Glenn Kirschner describes what ought to be done, in a functioning democracy, when candidates for lifetime appointments on the nation’s highest, unappealable court lie during their confirmation hearings about what is settled law and what is “egregiously bad settled law”.
If those who technically control Congress only had a collective spine…
You recall, of course, the boss’s pithy comments about the same Democratic representative from California, right before his first impeachment.
The painting of targets begins.
Especially because of the YouTube channel they’re on, TRUTH SOCIAL.
TRUTH SOCIAL.
Here’s a great piece from Dana Milbank in today’s Washington Bezos, called “Supreme Court’s hacks reward Republicans’ betrayal of democracy.”
Worse, this McConnell-packed Roberts court has returned the favor by stacking the deck in favor of minority rule by Republicans. It has blessed partisan gerrymandering, giving Republicans representation in the House disproportionate to their share of the electorate. It has allowed elections to be decided by billionaires and corporations spending unlimited sums of untraceable money. It has kneecapped labor unions, co-signed voter-suppression schemes by Republican-run states and eviscerated the civil rights era Voting Rights Act, to disastrous effect for Black and brown voters.
Now comes this breathtaking assault on the rights of women, a strongly Democratic constituency, eliminating the right tens of millions have firmly relied upon for half a century to control their own bodies.
The five justices have aligned themselves with the 16 percent of Americans who, according to the latest Post-ABC News poll believe abortion should be illegal in all circumstances, and against the 79 percent who believe it should be legal in at least some circumstances. Eighty-two percent of Americans believe abortion should be allowed if a woman’s life is endangered, 79 percent in cases of rape or incest and 67 percent if the child would be born with a life-threatening illness.
Not to mention, of course, that this pandemic induced inflation is global. From Robert Reich
“Deeply rooted in this country’s history and traditions” is the standard seething reactionary Samuel Alito sets for what is permissible when the Supreme Court enumerates an unenumerated constitutional right of citizenship. Like a citizen’s unenumerated right not to be forcibly sterilized, for example, enumerated in 1942 by the Supreme Court.
He gets legal support for the argument that abortion was always illegal in this country, and thus deeply rooted, from an English aristocrat, the guy who codified procedures for witch trials in the 17th century, making it easier to execute the female minions of Satan. He cites this English Lord, Sir Matthew Hale, over and over as an unimpeachable legal authority on abortion, unimpeachable as the twice impeached Putin ally who appointed a supermajority from Alito’s judicial fraternity to decide what is deeply rooted in the history and traditions of this country (lynchings and pogroms are two that spring to mind). Hale denounced the Satanic evils of abortion in the 1640s, which is more than good enough legal authority for the Federalist Society Six.
Here’s an excellent discussion of the drive to “repeal the twentieth century” now in full, ugly swing, as a mob of top GOP officials calls for the blood of a partisan leaker of unknown allegiance, for, as many have noted, violating the sacred privacy of the Supreme Court. Talk about your fucking unenumerated rights…
The quietly enraged are dangerous adversaries. Because they’re quiet and seemingly calm, their rage, when it gets a chance to express itself, is perhaps the most chilling kind of rage of all, because it’s so stealthily hides in seemingly unruffled quiet and seems to explode out of nowhere. This kind of rage waits for the perfect moment to quietly and inexorably express itself, rendering a final opinion that cannot be appealed. You cannot come back from the conclusions a quietly angry person imposes when they finally make their disapproval clear.
Silence itself is perhaps the single greatest weapon for expressing rage.
The beauty of silence as a weapon is that it is infinitely deniable, you cannot prove the intent of silence, it could have no intent at all. It could certainly have nothing to do with you, why is everything about you? Isn’t your interpretation of my silence just your perverse gloss on it? I said nothing, nothing, how can I have expressed any opinion on what you asked me about, you demanding dick?
How about we put you on the defensive by not answering, by maintaining complete and total silence, and when you cry out we will point to the proof, you are a goddamn, whining hot head.
The beautiful part about expressing rage with silence is that any unbiased observer can plainly see that the person getting upset seems to be working themselves up about nothing.
Picture a ten year old black kid, going to bed every night scared, in the sudden violence of the projects, gunshots outside, in the stairwells, no-knock warrant, undercover police, housing authority security, gangs. Picture answering that kid’s question about the segregated poverty all around him saying, with the smug assurance of Bagpiper Bill Barr, that there’s no systemic racism in America, and its debatable that there ever was race-based slavery here, let alone a Supreme Court ruling [1] that people like you had no rights a white man was bound to respect that you were bought and sold like property because that’s what you were, nothing racist about it.
And then, silence.
The problem of scary, inherited poverty is yours, boy, and nobody else’s.
We can go down a long list of examples of this despicable technique, but consider the quietly enraged reactionary Samuel Alito and his enraging rationale for why Jesus Christ must have the final say in US Constitutional matters, establishment clause be goddamned. You have Mitch McConnell and Ted Cruz, the other day, squealing like stuck pigs about the nefarious malefactor who leaked the Alito draft ruling that women have no rights a white man is bound to respect, the partisan far-left criminal leaker (someone like Ginni Thomas is a much likelier culprit, since the draft must now stand as it is, with no retreat!) who silently stole and leaked a confidential Supreme Court draft decision, in an effort to politicize the fairest court an emissary of Jesus Christ Himself could appoint, to defend the unborn, the rights of good people not to be exposed to perverts, to lies about good, white Christian children, etc.
Makes me wanna holler.
Into the silence of a prosecutorial judge’s quick deliberation, sentence already in hand, not making eye contact as he listens impatiently to your version of events. Lots of cases, nothing personal, I have a lot of hate in my heart, I’m not giving you eye contact as you make your case because, as you know, I am not listening, too enraged.
Silence, the verdict and punishment already in the mail.
[1]
Obvious Commie twaddle:
Chief Justice Roger Taney (above) bluntly and maliciously described the status of persons of African origin in the 1857 Dred Scott decision:
“[Black people] had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit. He was bought and sold, and treated as an ordinary article of merchandise and traffic, whenever a profit could be made by it.”
Reminding us again that the real sting of death is that eternal silence where a beloved life once was.
Little Girl (foreground, her sister White Back behind her, as always), who greatly resembled her beautiful mother Mama Kitten, her constant companion and ally, left us as gracefully as she came into this short, precious life four years ago.
Her absence hangs heavily over the turf she bravely defended and enjoyed the many roosts of, and where we touched base late almost every night. She was an agile, athletic hunter who could grab a bird out of the air, a gold glover who could catch a tossed treat and pop it into her mouth. She always showed up in the driveway to shake us down every time we approached the door. She carried on the tradition her mother started. They were known as the Driveway Bitches, two natural beauties, demanding their due, and they always happily collected their toll.
An ordinary event, the natural death of a sometimes affectionate feral cat we loved, filling our mortal hearts with sorrow, threatening to burst them, until the sorrow overflows.
Reminding us again that what takes your breath away at death is that eternal silence where a soul we loved once was.
You said it, Brett.
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