Posted on 07/01/2018 12:22:06 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
It matters less, now, if President Donald J. Trump serves only one term. It matters less if he is impeached. It matters less if Robert Mueller indicts him for colluding with a foreign power. With the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy from the U.S. Supreme Court, Trump is a hairbreadth away from sealing his legacy as one of the most influential (if petty, crude, divisive, corrupt and antidemocratic) presidents in American history.
It is hard to overestimate the magnitude of this development. Trump has promised to appoint another hardcore conservative, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his minions will roll right over Senate Democrats to confirm him (or her). That jurist will likely be in his or her 40s or 50s and serve for decades.
That strongly suggests that for the rest of my life — and through a considerable part of my child’s adult life — the nation’s highest court will be a bastion of ultra-right doctrine, hostile to progressive causes of all sorts. That court will likely kill off reproductive rights, starve unions, look askance at affirmative action, eviscerate voting rights and abuse criminal defendants. It will coddle violent police officers, kowtow to corporations and re-write the First Amendment, bulldozing Thomas Jefferson’s famed “wall of separation between church and state.”
This is a huge victory for the forces of retrenchment. Conservatives are much better than liberals at playing the long game, and rich political players on the right have been plotting to remake the court in their own image for decades now. Even before Kennedy’s announcement (and with Kennedy’s assistance), the high court had shifted rightward. Just this summer, the court has weakened reproductive rights, upheld Trump’s hateful, anti-Muslim travel ban and hammered public sector unions. It aided and abetted homophobes with a ruling that sided with a baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple.
McConnell gambled on that shift — and won — when he stymied President Barack Obama’s appointment of Merrick Garland. Spitting on the U.S. Constitution, McConnell defied precedent, mocked tradition and trammeled bi-partisanship, insisting that no high court nominee should be confirmed in an election year. Senate Republicans later embraced Trump’s nomination of Neil Gorsuch, who has become a reliable ultraconservative vote. Of course, McConnell quickly reversed himself after Kennedy’s announcement, revealing that the Senate will vote on a nominee in the fall. Never mind that it’s an election year. Conservatives see their long-held goal of a far-right court just a step or two away, and hypocrisy is their handmaiden.
For much of my life, the Supreme Court served as a defense for oppressed minorities — a bulwark that pushed political and civic institutions to fully respect our rights as citizens. Through several decades, the highest court issued rulings that desegregated public schools, upheld voting rights, sanctioned desegregation of public accommodations and respected affirmative action. It broadened protections for criminal defendants. As feminism took center stage, the court upheld reproductive rights.
And even as the court turned rightward after the appointment of Justice Clarence Thomas, it still found occasion to grant succor to the oppressed. Kennedy’s libertarian streak helped to sustain that impulse. He upheld Roe v. Wade. He championed gay rights. He voted against the death penalty for juvenile offenders. But Trump’s list of potential nominees likely includes no Kennedys.
While the Trump-McConnell machine is taking all the credit for their victory, they had help from the left — from the #NeverHillary crowd. Progressive activists such as actress Susan Sarandon insisted that the Democratic nominee would be no better than Trump. Green Party nominee Jill Stein drained votes away from Clinton. Young progressive voters stayed away from the polls in the 2016 presidential election because they weren’t “energized” by Clinton’s campaign.
They helped put Trump in office, and they will reap what they have sown. So, unfortunately, will the rest of us.
The RIGHT to AVOID RESPONSIBILITY for ANY and ALL acts they may decide to commit.
Well, yes there is. Even prisoners have conjugal visits and may reproduce.
HOWEVER, it's NOT REPRODUCTION if you KILL THE FETUS. There is NO CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT to KILL the fetus.
I knew why I voted Trump, this is why the Supreme Court...I love liberals tears in the morning...:-)
She swerved from talking Trump into precisely describing Obama, as one of, if not THE MOST.....
"petty, crude, divisive, corrupt and antidemocratic presidents in American history."
Ummmmm....nice going. Hillary described Obama to a tee.
“If you didn’t vote for Hillary, this is your fault”
Ha! Ha! Got to love to love it. The lib/rats are drowning in the swamp.
Please feel free to add your own observations to Trump’s makeover of the court.
Best. Election. Ever.
The Liberals mental illness is getting worse & worse.
This was such an informative piece: I was informed that Cynthia (”Abortion is a sacrament”) Tucker is not only still alive but is just as venomous as ever. Maybe the new SC appointment will finally push her off the bridge.
Well that is certainly true, but my thought was that it is quite a "comedown" from the AUC to the "Chico Enterprise Record". I wonder if the change was voluntary or otherwise.
I lived to see the day Cynthia Tucker soiled herself in print.
Maybe the baby Harp seal cure will work on her.
I hadn’t considered that there was any difference. Now that you mention it, I recall Dante’s explanation of their differing levels.
If Cynthia Tucker is sad, I am glad.
She used to write for the Atlanta Journal. She must have moved up.
We used to be treated to Tom Teepin as well.
They gloated throughout the Clinton era.
Chickens coming back to roost now.
“That court will likely kill off reproductive rights”
**************
No one has proposed keeping women from having children. It seems that nature takes care of this issue. The problem is groups that promote killing off innocents in the womb, all in the name of preventing shame, or poverty. Newspeak has taken control of our society, and we use the terms Pro Choice, and Pro Life, rather that Pro-Abortion and Anti-Abortion.
George Orwell Quote:
“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture repainted, every statue and street building renamed, every date altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has been stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”
MAGA!
The pendulum swings ever so more forcefully in the opposite direction.
Only problem is next leftwing dingbat that gets in will be worse than Obama.
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