Crazy Court – Part I

It is late Monday morning as I commence penning this and the Supreme Court has issued another 6-3 decision that violates the Constitution but conforms to the right wing majority’s philosophy. This was another (and I fear it will not be the last) religion over law decision. (It will be interesting to see how they weasel out of that philosophy if the court challenge to the overturning of Roe based on the teachings of the Jewish faith ever reaches them.


It is now glaringly apparent even to non-political junkies that the Court majority is out of control. In fact, I have already decided that I cannot fit everything into today’s article that I originally wanted to and therefore tomorrow’s is “mentally written”.

Franklin Roosevelt took over a nation that the Republicans before him had on the brink of ruin. (Much like Obama and Biden.) He also faced an openly hostile Supreme Court that cared not at all for the situation America found itself in nor the will, and might I say needs, of the people. He threatened to expand the Court’s membership in order to dilute the pollutants to the point of irrelevancy. Books could be written about that and I’m not going to defend all of FDR’s intentions. The bottom line is that the Court came back into line with reality and the people.

The evil genius of Mitch McConnell, combined with the useful idiot status of Donald Trump and a little luck (perhaps also some help from Trump’s foreign friends the true impact of which may be never definitively known) gave us Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett “I like beer” Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. They, combined with Clarence “Just give the money to Virginia” Thomas, all appear to be legitimate candidates for removal via impeachment. With the current Senate or of any Senate I can envision in the foreseeable future that will not happen. However, the Senate is still the key and the voters control its membership. If the Court senses that there is a possibility of additional justices being seated to tip the balance of power they will come in line.

At this point (pending primaries could change it a bit) there are 15 Republican Senators running for reelection this fall. I’d like to key in on six key votes they all took. The confirmations of Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett along with the three (two on the first round) impeachment removal votes they took with reference to Trump.
14 (John Boozman of Arkansas, Mike Crapo of Idaho, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, John Hoeven of North Dakota, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, John Kennedy of Louisiana, James Lankford of Oklahoma, Mike Lee of Utah, Jerry Moran of Kansas, Rand Paul of Kentucky, Marco Rubio of Florida, Tim Scott of South Carolina, John Thune of South Dakota and Todd Young of Indiana) voted to confirm all three Court nominees and also found Trump not guilty on all three counts. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska did not vote to confirm Kavanaugh and she voted guilty on Trump’s second impeachment. In other words, she went 2 for 6 and if we graded on a curve got the only “A” at a score of 33. I’d say that is a pretty poor class!

If you want change you will have to be part of it. Some of these people are in very safe seats but a few are not. It is our obligation to work to vote them out. Unless the Senate changes it will be several decades before we overcome the Trump era and in fact, we are in jeopardy of keeping our democracy in anything but name. As George Packer said, “We are our last best hope.”

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