of their spouse being able to take whatever job they want to.  There is no right for someone to hold a public office, there is no right to be married to someone who holds such a position.  Their private decisions cannot be considered to be more important than the Peoples' need for honest government and an honest legal system.  If their spouse doesn't like that restriction on them making money or indulging in a hobby of extreme anti-democratic agitation, that's the nominees problem and they should probably keep the job they already had.  Frankly, I don't think there has ever been an irreplaceable member of the Supreme Court, one whose seat might not have been better filled by someone else.  We've had less than a handful of presidents who may have been irreplaceable,*

From what I understand the model of that would be Vice President Harris's husband whose legal career in corporate law was put on hiatus for her term in office even though it was extremely unlikely that her duties in office would ever be in conflict with it.  There isn't any right for a Supreme Court "justice" to be a multi-millionaire, thinking of such a thing as a "right" proves how stupid our "rights" language is, now.  We'd be better off if they had to all get by on a working-class salary, them and their spouses.  If she wanted a job she could have found one that had no conflict with his job but they're allowed to do that even when the conflict is so obvious.  I'd like to see them overturn the Constitutional ban on reducing Supreme Court salaries but I doubt we'll see that till after a restoration of intended democratic rule after a catastrophe.  I think the majority on the court would be overpaid at minimum wage.  

There's a point past which a mere appearance of corruption turns into a pattern in which it is entirely more than a mere appearance and the set way of doing business.  The Supreme Court passed that stage of mere appearance during the Marshall Court.  As an appointed, not elected branch of the government, giving them the kind of deference they have enjoyed was always stupid and a violation of the spirit of representative democracy.  They have proven what should always have been suspected, that, unless prevented from outside, an appointed judiciary was bound to become corrupt.  The low regard that the "political" branches are held in even though they had to pass the test of voter approval at regular intervals is misplaced, though through such corruption as Supreme Courts have enabled and supported, elections in the United States are often the duped stupidly putting their exploiters in office.  But such fallible men - and it's all been men so far - are the ones who choose who to put on the Court.  There is now a long standing pattern of Republicans elevating some of the worst for some time now.  Certainly in this century only two of those, Stevens and Souter have demonstrated an unwillingness to be corrupt on a partisan basis, the rest of Republican appointees, in cases such as Bush v Gore and those legalizing political corruption, vote suppression and rigging, and making Donald Trump immune from criminal prosecution are among the worst in the history of that court.  The Roberts Court should be the last straw in the continuation of that disgusting history.  The ordure in that Court has made drastic changes in it a necessity if equality before the law and democracy, itself, is going to survive.  Nothing can be allowed to stay the same, from their self-imposed impunity from ethics laws to the amber-tinted, awed piety style of Court reporting, all of that is part of their criminality and treason against democratic government.  The history of corruption on that court should be opened up and fully exposed, even going back to Marshall who was about as evil as a slave-holder could be expected to be.

* Washington who made himself so by relinquishing power to his successor,   Lincoln who fought the Civil War and ended legal slavery, FDR who saved the country from the Republican depression and foreign fascists, the very same forces we are facing now. LBJ who forced the adoption of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts using his enormous knowledge as a member of the Senate to do that.   I think if President Biden has a second term with a Democratic Congress, he may join that short list because we are in danger in ways that the others never faced.  The Roberts Court can be counted on to prevent that if they can get away with it.  They would welcome a Republican-fascist despot because they would serve the same purposes with pleasure and to their own profit.  

** Souter warned twelve years ago about someone like Trump getting power in the United States due to the profound ignorance of civic processes among Americans.   Given that warning you'd have hoped he would have done more to prevent that than he apparently has.  I haven't noticed him doing much of anything to counter Trump or the Roberts Court making what kept him awake at night the horrific reality we live with 24 hours a day.  

 

I would agree with what he said though I would say that at least as important, probably more so than  mere ignorance is something he touched on as a "feeling of responsibility" is the deficit of any sense of morality which is an even more important foundation for democracy.   I think the fact is we have to start positively instill in all Americans of all ages in the moral bases of equality and, so democracy.  And I mean in school children no less than those who are already supposedly adults.   And, far from Souter's charmingly naive concept of instilling that through high school civics classes, the only effective means of doing that is a requirement based in the mass media, the entertainment media being entirely more effective in doing that OR INSTILLING ITS OPPOSITE TENDENCY TOWARDS FASCIST STRONG-MAN RULE than the pseudo-journalistic parts of it. 

The Tragedy of Nicaragua Since Samoza

HAVING RECENTLY gotten into an argument with a young friend in her 20s about the increasing necessity of voting for President Biden again,  it got to the point where she asked me if I was familiar with Noam Chomsky.   I could tell her I probably first read him about thirty or forty years before she was born.  I added that I'd written him a letter once and he'd answered it.   After Violetta Chamorro won the presidency of Nicaragua, ending the Sandinista government,  I asked Chomsky how he could repeatedly see such things happen and not fall into despair.  He answered saying that he had no right to fall into despair which, considering how much my opinion of Chomsky has taken a hit since then, I go back to repeatedly as being one of the soundest things someone on the secular left has ever said to me.  

Did I know who Noam Chomsy is! 

I also asked her if she had any idea of who Chomsky intended to vote for in November, something I don't know.   If he doesn't vote for Biden he'll be voting for Trump no matter who he marks the ballot for or doesn't mark it for.   Those are the only two alternatives under our dangerous presidential system as opposed to a prime ministerial system in which you could vote for the Democrats' congressional representatives and end up with a Democratic prime minister.   Our system, when copied by later developing countries is associated with falling into dictatorial rule than the prime ministerial system, though it has plenty of problems, too.  But ours is far more dangerous for putting everything into one person who could die or be assassinated or otherwise not win on election day.   As we have learned, especially with the collusion of the Rehnquist Court in 2000 and the upcoming Roberts Court efforts to put Trump back in office, those dangers have increased with the ruthlessness of the Republican-fascist Supreme Court.

Anyway, reading this article about the 2024 Sandinista government's oppression, the then leader of the 1980's Sandinista government and present-day dictator, Daniel Ortega and his wife-Vice President  Rosario Murillo, are well on the way to copying much of what the previous dictators of the country did.   They are eliminating any institution or group or individuals who could mount an opposition to their dictatorship.   As an admirer of the then figure in the democratic Sandinista government, the late Ernesto Cardenal and an opponent of the Ortega dictatorship as it left behind their supposed ideals, the current Ortega dictatorship's violent actions against the Catholic Church resonate with irony and a sense of deja vu.   Even more ironically,  the Trump regime, in an executive order, targeted Murillo.  The Trump order called on Nicaragua to "restore democracy."   Ha! 

I will probably use this ironic situation in the future as an example of how Marxism an anti-democratic ideology, no matter how circumstances force "moderate" Marxists such as constituted the original Sandinista party, to accept some of the norms of liberal democracy.   The ease with which Marxists can convince themselves and gull others into going past those as easily as the Nazis convinced the German establishment to in the early 1930s is a lesson in how dangerous that ideology is.   Our own secular-civic mock-religion is quite dangerous enough on that count as we are just beginning to discover and, for People of Color, woke Women, woke anyone, really, that is no new discovery.   

Things are a lot more complex than I thought they were in the 1980s as I opposed the Reagan-Bush I terror campaign to reimpose fascist dictatorship in Nicaragua, though it was possible to believe, then, that the Sandinistas of that time might actually develop into a real egalitarian democracy.    I still think of the election of Violetta Chamorro as a tragic capitulation of the Nicaraguan People to Reagan-Bush era terrorism though I doubt the government under Ortega would have ended up as I hoped it would.   Back then I thought democracy was possible under an ideologically materialistic regime but I don't believe that any more.   I still admire the Catholic left which I can say my mother supported, even in the face of John Paul II's and the then Cardinal Ratzinger's opposition.  I don't respect Marxism at all, any more.  I was never a Marxist, myself, never having been a materialist and realizing as soon as I looked into it that it was based on some pretty naive pseudo-scientific scientism.    But I thought it was possible for them to do better than the fascists and oligarachs.   I don't think anything but a radically egalitarian and moral democratic government is reliable.   Not in Nicaragua and not in the United States.   Catholic social teaching is hardly 100% reliable, it is a human conception so it couldn't be, but it's miles ahead of both liberal democracy and any strength of Marxism.   I'd have trusted Cardenal with power, he'd have carried it through though he'd probably have been murdered by Reagan's terrorists.   As I pointed out recently the liberal democracies have a lot of sins to answer for even from before Trump. 

The Great Gray Whore, The NYT

can go to hell.   Too little, too late and it won't change a damned thing in their content going on.   Mara Gay as well as A. G. Sulzberger want to protect the Trump tax giveaway to the rich.  It's not only what they've done to Biden, what they did to Hillary Clinton is what started this nightmare.  

Colbert can go soak his head, too.   You can't trust a comedian or a show biz liberal, in the end.   What they really care about is the next laugh no matter what the consequences are. 

1934 Chick Webb - Stompin’ At The Savoy

 

Just felt like hearing it again today.  Chick Webb was one of the true greats. 

The Source Of The Roberts Court Putsch Against Democracy Has To Finally Be Cut Off

SO, IT'S BEEN just over a week since the Republican-fascist six on the Supreme Court, not being content with merely abolishing federal laws, officially abolished a country of laws and not of men. Or. rather, one Republican-fasicst man, Donald Trump, apparently making the stupidest, most vulgar, most fascist president in our history above the law is their judicial ideal.   As I will always bring up, Louis Boudin pointed out that the self-usurped powers of the Supreme Court had already done that in Marbury v Madison, making us a law of whatever the Supreme Court majority or consensus said the Constitution meant at any given time.  That had been accomplished by Court usurpation as the seed of Marbury v Madison came to harvest.  Though he was too polite to call it usurpation, I'm not polite when it comes to the Court.  Though there were some rare voices of dissent to that at planting time, such as when Jefferson warned of in at least one letter, that power lay there unused until the Taney Court used it to issue the Dred Scott decision, overturning a long standing and duly adopted federal law in order to turn Black People into non-people for all legal purposes and extending the practice of slavery throughout the United States and its territories, no matter what the Congress and Presidents  and what state governments had decided in that regard.  It is quite probable that that encouragement to the slave-power by the "justices" a number of whom benefitted personally from slavery is what led to the Civil War.  It was, in fact, the first significant use of the power John Marshall and his majority on the Court invented by way of unelected Supreme Court supremacy over the elected Congress and President, making them supreme over The People as well as their elected representatives.  So, in a way, they had demoted all People in the United States even as they reduced Black People to chattle having no rights that any white person was bound to respect.  That last point isn't one I can recall reading that point made before, that since the Supreme Court put itself above the elected representatives of The People, they have, in very real effect, already declared themselves to be above The People who vote for their representatives.  Under that rule, used that way, we are all less than 3/5ths persons whenever the Court majority decides we are.  Is it any wonder they decided to Dred Scott Women in this term?  

By stupid custom and even stupider habit and long standing Court practice, we have become accustomed to the very usurpation of unconstitutional power the Supreme Court has increasingly practiced, despite its major being used over and over again to violate the supposed separation of delegated powers under the Constitution though, with a few exceptions during such rarest eras in Court history as the Warren Court for less evil purposes.  But it is a power largely waged in the service of the richest, most privileged, largely white-straight-affluent males, in most of the use of that power. If that hadn't been the use of it, I doubt it would ever have survived the first time it was not used in for that purpose.  That history of the real effect of the Marbury power grab should convince any stupid liberals who believe it will be used the way Earl Warren and his colleagues tried to use it even most of the time should shatter their illusions about it.  That delusion extends, unfortunately, to our elected federal officials, perhaps because too many of them are lawyers who have been indoctrinated into that anti-democratic way of thought.  

It is astonishing, now, in 2024 that any Democratic President or Congress would respect that usurped unconstitutional power BECAUSE THE COURT SAYS IT'S THERE BECAUSE THE ROBERTS COURT PROVES EVEN THE SUPREME COURT DOESN'T PRESERVE SUPREME COURT DECISIONS.  If that power is legitimate, the current Court would feel bound to respect what they so mendaciously called "settled law" "long standing precedent" during their confirmation hearings, under oath.   President Biden and the Congress should make it clear that any ruling on the basis of the privilege the Court has given itself to overturn duly adopted federal law will not be implemented nor will it be allowed to stand.   The Courts should be required to enforce laws until they are overturned unless there is a clear and clearly unanimous holding that the law is obviously unconstitutional.  No split decision on that count should be allowed to stand as determinative.  As the Roberts Court should be infamous as having proved, they don't at any given time honor the meaning that even previous majorities, perhaps even unanimous decisions of even the most august of Supreme Court members in what they, themselves called "settled law" during their confirmation hearings.  All of those who voted to overturn previous precedent in numerous rulings lied about that during their own confirmations, committing blatant perjury under oath in front of the Senate.  Roberts lied through his teeth during his famous lie about only calling balls and strikes, Alito, Goresuch, Kavanaugh, Coney Barrett, lied about Roe v Wade in that regard,  Thomas lied about many things as well.  I have heard some lawyerly blather about there being a "moderate center" to be found on the Court as it is now,  there is no such moderation or center.  I heard someone say that Coney Barrett might set herself up as a swing vote.  I have said she is and will be the Susan Collins of the Roberts Court, doing the right thing sometimes but only when it doesn't matter.  You need to have a clear 4-5 set up for there to be any "swing vote" in the manner of a Sandra O'Connor conjob or an Anthony Kennedy one and there is not one and likely won't be one.  Any concurrence she has with the Democratic appointees will be on the losing side.  I'm tired of hearing such Court reporter fantasies, we need to face the fact of the utter corruption of the Court's Republican-fascist majority and the corrupt apparatus that packed them onto the court.  

It was always one of the stupidest things that those in the Congress and presidency have done that they allowed the Supreme Court to get away with maintaining that self-granted, unconstitutional power.  It must have been obvious to lawyers such as Madison and Jefferson that Marshall and his colleagues had lied in overturning the section of the Court organizing law in creating that power.  The seemingly insignificant detail* that Marshall declared that it was unconstitutional for the Supreme Court to issue a writ of mandamus though that act said it could was, in effect, overturning the legal belief of the author of that law who just happened to be Marshall's predecessor as Chief Justice, Oliver Ellsworth, who, unlike Marshall was one of the chief drafters of the Constitution as well as one of the most respected lawyers in the United States.  Ellsworth had been a member of the Committee of Detail in the Constitutional convention, who had, in fact, done the actual drafting of the Constitution,  Considering his professional representation including the provisions that created the Supreme Court.  The law the Marshall Court overturned was passed in the Congress with the votes of a number of other framers of the Constitution, including Madison and signed into law by none other than George Washington who, though not a lawyer, had as intimate a hand in framing the Constitution as anyone.  

To say that Ellsworth, Madison, Washington, didn't know the Constitution and what it said, what it allowed and what it disallowed over someone who had not been part of its drafting was ridiculous on its face.  Though Madison and Jefferson may have thought that allowing the Supreme Court to get away with that power grab over what was a matter of minuscule importance over a last minute appointment to a minor office by the last Federalist President, John Adams, the term of that office already expired by the time the Marbury decision as issued, it has been one of the most destructive and consequential usurpations of power in the history of the country.  The Taney Court which used it in a significant matter for the first time is rightly seen as having incited the Confederate rebellion against the United States and caused the Civil War.  

If the Roberts Court does what they plainly risk, setting up a Republican-fascist, even a Trump dictatorship, with modern weaponry held in such abundance by fascists and fanatics around the country instead of just in one region of it, ALSO SOMETHING THE COURT ENABLED,  they may outdo Taney in the consequences of their decisions.  The last one which is even more corrupt in Constitutional terms, destroying the very structure of the government, the supposed system of checks and balances put into place to prevent exactly the despotism the Roberts Court legalized, a partisan dictator.  They not only overruled the Constitution, definitively, they have overruled the Declaration of Independence, making a Republican-fascist president a king above legal restraint and with powers to pardon his assassins and henchmen.  Powers that may have, in the imaginations of the Framers, been safe with the likes of Washington or Adams or Jefferson has proven to be extremely dangerous in the hands of a Trump.  

There is not going to be a day for as long as that ruling stands as the lawless law of the land when it should not be held to be an outrage and assault on not only democracy, but on the United States as a republic instead of a dictatorship.  This Court term has produced so many of the worst decisions in the history of that Court that its Republican-fascist majority should be considered out-laws instead of treated royally as they are accustomed to.  They should feel the heat of that rage every day from now until they die because they have done some of the worst things any public official in the history of the country has done.

If, by some miracle, Joe Biden wins the election and takes office he should use the power the Roberts thugs gave him to investigate THEM.  It doesn't have to be for a criminal trial overseen by the court, it should be for a public trial of the members of that Court.  THEY SHOULD GET TO EXPERIENCE WHAT THEY HAVE UNLEASHED ON ALL OF US NOW.   The model for that already exists in a minor way in the scandals from when J. Edgar Hoover ran the FBI, when it collected information on the private lives of Americans to use to use to blackmail and attack them.  It was filthy but now presidential filthiness is the Roberts law of the land and, as I always say, NO ONE IN ANY GOVERNMENT SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO ESCAPE THE CONSEQUENCES OF WHAT THEY DO IN PUBLIC OFFICE, what the Roberts Court says presidents can do now.  The private lives, the business lives, the associations and alliances that the Supreme Court members AND THEIR FAMILIES should be thoroughly investigated by President Biden, using all of the powers the Constitution gives him in line with the Roberts Court immunity given to him.  If one of his agents oversteps the law in carrying out his order to investigate or expose them, he should pardon them.  If he discovers they have broken laws, he should order his Department of Justice to prosecute them.  If the case goes to a judge he believes will be lenient to a member of the Supreme Court, he should take means to get the case taken from them.  That will be easy if the prosecution is brought by the Department of Justice, as, no doubt, the infamous Roberts Court majority are hoping will happen when Trump gets back into power.  Since the Supreme Court majority have given him immunity to commit murder, he should consider the summary execution of them and the pardon of anyone he assigns to carry that out.  That the Roberts Court thugs gave those powers to someone they have every reason to know would use them, no doubt never imagining that someone who would do that would use it against the likes of them, makes the use of it by those who oppose that granting of dictatorial power not only permissible, but necessary.  Democratic presidents swear to uphold and defend the Constitution AND THE COUNTRY against all enemies foreign AND DOMESTIC.  The Roberts Court majority are enemies of the United States, the principle of governing by a majority vote of the population, they are enemies of equal justice under laws, they are, in fact, the most anti-American people to have held office, perhaps since those Second World War Nazi-friendly seditionists Rachel Maddow has taught us so much about.  

Roberts, Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett should not rest comfortably, convinced that they couldn't experience the consequences of what they did.  Not anymore.  No Court should get to exempt themselves from the consequences of their rulings as the Supreme Court regularly does.  That should be the law of the land, one which the Supreme Court can't overturn by 5-4, 6-3 or 9-0.  They should immediately have the heat turned up on them and they should be made to know that they will be liable to either the whims of the president they have enabled or his cold, rational calculations.   Just as Thomas and his wife should feel the heat if he gets his way and he guts the privacy basis of the Loving decision, making their marriage legal in Virginia, none of them should get to sleep any easier than we have this past week.  

* The insignificance of the case in Marbury v Madison, moot by the time that the decision was issued makes me suspect that Marshall, one of the major slave-holding class, may well have had its usefulness in protecting slave-holding from the majority opinion in the future as his motive.  Modern historical research into John Marshall proves that, contrary to previous hagiographic biographic bilge, he held large numbers of slaves on a number of his plantations, wealth that Marshall had not inherited but had built up during his lifetime, including during his membership of the Supreme Court.  The major, large slave-holder class were the super-rich of the United States and, in fact, were some of the richest men in the world of their time and their wealth was founded on enslaving Black People, both kidnapped and enslaved and those bred into slavery.  

We know from Madison's record of the original Constitutional Convention that protecting slavery AND OBTAINING PRIVILEGES FROM THE NEW GOVERNMENT FOR SLAVE HOLDERS, was one of the major topics of discussion and disagreement at the Convention.  We know from the previous records of the original organization of the country under the Articles of Confederation that the slave-holders had similar worries about the future of their economic wealth and insisted on them, as a group, being privileged under that earlier scheme of government, insisting on not counting slaves for purposes of taxation and obligations to the country at first, then insisting on counting them for purposes of giving slave-holders more representation in the new Congress, many of the same figures contradicting what they'd insisted on a few years before.  Stealing for the slave-holders the natural right to representation that belonged to those who they enslaved.  That is what the Roberts Court is attempting to reestablish through their demolition of the Voting Rights Act.  John Roberts is one of the major white supremacist "justices" in the history of that court, seeking to restore that original theft of representation for white supremacists through permitting states to suppress the votes of Black People, Native Americans, and others.  There's nothing clean or perfumed or respectable about him.  As we know from his lying during his confirmation hearing, he can lie and pose as a respectable man but his actions prove that to be a con game.   

I think Marshall, always using his position on the Court to enhance slave-power and, so, his own fortune, probably had something like what Taney did with the Marbury usurpation of power on behalf of the slave-power in mind.  He was enough of a thinker and lawyer and hypocrite to embed something like that in the law with that in mind.  He may not live to need to use it but his children and grandchildren, holding the children and grandchildren of those he enslaved would find it handy.  I can't believe he wouldn't have had something like that in mind as he went to the bother of usurping the powers he and his colleagues did over such an otherwise trivial issue.  For all Marshall knew Madison and Jefferson would have reacted as strongly against that as they should have and would have if the issue at hand had been more consequential for them.  Or, maybe, they didn't react to it because they, as well, saw the potential usefulness of it to their posterity holding their generation of those enslaved as the source of their wealth.  

One of the hardest facts about the slavery permitted in the original Constitution and the Jim Crow that succeeded it with Supreme Court approval is that none of it could be set up and enforced without both social and state violence being at the bottom of it.  No one would consent to be a slave without both the threat and use of violence against them.  Our Constitution still has the vestiges of what the slave-holders put there to protect their use of the state to enable their enslavement of People.  Now those of us not in direct danger of enslavement are discovering what was used against Black People is a danger to everyone.  That won't change until the Electoral College, the anti-democratic structure of the Senate and the unconstitutional powers invented for itself by the Supreme Court are obliterated.  

We have to get rid of it and cut the Court down to the same size that such Courts have in other, less imperiled democracies.  

I Just Realized A One Line Summary Of This Year's Political Season So Far

 

We Don’t Need A

 

New Democratic

 

Nominee,

 

We Need A New

 

Press Corps.

Michael Moore Go Soak Your Head

I READ THAT the one-time movie maker Michael Moore is calling on President Biden to drop out of the presidential race.  He has a cute line saying he's the victim of "elder abuse" which, coming from him could hardly be more condescending to one of the most accomplished and over-performing Democratic Presidents in our history by one of the most under-performing minor celebrities of pop culture.

What's the last thing Michael Moore was right about?   Oh, he endorsed Joe Biden in 2020 after endorsing Bernie Sanders but he almost immediately tried to sandbag Biden in Michigan. 

Micheal Moore made approximately a couple of mildly important but impotent movies in about the dozen he's made.   They had little to no impact on the world outside of their viewership and precious little impact within it.   He regularly makes an ass of himself and, because he made some movies, gets on MSNBC and other such venues way, way, way more than his importance or intelligence warrants. 

He is a play-lefty, the kind of lefty who not only will never back someone who gains power as a first choice but who can be counted on to try to sandbag anyone who actually can gain power and retain it to change things.   Play lefties are generally affluent, mostly white, quite often male, straight and quite OK with Republican-fascists governing the country because they don't much impact their lives.   They are drones without any real sting but who can be a problem for the Democratic Party which can gain power and govern, making laws that will change real Peoples' lives for the better. 

If I never hear from Michael Moore for the rest of my life,  I don't think I would notice the absence, his presence is so unimposing and unimportant, otherwise.