My Blog Week: October 25 to October 31

A Word on the Week

Four Points of Light

As the world audience may be aware, there are some people in America who feel really, really sorry for themselves. They voted for the current administration; they largely still support it. They’ve got nothing from it, but they continue steadfast sweethearts, willing to live vicariously through the lives of billionaires, hangers-on of billionaires, stooges of billionaires… One thing they’ve wanted, which will do them no good also, but will please the objects of their affection, is a conservative, rubber-stamping, mostly Catholic Supreme Court.

We, on the side of right, fear a stolen election, an end to legal abortion, and a disastrous healthcare non-plan, when the ACA is attacked. 

Here are a few considerations, as to why the GOP suicide over control of the courts might not have been a good idea.

1. Democratic state legislatures and a Democratic congress can do a lot beyond the courts. The first thing, widely discussed, is a reform of the Supreme Court. The number of justices can be expanded. Another way to apply the old Solomonic wisdom, is each major party taking its turn nominating a candidate, in a straightforward ordered process outside party dominance. If the GOP puts on an extremist, they know the Democrats get next choice.
2. Courts are slow, no matter what. Having legislative control to push through floods of progressive new laws, means the laws stand effective until successfully challenged. The funnel narrows considerably between the appeals courts and the Supreme Court, so even a single final ruling may be a drop in the bucket against the blue tide.
3. There is a thing, that I learned to call a forked-stick argument. Now I can’t find the term via search engine, but whether I made it up or not, I’ll explain it. A forked-stick is the sort of choice where you can only have what you want by also accepting what you don’t want. A phrase such as “right to life” can’t just be inserted in a judiciary opinion; it has to be defined. Without delineating the extensions and limitations of this “right”, any ruling would spawn a hundred new challenges. Can Catholic justices take the position that a baby, even a healthy one, incapable of surviving without help, fully capable of suffering more than a fetus in a womb, has no right to quality of life, and is of no interest to the court, having been forced to birth? Potentially, in this question of right to life is an open gate to the entire progressive agenda: healthcare, environmental protections, equality of opportunity, etc. Is healthcare a right in itself? Reviews of the ACA could raise this point, as one that must be fully defined before it can be legislated upon.
4. Finally, Republicans are dirty dealers. They picked a lot of incompetents to fill seats at the federal level, just to have some fetch-and-carry people for the conservative agenda. In an interview with Stephen Colbert, Sacha Baron Cohen told an interesting story about Rudy Giuliani—that Giuliani had his own security guard to scan the motel room and then stand outside the door (an actress in Cohen’s movie was alone with America’s Mayor as one of the gags…and shirt-tucking ensued). In short, you can protect yourself from stings by not doing the bad stuff, or you can try protecting yourself by hoping no one catches you. A lot of these judges may be ripely stingable, and if what they’re caught at is bad enough, it won’t matter if they cry entrapment. On the other hand, having a lifetime appointment that forces you to live like a monk for the rest of that life, is a pretty apt punishment for a dirty bastard.