Getting rid of this king won't do it, you've got to get rid of the kingmakers, as well.

IT'S TOO BAD TRUMP TAKES UP ALL THE ATTENTION because after he's died and gone to the place the rich man went in the parable,  John Roberts and his five fellow fascists on the Supreme Court,  the fascists who comprise 100% of the Republican caucus in the House,  those who dominate the legislatures and governorships in most states will still be there.

I've been concentrating on the worst of those,  the Roberts majority on the Supreme Court because they are the ones who rewrote the Constitution to give Donald Trump, not  only impunity for the crimes he committed in the past,  but, unasked by those who brought the case,  made him or those like him in the future into actual kings who will enjoy the ability of absolute monarchs to break the law and do terrible things without any real restraint on them.   I imagine one of those liar-lawyers on the Supreme Court bench would say that it was up to the Congress to stop them KNOWING FULL WELL THAT THE IMPEACHMENT PROVISIONS OF THE CONSTITUTION ARE AMONG THOSE DUMBEST OF ALL DUMB IDEAS THAT THOSE AMATEUR STATE FRAMERS CAME UP WITH.   Impeachment, if it was ever going to work would have worked,  certainly when Trump fomented an actual insurrection against the Constitutional order of the United States only to have their fellow Republican-fascists in the Senate - don't forget, the ones that put all of them on the court - refused to convict him despite they, themselves having been witnesses to his crimes.  

My little story about "the Bob rule" is entirely apt for the occasion,  John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas,  Neal Gorsuch,   Brett Kavanaugh (never trust a rich Catholic boy named Brett) and Amy Coney Barrett fully intended to turn the worst president this country has had, the most undeniably criminal, the most crooked,  the most adulterous (yeah, I wish someone would bring a phony test case dealing with refusal to give services to a straight, white, rich adulterer,  let's see how those trad-caths on the court do the double-step when that part of Leviticus is cited) and monumentally stupid and vulgar man to have ever been president impunity for doing the most obviously criminal things in office AND WHEN HE WAS NOT IN OFFICE.  

I was not especially surprised to see Amy Coney Barrett being interviewed by one of her fellow trad-cath-fasc goons go all Sandra Day O'Connor when even Ross Douthat seemed a little nervous about what the Roberts Republcian-fascists on the Court have given to Trump.

In an interview released on Thursday, Supreme Court Associate Justice Amy Comey Barrett had to be asked twice what the nation’s highest court would do if Donald Trump turned up his nose at an adverse ruling and refused to abide by it.

In a wide-ranging interview with the New York Times’ Ross Douthat, Barrett was first asked about the extent of the president’s power over the government that has been a central tenet of Trump’s second term as his inner circle has pushed the so-called “unitary executive theory" that slots him above the legislative and judicial branches of government.

According to Trump’s last appointee to the court, who replaced the late liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 2020, “It would imply strong presidential power over executive agencies. There has been a lot of debate and some new originalist scholarship debating right now whether indeed it has sound originalist credentials. But yes, it is one that has traditionally been associated with originalists.”

I'll point out again that the rather dim-witted Barrett takes refuge in the fraudulent idea that because she claims the mantle of "originalism" that that means the conclusions she pastes that label on means she isn't imposing her ideological preferences on the Constitution - ideologies are adopted OUT OF THEIR UTILITY FOR DOING EXACTLY THAT,  PROMOTING THEIR ADHERENT'S PREFERENCES.  That is true no matter what those preferences are, even those who might give some ideological school as their reason for preferring egalitarian democracy as well as those like her who favor pseudo-Christian, white-supremacist fascism of the kind she and her fellow five fascists working under Roberts do.    But these days it's only the fascists on the court who are doing that,  I have seen nothing in the three Democratic appointees on the Court which does the same thing.   As I said before,  I agree with Sheldon Whitehouse when he has expressed extreme skepticism of those who proclaim a "judicial philosophy" because of the cases I've known of,  whether it is the current wave of Republican-fascists proclaiming their "originalism" or "textualism" or whether it was Oliver Wendell Holmes jr. whose judicial philosophy was tied to his own ideology of scientism - a scientism which was already outmoded and naive at about the same time he got on the Court.   As I noted, in his case it led to one of the monuments in shameful Court decisions,  Buck v Bell, which I imagine would be decided right in line with the Republican-fascist ideological position that there is no right to privacy in the Constitution so it doesn't exist. 

She then noted that debate is currently being addressed “in some of the cases on the court’s docket now.”

Yeah, and every time one of those cases comes up it's a gamble whether anything like democracy will survive.   And it isn't only on the Supreme Court that we have to be nervous, now.    A panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has given Trump a green light to invade Portland, Oregon.   It's anyone's guess how a large bench of that Court will come down on the clearly illegal act by Trump - the original judge noted that the evidence the Trump goons presented doesn't support their case but that made no difference to the majority of the thugs who ruled that way the other day.   

This is the situation that Barrett and her fellow fascists on the Supreme Court have created out of their ideological position that the presidency is a "unitary executive."   

With that looming over the court as an avalanche of challenges to the current president are overwhelming federal courts, Douthat pointed out to the justice, “The Supreme Court does not command the power of the purse, doesn’t command the military, doesn’t have police powers. What it has, in a sense, is prestige, public support, a historic constitutional role.”

Adding, “... we’re in a moment — and we don’t have to make this specific to the Trump White House — when it’s very easy to imagine, from either the left or the right, some present or future president deciding to test the court, Andrew Jackson-style, saying: Interesting ruling, Justice Barrett. Good luck enforcing it,” he proposed, “How do you think about that potential challenge, as a member of the court?”

Admitting the NYT columnist was correct, Coney Barrett attempted, “Just as the court must take account of the consequences on the institutional dynamics, say, between a current president and a future president, the balance of power between the executive branch and the legislative branch, that of course, those same kinds of institutional concerns for the long run are ones that play a part in the court’s separation of powers decisions and always have, because they also are reflected in concerns of the constitutional structure.”

Unsatisfied with the lack of clarity in her answer, Douthat pressed, “OK, let me try that again: If a president defied the Supreme Court, what would you do?”

Coney Barrett then admitted that the court’s hands would largely be tied because there is a limited enforcement mechanism at its disposal.

“Well, as you say, the court lacks the power of the purse. We lack the power of the sword,” she conceded. “And so, we interpret the Constitution, we draw on precedents, we have these questions of structure, and we make the most with the tools that we have.”

Listen to the skank!  Burying the fact that it was she and her fellow fascists who have gotten us here,  first by enhancing the corruption of money in our politics and now with their overt pro-fascism rulings.  And hearing her, "we draw on precedents" as they have knocked down precedents going back to the post-war period POST CIVIL WAR.   And probably eariler.   I remember when the liar was testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee that when asked which precedents she considered finally settled, she claimed that Brown was one and the Marbury power grab was another.   Other than those there is nothing that she and her fellow fascists wouldn't knock down to make Trump the kind of dictator that he has become -UNDER, NO, BY THEIR MAJORITY OPINION - and as I've said,  if they're willing to do that for Trump imagine what they'll do for Vance.

Those who come out for No Kings events should light a fire under the Courts,  the Supreme Court especially but also the lower courts, too, because every step we have made towards fascism has been given a green light by the Courts.  Every one of them.   Trump couldn't have run if the Supreme Court hadn't nullified the provisions in the 14th Amendment banning insurrectionists from holding federal offices.   

We need to do to the goddamned courts what Trump is doing to the East Wing of the Whitehouse.   I would actually zero out their budget except for their salaries - no clerks -  and remove them to the basement of the Capitol again.   If not some dump of a rented facility.  I'd turn that fascist marble palace* they reside in into a homeless shelter or low rent housing.   I'd also make them ride the circuit and abide by rigorous anti-corruption laws on pain of imprisonment with stiff sentences.   I think that one alone would empty out the Republican-fascists from the bench because we now know at least four of them are taking big bucks from those invested in Republican fascism.

Getting rid of this king won't do it,  you've got to get rid of the kingmakers,  as well.   The Supreme Court is the source of the corruption in our government through their line of rulings starting with Buckley v Valeo right down to what those thugs are cooking up right now.   They are the authors of American fascism, replacing the republic that Benjamin Franklin warned we'd only have as long as we can keep it.  Only it was the Ivy League Law School liar-lawyers who ditched it, not The People. 

* It's actually built with marble imported from Italy during Mussolini's reign.   How appropriate that is