a joyful process
I had planned nary a blog until Monday night at the earliest, but Da News waits for no man.
Point one, the main point really, is that the Dems will roll over on this, you betcha, and call it compromise, dress it all up in sanctified language to prove once and for all they're not the party of obstructionism (finally throwing off blacks, gays, libs, women, unions, and children to wholly embrace that growing, all-powerful demographic, Americans Who Don't Obstruct. They may be your neighbor, your co-worker, they may even be one of your loved ones...and they're just like you or me. Except they don't obstruct).
There's another story beyond the frenzied speculation over which repressed corporatist the Bushies will nominate to the Supremes. Indeed, the fact that an upwards of $18 million will be spent by a tiny - albeit fanatic and zealous - slice of the body politic (who will probably succeed) to convince the Senate to select from God's Own slate of candidates for the newest high arbiter of the nation's laws says more how we've come to view the functions of our government more than anything; that, instead of viewing the Supreme Court as an institution meant to safeguard the public's rights against private power, unjust laws, or the "tyranny of the majority," it's merely another vehicle for power to dispense favor and fuck with Other People, be they young women or people who've fallen afoul of big business.
At any rate, here's Cockburn and St. Clair with some perspective:
The US Supreme Court has always been a conservative body, except for the years after Eisenhower made what he called his two great mistakes, nominating William Brennan and Earl Warren, thus giving us the Warren Court. So whatever the pick, the news will not be good, and as we have pointed out, it was the liberal justices who gave us two recent terrible decisions, on medical marijuana and eminent domain.
The sky is dark and there's no silver lining, except one glimmer. We may be entering an era when states openly defy US Supreme Court decisions they don't care for, and where popular opinion and state court rulings point the other way, as with medical marijuana in California and Oregon.
Can we look to the day when Arnold Schwarzenegger will try to recoup his waning political career by standing on the hospital steps of Cedar Sinai facing down Bush's federal marshals trying to haul off young starlets as they seek to exercise a woman's right to chose?
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