Power at the level of the federal government is a zero-sum game. If one branch leaves power on the table because of scandal or the kind of partisan freeze-up that has seized the House of Representatives today, one or both of the other branches are going to pick it up and run with it. You’ve heard for years about the “imperial presidency,” basically a lamentation by Great Thinkers about politics and democracy that the presidency, over the years, has attached to itself too much power.
May 29·edited May 29Liked by Lucian K. Truscott IV
We are trying to stop him.We The People.We The Women! I am hoping that the outrage of women will materialize at the ballot box and those that love them will come out to vote with them in November.
I agree that women are the ones who will ultimately be the ones, and the catalysts, to turn the tables. I speak to every woman who passes through our clinic doors, EVERY ONE, about what's at stake (and not just abortion, although that's the service we provide) this election. I get them registered if they choose, and emphasize that every freedom all of us has, men included, are on the chopping block...that's how crucial this election is.
Many don't know because they aren't paying attention. I can tell you, after speaking with me, they are shocked, and I do believe I've convinced most to pay attention and vote. Hopefully, with the efforts of women across the country, it will make the difference.
You’re correct to underscore Tatel’s point today. Unelected, morally flexible judicial appointees of a highly political anti-democratic effort are in fact agents determined to undermine the basic tenets of our democracy.
But they tripped up I believe. In their misogynistic zeal they upturned Roe.
They’ve infuriated women. Even republican women. None of us are staying home in November.
Not ah! men, but oy! men, the ones who need a recepticle for the blather that comes out of their mouths and another recepticle for the lather that emerges from their version of the Orange Blob's shroom. Is someone doing a musical update of Lysistrata?
Brilliant idea. With "Mrs. Alito" as the embodiment of Lysistrata. The perfect comeuppance for an asshole who illustrated his contempt for women by throwing his own wife under the bus for flying a flag upside down. And an outraged Chorus of men and women as the embodiment of the media, whose running commentary isn't rendered moot with both-sidesism.
As the Supreme Court building resembles the Acropolis, it's kinda perfect that it should be occupied by women exercising ultimate power.
From all accounts, she deserves to be under the bus with him. Recent reporting says that HORRIBLE use of the "c word" that caused her the same amount of distress as a sinking ship might feel--that happened in FEBRUARY. The flag was long down and the horrible neighbor had never even seen it. And the horrible, child corrupting sign that said "Fuck Trump?" It went up in NOVEMBER after the election.
So I guess all the outrage that the neighbor just came to a peak after January 6 necessitating a call of distress.
Now that there's mad Marge, Bobo, and repulsive MAGAt females, we have to acknowledge that men do not corner the market on fascism in the USA and every evil, immoral sick act it implies.
May 29·edited May 29Liked by Lucian K. Truscott IV
Lucian writes that Judge David S. Tatel claims that the Supreme Court is “aggrandizing [its] own power, and it’s the one branch of government that’s unelected.” The quotation is from a NY Times article that includes more that is worth quoting. Tatel is retired, which is why he can get away with saying what the Times quotes:
Judge Tatel, now 82, wrote that he had stepped down because he “didn’t want to take the chance that my seat might be filled by a president who’d campaigned on picking judges who would fulfill his campaign promises.”
But there was more. “I was also tired,” he wrote, “of having my work reviewed by a Supreme Court that seemed to hold in such low regard the principles to which I’ve dedicated my life.”
In 2012, he wrote the majority opinion for a divided three-judge appeals court panel in Shelby County v. Holder, rejecting a challenge to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The next year, by a 5-to-4 vote, the Supreme Court reversed that decision, effectively tearing out the heart of the law, which had been a signal achievement of the civil rights movement.
“The court reached the result it did through decidedly nonjudicial means,” Judge Tatel said. “It’s contrary to the Constitution. It’s contrary to its own precedent. And it’s completely disrespectful of congressional findings.”
“The result,” he said, “is threatening to democracy.”
I'm basically speechless after reading your column Lucian, but I'm going to keep typing...... You point to total disaster. The long litany of what Leonard Leo, right-wing billionaires, et al have done is discouraging. BUT the blow that almost takes away hope is to realize that all this was done in the open, reported in newspapers, no doubt discussed in many many Democrat meetings and strategy sessions----yet it is like the Democrat Party has been asleep at the switch, shuffling around the library rearranging the books, or engaged in other trivial pursuits while the GOP/conservatives/MAGA/et al went on a march to success...... I'd like to be told I'm wrong, that somehow this is going away, but it is not going away----more and more of the organized world of government agencies that protect the environment, etc etc, and more and more of the rights we take for granted (voting, etc) will disappear unless there is some kind of BIG REVOLUTION. Life is going to become more perilous (well, it already is). Not smiling...... Having said that, WE, who read this substack, are the power that can act to turn back this great tide of repression.......that is the Mission........how we accomplish that is the matter of the moment.......
You're right that the Democratic Party has been asleep. Lucian writes, "you tell me when the Democratic Party will have enough votes to remove a corrupt judge or justice by finding them guilty of abusing their power in the Senate." But the Democratic Party isn't interested in removing anyone. Look at Durbin's brushing away Alito's ethics violations and failures to recuse himself. The only hope is to add four justices, which would require the Democrats to win the presidency, the House, and the Senate. The problem is that, if they win the presidency, the House, and the Senate, they will still do nothing.
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is a book about the history of science by philosopher Thomas S. Kuhn. Its publication was a landmark event in the history, philosophy, and sociology of science. Kuhn challenged the then prevailing view of progress in science in which scientific progress was viewed as "development-by-accumulation" of accepted facts and theories. Kuhn argued for an episodic model in which periods of conceptual continuity where there is cumulative progress, which Kuhn referred to as periods of "normal science", were interrupted by periods of revolutionary science. The discovery of "anomalies" during revolutions in science leads to new paradigms. New paradigms then ask new questions of old data, move beyond the mere "puzzle-solving"[1] of the previous paradigm, change the rules of the game and the "map" directing new research.[2]
For example, Kuhn's analysis of the Copernican Revolution emphasized that, in its beginning, it did not offer more accurate predictions of celestial events, such as planetary positions, than the Ptolemaic system, but instead appealed to some practitioners based on a promise of better, simpler solutions that might be developed at some point in the future. Kuhn called the core concepts of an ascendant revolution its "paradigms" and thereby launched this word into widespread analogical use in the second half of the 20th century. Kuhn's insistence that a paradigm shift was a mélange of sociology, enthusiasm and scientific promise, but not a logically determinate procedure, caused an uproar in reaction to his work. Kuhn addressed concerns in the 1969 postscript to the second edition. For some commentators The Structure of Scientific Revolutions introduced a realistic humanism into the core of science, while for others the nobility of science was tarnished by Kuhn's introduction of an irrational element into the heart of its greatest achievements. [more]
I've read The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and your summary is good. But I don't understand how it fits what the Supreme Court is doing. I suppose we could say that the fact that the six Republican politicians on the Court consider their job to be to implement the Republican agenda, without regard to the Constitution or federal statutes, constitutes a paradigm shift. What "model" do you see as like Kuhn's?
Democrats not the only snoozers. "Good" Republicans (remember them? never as many as passenger pigeons, but today the few remaning are being mercilessly hunted down).
Necessary but not sufficient. We are collectively being more or less forced to deploy every last legal, nonviolent, relevant (and hopefully clever, efficient, inspiring - append your own positive adjectives!) methods to foil these authoritarian creeps.
People like you and I will be long gone before this petty bunch of assholes, miscreants and the like will be done dismantling what is left of settled law.
May 29·edited May 29Liked by Lucian K. Truscott IV
Other options. Fire every tangeranus appointee including DeJoy and Wray and everyone he appointed to any position anywhere. Arrest Thomas and Alito and Crow and charge them with bribery. Give all the J6 traitors, including Ginny Thomas, a blindfold and a cigarette, same with the congresspeople and senators that tried to invalidate the election, and send their families a bill. Same as tangeranus and his spawn. Make it known in no uncertain terms that any decision by the likes of Kaszmaryk will be ignored. Nationalize the Texas Guard and send in the COE to tear out all the razor wire and saw blades, then pull all federal funding of any kind out of red states. They want tyranny we shove it right up their fundament hard and fast. Can’t anybody here play this game?
Absolutely the most brilliant piece I've read on this subject. Unfortunately the Democratic leadership is just beginning to stir out of a deep slumber. It's a bit like the missionary in the Amazon jungle taking a a bath in a big iron pot not realizing the cannibals are slowly turning up the heat until he is fully cooked cooked.
Of course at this point I don't know what the Dem ;leadership can do, especially if trump did gey t elected again short of allowing the army to take over temporarily, but even if they agreed whih is doubtful that move would probably lead to civil war.
There must have been secret meetings taking place, perhaps on one of those luxury yachts, from time to time to devise this master plan, sort of like the mafia don's carving up territory and planning to tae over more. Not by force but by getting favorable e, rulings by the Supreme Court on redistricting in favor of Republicans, like the ruling a couple of days ago when the Democrats appealed an unfair re-drawing of the maps. This is from one in March but it keeps happening over and over in the various states."The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a Republican-drawn South Carolina congressional district, reversing a previous ruling by a lower court and potentially making it harder to challenge voting maps in the future.
In a 6-3 ruling, divided along ideological lines, the court reversed the three-judge district court’s opinion that the new voting map “unlawfully diluted the Black vote.”
This whole thing is is actually a war between good and evil. Like any criminal element they don't see it ta way. As the old saying goes, "What's yours is mine and what's mine is my own."
You need to get that published, but that’s not even enough. So many people need to hear it or read it. I haven’t a clue but I will share it. You are right on and expressed so well and inclusive. Well done, Lucian!
Is voting going to be enough? This is the "choir" and we are engaged as much as possible in our civic duty. But the large number who don't or can't vote is really disturbing. What do we do NOW? It's so disturbing.
Lucian, your thoroughness combined with your eloquence has made you one of my must-read Substacks. You call it as you see it, portray the threat accurately, remind us what's at stake. Please keep naming this right-wing coup relentlessly as we hurtle toward November. Thank you.
Oooops. John Marshall was fourth chief justice, not first. h/t Les Perelman.
We are trying to stop him.We The People.We The Women! I am hoping that the outrage of women will materialize at the ballot box and those that love them will come out to vote with them in November.
I agree that women are the ones who will ultimately be the ones, and the catalysts, to turn the tables. I speak to every woman who passes through our clinic doors, EVERY ONE, about what's at stake (and not just abortion, although that's the service we provide) this election. I get them registered if they choose, and emphasize that every freedom all of us has, men included, are on the chopping block...that's how crucial this election is.
Many don't know because they aren't paying attention. I can tell you, after speaking with me, they are shocked, and I do believe I've convinced most to pay attention and vote. Hopefully, with the efforts of women across the country, it will make the difference.
The Women Haters are scum...86 45 STAT!!!
You’re correct to underscore Tatel’s point today. Unelected, morally flexible judicial appointees of a highly political anti-democratic effort are in fact agents determined to undermine the basic tenets of our democracy.
But they tripped up I believe. In their misogynistic zeal they upturned Roe.
They’ve infuriated women. Even republican women. None of us are staying home in November.
Not ah! men, but oy! men, the ones who need a recepticle for the blather that comes out of their mouths and another recepticle for the lather that emerges from their version of the Orange Blob's shroom. Is someone doing a musical update of Lysistrata?
Aha - my favorite play of all time.
Interesting that my favorite goddess in the pantheon is Nyx, btw - even Zeus had the sense not to piss her off.
Love that play also and it does need a revival! Maybe Cyndi Lauper will provide the music. :)
🔥
Brilliant idea. With "Mrs. Alito" as the embodiment of Lysistrata. The perfect comeuppance for an asshole who illustrated his contempt for women by throwing his own wife under the bus for flying a flag upside down. And an outraged Chorus of men and women as the embodiment of the media, whose running commentary isn't rendered moot with both-sidesism.
As the Supreme Court building resembles the Acropolis, it's kinda perfect that it should be occupied by women exercising ultimate power.
From all accounts, she deserves to be under the bus with him. Recent reporting says that HORRIBLE use of the "c word" that caused her the same amount of distress as a sinking ship might feel--that happened in FEBRUARY. The flag was long down and the horrible neighbor had never even seen it. And the horrible, child corrupting sign that said "Fuck Trump?" It went up in NOVEMBER after the election.
So I guess all the outrage that the neighbor just came to a peak after January 6 necessitating a call of distress.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/28/us/justice-alito-neighbors-stop-steal-flag.html?unlocked_article_code=1.vk0.T5VG.u3Qf51VshZtM&smid=url-share
Put Mom in charge...everywhere!
Now that there's mad Marge, Bobo, and repulsive MAGAt females, we have to acknowledge that men do not corner the market on fascism in the USA and every evil, immoral sick act it implies.
They are too eager to please Trump and have no idea of the backlash coming their way!
Lucian writes that Judge David S. Tatel claims that the Supreme Court is “aggrandizing [its] own power, and it’s the one branch of government that’s unelected.” The quotation is from a NY Times article that includes more that is worth quoting. Tatel is retired, which is why he can get away with saying what the Times quotes:
Judge Tatel, now 82, wrote that he had stepped down because he “didn’t want to take the chance that my seat might be filled by a president who’d campaigned on picking judges who would fulfill his campaign promises.”
But there was more. “I was also tired,” he wrote, “of having my work reviewed by a Supreme Court that seemed to hold in such low regard the principles to which I’ve dedicated my life.”
In 2012, he wrote the majority opinion for a divided three-judge appeals court panel in Shelby County v. Holder, rejecting a challenge to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The next year, by a 5-to-4 vote, the Supreme Court reversed that decision, effectively tearing out the heart of the law, which had been a signal achievement of the civil rights movement.
“The court reached the result it did through decidedly nonjudicial means,” Judge Tatel said. “It’s contrary to the Constitution. It’s contrary to its own precedent. And it’s completely disrespectful of congressional findings.”
“The result,” he said, “is threatening to democracy.”
Thanks for the amplification, Henry Cohen. Amplifies even more the desperate situation we are now in.......
I'm basically speechless after reading your column Lucian, but I'm going to keep typing...... You point to total disaster. The long litany of what Leonard Leo, right-wing billionaires, et al have done is discouraging. BUT the blow that almost takes away hope is to realize that all this was done in the open, reported in newspapers, no doubt discussed in many many Democrat meetings and strategy sessions----yet it is like the Democrat Party has been asleep at the switch, shuffling around the library rearranging the books, or engaged in other trivial pursuits while the GOP/conservatives/MAGA/et al went on a march to success...... I'd like to be told I'm wrong, that somehow this is going away, but it is not going away----more and more of the organized world of government agencies that protect the environment, etc etc, and more and more of the rights we take for granted (voting, etc) will disappear unless there is some kind of BIG REVOLUTION. Life is going to become more perilous (well, it already is). Not smiling...... Having said that, WE, who read this substack, are the power that can act to turn back this great tide of repression.......that is the Mission........how we accomplish that is the matter of the moment.......
You're right that the Democratic Party has been asleep. Lucian writes, "you tell me when the Democratic Party will have enough votes to remove a corrupt judge or justice by finding them guilty of abusing their power in the Senate." But the Democratic Party isn't interested in removing anyone. Look at Durbin's brushing away Alito's ethics violations and failures to recuse himself. The only hope is to add four justices, which would require the Democrats to win the presidency, the House, and the Senate. The problem is that, if they win the presidency, the House, and the Senate, they will still do nothing.
Maybe, but maybe the model is more like T.S. Kuhn's model:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Revolutions *** Opening excerpt:
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is a book about the history of science by philosopher Thomas S. Kuhn. Its publication was a landmark event in the history, philosophy, and sociology of science. Kuhn challenged the then prevailing view of progress in science in which scientific progress was viewed as "development-by-accumulation" of accepted facts and theories. Kuhn argued for an episodic model in which periods of conceptual continuity where there is cumulative progress, which Kuhn referred to as periods of "normal science", were interrupted by periods of revolutionary science. The discovery of "anomalies" during revolutions in science leads to new paradigms. New paradigms then ask new questions of old data, move beyond the mere "puzzle-solving"[1] of the previous paradigm, change the rules of the game and the "map" directing new research.[2]
For example, Kuhn's analysis of the Copernican Revolution emphasized that, in its beginning, it did not offer more accurate predictions of celestial events, such as planetary positions, than the Ptolemaic system, but instead appealed to some practitioners based on a promise of better, simpler solutions that might be developed at some point in the future. Kuhn called the core concepts of an ascendant revolution its "paradigms" and thereby launched this word into widespread analogical use in the second half of the 20th century. Kuhn's insistence that a paradigm shift was a mélange of sociology, enthusiasm and scientific promise, but not a logically determinate procedure, caused an uproar in reaction to his work. Kuhn addressed concerns in the 1969 postscript to the second edition. For some commentators The Structure of Scientific Revolutions introduced a realistic humanism into the core of science, while for others the nobility of science was tarnished by Kuhn's introduction of an irrational element into the heart of its greatest achievements. [more]
I've read The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and your summary is good. But I don't understand how it fits what the Supreme Court is doing. I suppose we could say that the fact that the six Republican politicians on the Court consider their job to be to implement the Republican agenda, without regard to the Constitution or federal statutes, constitutes a paradigm shift. What "model" do you see as like Kuhn's?
Democrats not the only snoozers. "Good" Republicans (remember them? never as many as passenger pigeons, but today the few remaning are being mercilessly hunted down).
You are not wrong. Democratic leadership has let us down badly and at the worst possible time.
I hope voting will be enough.
Necessary but not sufficient. We are collectively being more or less forced to deploy every last legal, nonviolent, relevant (and hopefully clever, efficient, inspiring - append your own positive adjectives!) methods to foil these authoritarian creeps.
Go Dark Brandon-Go Joe Biden
People like you and I will be long gone before this petty bunch of assholes, miscreants and the like will be done dismantling what is left of settled law.
If there’s anything left 😢
Other options. Fire every tangeranus appointee including DeJoy and Wray and everyone he appointed to any position anywhere. Arrest Thomas and Alito and Crow and charge them with bribery. Give all the J6 traitors, including Ginny Thomas, a blindfold and a cigarette, same with the congresspeople and senators that tried to invalidate the election, and send their families a bill. Same as tangeranus and his spawn. Make it known in no uncertain terms that any decision by the likes of Kaszmaryk will be ignored. Nationalize the Texas Guard and send in the COE to tear out all the razor wire and saw blades, then pull all federal funding of any kind out of red states. They want tyranny we shove it right up their fundament hard and fast. Can’t anybody here play this game?
Where do I sign up?
👍👍
I'm with you!
Absolutely the most brilliant piece I've read on this subject. Unfortunately the Democratic leadership is just beginning to stir out of a deep slumber. It's a bit like the missionary in the Amazon jungle taking a a bath in a big iron pot not realizing the cannibals are slowly turning up the heat until he is fully cooked cooked.
Of course at this point I don't know what the Dem ;leadership can do, especially if trump did gey t elected again short of allowing the army to take over temporarily, but even if they agreed whih is doubtful that move would probably lead to civil war.
There must have been secret meetings taking place, perhaps on one of those luxury yachts, from time to time to devise this master plan, sort of like the mafia don's carving up territory and planning to tae over more. Not by force but by getting favorable e, rulings by the Supreme Court on redistricting in favor of Republicans, like the ruling a couple of days ago when the Democrats appealed an unfair re-drawing of the maps. This is from one in March but it keeps happening over and over in the various states."The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a Republican-drawn South Carolina congressional district, reversing a previous ruling by a lower court and potentially making it harder to challenge voting maps in the future.
In a 6-3 ruling, divided along ideological lines, the court reversed the three-judge district court’s opinion that the new voting map “unlawfully diluted the Black vote.”
This whole thing is is actually a war between good and evil. Like any criminal element they don't see it ta way. As the old saying goes, "What's yours is mine and what's mine is my own."
And I'm sure Mitch (the turtle) McConnell was on board the yacht!
You need to get that published, but that’s not even enough. So many people need to hear it or read it. I haven’t a clue but I will share it. You are right on and expressed so well and inclusive. Well done, Lucian!
The Repugnants are also at an advantage because of the Electoral College and legally gerrymandered districts.
Legally gerrymandered courtesy of the SCOTUS six.
Exactly!
This is our country? I am bereft after reading this, Lucian.
A great summary of what we are up against and how we got here.
Is voting going to be enough? This is the "choir" and we are engaged as much as possible in our civic duty. But the large number who don't or can't vote is really disturbing. What do we do NOW? It's so disturbing.
Lucian, your thoroughness combined with your eloquence has made you one of my must-read Substacks. You call it as you see it, portray the threat accurately, remind us what's at stake. Please keep naming this right-wing coup relentlessly as we hurtle toward November. Thank you.