How the Supreme Court is Taking a Wrecking Ball to America
Mitch McConnell, thank you for your inescapable, ignominious contributions to preserving our democracy. Thanks for not mustering GOP votes for impeaching a criminal and then making a hypocritical speech on the senate floor implying Trump should be prosecuted. Thanks for packing the Supreme Court with religious zealots. You have given us, in coordination with your dissembling judges, a Supreme Court that has just overturned a precedent relied on by two generations of American women, the constitutional right to make their own reproductive choices.
The fanatical religious zealot Samuel Alito and the intellectually dishonest, equally zealous, Amy Coney Barrett joined by the lying Clarence Thomas, now threatening other rights, (who replaced a judicial giant, Thurgood Marshall) and Bret Cavanaugh, have laid waste to 50 years of increasing rights for women. Cavanaugh, after disingenuously telling Susan Collins that he had no intention of overturning Roe v. Wade (1972), has joined his extremist brethren in wresting the power of the Chief Justice from him, moving the court even further to the right, using religious dogma to rationalize the draconian political results to come of overturning Roe. Preachy Barrett replaced another judicial giant, RBG, a lifetime warrior for the rights of women, who, on her deathbed, pleaded for the Senate to wait until a new president was inaugurated. But McConnell, after not even allowing a Senate vote on Merrick Garland for a year, rammed Amy through the senate in the last months of Trump’s presidential pardon adventure for felonious cronies.
Thomas Jefferson famously said, “keep the preachers away from government,” and surely his words resonate now more highly than ever. We have preachers on the court making decisions based upon their interpretation of Catholic/evangelical doctrine. Except perhaps other religions may have a different point of view.
For example, interpretive religious writings, in the Talmud says that a fetus does not yet have a soul until it is born. And the doctrine of “pekuach nefesh” says that the life of the mother is superior to the unborn. But apparently not in Texas or Mississippi.
Using religious dogma as the sole basis for judicial decisions is like using a stone age manual for building a computer.
Several things need to be done to control court extremism. Voters need to work hard jettisoning GOP politicians who pander to their minority base to the detriment of the majority. Justices should be added to the court, subject to term limits of 18 years, allowing each president two choices for the court, per four years of presidency.
The United States Senate could be made more democratic through a constitutional amendment, say, allowing two senators per 500,000 of population, or some other figure that does not allow states with only that number to have as many senators as a state with 40 million people. This is inherently undemocratic, allowing entrenched minority rule. Next, there should be a constitutional amendment codifying Roe, and another one abolishing the dark money generated by Citizens United.
Another amendment screaming at us is the abolition of the electoral college, allowing direct popular vote, no more minority presidents.
The Kabuki dance confirmation process should be transformed allowing senators to really know what philosophy these powerful supreme court nominees really hold.
A one term, criminal minority president who lost by 3 million votes to Hillary Clinton, with the help of Mitch McConnell, appointed three justices, captivated by antediluvian dogma. The Senate is not representative of the people. Religion has invaded the public space. And people who are the minority rule the land through a perverted electoral process, originally created to give equality for slave states and a militia carrying muskets.
The framers, who knew well the history or government and religion deeply understood that separation of church and state be inviolate. It is right in the First Amendment, clearer than a bell. “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” This amendment has allowed disparate religious beliefs to thrive in America.
Many cases have interpreted this clause, as well as the right to bear arms, for that matter. Justices place their personal imprimatur on these issues, however. The court needs moderation, not extremism.
The constitution does not go well with originalism, written when people believed differently than they now do. Amy Coney Barrett believes that women should carry unwanted children to term including those who are plagued with incurable maladies that can be determined well before viability, to term, and then drop the child at the police station or at a an underfunded childcare facility so that they can be adopted. This zealot does not belong in a position of power deciding the fate of millions of women who need reproductive choice. She and Samuel Alito are cut from the cloth of those who persecuted others because they did not share their beliefs.
Alito, a modern-day Torquemada, is conducting an inquisition against women. His opinion is a screed of indifference to the dim social implications of overturning Roe, forcing poor women to travel long distances to seek reproductive care, creating insurmountable obstacles to keep their lives controllable. Some states will now ban all abortions, including a result of incest or rape.
As Jefferson said, “Keep the preachers away from government.”