Chief Justice Roberts Concerned About Supreme Court’s Integrity

And he should be concerned, considering the history of the institution in the past 200+ years.  There has been a recent resurgence of bench activism, with Bush v. Gore and Citizens United providing two highly memorable examples.

Chief Justice Roberts took something to heart that is critically important, IMO.  If the populace loses faith in the Court’s decisions, the populace will grow to resent those decisions and actively work to undermine the Court’s authority.  What would happen in Americans refused to acknowledge the Court’s legitimacy?  9 hollow shells whose actions mattered not a whit does not bode well for a functioning democracy.

I think Roberts tried to walk the Court back from the step or two with the Obamacare ruling.  The other right-wing extremists would have taken the Court even closer to the edge, if not a little bit over it.

Congress might want to learn a little bit of the same lesson for its own good.  Both parties seem primarily interested in getting elected and re-elected, not governing.  The Democrats have done a slightly better job of governing, but not much – and what kind of bar am I comparing them to?  Some of the most extreme bunch of folks to ever control any kind of power in US government.  Thus, my statement should not be taken as a ringing endorsement of the Democratic Party or its so-called “accomplishments”.

To the contrary, the Democratic establishment continues to try to play the Democratic base for fools with their fear-mongering of the Republican Teahadists.  I want to see real progress made on every critical issue of our time.  What I’ve come to realize is the Democratic establishment doesn’t want that any more than the Republican establishment does.  Doing actual work would distract us from the scary “others” out there that need to be constantly fought.  No, what I and millions of other Americans want are effective political movements – the kind which were squashed in the 1960s with all of the assassinations of the previous movements’ leaders and high-profile supporters.  We have seen what the lack of those movements has meant for America: stagnation on multiple different fronts.  Sure, I can buy lots of crazy cool crap, but is my life really significantly better than the average Americans’ life at the end of the 2nd third of the 20th century.  I don’t think so.

So Roberts took a small step back – good for him.  The question is: will it be enough?  How many more decisions have to be made; how many more elections have to be held until most Americans not only realize the establishment isn’t working for them, but are willing to actually do something about it?

Conservatives Do Not Believe In States’ Rights

The most conservative judges on the Supreme Court since the 1930s issued a decision yesterday that said police could racially profile people in Arizona.  Some of the writings and statements made yesterday were overtly political – exactly what judges should not be.  The politicization of the Supreme Court by right wing extremists has reached new heights with this group.  That was the state of affairs forecasted to occur by non-partisan experts asked to comment on President Bush’s unqualified nominees.  And that is the state of affairs that has developed.  Based on the aforementioned writings, the conservative judges defended the so-called “right” of Arizona to “defend” itself against people that those in power don’t want in the state: brown people.

Is the immigration system broken?  Yes.

Are most government systems broken?  Yes.

Why are they broken?  Because those same right-wing extremists have put policies and personnel in place to ensure the systems don’t operate as they were designed.  The more they can wreck things, the truer their complaints that government doesn’t work rings true.  It’s called fulfilling their own prediction.

But hold on one moment.  Those same so-called “pro-states’ rights” folks are equally silent on the right of Montana to enforce a 100-year old law to keep corruption out of government.  Folks used to publicly pay for legislators – including U.S. Senators – to get the policies they individually wanted implemented.  The people of Montana stood up to that kind of nonsense.  Alito, Romney, Limbaugh and all the other right-wing nuts out there didn’t say word one about Montana’s right to pass a state law in the absence of national laws and a broken election system.

There are dozens of corporate media articles proclaiming Romney’s unwavering belief that states’ rights are paramount.

Except that it isn’t.  The corporate media is part of the problem.  If they sold themselves as stenographers, dutifully copying down everything fed to them by whatever source they could dredge up, that would be one thing.  But they continue to try to pass their industry off as legitimate.  The results?  Declining participation in a democratic process.  Disapproval of all branches of government.  These conditions won’t last forever.  Movements will arise and succeed in putting the ship back on course.  The wealthy and powerful won’t like it, but that’s not the real issue.

At the end of the day, conservatives believe in states’ rights.  Except when they don’t, which is more often than when they do.

On Super PACs and “Conservative” Columnsists

I’m going to revisit a writer whose work continues to demonstrate how non-conservatives conservatives have moved.  The Denver Post’s David Harsanyi opines on Super PACs and, according to his title, “free will”.  Like most other “conservatives”, he argues that free speech is critical to our way of life and the Supreme Court “conservatives’” pre-meditated choice to issue a decision that didn’t even deal with a case that was brought before them somehow increases free speech (in the form of money, of course).  He continues by lamenting that citizens don’t have this same freedom because they have to file reports with the federal government when they join with at least 11 other citizens to donate money to political campaigns.

The crocodile tears shed for citizens sounds good until you think about which citizens have the most money: those already contributing to Super PACs.  I don’t have a single friend or activist acquaintance that has the financial ability to donate tens of thousands or millions of dollars to any campaign or issue of their choice.  Therein lies the problem with the argument: do super-corporations (especially those based over-seas) have more freedom of speech than a citizen of the United States?  Should they have more freedom than we do?  I don’t think so.  But “conservatives” today do.

Note further that “conservatives” wouldn’t be extolling the virtues of Citizens United if their elite-blessed candidates weren’t expected to be the primary beneficiaries of the decision.  Such is the reality in the hyper-partisan environment those same “conservatives” have spent 50 years creating.

And how much does this columnist actually believe in “free will” anyway?  If the belief was consistent, free will would extend to all personal choices, including what women decide to do with their own bodies.  That is the crux of the matter: too many partisans – on both sides of the aisle – are only willing to push for “rights” and “freedoms” when it’s convenient for them to do so.  Consistency is another casualty of today’s hyper-partisanship.