I am really not enjoying life under Government by fascist cabloid and hate-talk radio. That's what we've got, what we've been reduced to under government by Supreme Court. Ruth Bader Ginsberg's health news shows just how stupid it is for us to have to depend on the health of octogenarians on the Court. I remember being at a loss to explain why she didn't retire when she could have during Obama's presidency when there was some chance she wouldn't be replaced by a Federalist-fascist Society drone in his 40s or 50s. She'd already been through cancer treatment by then. I like "notorious RBG" as much as anyone but, really, egalitarian democracy is too important and too much in danger for its safety to repose in the hands of any one person.
Now it's just going to cement in a catastrophic court. Me, I favor radical solutions to the problem, expanding the court, limiting terms to ten years,* requiring either a super-majority or a unanimous court to overturn duly adopted laws -there should be an absolute requirement that some of the members of the court have a fairly good knowledge of the mathematics and science needed to understand some of the issues before them, it is sheer lunacy to have the likes of Scalia and Thomas deciding issues that they can't begin to understand and which they, with Trumplike bravado and stupidity, claim they don't need to understand because their legal training gives them a superior road to knowledge.
I would like to be able to dope-slap all of the Greens the non-Green equivalent and others who, when confronted by the dangers of having Republican fascists control the court drop the prepared lines that they were tired of being "blackmailed over Roe". The simple fact is that the entire secular left who spouted such slogans and lines as they pushed stupid, never-would-happen pipe dreams IS one of the major sources of our horrible situation. That play-left - I'm ever more convinced some of it financed by Putin and other oligarchs - needs to be dumped in the burning dumpster that is our too real reality.
* A ten year term limit would make the fascist strategy of putting youngish tools on the court irrelevant. It would be a great equalizer in that regard. That with a lifetime ban on retired justices having a financial interest in issues that were before them while on the court would take care of the alleged motive of wanting a court which would allegedly be made incorruptible by having members seated till they rot. If there's one thing the Court has been, from its earliest days, it is corrupt in pretty similar ways that the Congress and Executive have been. The history of Justices who were slave owners as they corruptly ruled to their own financial benefit was all the proof anyone could have needed that that idea was stupidly unrealistic.
Lawyers tell jokes (i.e., true stories) about lawyers who think their legal training makes them experts in any field. The joke is about what misery results from such hubris.
ReplyDeleteAnd yeah, the idea that a single judge, or a mere panel of 3, or no more than 4 (if one us recused, and Scalia was the poster boy for the problem of recusal and how it is enforced, or rather no), is beyond defensible. Warren worked hard to get a unanimous verdict in Brown, for good reason. We can't pass a Constitutional amendment without tremendous effort and a supermajority, but 5 people can rewrite the plain text of the 2nd amendment or gut the VRA, the implementing statute of the 15th.
ReplyDeleteThis is nuts.