January 31, 2020--His Majesty the President

If you are wondering why Nancy Pelosi took so long before authorizing the House Intelligence Committee to begin an impeachment "inquiry," wonder no more. 

Just look around at what is going on and the reasons should be clear.

As I write this (Thursday afternoon), it looks as if Mitch McConnell has the votes needed to beat back attempts to call witnesses and  turn documents over to the Senate where the impeachment trial is underway.

If this is true--and we will know by Friday afternoon when the vote about witnesses takes place--Mitch if nothing else is as good a vote counter as was Lyndon Johnson when he presided over the Senate. And, if necessary, Mitch is about as good as it gets when he sees it necessary to twist arms.

So, expect to have witnesses voted down by at least one vote from among the Republican caucus of 53. And almost immediately after that, Friday night, under the cover of darkness, expect to see Trump exonerated by all 53. He will be able to trundle off to the Super Bowl where he will take a bow and then, a few days after that, deliver his State of the Union address before an  ecstatic sea of congressional Trumpers and disgruntled Democrats.

Susan Collins and her wobbly colleagues will be able to say they voted for witnesses; and even though they ultimately voted to find Trump not guilty, this they feel will provide enough political cover for them to eek out close reelection victories. Thus this means the GOP will retain control of the Senate.

How will this be regarded by Democrats, those in Congress and millions among the general population? Not well. With a likely weak candidate nominated to take on Trump, his reelection is more likely, but not certain, than when the impeachment process began.

Anyone who knows political history and human psychology, like Pelosi, knew these outcomes were easy to predict.

How then to think about this? 

I am hearing from friends and family members that, "It's all over." With the "it" being our way of life and representative democracy. The Constitution, they contend, failed us.

When I disagree they accuse me of being a lazy optimist.

Perhaps.

For what it's worth here's what I think--

Yes, if the obvious scenario plays out, we will indeed be in peril. Four more years of Trump could see us as a people"crossing a bridge" of no return.

Those who feel this way, to me, are missing the three most powerful of our remaining checks and balances--an activated free press, the federal courts which have as yet not weighed in, and ultimately the people themselves when we vote in November.

In regard to the courts, perhaps the most significant aspect of the Senate trial is the fact that Chief Justice Roberts was required to sit through dozens of hours of debate where Trump's lawyers came up with preposterous arguments to bolster their defense. It is difficult to imagine that as Trump-related cases make their way to the Supreme Court Roberts will forget what he witnessed and how dangerous the Trump view is of the president as monarch.

But, if the free press is abrogated, if SCOUS because of a perverse reading of Article Two votes to allow the president to "do whatever he wants," and, by far most important, if we either sit out the election or nominate weak candidates, it is indeed over.

So, our future is in our own hands. Where it should be.

June 29, 2015--Jiggery-Pokery

In his, even for him intemperate rant against the Supreme Court's historic 6-3 decision to uphold the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), associate justice Anton Scalia went further than usual in a descent that went beyond the judicial to the very personal.

More than saying that he fervently disagrees with his colleagues' legal logic, he accused them of participating in a deceitful and dishonest act, even applying the archaic Scottish slur jiggery-pokery to impeach their honor and integrity.

In the old days, which he so reveres, he might have been called out to a duel on the field of honor by one of the other justices. But alas, we will have to endure more of him and more of this because the court, under chief justice Roberts, is going rogue on him.

As the intellectual leader of the court's conservatives, the alleged strict constructionists or texturalists,  for decades dominating the other three to four justices who have placidly gone along with his views of the Constitution (with Kennedy occasionally being a swing vote, agreeing with the four automatic liberals), Scalia now finds himself at times in the minority, especially when the court hands down its most significant decisions, like last week's rulings on Obamacare, same-sex marriage, and the Fair Housing Act. (Do not overlook the importance of the latter.)

Scalia might have been more enraged than ever by Roberts' majority opinion in Burwell (the ACA appeal) where he subtly and without attribution quoted Scalia to himself to support the core of the argument he articulated for the five concurring justices.

It is all about context, as Scalia claimed in cases last year when he employed the same contextual argument--it is all about what the Congress truly intended. In the ACA case, Roberts wrote last week, if one looks at the 900-plus page context of the ACA--as Scalia would have us do in selective instances such as this one for laws he viscerally despises--it is clear that Congress intended the uncovered to be able to obtain affordable health care insurance.

Being quoted this way to justify something he violently opposes clearly got under Scalia's skin and motivated him to deliver his dissent from the bench, a highly unusual occurrence that underscored his fury.

But, again, Scalia's intemperance is less about the Obamacare vote than his sense that the court and American society on key social issues are moving on and he is more and more being left in the retrograde past--multiple meanings intended.

He will learn forcefully now that this is the Roberts' Court, not the Scalia.

June 2, 2015--One Man (sic) One Vote

If there is a case pending before the Supreme Court that has the potential to change life in America as we have come to know it, it is not their soon-to-be-announced ruling on same-sex marriage or even down the line Roe v. Wade.

It is how the Supremes will rule in 2016 on voting. On what used to be called one man one vote which in our current era is referred to as one person one vote.

Here's the issue--

Currently, election districts are drawn so that approximately the same number of residents are included in each one. SCOTUS will decide whether or not in their view this is constitutional or if districts made up of equivalent numbers of voters better satisfie the meaning of one person one vote.

If they decide the latter (and in previous cases that have raised similar questions the court has ruled that everyone needs to be counted, not just voters) this will dramatically shift electoral power away from urban centers and more toward suburban and rural communities.

In other words, districts that include only voters in their count will be much more conservative (read Republican) since cities with large immigrant populations (including undocumented ones who get counted but don't vote) are traditionally more liberal but as a percentage of population have fewer voters than rural or suburban communities.

Such a shift would have major political consequences and could lead to that long-dreamed-of permanent Republican majority. Thus, considering the iron ideological division in the current Supreme Court it is no surprise that the Chief Justice has opted to once again bring it to the court's attention. In his view, clearly, the current constitutionally-defined structure for election districts is not settled law. Just as the Voting Rights Act, which recently they substantially gutted, turned out not to be settled law.

We know right now, before even one brief is filed much less an oral argument offered, that at least seven or eight of the nine justices already have their minds made up. This shouldn't be, but that is how it works these days in the federal courts. Ideology and political orientation rule.  Pun intended.