Do the Hokey Pokey

"Words no longer have meaning" says Justice Scalia and he should know, being a major contributor to the vocabulary of Right Wing babble.

Chief Justice Roberts' reasoning in yesterday's decision on the Affordible Care Act was "Argle-bargle." The decision against the Defense of Marriage Act was "Jiggery-pokery."  That's the power of words to hide the embarrassing truth and in Scalia's case, the truth is he's arguing the reverse of last years' Bargerly Argle.

"Three years ago, when the Affordable Care Act’s constitutionality was challenged, Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Sam Alito read the law in such a way as to see all eligible consumers receiving subsidies, regardless of state or federal exchanges. In today’s dissent, these three had to read the law in the polar opposite way" writes Steve Benin. 

Contradictions like these say a lot. They say that the Court's most "conservative" spokesmen see the law in a rather situational way, That is to say it's right or wrong depending on who's doctrinal ox is being gored.  In this case maybe we can call it argumentum ad Obama, or "whatever he does is wrong."  If words have lost their meaning, which in a sense is true, perhaps it has much to do with the kind of rhetorical  wriggle-wragle or humpity-bumpidy defenders of  antiquated hoogely-boogely use to justify their dishonest HokeyPokey

Say, how many worms are in that can?

Americans like words like Freedom and Liberty and perhaps because those ideas scare us so much. We are terrified of coercion by a government we all choose but we love to coerce those who disagree with us and deny them the right to choose.  We certainly are rarely in agreement as to what it means to be a free country and I might dare to say that question is still central to political argument today.  How do we define freedom?

• " It's a free country and I can do what I want." 
• " It's a free country and I don't have to do anything I don't want to do."

Some would equate those statements, others would point out that the first is true within limits and the second isnot, but the idea that freedom carries no obligation and indeed that in a free country it never should seems common amongst extremists.  Unfortunately extremists have a stranglehold on the Supreme Court and perhaps on Congress.  The recent decision regarding the ACA mandate that employers provide insurance coverage for contraception shows that the court sides with the second example and that when it comes to the concept of  freedom of religion and perhaps freedom of speech, personal beliefs convey personal privilege, but because this is such a limited ruling, the inherent hypocrisy becomes apparent.

If  I believe interfering with the implantation of a fertilized egg is murder, it's because of a religious interpretation of murder other people do not share and an interpretation of humanity and human rights that borders on the ludicrous. Citing a definition of freedom I do not believe the Constitution shares, the God Squad on the court allows me to opt out of  having my corporation pay for insurance that might pay for a "morning after" medication and perhaps any form of contraception. That court and indeed all courts do not provide immunity for other religious or other personal opinions and specifically not to opt our of paying for wars and executions and that is proof that one specific belief is being given special rights and others are not.  This violates the constitutional prohibition against establishment.

How will we see yesterday's ruling when other religious groups decide they don't want indirect participation in executing prisoners, bombing foreign countries and a host of other activities?  Will the court have to say this opinion is privileged and that one is not?  Haven't they just done that?  Does an aversion to contraception become an excuse to opt out of  an obligation only if  it's tied to some organized faith or is a personal dislike sufficient?  That question was answered during the years we had the draft.  It was damned hard to establish personal aversion to war without showing long term affiliation with a pacifist religion and not just a pacifist philosophy.

There can be little doubt that our government is in the business of establishing religious belief and assigning special privileges, special rights to members thereof.  There isn't a damned thing we can do seeing that the independence we make a fuss about every July was so limited.  We severed ties with the United Kingdom but not with Christianity as a force that legitimizes government and those who demand and assert the "Christian Nation"  idea are no more patriots or advocates for freedom than the Hessian troops George II hired to kill our revolutionary patriots.

It will be very hard to cite this decision as limited to the case that prompted it, and there are so many worms in that can that everyone will be able to fish for whatever special dispensation from any obligation he dislikes and our reputation for sanity, if we ever had one, won't need any bit of lead to make it sink to the bottom.

ACA Decision: Area Dino Declares Chief Justice Roberts Honorary Dinosaur

So nobody is going to write up today's SCOTUS decision?  You're leaving it to the simple lizard who is more or less beneath good and evil? 

Well, Chief Justice Roberts and the SCOTUS majority deserve this dino's praise for taking the nonpartisan high road: apparently, he saw the Court's job as consisting mainly in finding a reasonable way to square the ACA's mandate provision with the constitution, and along with four other justices, he did so.  If you call it a tax instead of insisting that the Commerce Clause backs you up in "regulating" this kind of commerce, it's okay.  I think the Administration can live with that, though I suppose it's a spot embarrassing to call the enforcement mechanism a "tax" on people who refuse to pony up for some health insurance.  Same goes for the Medicaid part of the ruling, which was sterner. 

The point is, the legislative branch of gubmint had passed this thing, and Chief Justice Roberts didn't see it as his prerogative to find easy ways to crush it.  He seems to have rewritten or reconceptualized the ACA somewhat to make it fit his reading of the constitution.  The SCOTUS looks pretty damn good today, thanks in large part to one John Roberts, Bush 43 appointee.  He is hereby declared an honorary dinosaur.  That's the highest award I can bestow on a human.  It's sort of like getting a Congressional Medal of Honor.  The majority's decision was wise, and they deserve praise for it.  They won't get it from the ultrapolarized 'Baggery, of course, but it should be obvious why that's the case.

I think people will become more positive about the ACA as more of its provisions come online.  It isn't perfect and a lot of us would prefer something more thorough, but it's certainly going to move us closer to where we should be.  I watched the president's brief announcement after the ruling, and as usual he impressed me.  He comes across as decent, earnest and thoughtful, which is a hell of a lot more than I can say about any of his most dedicated opponents.

Humans, Repeat after BloggingDino 500 Times

You can't tell what the Supreme Court is going to decide just by listening to the questions the justices ask and then convincing yourself that your own breathless interpretation of their attitude must indicate how they will cast their vote. 

You can't tell what the Supreme Court is going to decide just by listening to the questions the justices ask and then convincing yourself that your own breathless interpretation of their attitude must indicate how they will cast their vote.  

You can't tell what the Supreme Court is going to decide just by listening to the questions the justices ask and then convincing yourself that your own breathless interpretation of their attitude must indicate how they will cast their vote. 

You can't do that even if you're a commentator whose head regularly appears magically in other people's Tee-Vee boxes.  I've heard almost nothing all day but excited or gloomy attempts to do precisely that with regard to the rigorous and skeptical way of the SCOTUS while questioning the gub'mint and its state opponents on the health-insurance mandate.  They're the nation's highest judges; they're SUPPOSED to ask tough questions, question their own assumptions, and all that sort of thing.  Nobody really knows how the vote will go until it actually goes.

Bush v. Gore Redux (With 2 Updates)

In Election Year 2000, Al Gore won the national vote by a plurality of over 2 million votes cast. The Bush campaign won the not so great State of Flori-duh by a mere 531 votes - winning an Electoral College victory but making George Bush only the second president in history without a popular mandate. No other democracy in the free world counts votes quite like the United Reprobates of Amerika. Eleven years later, former Supreme Justice John Paul Stevens writes in his new memoir, Five Chiefs, that the Bush appeal to the United States Supreme Court was "frivolous" and should never have been granted (source):

He recalls bumping into Justice Stephen Breyer at a Christmas party and the two having a brief conversation about the Bush application to halt the recount by issuing a stay. "We agreed that the application was frivolous," he writes. "To secure a stay, a litigant must show that one is necessary to prevent a legally cognizable irreparable injury. Bush's attorneys had failed to make any such showing."

Imagine what the world would be like if the SCOTUS stayed away from politics … and let the election be decided in Flori-Duh after massive amounts of election rigging had come to light.**  If the vote count were reversed in the Florida Supreme Court, imagine a world with no George Bush! No Darth Cheney! No fungible Rumsfeld! No Bush tax cuts!  No decade of ruinous wars! And no economic meltdown!

**  Database Technologies (DBT) won a $4 million contract from the state of Florida to assist the Division of Elections in the removal of ineligible registrants from the voter file.  Ultimately 173,127 Floridians were identified as potentially ineligible to vote in the November 2000 election. Of those on the list, 57,746 were identified as convicted felons, which later proved to be false. The practice of felon disenfranchisement has resulted in the greater likelihood of minorities, especially African Americans – the ones most likely to vote Democrat - appearing erroneously on the Florida felon exclusion list.  For more commentary on election rigging, please read the comment thread below.

TUESDAY UPDATE:  If you believe Bush v. Gore was a freak historical anomaly, think again.  Republicans are determined to create a political monopoly and end democracy as we know it.  Slowly, methodically, bit by bit, they have been laying a foundation nationwide to disenfranchise voters, as this New York Times Editorial explains:

The Myth of Voter Fraud

It has been a record year for new legislation designed to make it harder for Democrats to vote — 19 laws and two executive actions in 14 states dominated by Republicans, according to a new study by the Brennan Center for Justice. As a result, more than five million eligible voters will have a harder time participating in the 2012 election.

Of course the Republicans passing these laws never acknowledge their real purpose, which is to turn away from the polls people who are more likely to vote Democratic, particularly the young, the poor, the elderly and minorities. They insist that laws requiring government identification cards to vote are only to protect the sanctity of the ballot from unscrupulous voters …

None of these explanations are true. There is almost no voting fraud in America. And none of the lawmakers who claim there is have ever been able to document any but the most isolated cases. The only reason Republicans are passing these laws is to give themselves a political edge by suppressing Democratic votes [my bold].

If you thought the stolen election of 2000 were bad enough – the one that gave us 8 disastrous years of Bush/Cheney – get ready for the Republican Reich.

WEDNESDAY UPDATE:  Is the hidden motive behind voter suppression driven solely by the ambitions of one party - to crush the opposition and dominate the national agenda? Or is there more? A political party is merely the public face of its backers in the pursuit of economic self-interest.  In this article, The Real Agenda Behind Voter Suppression, Donald Cohen offers this perspective:

In 1974 and 1975, the Conference Board, a mainstream business organization, held a set of strategic brainstorming meetings with groups of top business executives to understand these threats to free enterprise and begin to chart a course to fight back. They openly expressed their worries whether democracy, in the long run, was even compatible with capitalism. “One man, one vote has undermined the power of business in all capitalist countries since WWII. “ said one participant. Said another, “We need to question the system itself: one man, one vote” [my bold].

… which leads me to an academic question: If you can only have one, democracy or free enterprise but not both, which would you prefer? In my view, the Conference Board debate is a false dichotomy. Democracy and free enterprise are not mutually exclusive because eventually you will end up with neither. In a predatory world of business where the rules are written only by the most powerful, eventually the big fish will swallow the little fish, and all you will have left are lords and serfs.

The biggest problam facing America today. .

. . . is pornography. Well at least it has been according to orators at several Republican national conventions in recent memory. It's possible that such things are motivated by a Christian analogue of another right wing obsession: Sharia law, and it's possible that it was a smokescreen to divert attention from other core policies like borrowing on the promise of self funding tax cuts. One thing is clear, Politicians tend to be a randy lot, but Conservative males love porn the way they love money and women: they want it all for themselves.

Remember Ken Starr who wanted to make it a crime to use the word "breast" on the Internet but spent millions and wrote endless words, even on the Internet, about Bill Clinton's penis, Monica Lewinsky's cigar and related subjects? Yes, I know, Democrats like porn too and cheat on their wives and are hypocrites and all that as I'm sure someone will assure me to obscure the fact that they haven't been on a moral crusade for those nebulous but normative "family values" for decades. I've had all the contrived and deceptive equivalences I need for now, thank you.

Which brings me to Clarance Thomas. It was the equivalent of a lynching, said he when accusations were leveled by another conservative that he'd offered her a Coke with pubic hair on it, even though she had little reason to lie and had complained to the FBI only in private. Anita Hill was branded a Liberal, although she wasn't and isn't, in a fashion far more evocative of a lynching than the sworn testimony against Justice Thomas. It seems now that Lillian McEwen, a former girlfriend of the distinguished Justice says he was "obsessed with porn," and often made inappropriate sexual comments about and unwanted advances toward women in his office and she's kept quiet until now. She confirms, for instance, that he asked women about their breast size when at work.

McEwan was, in fact, given as a character witness by Thomas, to show that he had a regular relationship and wasn't the rude, sex-obsessed, predatory little creep he was alleged to be by more than one accuser. Too bad she wasn't called to testify under oath because, as we read in the Washington Post: in her soon to be published memoir, she confirms our suspicions.

Perhaps it was knowledge that the book contained such damning information that prompted his wife's odd early morning call to Anita Hill, but I don't think she need fear that he'll lose his job or reputation when the accusation of LIBERAL still carries the power that the accusation of WITCH used to have in centuries past. We're stuck with an overgrown adolescent and liar on the highest court. We may all have his pubic hair in all the wrong places and we don't have a hell of a lot of choice but to drink from the can.

An unbalanced truth

Seems like yesterday when criticizing George Bush was close enough to treason that the police would get involved. I remember people walking out of a Jon Lovitz stand-up routine when he made some mild crack about Bush's garbled English. I remember tirades on TV when Streisand aired her opinions of the president. I remember grumbling in the movie theater lobby after a showing of "W" about how "you shouldn't criticize a president like that." There were the Dixie Chicks, and there were the Radio bloviators out there bashing liberals as though freedom of speech were some Marxist plot. The word treason, the accusation of "emboldening" and giving aid and comfort to some amorphous enemy was given enough air time to warm the climate for real.

I remember audiences for Bush's town hall meetings being vetted to make sure flattering questions were the only ones asked. I remember protesters being herded into "free speech" zones behind barbed wire and miles from anywhere the President might be. I remember people being escorted from the premises by armed policemen simply because of a bumper sticker on the car they arrived in.

Many people persist in telling us that such things are common on "both sides" yet I do not remember anyone being escorted away from the current president for carrying signs advocating killing "his ugly wife and stupid children" nor for carrying guns. It's perhaps the most false of the false equivalences that constitute political dialogue today.

Of course if you want to tell me the courts share the blame, I'll agree. According to the Christian Science Monitor, the US Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal of two Colorado residents who were excluded unwillingly from a speech by President Bush in 2005 because White House aides saw them arrive in a car with a bumper sticker that proclaimed: “No More Blood For Oil.”

Do we attribute this slap in the face for the First amendment to the Bush Police State? Certainly it wasn't the only one, but Bush is gone and the highest court seems to think we won't care that they don't care enough to hear the case.

So is it now that the freedom to have a bumper sticker on your car -- that is the freedom to criticize the government, to petition the government, to print your opinions for all to read can simply be washed away by a government that can't be bothered to listen to it? Stare decisis?

I don't know about you, but no matter how conservative, libertarian or just plain ornery you are, I don't see a way to pin this one on Obama or to try to pull a fast one with the "both sides do it so its not so bad" sidestep. If you agree that this kind of presidential power is inappropriate, you'll have to agree that getting away with it because the courts don't care is worse. So can we shut up about "liberal active courts" and recognize that this one at least has come down on the side of the police state and the Liberals had nothing to do with it?

So where's the anger? where's the admission that yes, we supported this administration and its policies and WE WERE WRONG!

BOYCOTT BEST BUY & TARGET STORES

Government of the people, by the people and for the people has perished from the earth and now lies decomposing in corporate boardrooms across America. 

Kids in cages

"Children should neither be seen or heard from - ever again" said W.C. Fields.

Surprisingly, our activist Supreme Court has begged to differ. It was only five years ago that the Supreme Court finally decided that killing kids for justice was a bit behind the times, but of course some "Conservative" states have continued to sentence juveniles to life without parole. Chief amongst those states is Florida, which houses about 70% of them.

It would be hard to describe Florida as a particularly child-friendly state. Although I can't say it's particularly friendly to those who prey on them or neglect them, the poverty, substance abuse and ignorance that abound isn't child friendly either. Certainly "55 and older" communities are everywhere and as communities of older people are more likely to be afraid of the noise wild behavior and petty crime, there's a certain hostility. There's a certain feeling of helplessness and even terror amongst older people that can lead to hostility. It's a terror that overrides conscience in some cases and that sides with a draconian justice system while whimpering about a less powerful government.

Of course there's a big difference between chasing those brats off your lawn and locking them up in a cage for as long as they shall live, and that bit of casual inhumanity has at last drawn Supreme attention. Terrance Graham was implicated in armed robberies when he was a minor and has been sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole. The court voted 5-4 on Monday and Kennedy, writing for the majority said:

"The state has denied him any chance to later demonstrate that he is fit to rejoin society based solely on a nonhomicide crime that he committed while he was a child in the eyes of the law. This the Eighth Amendment does not permit." (as a cruel punishment)

This decision was a majority one because Chief Justice Roberts sided for once with the liberals although with the qualification that it should not apply to all non-homicide crimes. That of course makes the decision less than decisive. It's a step forward, but a timid and qualified step toward humanity; toward sometimes, in some cases allowing a second chance to someone who got caught doing what millions of others have got away with and never done again. That's just the sort of thing conservatives object to: making the law and justice more congruent; making the law for man and not man for the law -- and that's just the reason we need to balance the angry, self righteous and fearful elements on the court.

Fear and Trembling in the Court

OK, so now I'm worried. I was willing to make some excuses for Obama's new support of offshore drilling; blaming it on previous administrations' infiltration of oil men into the department of energy and the drowning of environmental regulations, but if what I'm hearing about Elena Kagan is even partly true, I'm worried that we're going to have a more dangerous court, more friendly toward unfettered Presidential powers and willing to cut a wider swath through the law to root out nebulous, ever shifting devils and their agents -- making any accusation, any suspicion a de facto conviction without representation, without trial, without appeal: in some cases without anyone even knowing about it.

"Battlefield Law", said she to Lindsay Graham last year, should be applied to anyone we have a feeling is financing Al Qaeda and one's rights should not be read to anyone that might be construed to be a "terrorist" despite the lack of any real definition of what a terrorist might be. Vague definitions and accusations of shadowy connections leading to indefinite detentions without due process? Why have a court at all if we're no longer a civilized nation but a band of warriors on a worldwide battlefield?

Attorney General Eric Holder said on ABC's This Week Sunday, that even US citizens don't need to be read their rights if they're suspected of being involved in terrorism. Suspected is the key word here and in a time when everyone seems to be suspected every time they board an airplane, it's a scary word.

“I think we have to give serious consideration to at least modifying that public safety exception." Chopping a piece out of the Bill of Rights is “one of the things that I think we’re going to be reaching out to Congress to do – to come up with a proposal that is both Constitutional, but that is also relevant to our time and the threat that we now face.”

I think it's worth mentioning that the most recent attempts at terrorist acts were hardly impeded by the reading of rights as the terrified terrorists , one of whose gonads had just been blow off, spilled their guts as fast as they could get the words out and when we're happy to torture people so thoroughly their testimony becomes invalid, what's going to change if we tell them they have any rights at all -- which, practically speaking, they don't. I'm afraid we don't either. It's certainly harder not to cry when reading about our forefathers' noble ideals about all mankind being endowed with inalienable rights when we're told that's just too risky these days.
It's always been risky and taking that risk has been one of our valid claims to greatness.

The last thing I expected or wanted from the President in the way of restocking the Court was another battlefield lawyer, supporting the degradation of our most basic American traditions and laws from gutless cowardice. We have more to fear from fear of terrorism, it seems, than from terrorism itself. At a time when the very concept of a government is so frightening to so many, I would have expected a selection with a more obvious commitment to taking the risk of Liberty and willing to face saboteurs without sabotaging our own freedom.

Desert Cross

"the Constitution does not oblige government to avoid any public acknowledgment of religion's role in society"

said Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy. The Cross may be an affirmation of Christian beliefs but it's also used to "honor and respect heroism." The cross he refers to of course is the one erected 75 years ago in the Mojave Desert to "honor" the dead of the First World War, including those without Christian beliefs; those whose own beliefs were inimitable to and lives diminished by those with Christian beliefs. Yes, Tony, there are and were atheists in foxholes: Jews, Muslims, animists, Unitarians and others -- and no Tony, that cross doesn't salute them be they heroes or clerk-typists: it salutes you and your religion at their expense and mine. It doesn't acknowledge that there are religious people in America, it tells you they're the ones who count most.

"Here, one Latin cross in the desert evokes far more than religion. It evokes thousands of small crosses in foreign fields marking the graves of Americans who fell in battles, battles whose tragedies are compounded if the fallen are forgotten"

continued Kennedy hoping apparently that in the passionate flaunting of murky emotional tropes we will forget that the most moving of war memorials contains nothing but names: hoping apparently that you've never been to one of those cemeteries in Europe and seen the graves marked by the Star of David and memorializing bones than didn't fight for or die to uphold Christianity or an allegedly Christian nation. The Desert Cross isn't designed to help us remember anyone but to remember Jesus of the Gospels. Waving a cross in their dead faces isn't designed to be a memento of them, but a proud rebuke toward others and another bit of puffed-up braggadocio in the same fashion as our traditional bully-boy patriotism. We're number one -- and that's because we're Christian.

What Judge Tony is saying here is that they don't matter, they don't deserve to matter; don't deserve the dignity of being buried without alien iconography. What America is hearing is that we can't spare a dime for Public TV but putting up and maintaining Christian symbols on public property is public duty because the United States of America would really be the Christian States of America God wants it to be if we hadn't allowed those people in.

"The cross is not a universal symbol of sacrifice. It is the symbol of one particular sacrifice, and that sacrifice carries deeply significant meaning for those who adhere to the Christian faith"

states Justice Steven's dissenting, and historically correct opinion, an opinion soon to retire from the bench. The symbol does not represent the United States, it does not represent all of us or describe what we're about. It does not remind us of the unnecessary and pointless slaughter of the Great War conducted by the Christian kings of Christian nations asserting Christian values. It does not remind us that we have a secular government and we designed it and maintain it to protect our individual beliefs and our right to practice our creeds and sects and religions without government interference and coercion, be it subtle or overt.

Once again we have been made aware of how precarious is our freedom of conscience, our freedom from interference in our private beliefs and our right to be included as Americans in a state that is under relentless religious pressure to be exclusive. We have a Court willing, it seems, to reevaluate and revisit many things we thought were decided and that would be a great many things indeed if next year's Court leaned more heavily toward giving our government a more religious stance when it comes to matters of morality. We can expect some serious fervor surrounding the next appointment. If you value religious freedom and indeed if you value religion itself, maybe now's the time to pray.

Back to the future

Only a year into Ronald Reagan's first term, some pundits were calling him a one-term president. Only hours into Bill Clinton's first term many were saying the same thing.Barak Obama hasn't been spared the would-be self fulfilling prophecy either. Republicans and the corporate interests who own them have been focusing on the upcoming elections since November 2008 and now, the Supreme Court has given them what may be just what they need to make their reconquista possible. Indeed the midterm elections may have their outcome affected by new, less restrictive rules regarding campaign spending by corporations.

"Our nation's speech dynamic is changing, and informative voices should not have to circumvent onerous restrictions to exercise their First Amendment rights,"

wrote Kennedy for the majority, setting aside a century's limited progress in separating the power of money from the power of the vote. By "informative voices" of course, he means The Insurance industry, the Health care industry, The Oil Companies and all who seek to profit by influencing and restricting our choices. That's one small step forKBR, Halliburton, United Health Care, Exxon and Cargill -- and one giant step backwards for you and me.

At a time of national outrage as concerns the true loyalties of our elected representatives, could this affirmation of the power of money over the power of the individual come at a worse time?

Today's ruling, by Big Money's representatives in the court may not change much, considering the ease with which corporations have been able to influence every last detail of our lives as it is, but it's a bad step in a bad direction.

Honor our troops - at least some of them

Yes, sir, I'm glad we have real men like Anton Scalia on the Supreme Court instead of some "activist" liberal pansy. Who but a Liberal would come up with the idea that putting a cross on a Jewish ( or Muslim, or Buddhist or atheist) soldier's grave wouldn't be an insult to the troops we're told to honor and support?

The court is hearing a case on the constitutionality of erecting a cross on Government ( our ) land in order to honor the dead of WW I. It's not really a religious symbol, opined Scalia but just a common thing to do in cemeteries. In Christian cemeteries -- certainly but here's where Scalia seems unimaginative enough to recognize that many of us and certainly many of us whose families have been here far longer than his, are not Christians nor is there an established religion in the US; Christian or otherwise.

Crosses never appear in Jewish cemeteries, said the ACLU lawyer, but like the hard-hearted biblical Pharaoh, Scalia could only reply

“I don’t think you can leap from that to the conclusion that the only war dead that that cross honors are the Christian war dead. I think that’s an outrageous conclusion.”

Well I don't think it is outrageous and I imagine there are more than a few people buried in any military cemetery who would, if they could, disagree with him. As Ann Woolner points out on Bloomberg.com,

"Hundreds of thousands of non-Christians served in World War I. Jews alone accounted for 250,000, or about 5 percent of the troops deployed. To memorialize them, Muslims and other non- Christians who gave their lives for their country with a Christian cross doesn’t honor them. For many of their families, it insults them. "

There is no secular purpose and therefore no legitimate government purpose in putting a cross on government property, says the Amicus brief filed by Jewish War Veterans of the United States of America. Of course that's true and in my opinion, as each grave has it's own appropriate marker, the only reason to Christianize the entire cemetery is to put a Christian stamp on the US military and all it's endeavors and all it's men. One would think that the truly devout might say that it puts a US military stamp on Christianity and indeed some do.

All things considered, I'd rather not have a symbol of a religion ( particularly Scalia's) that's been persecuting and vilifying my ancestors since the Constantine administration on my lawn or my grave or the graves of any of my family who has been in the US military for the last 150 years. The party that so often screams about their "freedom" being taken away is usually quite silent when someone else's freedom of religion is being taken away and the honor and dignity of so many of our troops is being trod upon by their fellow Americans.

I'm with McCain

As a commenter below mentioned, the Supreme Court is about to revisit prior decisions that in some cases for as much as a century have been restricting the ability of corporations and trade unions to finance political campaigns. That there should be one vote for every eligible citizen is inseparable from any definition of democracy, but is a corporation an eligible person with human rights like any person?

John McCain says no, and I absolutely agree. In a press conference with Russ Feingold, McCain said:

“The one thing I know is that if the court overturns long-standing demands — long before McCain/Feingold as it’s called, the ban on corporate and union campaign contributions, I think you will see an era of corruption.”

That's an understatement. Massive amounts of money give massive political power and that turns democracy's somewhat level playing field into a cliff. As voters, we can't mount trillion dollar ad campaigns, produce movies, buy networks. As voters in a system where money does all the talking we might as well not vote. In fact, we're already in a position where this will be decided without our vote and thanks to the consistent appointment of ultra right wing judges over the past decades, it will be decided by long gone administrations whose policies are no longer in vogue.

Can we look forward to the Toyota administration? The Cigna Presidency? ( I almost said the Halliburton Administration, but arguably, we've already had that.) What's to stop it, since there are corporate entities, foreign and domestic, big enough to put anyone in office. It's a situation far more frightening than losing the health care reform battle.

Guys like us

Boy, the way Glenn Miller played!
Songs that made the Hit Parade.
Guys like us, we had it made.
Those were the days!

We should worry. There are doubts. We don't know enough about her. She's "ethnic" and therefore might have "empathy" for other ethnics and therefore she might be prejudiced against us - and lets face it she's dangerous because we can't know how people like that think. Do we want someone with a special social or gender or ethnic perspective instead of a regular American anyway? It's not that we're prejudiced, it's that she probably is because, well you know. . . aren't they all?

And you knew where you were then.
Girls were girls and men were men.
Mister, we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again.

Change the "she" to a "he" and you have the same whiny, timorous Archie Bunker mentality that assured us their fear and loathing of Obama had nothing to do with the fact that he was a Ni -- I mean African American.

Turn on C-Span this morning and you have the same white collar bigotry from the same, expensively dressed, white Anglo-Saxon senators from the same tradition and the same party that fought school segregation, supported restricted real estate markets and hotels and caressed their bibles while telling us it was and should be a felony to marry outside your race. The same people whose family values trump yours, who want you to affirm their religion regardless of what you believe, who would never, however be so rude as to use a racial epithet whenblackballing you from the club. The same tailored suits who pretend to solemn deliberation to hide their knee-jerk prejudice. She's just not suitable, not one of us, don't you know old chap. It's nothing personal.

A wise Latina woman? Not at my country club, not on my court.

Didn't need know welfare state.
Everybody pulled his weight.
Gee, our old LaSalle ran great.
Those were the days!

Man was made for the law.

At least while the remnants of Republican barbarism still control the court, the law is the law is the law; right or wrong .

Is anyone still so idealistic as to think that our justice system is about justice and not about upholding the authority of. . .well, authority? Well, maybe the latest ruling from the Old Bastard's Club we sometimes call the Supreme Court and the Republicans sometimes accuse of giving a damn, will change your mind. In a ruling today one might have expected from a Texas court or perhaps the Spanish Inquisition, it ruled that once you're convicted, you have no right to obtain evidence that might exonerate you at least in Alaska, one of the six states in which innocence is no defense once the infallible courts have ruled.

"Science alone cannot prove a prisoner innocent,"

read the decision and of course not, but it can prove him not guilty and it often has done just that. But I guess this is a good way to keep from the inevitable embarrassment of killing a few innocent people now and then.

So isn't it nice that at least one branch of Government retains it's contempt for the value of human life once it's had the chance to be baptized?

Sotomayor

The Jeffrey Toobin article at CNN was only 55 seconds old when I read the comment claiming she

"is just the person to carry this administration’s water when it comes to re-writing laws from the bench."

Gentlemen, launch your swift boats, fire up the all-purpose pejoratives, let the sleazewars begin. Why look for real-world examples when we can invent them and have them now?

Her resume is impressive and she was appointed to the Federal Bench by George H.W. Bush, but any Obama appointee will be treated as an opportunity for the reactionary turkey coop to air the same old "farleftliberal" gobble.

Whether she is indeed a far left Liberal, whatever that means, or a moderate Liberal, if you can sum up anyone that easily: even if she is "carrying water" for the administration, if you'll pardon their cliche', she isn't likely to be carrying all those sacks of reeking fascist shit that have been piling up in the halls of justice during the Republican Dark Ages and that, to me, means far more than gender, ethnicity or any label the pinhead Republicans can pin on her.

This Just In!

Fox has announced their verdict. Sonya Sotomayor is the “most liberal” of any of his candidates and was chosen to “appease the far left.”

Still no word on why the "most Liberal Senator in American History" has yet to prove he isn't a conservative, but hey - it's Fox, how wrong can they be?