Tag Archives: supreme court

Political Rants

Such a quiet boy, a bright boy

I’m not fond of doing blog posts about mass shootings. Part of the reason for this is the fact that they happen all the time, and it’s manifestly obvious that none of our political leaders are willing to do anything substantive to prevent them. Still, this shooting at the Tops supermarket in Buffalo is particularly heinous. Yes, this is about guns, but it’s about more than guns. It’s about assholes, too.

No, I’m not referring to the shooter, though he is clearly an asshole. The primary responsibility for this atrocity belongs to more powerful people. This kid didn’t pluck racist “great replacement” theory garbage out of thin air. This crap is being circulated by politicians, pundits, and other well-paid voices eager to draw some attention to themselves. Young people like the shooter are susceptible to the toxic logic behind these crackpot theories. Those who propagate it know this, and they have blood on their hands.

Legally obtainable

According to press reports, the shooter legally obtained his Bushmaster assault rifle. (Apparently he had his man card checked.) This in spite of the fact that he had made threats against his high school – threats serious enough for the school to report it to the NY State Police. And yet, with all that, he was able to buy the gun. Was that a grievous mistake? An unfortunate clerical error? Or the soft terrorism of flaccid gun laws?

I’m inclined to believe it’s the latter. Even in a state like New York, our gun laws are weak. Worse, the Supreme Court is closing in on a decision on NY State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, which involves a challenge to the NY State law requiring gun-toters to show probable cause before getting their concealed carry permit. It seems likely that this law will be overturned, which may mean more white nationalists will be packing heat in a supermarket near you.

Twitter gate crashers

Then there’s the Swanson fortune heir. You know – the one on T.V. that occasionally cackles like Felix the Cat. Now, I’m certain that his pathetic little junior Nazi producers funnel dark web conspiracy theories up the the boss on a regular basis. That replacement theory BS, though – that’s old as fuck. That shit likely rode into Tucker’s mouth on the same silver spoon that delivered his pablum. He’s heir to more than frozen dinner money, you know. Pater and Mater left him a handsome legacy of country club racism as well.

Of course, he likes to have his audience pretend that he’s not a member of the elite – that it’s those people on the left telling you what to think and lording it over you. He’s talked about the “gatekeepeers” on Twitter who get “hysterical” when he talks about the great replacement. Not sure how anyone on Twitter can be a “gatekeeper” for a guy with the top rated show on cable news. Right wingers are super sensitive little butterflies, aren’t they?

I’m just using Carlson as an example. There’s plenty of prominent reinforcement for bad ideas like replacement theory. He could disappear tomorrow and it would still be a problem.

What now?

The answer to hate is better organizing. I don’t see any other way. We need to help people understand that their problems are not being caused by other workers who happen to look, talk, love differently.

What to do about the Court’s broad interpretation of the second amendment? Well, I believe Congress can pass legislation that’s outside the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. Here’s the relevant passage, from Article III, Section 2:

…the Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction, both as to law and fact, with such exceptions, and under such regulations as the Congress shall make.

“With such exceptions, and under such regulations as the Congress shall make”? That’s not nothing.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

The best way to make your vote count

I know this is not a week when people want to hear about lost elections, but somebody has to say it. This is such an elementary point, I don’t understand why there’s so much resistance to it, but elections have consequences. I feel the urge to tell my leftist friends that (a) I’m further left than they are, (b) the revolution is not just around the corner, and (c) voting strategically doesn’t take anything away from organizing.

This week the Supreme Court gave us their best reason yet to use voting as a political strategy. We are looking at a 5-4 reversal of Roe v. Wade, a decision that will cause enormous hardship for millions of working class and poor women across the country. That five-vote majority could not be arrived at without the appointment of Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett, and Brett Kavanaugh to the court. If a Democratic president had filled even just two of those seats, it’s doubtful that Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health would have even made it to the court in the first place.

Not our first rodeo

The sad fact is, because of flaccid support for flaccid Democratic candidates over the past twenty years, we have missed multiple opportunities to flip the Supreme Court over to the centrist-liberal side. There were several points at which a Democratic senate majority and/or Democratic president could have taken advantage of serendipitous vacancies, but alas, they simply were not there. The Republicans have managed to be in the right place at the right time in each instance.

It happened in the Reagan years, but without delving back into the stone age, the first instance I’m thinking of is 2005, right after Bush’s reelection, when Chief Justice Rehnquist died of thyroid cancer. If Kerry had won in 2004, Rehnquist would not have been replaced with Roberts. Neither would Sandra Day O’Connor have been replaced with Alito that same year. Then, of course, there was 2016, when Scalia dropped dead. Much as I couldn’t stand Clinton, she would not have appointed Gorsuch to replace him. And if we had held the Senate in 2014, confirmation of Obama’s nominee would have been assured.

Harm reduction 101

There are plenty of fair complaints on the left regarding how Biden has handled things, how the Democratic House and Senate have used their majorities, etc. But the principle obstacle to better policy is the lack of a firm majority in the Senate. That’s the reason why the Child Tax Credit was not renewed, even though it had cut child poverty in half. That was a wildly successful program that missed renewal by a whisker – really just one vote short in the Senate.

How do you fix that problem? Elect more progressive Democrats. Failing that, elect more Democrats who will at least support core policies, like reducing or ending child poverty, protecting a woman’s bodily sovereignty, and so on. It’s one of those necessary but not sufficient measures. Voting for Democrats will not solve our most serious problems by itself. It will keep things from turning into the dumpster fire we’re seeing now.

Do it for the downtrodden

Hey, I know … it sucks to have to support a lousy candidate. You work like hell in the primaries to get somebody decent on the ballot, and then end up with some watery moderate like Biden. Bad enough, but you know what’s worse? Republicans. And it may not affect you directly, if you’re well situated economically, but for working class and poor people, there is a significant difference between the parties.

So mark your ballot, then march. You can spend the whole year doing the latter. The former will just take you a few minutes.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.

Political Rants

Making half of us second class citizens

I heard a few moments of oral arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health while they were underway. I didn’t, however, get the chance to dig into it until about a week later, when Michael Moore ran the full audio feed on his podcast, Rumble. You can also read the transcript posted on the Supreme Court’s web site, if you prefer.

Either way you access it, it’s pretty ugly, but that’s not surprising. The fact is, we’ve been seeing this slow-motion train wreck coming for decades, and many, many of us chose to do nothing to stop it. But before I get into that familiar diatribe, I want to comment briefly on some of what was said during these oral arguments – specifically, a few reactionary hot takes as analyzed by someone who is not a Con Law expert.

Being neutral on a speeding train

If you listen to the entire proceedings, you will hear Justice Kavanaugh dive into a discussion of precedent. Kavanaugh cited cases like Brown v. Board of Education as fodder for his argument that sometimes it’s appropriate to overturn decisions that are wrongly decided. Legal experts have pointed out that most if not all of his examples were cases that expanded rights, whereas overturning Roe would take rights away from Americans. But he also contended that the court should be “scrupulously neutral” on the question of abortion because, he claims, the Constitution is neutral on abortion.

Kavanaugh affects to consider Plessy v. Furguson as wrongly decided – fair enough. But wasn’t Plessy effectively the court’s way of saying that they were neutral on “separate but equal” Jim Crow laws? After all, the majority wasn’t forcing all states to adopt these laws. If a state wanted to do so, it was up to them. In light of that, what was Plessy, then, if not “scrupulous neutralism”? How can he describe this kind of neutralism as being a positive thing?

Fetishizing enumerated rights

Both Justice Thomas and Justice Kavanaugh appeared to agree with Mississippi’s Solicitor General that abortion was not a right explicitly laid out in our 18th Century constitution. If they mean the word does not appear in the text, they are correct. However, it seems more than unreasonable to expect that the only human rights we should honor must be spelled out in our founding documents.

For instance, is there anything in the Constitution about a right to breathe? How about walking across the street – is that buried somewhere in Article II? Reactionary Supreme Court Justices play this little game all the time. Now, I’m not even just an old country lawyer, but I’ll say this much. It seems to me that what happens under your skin should be your own damn business. That strikes me as the closest thing to a natural right as anything I’ve ever heard.

Ladies choice, please

I have a suggestion for the Justices. Your honors, take this as you will. If you are considering a decision that will relegate women to second-class citizenship, it seems only fair that the decision should be made by those amongst you who are best situated to understand the full ramifications. I’m speaking of the women currently seated on the Court. Let’s let them decide how to move forward on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health. You boys just wait in the cloak room until they work it out.

Hey – if you don’t have a uterus, you should have a say in this. Simple as that.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.