Saturday, October 23, 2010

Animal farm


I don't think it odd that Glenn Beck was at this meeting. After all, Fox "News" is the propaganda arm for these people (and Beck wasn't even the only participant from Fox). But what does it say when Supreme Court Justices are intimately involved in political events like this?

After checking the attendee list at Think Progress, I don't believe there were Supreme Court Justices at this latest meeting. However, Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia apparently attended previous meetings. And Thomas' wife is a right-wing political activist accepting large anonymous donations from people who could well be affected by Supreme Court decisions.

Keep in mind that it was Thomas and Scalia, along with three other right-wing Republicans on the Court, who made George W. Bush president in that notorious 5-4 decision in 2000. (Funny, that was pretty much the only "states' rights" argument they haven't supported.) So how does it feel to know that some Supreme Court Justices are Republican political operatives, working hard to impose their own right-wing vision on our country? Does it give you a lot of faith that their decisions will be made based only on the law?

And how about that 5-4 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, just this January, that overturned precedent and resulted in a flood of corporate cash supporting Republican political candidates this year? Knowing that Supreme Court Justices have become active in Republican politics, are you confident that the decision - which, as I say, overturned longstanding precedent on a narrow 5-4 vote - was really based on the law?

What does it say when our Supreme Court becomes just another institution filled with partisan political operatives? This is unprecedented. After years of Republican efforts to pack the Court with young, right-wing justices, almost every important decision from the Supreme Court these days is narrowly decided, 5-4. That's bad enough in itself. But now we've got sitting justices who are also active in right-wing politics.

Frankly, it seems to me as if Republicans are deliberately destroying America's system of government. I wonder why the Tea Party folk aren't upset about this? They claim to revere our Founding Fathers, but they're supporting the complete destruction of our founders' 200-year-old vision.

It's not just the separation of church and state - and the 14th Amendment, too - that are under relentless attack, but our entire system of government. Political activists in the Supreme Court, a flood of anonymous money into politics, and constant filibusters in the U.S. Senate (which has effectively ended rule by the majority and removed the Vice-President's Constitutional duty to break ties) - all of these seem to be part of the same effort to destroy our political system.

It's scary times, isn't it? I thought things were bad during the Bush Administration, but it seems to be getting worse all the time.

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