Laurence Tribe and Michael Dorf at USA Today put it best in re our Supreme Court's recent ruling on New York's COVID restrictions: "(f)or the Supreme Court’s new and extremely conservative majority, it seems, failure to sufficiently discriminate in favor of religion counts as discrimination against religion." This ruling -- which Chief Justice Roberts didn't join, at least partly because our Court had already ruled the other way in similar cases from California and Nevada -- signals that the five reactionary Supreme Court justices are ready to roll everything back, regardless of precedent, and certainly regardless of both law and order and the people's will. In other words, they're the judicial activists right-wingers have told us they've always feared. Odd how that happens.
Our soon-to-be-ex-President lost two more court cases in recent days: in one, a Third Circuit panel made up entirely of Republican-appointed judges, who wrote an opinion reading in part: "calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here." In the other, the Pennsylvania state Supreme Court rejected a lawsuit brought by Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PA), who thinks he'll be Pennsylvania's next Governor or Senator, asking to throw out six million votes and let the reactionary state legislature pick the President. You'll notice, as the Court did, that he didn't bring this lawsuit alleging that Pennsylvania's mail-in balloting procedure was "unconstitutional" until over a year after the state legislature passed the law, which certainly opens Rep. Kelly up to charges of bad faith.
When I hear David Brooks talking about "The Rotting of the Republican Mind," I'm quick to point out that he's contributed to that rotting whether he believes it or not -- I mean, anyone who advocated for the invasion of Iraq, about as fact-free an argument as had been advanced up to that point, shares responsibility for that. But, to be frank, the "epistemological crisis" he describes is absolutely real, as I experience every time some Facebook friend advances some easily-refutable story about "voter fraud" and never stops advancing the story or admitting they're wrong even after being told repeatedly by friends and neighbors they're wrong, and I also agree that the internet isn't the cause and that the urban/rural divide is a real thing that urban smartypantses ain't helping. Of course, Mr. Brooks won't identify the real cause -- a Republican party that cares about nothing but power -- because, again, he'd have to implicate himself.
In a peripherally-related note, Congressional Republicans prepare to strut around about "deficits" now that their President lost re-election. They're so cocky now that they say talk about "getting back to our DNA" like they never abandoned it out of expedience (i.e., with the worst tax "reform" ever passed in America) nor re-embraced it out of expedience (i.e., now a Democrat's President). It'll get worse, of course, as our "liberal" media gets ready to treat their absurd arguments about the deficit with seriousness again. Democrats could neutralize this stratagem by simply answering every question about the deficit with "you didn't care about it when a Republican was President, so shut your yap," but I sure wouldn't lay money on that happening.
Uh oh: Sen. David Perdue (R-GA), still up for re-election in a Georgia runoff in January, has apparently lied at least once (per our Justice Department) that he hasn't acted on insider information while making stock trades. Add in his millions in donations from the bankster sector (how does he need that, being so rich?) and you have Lesson #334 in "Why You Don't Put Rich People in Office." Think Jon Ossoff will start running "so I wasn't lying after all!" ads? Nah -- that wouldn't be civil.
Finally, our soon-to-be-ex-President unfurls this flatugasm at a reporter: "You’re just a lightweight. Don’t talk to me that way. I’m the President of the United States. Don’t ever talk to the President that way." My answer to such remarks is always the same: try earning some damn respect.
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