It’s not just that so many of the court’s decisions have been manifest in finding ways to strip rights from citizens that previous courts have done their best to secure. It’s not the ham-handed, ignorant, nakedly political way they have done it. It’s not because two of the justices got on the court by yelling at Senators and in one case weeping as he told lies to get himself confirmed.
My Grandfather, a Virginian, used to take me to visit the graves of relatives buried in the cemetery of a church our family had attended for over 100 years. Reading their stones was considered an important family activity. In my early twenties, I was struck by the number of women who had died young-in childbirth. Some men had buried several wives. I think of that when I read about the results of the Dobbs decision.
These are great comments. The other thing you see at old cemeteries but not so much anymore are lots of children's headstones. Widespread vaccination ended that phenomenon -- at least for now.
Yup. When I was a kid I suffered through measles, mumps, chickenpox, rubella and the flu because the only vaccine available was for smallpox. Fortunately I didn’t die, but I missed a lot of school. I still remember the excruciating earache I had with the measles. Anti-vaxxers don’t appreciate how fortunate we are to have all these vaccines so that kids today never have to suffer with these diseases. We are also able to be vaccinated against Covid.
I was thinking more of herbal remedies, both to prevent conception and to induce abortion. Through the centuries women have generally known better than to trust contraception to men.
Here is another thing you see in many cemeteries in the South. More Confederate Battle Flags and monuments to the Lost Cause than to the Nation and our Union.
Lucian, I share your sorrow. One thinks SCOTUS can’t go any lower, and then they prove you wrong. I lived and worked in Boulder, CO, for 26 years, and my former Ph.D. student’s girl friend at the time of his graduation was an intern with Neil Gorsuch. I vividly recall attending the graduation party for my student, at his parents’ house in Boulder, and talking to his father, who is also a lawyer in high regard in the area. I asked him what he thought of Gorsuch, and he responded without a word, rolling his eyes. That’s all I needed to know.
Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Coney Barrett…one could argue that none of them are legitimate for various reasons: Gorsuch’s seat was stolen from Obama and his nomination of Merrick Garland, who would’ve made an excellent SCOTUS justice—perhaps better than his performance as Attorney General. Kavanaugh actually has the benefit of being appointed to a vacancy that was pretty much without controversy. But, then, his confirmation hearing was a total disgrace, and it’s obvious he lied to get his way onto the high court. And then ACB…well, we all know the story about ram-rodding her confirmation through in the last days of the Trump administration so close to the election that early voting had already begun. Thanks, Moscow Mitch (McConnell); so much for the BS about it being “too close to an election,” even though it was eleven MONTHS prior to the election in 2016 when he “ruled” that Garland’s appointment was too close to the upcoming election. That was then, this is now.
It almost seems like since all three know their seats were compromised from the outset that it’s fine if they let their biases and ideologies fly. They’ve already shown who they are: Willing to compromise whatever ethics they might have had prior to being nominated for the opportunity to sit on the High Court.
There’s an old saying, “If a person has integrity, nothing else matters. If a person doesn’t have integrity, nothing else matters.” These three have shown which side of that divide they are on.
McConnell has done far more damage than one man should get away with. He is disgusting. I was born in KY and have family there. McConnell is not held in high regard but the SOB wins elections. We had a great candidate in Amy McGrath, but he won anyway. Gov. Andy Beshear is the saving grace of that Commonwealth.
At risk of prematurely counting chickens, a positive thought: with Democratic party majorities in both chambers it would not be difficult to commence impeachment proceedings against deserving SC justices during a second Biden term next year. Beginning with Clarence Thomas, or announce several at once?
All true, David, but one must add Thomas and Alito to your list. Thomas is a disgrace. Full stop. An angry, resentful man who harbors a standing grudge against liberals and Democrats because so many of them voted against him at his confirmation hearings, which were, like him, a disgrace. The trashing of Anita Hill— who, I will believe to my dying day, was telling the damning truth about a lecherous Clarence Thomas—was a disgusting travesty. He was Poppy Bush’s deeply cynical nomination to show how “open and liberal” the mostly white GOP was… correction: wanted to appear.
Alito is a supremely arrogant doctrinaire Roman Catholic whose disgusting written opinion on Dobbs had nothing to do with precedent or law and everything to do with his own far-right conservative and religious views. All five are conservative hacks in black robes.
From HCR, "Constitutional law professor Anthony Michael Kreis ... found it '[u]nbelievable that Supreme Court justices who see forgiving student loans, mandating vaccines, and regulating climate change as a slippery slope toward tyranny were not clear-eyed on questions of whether a president could execute citizens or stage a coup without being prosecuted.'”
Thank you Lucian for writing what I do not have the skills to write. What you wrote is both terrible and true. I had watched that Supreme Court TV Q&A and got nauseous.
Is this how it ends for the United States then, in a fog of "blather and delay" ?
Exactly! Trump is not running for POTUS. He is running for dictator-for-life. Our Constitution is in tatters now but would cease to be in existence with a second coming of TFG. He has laid out all of that out quite hellishly nicely and our current SCOTUS is laying the framework for our democracy being turned into an autocratic dictatorship.
Excellent! You have put into stark words the feelings I have had since the tRump justices were seated. I am disillusioned, angry, bereft for our democracy and past precedents that enshrined those Constitutional precepts into laws as time passed. It is past time to terminate lifetime appointments and rotate retirements to ensure every President has an equal opportunity to appoint justices - along with expanding the court to reflect the growth of our country. This detestable excuse for fair-minded and honorable courts of the past (at least most) may well serve to end our democratic republic. November will tell...
Mr. T.'s heartbreak is my deep disappointment. The Supreme Court was never so totally in the tank as it is now. (Even Abe Fortas resigned, knowing that the 20 grand from Lou Wolfson looked bad.) The sadness, or the heartbreak, if you like, is when the traditional last word in Justice has rather recently begun to play politics and take sides. There maybe was a little funny business with SCOTUS giving the presidency to Schrub (which Sandra Day O'Connor privately regretted) but that's all I can think of before this crowd came in.
I would say my heartbreak is that millions of people think Trump was, and should be again, President of the United States. We live amongst morons, and too many people are nuts.
When relatively intelligent humans want to see TFG as rerun, it is an issue of wealth preservation. They are not their brothers’ keepers. They despise globalization. To them climate change is simply a weather cycle. The less wealthy followers, see him as their savior because they’ve never felt represented by government, and his destruction of democratic institutions is their goal. Oh, and the RACISM encompassing anyone who isn’t just like them. It is so depressing and disturbing.
Not so much nuts, perhaps, but credulous and malleable and resentful… people in need of a hero, easily brainwashed by a clever demagogue. They’re always out there. Remember Jim Jones and the Kool Aid laced with cyanide. Remember David Koresh and the Branch Davidians.
Re the people you mention, I would say they are nuts. Or to be more precise, we might use these words: unhinged, unbalanced, disturbed, or mentally ill.
Yes, and end the insanity of lifetime appointments. Staggered terms of 12 or 16 years, perhaps. Every president should get one and only one nomination.
Dumbing down seems to be the hallmark of today’s highest court.
It’s clearly a reflection of our times, wherein tolerance is at a low point and revenge is vogue.
When l attended an international women’s conference in Saint Petersburg (formerly Leningrad), in 1997, it was like the Wild West.
Ordinary citizens were afraid to report crime because corruption was rampant and disappearances were suspect. Pay for government workers was optional including medical personnel and teachers. Russian University Students told us twisted tales, each more absurd than the last.
Finally on the plane going home, members of the Masons (a long-standing and respected fraternal group), spoke of “homeless children living like rats in the sewers.” I said: Enough! No more horror. Sure enough, a tv report back in the USA, included footage of children scurrying in underground tunnels in Russia cities.
As Masha Gessen, formerly a Russian Journalist and now living with her wife in Brooklyn, left in fear of persecution!
Well put Lucian. This Court adheres to the old adage of a Solution looking for a Problem. They start with the societal decision they want and then choose a case, even completely made up cases (the religious freedom cases) and then fashion a decision bereft of precedent or scholarship to impose a religion based law. Sharia law might as well be their philosophy.
Indeed, this is the age of disillusionment. As much as I agree w/ you, Lucian, I'm holding on to hope that George Conway's take on Friday's hearing is correct. He believes that the Justices found most of Trump's argument so absurd that they used the session as kind of a classroom about "What if?" and ignored most of the Trump premises for absolute immunity. He believes they want to protect democracy and the rule of law. It's on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=go1fEFH_Eok&t=510s. Oh my, I hope he's right.
JDS: My take on that question is that Roberts wants to examine tRump’s outwardly preposterous claim and issue a (hopefully sensible) ruling on it, to enhance (or maybe reverse) the current court’s tawdry reputation.
They’re trying but don’t let them, educate, debate, win over those around you to vote Democratic. The 2020 was imperative for Biden to win but this one will be able to buy the time to head off this oligarchy push…
Thank you, Lucian, for articulating succinctly why my brain is a mass of roiling incredulousness. It is scary to witness what the supreme court is doing to damage democracy. And to think the supreme court judges have lifetime tenures!!! I like the idea of increasing the number of justices to counteract the rogue supreme court.
As I think about Alito and Roberts I am reminded of the Judge Ernst Janning played by Burt Lancaster in the movie Judgment at Nuremberg, a character based on Franz Schlegelberger (think John Roberts). Alito reminds me more of another German judge named Roland Freisler whose last post in the Third Reich was President of the People's Court (1942-1945). Draw your own conclusions.
One of the best pieces I’ve seen written about the current Supreme Court. It’s broken my heart, too. The Supreme Court has traditionally been a guardian of democracy and civil liberties. No more.
My Grandfather, a Virginian, used to take me to visit the graves of relatives buried in the cemetery of a church our family had attended for over 100 years. Reading their stones was considered an important family activity. In my early twenties, I was struck by the number of women who had died young-in childbirth. Some men had buried several wives. I think of that when I read about the results of the Dobbs decision.
It’s disgusting and wholly antithetical to individual freedoms.
Not just Dobbs. There was no birth control, so women were always pregnant. Lots of babies died too.
These are great comments. The other thing you see at old cemeteries but not so much anymore are lots of children's headstones. Widespread vaccination ended that phenomenon -- at least for now.
Yes, but in many deep red states, such as California Indiana, the death rate for pregnant women and their fetuses is very high.
Yup. When I was a kid I suffered through measles, mumps, chickenpox, rubella and the flu because the only vaccine available was for smallpox. Fortunately I didn’t die, but I missed a lot of school. I still remember the excruciating earache I had with the measles. Anti-vaxxers don’t appreciate how fortunate we are to have all these vaccines so that kids today never have to suffer with these diseases. We are also able to be vaccinated against Covid.
There was more "birth control" than you may realize, but childbirth was dangerous no matter what.
It still is.
Exactly -- especially for women with inadequate access to health care, especially women of color.
Correct. There were condoms, first skin, then rubber, then latex. Not always foolproof.
I was thinking more of herbal remedies, both to prevent conception and to induce abortion. Through the centuries women have generally known better than to trust contraception to men.
Amen to that, Susanna. Among the ten biggest standing lies: “I’ll
withdraw” and “Oh yeah, I’ve got a condom.”
Another one I remember: "I'll still respect you in the morning."
Our sad step back in time. A heart wrenching observation
Here is another thing you see in many cemeteries in the South. More Confederate Battle Flags and monuments to the Lost Cause than to the Nation and our Union.
Lucian, I share your sorrow. One thinks SCOTUS can’t go any lower, and then they prove you wrong. I lived and worked in Boulder, CO, for 26 years, and my former Ph.D. student’s girl friend at the time of his graduation was an intern with Neil Gorsuch. I vividly recall attending the graduation party for my student, at his parents’ house in Boulder, and talking to his father, who is also a lawyer in high regard in the area. I asked him what he thought of Gorsuch, and he responded without a word, rolling his eyes. That’s all I needed to know.
Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Coney Barrett…one could argue that none of them are legitimate for various reasons: Gorsuch’s seat was stolen from Obama and his nomination of Merrick Garland, who would’ve made an excellent SCOTUS justice—perhaps better than his performance as Attorney General. Kavanaugh actually has the benefit of being appointed to a vacancy that was pretty much without controversy. But, then, his confirmation hearing was a total disgrace, and it’s obvious he lied to get his way onto the high court. And then ACB…well, we all know the story about ram-rodding her confirmation through in the last days of the Trump administration so close to the election that early voting had already begun. Thanks, Moscow Mitch (McConnell); so much for the BS about it being “too close to an election,” even though it was eleven MONTHS prior to the election in 2016 when he “ruled” that Garland’s appointment was too close to the upcoming election. That was then, this is now.
It almost seems like since all three know their seats were compromised from the outset that it’s fine if they let their biases and ideologies fly. They’ve already shown who they are: Willing to compromise whatever ethics they might have had prior to being nominated for the opportunity to sit on the High Court.
There’s an old saying, “If a person has integrity, nothing else matters. If a person doesn’t have integrity, nothing else matters.” These three have shown which side of that divide they are on.
God help us all.
I have always espoused that integrity is the most important aspect of the human character, for without it, there is nothing.
You are spot on, except forget god. There is no divine help and wishing for it or praying for it doesn't make it so.
All we have are ourselves and our willingness to stop the takeover of our government.
This will be referred to as the McConnell court by historians.
McConnell has done far more damage than one man should get away with. He is disgusting. I was born in KY and have family there. McConnell is not held in high regard but the SOB wins elections. We had a great candidate in Amy McGrath, but he won anyway. Gov. Andy Beshear is the saving grace of that Commonwealth.
The McConnell Court. Love it!!!!
Weeping for our nation...
Don’t weep, get mad as hell and fight for Joe and every Democrat on the ticket!
At risk of prematurely counting chickens, a positive thought: with Democratic party majorities in both chambers it would not be difficult to commence impeachment proceedings against deserving SC justices during a second Biden term next year. Beginning with Clarence Thomas, or announce several at once?
Absolutely! Start with Thomas. He is a disgrace to the SC. Or Alito. Hell, Kavanaugh too.
I like it!! It could happen!
Schumer would never do it because comity.
That also!!
The day Gorsuch was appointed, I had to go to the hospital ER because I couldn't breathe. Turns out it was a (justified) panic attack.
All true, David, but one must add Thomas and Alito to your list. Thomas is a disgrace. Full stop. An angry, resentful man who harbors a standing grudge against liberals and Democrats because so many of them voted against him at his confirmation hearings, which were, like him, a disgrace. The trashing of Anita Hill— who, I will believe to my dying day, was telling the damning truth about a lecherous Clarence Thomas—was a disgusting travesty. He was Poppy Bush’s deeply cynical nomination to show how “open and liberal” the mostly white GOP was… correction: wanted to appear.
Alito is a supremely arrogant doctrinaire Roman Catholic whose disgusting written opinion on Dobbs had nothing to do with precedent or law and everything to do with his own far-right conservative and religious views. All five are conservative hacks in black robes.
Biases and ideologies…should be the tagline of the present court. It is stunningly transparent.
Will you or won't you abide by the Founders' imperative originality policy of the separation of church and state? Pretty simple.
Bill Barr, Mr. Catholicism, says ( and he knows???) that's not what the framers intended!
ugh
From HCR, "Constitutional law professor Anthony Michael Kreis ... found it '[u]nbelievable that Supreme Court justices who see forgiving student loans, mandating vaccines, and regulating climate change as a slippery slope toward tyranny were not clear-eyed on questions of whether a president could execute citizens or stage a coup without being prosecuted.'”
They’re compromised
Amen!
Double AMEN!
Thank you Lucian for writing what I do not have the skills to write. What you wrote is both terrible and true. I had watched that Supreme Court TV Q&A and got nauseous.
Is this how it ends for the United States then, in a fog of "blather and delay" ?
And another Trump presidency would be the death knell to our democracy and our Constitution.
Exactly! Trump is not running for POTUS. He is running for dictator-for-life. Our Constitution is in tatters now but would cease to be in existence with a second coming of TFG. He has laid out all of that out quite hellishly nicely and our current SCOTUS is laying the framework for our democracy being turned into an autocratic dictatorship.
He is running for STAY OUT OF JAIL, nothing more than that!!
Exactly!
Full Disclosure: I borrowed "blather and delay" from Lawrence Ferlinghetti, although I did put it in quotation marks: https://voetica.com/poem/7507
Excellent! You have put into stark words the feelings I have had since the tRump justices were seated. I am disillusioned, angry, bereft for our democracy and past precedents that enshrined those Constitutional precepts into laws as time passed. It is past time to terminate lifetime appointments and rotate retirements to ensure every President has an equal opportunity to appoint justices - along with expanding the court to reflect the growth of our country. This detestable excuse for fair-minded and honorable courts of the past (at least most) may well serve to end our democratic republic. November will tell...
A GOP victory is the end of Democracy.
Mr. T.'s heartbreak is my deep disappointment. The Supreme Court was never so totally in the tank as it is now. (Even Abe Fortas resigned, knowing that the 20 grand from Lou Wolfson looked bad.) The sadness, or the heartbreak, if you like, is when the traditional last word in Justice has rather recently begun to play politics and take sides. There maybe was a little funny business with SCOTUS giving the presidency to Schrub (which Sandra Day O'Connor privately regretted) but that's all I can think of before this crowd came in.
I would say my heartbreak is that millions of people think Trump was, and should be again, President of the United States. We live amongst morons, and too many people are nuts.
When relatively intelligent humans want to see TFG as rerun, it is an issue of wealth preservation. They are not their brothers’ keepers. They despise globalization. To them climate change is simply a weather cycle. The less wealthy followers, see him as their savior because they’ve never felt represented by government, and his destruction of democratic institutions is their goal. Oh, and the RACISM encompassing anyone who isn’t just like them. It is so depressing and disturbing.
Agree, 100%. Thank you.
Amen!
Not so much nuts, perhaps, but credulous and malleable and resentful… people in need of a hero, easily brainwashed by a clever demagogue. They’re always out there. Remember Jim Jones and the Kool Aid laced with cyanide. Remember David Koresh and the Branch Davidians.
Re the people you mention, I would say they are nuts. Or to be more precise, we might use these words: unhinged, unbalanced, disturbed, or mentally ill.
I am ready to fight!
Get Sarah to help.
I guess it’s time to add more judges to the court. After the election if Biden wins and we have a democratic house and senate.
Yes! This is a break glass moment in our history.
Yes, and end the insanity of lifetime appointments. Staggered terms of 12 or 16 years, perhaps. Every president should get one and only one nomination.
Dumbing down seems to be the hallmark of today’s highest court.
It’s clearly a reflection of our times, wherein tolerance is at a low point and revenge is vogue.
When l attended an international women’s conference in Saint Petersburg (formerly Leningrad), in 1997, it was like the Wild West.
Ordinary citizens were afraid to report crime because corruption was rampant and disappearances were suspect. Pay for government workers was optional including medical personnel and teachers. Russian University Students told us twisted tales, each more absurd than the last.
Finally on the plane going home, members of the Masons (a long-standing and respected fraternal group), spoke of “homeless children living like rats in the sewers.” I said: Enough! No more horror. Sure enough, a tv report back in the USA, included footage of children scurrying in underground tunnels in Russia cities.
As Masha Gessen, formerly a Russian Journalist and now living with her wife in Brooklyn, left in fear of persecution!
Well put Lucian. This Court adheres to the old adage of a Solution looking for a Problem. They start with the societal decision they want and then choose a case, even completely made up cases (the religious freedom cases) and then fashion a decision bereft of precedent or scholarship to impose a religion based law. Sharia law might as well be their philosophy.
Federalist Society doggerel...
Well said. Agree 1,000%.
Indeed, this is the age of disillusionment. As much as I agree w/ you, Lucian, I'm holding on to hope that George Conway's take on Friday's hearing is correct. He believes that the Justices found most of Trump's argument so absurd that they used the session as kind of a classroom about "What if?" and ignored most of the Trump premises for absolute immunity. He believes they want to protect democracy and the rule of law. It's on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=go1fEFH_Eok&t=510s. Oh my, I hope he's right.
I hope so, too. But why take up the case in the first place?
JDS: My take on that question is that Roberts wants to examine tRump’s outwardly preposterous claim and issue a (hopefully sensible) ruling on it, to enhance (or maybe reverse) the current court’s tawdry reputation.
If only
Oh…please!!!!
This breaks my heart too Lucian. You have articulated what I think many of us are feeling.
Yes.
The US is the world's largest banana republic. The Supremes just drove that point home.
They’re trying but don’t let them, educate, debate, win over those around you to vote Democratic. The 2020 was imperative for Biden to win but this one will be able to buy the time to head off this oligarchy push…
We have become the Shithole country.
They are the branch office of the United Fruit Company.
Thank you, Lucian, for articulating succinctly why my brain is a mass of roiling incredulousness. It is scary to witness what the supreme court is doing to damage democracy. And to think the supreme court judges have lifetime tenures!!! I like the idea of increasing the number of justices to counteract the rogue supreme court.
Add Justices and Term Limits. No one deserves a lifetime position. No one.
Absolutely.
As I think about Alito and Roberts I am reminded of the Judge Ernst Janning played by Burt Lancaster in the movie Judgment at Nuremberg, a character based on Franz Schlegelberger (think John Roberts). Alito reminds me more of another German judge named Roland Freisler whose last post in the Third Reich was President of the People's Court (1942-1945). Draw your own conclusions.
One of the best pieces I’ve seen written about the current Supreme Court. It’s broken my heart, too. The Supreme Court has traditionally been a guardian of democracy and civil liberties. No more.