Today at noon, Ketanji Brown Jackson was sworn in as the first Black female justice on the Supreme Court. Before Justice Brown took her oath, the court also signaled the end of the federal government as we know it. In the past, the Supreme Court has operated on the basis of “stare decisis,” which literally means “to stand by things decided.” The purpose of that principle is to make changes incrementally so the law stays consistent and evenly applied, which promotes social stability. On occasion, the court does break precedent, notably in 1954 with the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision, which overturned the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision that rubber stamped racial segregation. When that sort of a major change happens, both the court and elected officials work hard to explain that they are changing the law to make it more in line with our Constitution, and to move people along with that change.
Isn’t this rogue court engaged in a quasi coup? It’s stripping down the country, reducing it to a vague semblance of what it once was. And very soon, the anything-but-conservative six wrecking-ball justices will make federal elections a farce of democracy.
They’re endangering the planet and every life by ignoring existential climate change, giving government control over women’s bodies, and carving up democracy so it slowly bleeds out.
These recent abrogations of precedent and reversals of stare decisis form the core principles on which the Federalist Society was created by, among others, Antonin Scalia.
The Federalist Society's primary purpose has been to cloak those principles - hamstringing government regulation of business, minimization of civil liberties, empowering oligarchs and autocrats - in academic and intellectual legitimacy.
A great example of that cloaking takes the form of Justice Alito's shabby quotation of Sir Matthew Hale, a discredited 18th century English jurist largely responsible for the abhorrent common law doctrine that a husband, no matter how violent or non-consensual, could never be guilty of raping his wife. Alito relied on Hale for the common-law understanding of "when life begins," and even then, in a disingenuous sleight of hand, Alito appears to have substituted conception for quickening.
What amazes me is how many women I know who quietly or willingly supported Trump who now bemoan this loss of a fundamental human right.
Without Trump's appointments of Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Coney-Barrett, all Federalist Society members, these reversals could never have occurred.
Looking on from Europe, I don’t understand why the Democratic Party doesn’t live up to its name and fight back - not only individuals like Newsom and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, but the Democratic Party as an institution. It should be on a war footing (political, legislative, judicial, institutional), but instead, it’s business and internecine squabbling as usual.
I read this morning that Joe Biden signed more oil drill permits than Donald Trump. If that’s true, it’s clear that the Democratic Party is no more interested in slowing down global heating than are the Republicans. In those circumstances, its protests over the EPA case sound hollow.
The Democratic Party wasted years in neglecting state legislatures, with the result that even in swing states where they might command majorities, they have been trounced by the GOP.
On the question of abortion, I note that unlike every other country where women have had that right enshrined in law, the US never bothered to do so - or rather, the Democratic Party never bothered. It assumed that Roe v Wade - a decision taken on the basis of privacy, not equality - would suffice and would stand, even though it was the stated intention of Republicans to overturn it.
Such hubris in the Democratic Party reminds me of that other hubris, in 1933, which led the Nazi Party to power because the opposition parties could not agree to cooperate in opposing it, and had spent 15 years fighting each other.
Here’s a lesson from history: when freedom is lost, it’s exceedingly hard to regain it. It often takes generations, or a long fratricidal war, to do so, if it can be done at all.
“ In the one term Trump’s three justices have been on the court, they have decimated the legal landscape under which we have lived for generations, slashing power from the federal government, where Congress represents the majority, and returning it to states, where a Republican minority can impose its will. Thanks to the skewing of our electoral system, those states are now poised to take control of our federal government permanently.”
I would imagine that were you writing this with a pen, the script would be varied and shaky so angry you must be as am I, given the devastating decisions brought by this illegitimate court
"...It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
Two weeks and they destroyed the country. The 50 year campaign paid off.
As Richard Hofstadter pointed out back in 1954:
It can most accurately be called pseudo-conservative — I borrow the term from the study of The Authoritarian Personality published five years ago by Theodore W. Adorno and his associates — because its exponents, although they believe themselves to be conservatives and usually employ the rhetoric of conservatism, show signs of a serious and restless dissatisfaction with American life, traditions and institutions. They have little in common with the temperate and compromising spirit of true conservatism in the classical sense of the word... Their political reactions express rather a profound if largely unconscious hatred of our society and its ways — a hatred which one would hesitate to impute to them if one did not have suggestive clinical evidence.
Adorno and his co-workers found that their pseudo-conservative subjects, although given to a form of political expression that combines a curious mixture of largely conservative with occasional radical notions, succeed in concealing from themselves impulsive tendencies that, if released in action, would be very far from conservative. The pseudo-conservative, Adorno writes, shows “conventionality and authoritarian submissiveness” in his conscious thinking and “violence, anarchic impulses, and chaotic destructiveness in the unconscious sphere. . . . The pseudo conservative is a man who, in the name of upholding traditional American values and institutions and defending them against more or less fictitious dangers, consciously or unconsciously aims at their abolition.”
I see all the signs of a fascist regime erecting their platform. I hope I am overreacting but everything that has been happening in certain states and with the SCOTUS fits the description. Back to the 1930s and Charles Lindbergh ....... There are so many signs. Chaos is in the playbook of Putin and other fascist leaders, so the authoritarian leader will arrive to offer stability. I also understand why Manchin was so Republican acting; now coal fired furnaces will belch anew.
If only the principal Founding Fathers: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and James Madison could see the country now and speak to us.
‘What would Madison make of American democracy today, an era in which (Andrew) Jacksonian populism looks restrained by comparison? Madison’s worst fears of mob rule have been realized—and the cooling mechanisms he designed to slow down the formation of impetuous majorities have broken.’
‘The polarization of Congress, reflecting an electorate that has not been this divided since about the time of the Civil War, has led to ideological warfare between parties that directly channels the passions of their most extreme constituents and donors—precisely the type of factionalism the Founders abhorred.’ (AtlanticMagazine) See the link below.
'James Madison's Mob-Rule Fears Have Been Realized'
To those Democrats and liberal independents who just couldn’t bring yourselves to vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016, the current Supreme Court is your gift to us all.
This SC sh*t duckery is breath taking. I’m trying to see into the minds of the radicals, trying to get a handle on their thinking. Given the potential outcomes for their rulings, one can only deduce that their deliberate intention is the obliteration of the United States. ( the world). Do they believe they are God’s good little children by fomenting the Apocalypse? Are they brain damaged by the religious stew they are boiling in? Or are they just a puny clique of narcissistic sociopaths unexpectedly positioned by tyrants to do their willl?
As one pundit observed, why is the conservative block of SCOTUS in such a rush to roll back settled law? Each Justice has a lifetime appointment. What don’t we know about why they’re pushing these decisions so quickly? There’s a strategy here. I’m thinking about what it might be but I can’t put my finger on it.
Dr Heather Cox Richardson's clearest, most damning summation yet.
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world...
Yes. Read again Yeats' great prophetic poem, The Second Coming.
For my part, I woke up one night in early 2016 and started to write down some crappy lines I had just dreamed. After the November presidential election, I realized I'd written these exactly 9 months before... Here...
Isn’t this rogue court engaged in a quasi coup? It’s stripping down the country, reducing it to a vague semblance of what it once was. And very soon, the anything-but-conservative six wrecking-ball justices will make federal elections a farce of democracy.
They’re endangering the planet and every life by ignoring existential climate change, giving government control over women’s bodies, and carving up democracy so it slowly bleeds out.
They must be stopped.
How is it that the Supreme Court is now running the United States government?
These recent abrogations of precedent and reversals of stare decisis form the core principles on which the Federalist Society was created by, among others, Antonin Scalia.
The Federalist Society's primary purpose has been to cloak those principles - hamstringing government regulation of business, minimization of civil liberties, empowering oligarchs and autocrats - in academic and intellectual legitimacy.
A great example of that cloaking takes the form of Justice Alito's shabby quotation of Sir Matthew Hale, a discredited 18th century English jurist largely responsible for the abhorrent common law doctrine that a husband, no matter how violent or non-consensual, could never be guilty of raping his wife. Alito relied on Hale for the common-law understanding of "when life begins," and even then, in a disingenuous sleight of hand, Alito appears to have substituted conception for quickening.
What amazes me is how many women I know who quietly or willingly supported Trump who now bemoan this loss of a fundamental human right.
Without Trump's appointments of Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Coney-Barrett, all Federalist Society members, these reversals could never have occurred.
Elections have consequences.
Looking on from Europe, I don’t understand why the Democratic Party doesn’t live up to its name and fight back - not only individuals like Newsom and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, but the Democratic Party as an institution. It should be on a war footing (political, legislative, judicial, institutional), but instead, it’s business and internecine squabbling as usual.
I read this morning that Joe Biden signed more oil drill permits than Donald Trump. If that’s true, it’s clear that the Democratic Party is no more interested in slowing down global heating than are the Republicans. In those circumstances, its protests over the EPA case sound hollow.
The Democratic Party wasted years in neglecting state legislatures, with the result that even in swing states where they might command majorities, they have been trounced by the GOP.
On the question of abortion, I note that unlike every other country where women have had that right enshrined in law, the US never bothered to do so - or rather, the Democratic Party never bothered. It assumed that Roe v Wade - a decision taken on the basis of privacy, not equality - would suffice and would stand, even though it was the stated intention of Republicans to overturn it.
Such hubris in the Democratic Party reminds me of that other hubris, in 1933, which led the Nazi Party to power because the opposition parties could not agree to cooperate in opposing it, and had spent 15 years fighting each other.
Here’s a lesson from history: when freedom is lost, it’s exceedingly hard to regain it. It often takes generations, or a long fratricidal war, to do so, if it can be done at all.
“ In the one term Trump’s three justices have been on the court, they have decimated the legal landscape under which we have lived for generations, slashing power from the federal government, where Congress represents the majority, and returning it to states, where a Republican minority can impose its will. Thanks to the skewing of our electoral system, those states are now poised to take control of our federal government permanently.”
I would imagine that were you writing this with a pen, the script would be varied and shaky so angry you must be as am I, given the devastating decisions brought by this illegitimate court
"...It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
Two weeks and they destroyed the country. The 50 year campaign paid off.
As Richard Hofstadter pointed out back in 1954:
It can most accurately be called pseudo-conservative — I borrow the term from the study of The Authoritarian Personality published five years ago by Theodore W. Adorno and his associates — because its exponents, although they believe themselves to be conservatives and usually employ the rhetoric of conservatism, show signs of a serious and restless dissatisfaction with American life, traditions and institutions. They have little in common with the temperate and compromising spirit of true conservatism in the classical sense of the word... Their political reactions express rather a profound if largely unconscious hatred of our society and its ways — a hatred which one would hesitate to impute to them if one did not have suggestive clinical evidence.
Adorno and his co-workers found that their pseudo-conservative subjects, although given to a form of political expression that combines a curious mixture of largely conservative with occasional radical notions, succeed in concealing from themselves impulsive tendencies that, if released in action, would be very far from conservative. The pseudo-conservative, Adorno writes, shows “conventionality and authoritarian submissiveness” in his conscious thinking and “violence, anarchic impulses, and chaotic destructiveness in the unconscious sphere. . . . The pseudo conservative is a man who, in the name of upholding traditional American values and institutions and defending them against more or less fictitious dangers, consciously or unconsciously aims at their abolition.”
Are we thus completely completely hopeless?
Don’t tell me voting will fix this as it seems ‘the fix’ is in!
I see all the signs of a fascist regime erecting their platform. I hope I am overreacting but everything that has been happening in certain states and with the SCOTUS fits the description. Back to the 1930s and Charles Lindbergh ....... There are so many signs. Chaos is in the playbook of Putin and other fascist leaders, so the authoritarian leader will arrive to offer stability. I also understand why Manchin was so Republican acting; now coal fired furnaces will belch anew.
If only the principal Founding Fathers: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and James Madison could see the country now and speak to us.
‘What would Madison make of American democracy today, an era in which (Andrew) Jacksonian populism looks restrained by comparison? Madison’s worst fears of mob rule have been realized—and the cooling mechanisms he designed to slow down the formation of impetuous majorities have broken.’
‘The polarization of Congress, reflecting an electorate that has not been this divided since about the time of the Civil War, has led to ideological warfare between parties that directly channels the passions of their most extreme constituents and donors—precisely the type of factionalism the Founders abhorred.’ (AtlanticMagazine) See the link below.
'James Madison's Mob-Rule Fears Have Been Realized'
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/10/james-madison-mob-rule/568351/
To those Democrats and liberal independents who just couldn’t bring yourselves to vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016, the current Supreme Court is your gift to us all.
“But those emails!”
This SC sh*t duckery is breath taking. I’m trying to see into the minds of the radicals, trying to get a handle on their thinking. Given the potential outcomes for their rulings, one can only deduce that their deliberate intention is the obliteration of the United States. ( the world). Do they believe they are God’s good little children by fomenting the Apocalypse? Are they brain damaged by the religious stew they are boiling in? Or are they just a puny clique of narcissistic sociopaths unexpectedly positioned by tyrants to do their willl?
As one pundit observed, why is the conservative block of SCOTUS in such a rush to roll back settled law? Each Justice has a lifetime appointment. What don’t we know about why they’re pushing these decisions so quickly? There’s a strategy here. I’m thinking about what it might be but I can’t put my finger on it.
Dr Heather Cox Richardson's clearest, most damning summation yet.
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world...
Yes. Read again Yeats' great prophetic poem, The Second Coming.
For my part, I woke up one night in early 2016 and started to write down some crappy lines I had just dreamed. After the November presidential election, I realized I'd written these exactly 9 months before... Here...
*
MINDSHIT
*
It looks as though
You think you know
The things you know
The least...
*
Your mind's a screen
As clear and clean
As virgin snow --
And so you're free on it to sow
A trail of footmarks, mud and blood...
A billion spruce trees there you'll grow
Where there's no wood.
*
You fight to close the stable door
The horse is not there anymore.
I don't think that it ever was
Inside the stall, and that's because
In there's the lair of the Beast.
I'm wondering , for the first time, whether moving away actually does make sense.
I guess it's running away, but when a tsunami is approaching perhaps that's the wisest course.
I won't yet. but something must be done. horrendous.
thank you Heather.
Tom Fiero, merced.