Roberts Court an Enabler in GOP's Self-Destruction

In writing for the majority in favor of gutting the Voting Rights Act (VRA), Chief Justice John Roberts' argument boiled down to one point; that "the conditions that originally justified" singling out nine southern states and portions of seven more for increased oversight in election laws no longer existed, so that oversight was obviously unnecessary. This "the tire's not flat anymore, so we can tear off the tire patch" reasoning probably didn't fool too many people. Even the most racist and/or committed to the Republican War on Voting could likely see that it was a rationalization, not a solid logical point. As is so often the case, conservatives came to the conclusion they wanted to all along, then made up an explanation that backed up that pre-determined conclusion. The only other explanation would be that the conservative minority on the Supreme Court was made up of very stupid people who have no idea how logic works. But these are -- allegedly -- America's top legal scholars, so that explanation seems unlikely.

No, five of our supposedly "unbiased" high court judges -- the Chief Justice among them -- are blatantly dishonest and hopelessly biased by rightwing talking points. Roberts had previously demonstrated this trait in this very case, citing bogus census numbers. So the Chief Justice had the same command of the facts as your average Rush Limbaugh listener. Go ahead and let that depressing notion sink in. Fellow justice Antonin Scalia called the provision of the VRA a "racial entitlement," as if protecting people's right to vote was some special favor the government did for people who don't happen to be white. Again, this an opinion you could get from just about any frothing and stupid talk radio zombie.

Underneath the unconvincing lies is the real reason for the decision -- to aid in the Republican War on Voting. Racist voter ID bills and gerrymandering plans that would nullify the non-white vote can now be launched without federal oversight and Texas got right to work doing exactly that. Roberts ripped the patch off and, to absolutely no one's surprise at all, the air immediately began rushing out of the hole.

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Equality Before the Bench Today

In his morning headlines post, Greg Sargent gets right to the day's big story:

Today the Prop 8 case is being argued before the Supreme Court, and a sweeping ruling that strikes the law down as unconstitutional could pave the way for full marriage equality being the law of the land across the country. Such a ruling would be a historic outcome for equality and civil rights in this country.

Whether or not such a ruling will actually take place is a matter for patience. But one thing's for sure: there is no going back. No matter what happens today, it's becoming clearer and clearer that marriage equality will happen. The war against the Homosexual Menace is lost and those still fighting it are deadenders at their dead end.

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Old Jim Crow, Back for an Encore

Take a moment and consider how unlikely this headline would be:

WEALTHY WHITE VOTERS FORCED TO STAND IN LINES FOR HOURS TO VOTE.

Doesn't seem like much of a danger, does it? And that tells you all you need to know about the continuing necessity of the Voting Rights Act, currently under attack by the right and the conservative members of the Supreme Court. America has moved on, they argue. There is no polling place discrimination anymore. Racism has been solved.

Yet in Florida, early voting lines were hours long in many places. And for many, early voting isn't a luxury, it's a necessity. Contrary to conservative rhetoric, minority voters work. And most workers don't get to set their own hours. Being able to vote when they have the time off is the only way they can vote. The crooked Governor of Florida, Rick Scott, refused to reverse changes he'd made to election rules and, when told of the long lines, tried to spin it as the consequence of a vibrant democracy; "People are getting out to vote," he said. "That's what's very good."

People having to wait hours to vote is not "what's very good," it's what's very bad. And -- surprise! -- my headline about the travails faced by the intrepid with rich fella doesn't apply here. Reality is pretty much the opposite case.

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Rightwing Media Insists Elena Kagan is Hugo Chavez

I take it as a given that we live in a society marred by racial and gender inequality, that certain forms of speech perpetuate and promote this inequality, and that the uncoerced disappearance of such speech would be cause for great elation.

The meaning of that sentence, written by Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan in 1993, seems pretty clear; if all the haters and racists announced, "We're going to knock it off now," most people would be pretty happy about it. In fact, I don't see how you could read that any other way. That is, unless you tried to.

Which is exactly what many on the right are doing. The rightwing media needs an outrage of the week, especially now. With "Drill baby, drill!" becoming "Spill baby, spill!" and an underregulated Wall Street all but standing trial for fraud, a distraction is called for. Those are not the big problems facing the US -- because they're big fans of offshore drilling and an unregulated Wall Street. The big problem is a Democrat in the White House, which is always a terrible affront to the Founders. Ever since Ronald Reagan, the presidency has been a Republican birthright. But American voters apparently didn't get the memo. We go ahead and vote for Democrats occasionally anyway. Democracy's biggest flaw is that, sometimes, people who aren't Republicans get elected. Then, not understanding their place, these Democrats actually have the temerity to do stuff.

So, a centrist president becomes a frothing communist. It doesn't make any difference how liberal or conservative a Democrat is, it's just automatically the case. You might have noticed that people like Bill O'Reilly spend a lot of time talking about "the far left," but no time talking about the slightly left of center. There's a reason for that. For the right, the center is right where they stand. And if you've got any liberal tendencies at all, you're far to the left of where they stand. As a result, there's no such thing as left-leaning -- if you're on the left at all, you're on "the far left," since those to their left are still conservatives.





But, as we see with the treatment of Elena Kagan, they don't need any actual evidence to back this up. You just grab some random quote, report it completely out of context, and there ya go -- instant commie. And the rightwing media isn't just taking the quote out of the larger context, they're taking words out of context of the quote itself.

WorldNetDaily:

President Obama's nominee for the Supreme Court, Elena Kagan, argued certain forms of speech that promote "racial or gender inequality" could be "disappeared."

In her few academic papers, Kagan evidences strong beliefs for court intervention in speech, going so far as to posit First Amendment speech should be weighed against "societal costs."

The article goes on to quote the sentence in full, but the opening paragraphs set the tone of the article; Elena Kagan is an enemy of free speech. For a website that's constantly fearmongering hate crimes legislation (saying it would make Christianity all but illegal), this opportunity to tie Kagan to one of their favorite nonexistent crises must have seemed perfect -- or, at least, perfect enough with a tweak or two to reality.

And WingNutDaily is actually one of the more responsible examples. In talking about a similar 1996 paper, Rush Limbaugh had this to say:

The First Amendment is something she doesn't like. The government should have the authority to restrict free speech when they think it's doing harm. Like to who? Obama? Kagan, who is the Solicitor General "expressed that idea in her 1996 article in the University of Chicago Law Review entitled, 'Private Speech, Public Purpose: The Role of Governmental Motive in First Amendment Doctrine.' " Now this puts her in the camp with one of the czars, Cass Sunstein, who believes the same thing. So, as far as I'm concerned, I don't care what else she's done. I don't care how much she's written on Post-It Notes. I don't care how much she's written anywhere. This puts her in the Hugo Chavez world, folks. This aligns her with Communist dictators throughout history. The government will determine when speech is proper. She thinks that's OK.

No, she doesn't. Here's what she wrote in that very paper:

Consider the following snapshot of impermissible motives for speech restrictions. First, the government may not restrict expressive activities because it disagrees with or disapproves of the ideas espoused by the speaker; it may not act on the basis of a view of what is a true (or false) belief or a right (or wrong) opinion. Or, to say this in a slightly different way, the government cannot count as a harm, which it has a legitimate interest in preventing, that ideas it considers faulty or abhorrent enter the public dialogue and challenge the official understanding of acceptability or correctness. Second, though relatedly, the government may not restrict speech because the ideas espoused threaten officials' own self-interest -- more particularly, their tenure in office.

It should surprise no one that Rush Limbaugh is nothing but a liar. And it shouldn't startle anyone to find out that Glenn Beck tells pretty much the same lie.

The lesson here is clear; if the right can't come up with a reason to oppose Elena Kagan's nomination, it'll make up reasons. Because without that outrage-of-the-week, people will stop tuning in. Rightwing media is constantly trying to convince you that everything is the worse thing ever because turning the money faucet to drip would be the worst thing ever -- at least, for the blowhards who prey on the fearfulness and gullibility of their audience.

-Wisco


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Corporations are Literally Insane

There's plenty of blame to go around in the Deepwater Horizon gusher into the Gulf of Mexico. As dead dolphins begin to wash up on shore, we learn that the agency regulating offshore drilling is also the agency that sells leases for the same. With literally billions of dollars of revenue on the line, this creates a huge conflict of interest. As a result, the Minerals Management Service let industry do whatever they wanted -- so much so that the man in charge of the area, Minerals Management Service regional supervisor Michael Saucier, couldn't tell Congress who actually was enforcing safety requirements. "I am not aware of who does the self-certification," he testified. That's a pretty good indication that it was no one.

But the larger lesson here is that, if you don't make corporations obey the law, they'll just go ahead and break it. Whether it's the market meltdown, Enron, Tyco, or this environmental disaster, what we always find when the smoke finally clears is that corporations were involved in criminal behavior. Even in the largely self-regulatory oil industry, it's looking like what few laws applied to BP were broken. Let me be clear about one thing, corporations should be considered criminal by default. The assumption should be that they are breaking the law and regulatory agencies should be in the business of making them prove they aren't -- every goddam day. Calling someone up, asking, "How's your safety compliance on that rig? Go ahead and fax over your forms," then hanging up satisfied should in no way be considered policing. Ever. From now until the end of time, regulatory agencies should operate under the assumption that the corporations they're overseeing are trying to get away with something. Because it's a good bet that they are.

In the case of Deepwater Horizon, it's becoming clear that's exactly what BP was doing. They were getting away with breaking regulations, because they were asked to police themselves. And, of course, they didn't. We now consider corporations people, thanks to an incredibly foolish ruling by a right-leaning Supreme Court. But we need to look at what kind of "people" these corporations are. They don't love, they don't mourn, they have no emotions at all. The people within the corporation may have emotions, but they only serve the corporate body. They aren't the corporation. The corporation itself is all rationality and no emotion, which is the definition of a psychopath. So, if we're going to allow psychopaths to control systems capable of immense environmental and/or economic damage, it might just be a good idea to treat keep an eye on them, rather than just ask them to promise to be good.





Our lack of appreciation of BP's psychopathic nature has not only caused incalculable damage to the gulf region, but may be putting other shores at risk.

Huffington Post:

As the federal and congressional probes continue into the causes of the Gulf oil rig explosion, new information is coming to light about the failure of a key device, the blowout preventer, to shut off the gushing well, which could have prevented the growing catastrophe.

And new questions are being raised about the testing of the preventers. At today's hearing before a House subcommittee, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., revealed that the blowout preventer had a leak in a crucial hydraulic system and had failed a negative pressure test just hours before the April 20 explosion. And at a hearing in Louisiana on Tuesday, the government engineer who gave oil giant BP the final approval to drill admitted that he never asked for proof that the preventer worked.

"In addition, an oil industry whistleblower told Huffington Post that BP had been aware for years that tests of blowout prevention devices were being falsified in Alaska," reports Marcus Baram. "The devices are different from the ones involved in the Deepwater Horizon explosion but are also intended to prevent dangerous blowouts at drilling operations."

So, different equipment, but the same deliberate noncompliance. And with the same possible consequence. Does anyone believe that other BP platforms in other regions aren't operating the same way? This is, after all, a psychopath we're talking about here. BP is by its very nature manipulative, secretive, and supremely self-interested. As a result, it's not concerned with what it can do responsibly, but what it can get away with. It has no morals, no conscience, and no empathy. It is an artificial entity that we're forced by law to pretend is human.

The whistleblower, Alaskan oil rig worker Mike Mason, told Huffington Post that "the culture is basically safety procedures are shoved down your throat and then they look the other way when it's convenient for them." Which is pretty much exactly what you'd expect. The mafia also sees the law as an inconvenience. The comparison doesn't end there.

When criticism by Charles Hamel -- a private oil industry watchdog -- spurred an investigation in Alaska, BP came down hard on him, hiring a private security firm to harass him and try to dig up dirt on him. "They tapped my phone at my home in Alexandria, Virginia, had keys to my house -- I discovered that they went into my house twice," he says. The report also tells us "they sent a group to follow him up in Alaska, including a woman dressed provocatively who tried to get him into a hotel room with her." Hamel settled a lawsuit against Wackenhut, the security firm BP hired.

Now I ask you, does that sound like the problem-solving approach of an emotionally healthy person? No. These are the actions of a psychopath. BP, like any artificial corporate entity, is literally and criminally insane. Some keep it together better than others, living their entire corporate lives as solid corporate citizens, but the ones that don't are incredibly destructive.

If we're not watching every, single thing they do, we're just being stupid. Worse, we're just asking to be abused.

-Wisco


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I Guess Because Fear is Fun

Let the insanity begin. We now officially have a Supreme Court nominee. Solicitor General Elena Kagan is President Obama's choice to replace the retiring John Paul Stevens. An unnamed Republican aide previews part of the GOP game plane from here; "A third of the Senate said she was unqualified for the [solicitor general] post," the aide told Politico. "It will be hard to ask them to turn around and say she now qualified, for a lifetime appointment to the highest court in the land. And we'll be busy in the coming months looking over her whole year of courtroom experience."

See, Kagan -- like former Chief Justice William Rehnquist -- has never served as a judge. This explains the snide "whole year of courtroom experience" remark. A former Dean of Harvard Law School, there can be no doubt that understands the law well enough. And if a third of the senate thought she wasn't qualified to be solicitor general, two-thirds thought she was. Hell, if two-thirds of Americans voted for a presidential candidate, it'd be a historic landslide. Suddenly, being confirmed by a filibuster-proof majority is a bad thing. Apparently, unless someone was confirmed unanimously for another post, there's no way they're being confirmed for the Supreme Court.

Of course, this is just the right seeing the opportunity to pry open the wallets of their gullible and panicky base. It's all a big show, a pretend outrage, a phony fear campaign by a party that has no plan to offer any real opposition to Kagan's confirmation. "Barring extraordinary circumstances," reports the Associated Press, "Solicitor General Elena Kagan should have a relatively smooth confirmation to the Supreme Court if nominated by President Barack Obama."





"But there could still be a substantial culture war dust-up over her actions at Harvard to exclude military recruiters because of the ban on gays in the armed services," Politico reports. "Conservatives have indicated that one line of argument against Kagan is that her tireless efforts against the military recruiters shows Kagan is more activist and advocate than fair-minded judge – and such an argument could also nick Obama, who has had to defend his toughness on national defense matters from attacks by the GOP."

Now there's a bonanza; siding with those perverted gays against the military in a time of war. If I wanted to, I could write a whole "hates America" screed right now and probably not be too far off the "hates America" screeds we'll see from the right. Maybe she's even a closet lesbian -- as an Obama nominee, we can be sure she's a closet commie. Oops, my bad, the "closet lesbian" rumor is already spreading.

For the vast homophobic wing of the Republican Party, to be gay is to be literally insane. Homosexual behavior is a mental disorder than can be cured. Of course, that "cure" has an awful track record, sometimes with hilarious consequences. But more often, the consequences are tragic. 90% of so-called "ex-gays" -- people who've undergone this "cure" -- reported "depression to the point of attempted suicide or strained relationships with family and parents," according to a 2002 study.

But complete and utter failure has never been an impediment to belief among the right before and it's not going to start being one now. The right believes whatever it is they want to believe and the facts be damned. So Elena Kagan will be a horrible anti-American lesbian pervert -- which means she's insane. I guess because that's the most fun to be terrified of. I'll admit, I don't get this whole herd mentality that goes with falling for fearmongering. I assume it's fun, but I don't know. There has to be some sort of emotional reward associated with it, but I don't understand what that is. Being constantly terrified of things that never actually materialize would just be tiring otherwise. I don't understand how you could answer the call to panic again and again and again, only to find out every time that the Boogieman isn't really under the bed. Unless it's fun, it makes no sense.

Whatever the fear consumers' emotional itch is, Republicans are sure to give them reason to scratch it. At least their motivation here is easy to understand. If you give the base something to wet their pants over, they throw money at you. Of course, it won't be the Senators themselves who do all this hysteria whipping, it'll be their surrogates in the media -- Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Newt Gingrich, etc. GOP Senators will just go to great lengths to avoid agreeing or disagreeing with these surrogates. As always, the rightwing media will be the freelance, de facto press office for the GOP.

If Republicans won't offer anything but token opposition to Kagan, they'll certainly be rewarded by the phony opposition in their media. It worked that way during the Sotomayor confirmation and there's no reason to think the same thing won't play out now. Things are going to get very stupid, yes. But unless Kagan has a bona fide crime in her background, you wouldn't go broke betting her nomination will be confirmed.

-Wisco


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Barack Obama's Radical (But Unnamed) SCOTUS Nominee

President Obama hasn't even come up with a name for a nominee to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens and already the rightwing blogosphere is freaking out over how much of a radical commie that nominee is. In their defense, you've got to know by now that no matter who he nominates, they're going to get stupid about it, so why wait for a name? This is much more efficient.

As they did with the Sonia Sotomayor nomination, Republicans are telling their base that they're gearing up for a big fight, while telling the press that there isn't really going to be a big fight. Two Republicans -- John Kyle and Jeff Sessions -- have brought up the filibuster, but few believe they'd actually carry it out. An expert on this sort of thing explains:

The two Republicans' comments are likely to have little influence on Obama as he ponders his selection, said Trevor Parry-Giles, a communications professor at the University of Maryland and author of a book on the Supreme Court confirmation process.

"I don't think they're going to give him an easy time of it, no matter who he picks," Parry-Giles said.

Choosing a Supreme Court justice "has become a ritualized process" in which early statements by opposition leaders like Kyl and Sessions are meant to galvanize their political base rather than advise the president, Parry-Giles said.

"What they stated was sort of the obvious," he said. "You could have written the script before they said it."

I don't have much doubt that they did write the script beforehand. Like the rightwing blogosphere, they don't seem to feel the need to have an actual nominee to criticize. No matter who gets nominated, they'll attack a straw man version anyway, so what's the point of waiting? It wouldn't surprise me if they had this whole process written out beforehand, like a wire service obit of a celebrity.

And what better way to start this Kabuki than to warn the president about nominating a certain type of "radical" judge, then later slapping that label on whoever the nominee happens to be? "We warned you that there'd be trouble if you did this," they'll say. "You only have yourself to blame."

Then some histrionics, some talk radio blowhards whipping up hatred and fear, a couple of poorly chosen (and probably racist and/or sexist) comments, and finally -- like the Sotomayor nomination -- an easy confirmation by a comfortable majority. Meanwhile, Republicans rake in the cash from the reliably fearful and gullible base.

Republicans' filibuster threat -- empty though it is -- hinges on one qualification. They say the nominee must be "mainstream." And therein lies a problem; what Republicans consider mainstream everyone else considers insane. While you'd be hardpressed to find a Republican who believes the new healthcare reform law is constitutional, the University of Washington was hardpressed to find a constitutional law expert who'd argue it isn't. For a debate on the issue, they couldn't find anyone who'd take the Republican side. In the legal realm, Republicans have no business talking about the "mainstream."

Take the GOP's ideal Supreme Court Justice, Antonin Scalia. Among the "mainstream" decisions he's signed onto were Bush v. Gore and the idea that the state has every right to execute someone who can prove they're innocent.

Scalia's dissent in In re Davis [PDF]:

The Georgia Supreme Court rejected petitioner’s “actual-innocence” claim on the merits, denying his extraordinary motion for a new trial. Davis can obtain relief only if that determination was contrary to, or an unreasonable application of, “clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States.” It most assuredly was not. This Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is “actually” innocent. Quite to the contrary, we have repeatedly left that question unresolved, while expressing considerable doubt that any claim based on alleged “actual innocence” is constitutionally cognizable.

Scalia was joined in his dissent only by his handpuppet Clarence Thomas. "[I]f the attorney for Troy Anthony Davis can establish his innocence, he should be freed not put to death. Makes sense, right?" asked Mark Karlin for Buzzflash. "Not for Mr. Scalia (or Mr. Thomas)."

I ask you, do you think that advocating for the execution of innocent people is a mainstream position -- or would you call that radical? Scalia speaks (and Thomas parrots) often of his love for "original intent." Do you really believe that the framers of the Constitution intended that innocent people be put to death? Scalia apparently does.

Given the sort of judge Republicans would like to see on the Supreme Court, I think they get to shut up about who is or isn't a "radical." But proportion is a concept beyond them -- you're either a good judge or a Communist, either a fine legal mind or a wild-eyed crazy. No matter who Obama nominates, they'll attack that nominee as some radical to be terrified of -- if only to rake in the money thrown at them by their cowardly base.

But you can't get more radical, more insane, more poorly suited to the highest court than Antonin Scalia (Thomas isn't as bad, because he doesn't have his own mind). It won't be the President's eventual nominee who'll be outside the legal mainstream, it'll be that nominee's Republican critics.

-Wisco


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GOP Hypocrisy -- Again

Over the weekend, the media and the blogosphere were abuzz with the story that Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens may retire. With the justice being 89 years old, this shouldn't surprise anyone. And, given recent history, it also won't surprise many to learn that things will probably get very stupid. It won't make any difference who President Obama nominates to replace Stevens, that nominee will be painted as a terrorist and/or (probably "and") a communist.

If we've learned one thing in recent years, it's that elected Republicans are reactionaries and that the reactions their jerking knees lead them to is always completely out of proportion to the facts. We've also learned that Republican voters, aided by talk radio blowhards and lunatic conspiracy theorists on FOX News and the internet, are panicky grandmas who are afraid of their own shadows and, worse, are almost eager to be frightened into a stampede of sheep. If Glenn Beck or Michelle Malkin say that the Obama nominee wants to kill everyone, then they'll be more than happy to believe what confirms their own paranoid fantasies.

Wait, did I say that "things will probably get very stupid?" I guess I misspoke. There is no nominee and things have already begun to get stupid.

Huffington Post:

The second-ranking Republican in the Senate suggested on Sunday that the party would filibuster the next appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court, if that nominee were deemed to be outside of the judicial mainstream.

"It will all depend on what kind of a person it is," Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) declared during an appearance on "Fox News Sunday." "I think the president should nominate a qualified person. I hope, however, he does not nominate an overly ideological person. That will be the test, and if he doesn't nominate someone who is overly ideological, you may see Republicans voting against, but I don't think you will see them engage in a filibuster."

What makes for an "overly ideological" judge? We got a little preview of that. Arlen Specter was interviewed at the same time and told Chris Wallace that maybe we needed someone to balance out the court.

"I am a little troubled by what Arlen said," Kyl countered. "Don't have somebody coming in with preconceived attitudes. I'm going to be tough on the executives or I'm going to be for the little guy, we've had too much of that."

We've had too much of judges "standing up for the little guy?" Really? If Democrats don't grab that quote and run with it, someone's just not doing their job. It's about the dumbest damn thing I've heard in a while, as well as being nowhere near true.

And is Kyle actually threatening to filibuster a judicial nominee? Here's Kyle in 2005 on eliminating the filibuster when voting on judicial nominees (the "nuclear option"):

For 214 years it has been the tradition of the Senate to approve judicial nominees by a majority vote. Many of our judges and, for example, Clarence Thomas, people might recall, was approved by either fifty-one or fifty-two votes as I recall. It has never been the rule that a candidate for judgeship that had majority support was denied the ability to be confirmed once before the Senate. It has never happened before. So we're not changing the rules in the middle of the game. We're restoring the 214-year tradition of the Senate because in the last two years Democrats have begun to use this filibuster.

"[W]hat would occur as a result of the question that will be asked to the presiding officer in this debate is basically, is it the tradition of the Senate to have an up or down vote to give these nominees an up or down vote with the majority vote prevailing or is the last two years the real precedent of the Senate to require 60 votes?" Kyle said on the same program. "And I think that the presiding officer will say no the tradition of the Senate has been that a majority vote prevails."

By the way, all the Republicans called filibustering judicial nominees "unprecedented" and all the Republicans were wrong.

But more important is that Kyle is basically arguing that when Democrats filibuster a judicial nominee, it's a disaster of historic proportions. But when Republicans filibuster a judicial nominee, it's democracy in action. I'm getting awfully damned tired of typing out the word "hypocrisy" every other time I write about Republicans. It's tiring. I wish they'd just knock it off and try honesty for a change.

I'm torn over which offends me more, the Republican belief in my stupidity and inability to remember five years back or the idea that the American public needs to be protected from someone who'll "stand up for the little guy" -- i.e., the vast majority of the American public.

I guess in the end I can combine the two -- and a lot more -- by saying I'm offended by the shamelessness of the Republican party. Because Sen. Jon Kyle, Republican of Arizona, just announced he'd filibuster any nominee who'd promise to protect the American people from getting screwed.

And he said it as if it was a good thing.

-Wisco


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Murray Hill - a Corporation for Congress

One of my favorite parts of the State of the Union address this week was when President Obama called out the five justices who ruled so broadly in the Citizens United v. FEC case that overthrew more that a century of clean elections laws. The ruling gave corporations the ability to pour unlimited amounts of money into political campaigns and relabels legalized bribery as "free speech."

"With all due deference to separation of powers, last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests -- including foreign corporations -- to spend without limit in our elections," the president said. "I don't think American elections should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people. And I'd urge Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps to correct some of these problems."

At this point, at least one justice dropped the pretense that the highest court in the land was above politics. Samuel Alito shook his head and said, "Not true." Glenn Greenwald who, like the president himself, is a constitutional law expert, points out that this court has insinuated itself into the political arena more and more as time goes on -- citing the most obvious example; Bush v. Gore. As a result, Greenwald argues, the court's credibility in claiming to be nonpartisan "has -- justifiably -- declined substantially over the past decade."





"Justice Alito's flamboyantly insinuating himself into a pure political event, in a highly politicized manner, will only hasten that decline," Greenwald explains. "On a night when both tradition and the Court's role dictate that he sit silent and inexpressive, he instead turned himself into a partisan sideshow -- a conservative Republican judge departing from protocol to openly criticize a Democratic President -- with Republicans predictably defending him and Democrats doing the opposite. Alito is now a political (rather than judicial) hero to Republicans and a political enemy of Democrats, which is exactly the role a Supreme Court Justice should not occupy."

The fact that the opinion Alito joined is absurd doesn't help him any. Let me see if I can explain the reasoning behind the ruling for you. You see, this...



Is supposedly identical to this...



Nah, I'm just messing with you. That's not true at all. Skeezix here has fewer rights than AIG now, because he's a minor. Corporations are people -- presumably adult people -- which brings us to candidate for the US House of Representatives Murray Hill:

"Murray Hill Inc. plans on filing to run in the Republican primary in Maryland’s 8th Congressional District," the company says in a press release. "Campaign Manager William Klein promises an aggressive, historic campaign that 'puts people second' or even third."

According to Think Progress, Murray Hill Inc. is real; "The progressive PR firm Murray Hill Inc. has announced that it plans to satirically run for Congress in the Republican primary in Maryland’s 8th congressional district to protest the Supreme Court’s disastrous decision." And the run may be "satirical," but it's also very real.

"The campaign’s designated human, Eric Hensal, will help the corporation conform to antiquated 'human only' procedures and sign the necessary voter registration and candidacy paperwork," the company's statement reads. "Hensal is excited by this new opportunity. 'We want to get in on the ground floor of the democracy market before the whole store is bought by China.'"

So, unless I'm mistaken, Eric Hensal is going to run for congress as the representative face of Murray Hill Inc.

How legal is this? You got me. I guess we'll find out. And, in the process, we'll find out what absurd lengths supporters of the Supreme Courts' decision are willing to go to make it seem like it makes any damned sense at all.

I'm just hoping that corporations don't demand to exercise their second amendment rights now. One Blackwater is enough.

-Wisco


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Corporations are People Too

In all the noise over healthcare reform and the election in Massachusetts, you might not have noticed that democracy took a gut punch yesterday, as the Supreme Court ruled that corporations can give unlimited amounts of money to political campaigns, candidates, and parties. They can do this directly, from their own general fund, without the permission of their shareholders. If elections weren't corrupt, money-driven, and anti-democratic before (and they were), they sure will be now. SCOTUS put a big "For Sale" sign on every district in the United States.

See, corporations are people too. The fact that they obviously aren't is beside the point -- an idiotic and absurd legal fiction is super-important because... Well, because. I challenge anyone out there to come up with just one way this ruling will help the average, ordinary citizen -- and if you say "jobs," I swear I'll come over there and hit you. You might not have noticed, but corporations are taking jobs out of America. The only jobs that will be created by this are more lobbyists, more "tea party"-style corporate front group organizers, and more people creating smear ads against candidates the corporations don't like. And let's not forget that the Bush years and their ultimate financial collapse were the result of eight years of de facto corporate rule. In short, this won't help you in any way.

For the majority of the court, corporations -- as people -- were an oppressed minority. Put down by the man in the form of what Justice Kennedy, writing for the majority, called a "ban on political speech" which amounted to censorship. Sure, corporations enjoy special advantages such as "limited liability, perpetual life, and favorable treatment of the accumulation and distribution of assets," but that's just a minority superpower -- like being well-dressed if you're gay -- and we shouldn't hold that against them, because that'd be anti-corporate-person bigotry or something. These are nice advantages, but we shouldn't hold it against them. Wrote Kennedy, "[T]he State cannot exact as the price of those special advantages the forfeiture of First Amendment rights." Why should we hold it against them that they're immortal? And not actually people? It's just the way they were born -- except, of course, they were never born.





"The First Amendment confirms the freedom to think for ourselves," Kennedy wrote, adding that "when Government seeks to use its full power, including the criminal law, to command where a person may get his or her information or what distrusted source he or she may not hear, it uses censorship to control thought." Remember, that logo on that letterhead is a person -- and don't you forget it...

I'm reminded of an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, where an all-powerful being named Q finds himself stripped of all his powers as a punishment by his people. Q has been rendered human, although the crew believes this is a trick.

Q: I have no powers. Q the ordinary.
PICARD: Q the liar. Q the misanthrope.
Q: Q the miserable. Q the desperate. What must I do to convince you people...
WORF: Die.

And that's my take on corporate personhood. I'll think it's not the stupidest damned thing I've ever heard when I see a corporation -- say, Nike -- laying in a coffin in a funeral home.

For their part, Democrats are livid. In a statement, Sen. Russ Feingold had this to say:

It is important to note that the decision does not affect McCain-Feingold’s soft money ban, which will continue to prevent corporate contributions to the political parties from corrupting the political process. But this decision was a terrible mistake. Presented with a relatively narrow legal issue, the Supreme Court chose to roll back laws that have limited the role of corporate money in federal elections since Teddy Roosevelt was president. Ignoring important principles of judicial restraint and respect for precedent, the Court has given corporate money a breathtaking new role in federal campaigns. Just six years ago, the Court said that the prohibition on corporations and unions dipping into their treasuries to influence campaigns was "firmly embedded in our law." Yet this Court has just upended that prohibition, and a century's worth of campaign finance law designed to stem corruption in government. The American people will pay dearly for this decision when, more than ever, their voices are drowned out by corporate spending in our federal elections. In the coming weeks, I will work with my colleagues to pass legislation restoring as many of the critical restraints on corporate control of our elections as possible.

Reports are that they're banging out legislation to counter this, but in the meantime we're going to have to live with this awful, stupid, asburdist ruling.

We should go with a constitutional amendment that strips corporations of this idiotic pretense of "personhood," but that seems unlikely. But clearly we have to do something. The influence of big money already threatens our democracy and this ruling, unchecked, would pretty much destroy it.

-Wisco


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The Jewel of Liberty

Is the relinquishment of the trial by jury and the liberty of the press necessary for your liberty? Will the abandonment of your most sacred rights tend to the security of your liberty? Liberty, the greatest of all earthly blessings -- give us that precious jewel, and you may take everything else!... Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel.
-Patrick Henry

I went Constitutional lawyer Glenn Greenwald's blog at Salon to get the skinny on yesterday's Supreme Court decision ruling that prisoners at Guantanamo have habeas corpus rights. That quote comes from his post. It pretty much says it all. If we give up everything this nation stands for in order to protect it, what are we protecting? Once again, the idea that we're "fighting for freedom" is shown to be a bunch of crap. We're fighting for authoritarianism, which has much more in common with modern day China than those original thirteen colonies.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled that you don't get to lock people up forever without having to prove you've got a damned good reason to do it. That's it. They didn't set anyone free, they didn't keep anyone from being arrested, they didn't order Gitmo burned to the ground. All they did was require that the military and the administration give some good reason for keeping people in a dungeon.

The reaction on the right has been predictable. The BS flies fast and furious. The one response that really got to me while I was looking for reactions was Sen. Lindsey Graham's. "I am deeply disappointed in what I think is a tremendously dangerous and irresponsible ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court," Graham said. "The court has conferred upon civilian judges the right to make military decisions. These judges have virtually no training in military matters yet civilian judges, in some of the most liberal district courts in the country, will have an opportunity to determine who is a threat to the United States."

It's that "in some of the most liberal district courts in the country" that gets me. For the record, Lindsey Graham's a freakin' prick. What he's saying is that liberal judges aren't real judges and paints them as terrorist sympathizers. There aren't many people in government that I actually hate -- Lindsey Graham just made that short list with this divisive and stupid statement.

The second worst reaction came from the Supreme Court itself. In writing the dissenting opinion, Antonin Scalia decided to fearmonger and demagogue from the bench. "The game of bait-and-switch that today’s opinion plays upon the Nation’s Commander in Chief will make the war harder on us," Scalia wrote. "It will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed."

What BS. What laughable, ridiculous BS. Again, all the decision does is require that government prove it has a reason to imprison these people. If they've got a good reason, they should be able to prove it easily. If they can't prove they've got a good reason, then they don't have one. Scalia knows this, but is an authoritarian ass who's not very protective of Patrick Henry's jewel of liberty. Scalia sounds like he's writing for the White House press office. It's pathetic and insulting to have a Justice propagandize from the bench like this.

Other reactions have been more admirable, more thoughtful, and more sane. The aforementioned Greenwald writes, "Our political and media elite were more than willing -- they were eager -- to relinquish [habeas corpus rights] to the President in the name of keeping us Safe from Terrorists. Today, the U.S. Supreme Court, in what will be one of the most celebrated landmark rulings of this generation, re-instated that basic right, and in so doing, restored one of the most critical safeguards against the very tyranny this country was founded to prevent."

The argument that we have to give up some freedom to save it died a little bit yesterday. Good riddance, it's a stupid argument. If we give up freedom to fight an enemy, what exactly is it that we're protecting? The neocons keep telling us that "terrorists hate our freedom," then argue that we should give up freedom to fight them. I'm sorry, who hates freedom again?

The fact is that the Bush administration has been using the excuse of a "War on Terror" to consolidate power in the executive branch. In claiming the powers of a "wartime president," Bush has become a dictatorial president who insists no law applies to him or anyone in his administration. Like any dictator, he's the only one guaranteed freedom. When someone takes your rights from you, it's foolish to believe that they'll give them back when it's safe for you to have them again. And, since Bush argues that his war is open-ended (read, unending), he gives himself and future executives the same power any time they want. If a president wants to limit freedom and expand their own power, all they need to do is start a stupid, brutal, and needless war and they get to do any damned thing they want to. Commander in Chief of the Military becomes the Commander in Chief of Everything.

"Today's Supreme Court decision is yet another stinging rebuke of the Bush administration's extreme views on executive power..." said Sen. Russ Feingold. "It is a testament to our system of government that the Court has rejected the habeas-stripping provisions of the Military Commissions Act and reaffirmed that the government does not have the power to detain people indefinitely and arbitrarily without judicial review. The writ of habeas corpus provides one of the most significant protections of human freedom against arbitrary government action ever created. We can and must fight terrorists without abandoning the principles on which our country was founded.”

The neocon right's argument is the opposite of Feingold's; that we must not "fight terrorists without abandoning the principles on which our country was founded." That we must give up everything this country stands for to fight an ephemeral and poorly-defined foe. Terrorism is using fear to affect political change; by that definition, Graham and Scalia and Bush and the rest of these neocon morons are terrorists. They use your fear of terrorism to get you to give them whatever it is they want.

And what they want is that jewel of liberty. What they want is authoritarianism. What they want is personal power and a population so terrified they'll give up anything to feel just a little safer.

They act as if the Supreme Court stole something from them yesterday, but what the court really did was give something back to you.

It's about damned time. It was no one's to take.

-Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; law; Constitution; human rights; Bush; neon; White House; Supreme Court; Justice shows up in the most unlikely places -- even Guantanamo

Want to Know What Kind of Judges McCain Would Nominate? Meet Robert Bork

Yesterday, I wrote, "Any Democratic voter who believes McCain would be better than Obama is a brand-new kind of stupid." Today, I'm going to show why that is. People who've bought into Hillary Clinton's argument that experience is everything might conclude that McCain has the experience market cornered. If, as Hillary tells us, the most experienced is the most qualified, then Baghdad Johnny wins hands down.

Of course, experience isn't really a huge advantage in a president. Nixon was very experienced, Lincoln was not. Given a choice between the two, I'd take the newbie without giving it a second thought. As choices go, this isn't really much of a stumper.

The problem with these Democratic voters who are a brand-new kind of stupid is that they aren't listening to what McCain is saying. Or, at least, they're ignoring what he's saying. Because what he's saying is that he's George W. Bush.

Alex Koppelman, Salon:

John McCain has built a reputation for bucking the Republicans' party line on campaign finance, global warming and a handful of other issues. But when it comes to nominating Supreme Court justices how much of a "maverick" would a President McCain be? According to two recent analyses, the answer is not very, even despite McCain's role in the "Gang of 14," a group of senators who organized a compromise on President Bush's judicial appointment, which angered some conservatives. In fact, McCain's Supreme Court appointments might look a lot like President Bush's.

The question is important because the next president will likely nominate at least one justice: The court's oldest members, John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg -- both of whom lean to the left -- are of retirement age.

Koppelman cites the New Yorker's Jeffrey Toobin, who called McCain's comments on judicial nominees a "dog whistle for the right" and said McCain "plans to continue, and perhaps even accelerate, George W. Bush's conservative counter-revolution at the Supreme Court."

The right wing dogs are barking in response to McCain's whistle. The Democratic voters who'd vote for McCain because Clinton didn't get nominated aren't listening. What John McCain's judicial picks would look like is probably best represented in his own words -- written in support of far right nominee Robert Bork.

I would like to explain why I am going to vote of favor of confirmation [of Robert Bork], and why I do so without any hesitation … I believe that what the Senate should appropriately examine in a nominee are: Integrity and character, legal competence, and philosophy and judicial temperament. I believe Robert Bork is well qualified in all four respects … Judge Bork’s honesty, integrity, and diligence are above reproach … [he] demonstrates that he is not some intellectual “loose cannon on deck,” or a quixotic maverick jurist , but is a thoughtful, reasonable, jurist … [he] is hardly a radical, but is rather a very thoughtful judge in synch with the vast majority of his colleagues on the bench.

Bork, of course, was a Reagan nominee to the Supreme Court who was rejected by the Senate for -- well, there's no polite way to put it -- being out of his freakin' mind. Ted Kennedy said of Bork's nomination, "Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the Government, and the doors of the Federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens."

The New York Times reported in '87 that Bork critics saw "a narrowness of vision and reverence for executive authority" and that Bork had played a role in Nixon's "Saturday Night Massacre" -- the firing of special prosecutor Archibald Cox and the forced resignations of the Attorney General and a Deputy Attorney General. All were investigating Nixon's crimes.

This guy is McCain's idea of a justice who's "in synch with the vast majority of his colleagues on the bench." If Bork is a typical judge, we are very, very screwed. Bork's tolerance of crimes by the executive and his far right views makes him a judge that Bush could only dream of. That's the kind of judge John McCain would nominate to the highest court in the land.

And the right is responding to McCain's judicial vision.

Washington Times:

Prominent conservatives and activists are indicating they will put aside their differences with presumptive Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain and rally their supporters to his side because of one issue: federal judgeships.

In big gatherings and small, in e-mails and one-on-one conversations, conservative opinion leaders fear a Democratic president, especially Sen. Barack Obama, will use the presidential power to appoint federal judges who will remove references to God and religious symbols from public places.

"Obama is swimming in a sea of left-wing extremism with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright [Mr. Obama's former pastor] and [violent radical activist and Obama acquaintance] Bill Ayers and the rest of them," says former Reagan aide Peter J. Ferrara. The right sees John McCain as nominating their kind of judges -- i.e., crazy people who worship fetuses, think civil rights are a bunch of hooey, and believe that the homosexual menace must be dealt with harshly. Obama has promised to nominate sane people who have "the empathy to understand what it's like to be poor, or African-American, or gay, or disabled, or old."

Apparently, those kind of judges are completely unamerican. The irony here is that some Clinton supporters, many of whom are drawn to the candidate because of her commitment to feminism and abortion rights, would cast a vote for McCain and against Roe v. Wade if Barack Obama is nominated. It's time for them to listen to John McCain and hear what he's been saying. I can guarantee they won't like it.

Addendum: On the subject of Barack Obama, allow me to take a little sidetrip to blow my own horn. I said he should start looking for a running mate to force Clinton off the front page. News has come out that Barack Obama's looking for a running mate.

Yay for me. I wish I could believe I had something to do with it.

-Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; Barack Obama; Hillary Clinton; abortion; civil rights; Supreme Court; law; elections; 2008; Republican; Democrat; A vote for John McCain is a vote against Roe v. Wade

A Bad Day for America

Yesterday was a real bad day for the Bill of Rights. In fact, it may have been the worst I've seen in my life. I've already written about a Supreme Court ruling that tells us the president can give tax money to churches and everyone gets to shut the hell up about it. You can't complain -- not in court, anyway. Never mind that the Office of Community and Faith-Based Initiatives only gives money to christians. Just go about your business and quit pestering government about that damned Constitution. If the president hates democracy and wants to go with theocracy, 'father knows best.'

Not satisfied to tell you that government isn't the business of people living in a democracy, the Supremes came up with other ways to tell you to shut up and screw off.

Take the 'Bong Hits 4 Jesus' case, AKA Morse v. Frederick. In that case, a Juneau, Alaska high school student, Joseph Frederick, was suspended for displaying a banner reading 'Bong Hits 4 Jesus' while the Olympic torch was carried by. The high school principal took the banner and punished the student for this 'pro-drug' message. Of course, it's kind of hard to figure out what the hell the message even means, but there ya go. According to Frederick, he just wanted an outrageous banner that would get him on TV.

American Civil Liberties Union:

Frederick said that the phrase on the banner, Bong Hits 4 Jesus, "was never meant to have any substantive meaning. It was certainly not intended as a drug or religious message. I conveyed this to the principal by explaining it was intended to be funny, subjectively interpreted by the reader and most importantly an exercise of my inalienable right to free speech."

Frederick sued the principal for infringing on his First Amendment right to free speech. And, here's the thing, the kid wasn't at school at the time. High school principals now have the right to run around town, confiscating messages they disaprove of. See ya at the next antiwar rally or abortion protest kid... Right or left, makes no difference. In fact, even the right wing loonies hoped this one would go the other way, since children are often prominent at abortion protests.

Another ruling should make up for the loss for the 'pro-life' nuts, however. Wisconsin Right to Life won the right to run phony 'issue advocacy' ads during election campaigns. Banned by the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law, these ads are a way for corporations to get around pre-McCain-Feingold laws that limit corporate or union campaigning for candidates.

Basically, these ads stop just short of telling you who to vote for. We've all seen them -- "Sen. X voted in favor of terrorists and babykillers and against the troops. He loves child molesters and drinks the blood of the innocent. Call Sen. X and ask him, 'Why do you hate America?'" WRtL would be a front group for corporations hostile to Democrats, running 'babykiller' ads against dem candidates during elections and pretending that it's not all about the election. What McCain-Feingold was trying to do was close a loophole in existing campaign finance law. The Supreme Court basically ruled that corporations and unions can buy elections. But, since it's corporations who have all the money, the ruling really allows corporations to buy elections -- there is no limit to how much money can be put into 'issue advocacy' ads. Campaign finance laws are now meaningless.

The Capital Times:

Jay Heck, executive director of the reform group Common Cause in Wisconsin, said the ruling opens the gates to so-called "issue ads" that look and sound like regular campaign ads but don't tell viewers to vote for or against a candidate.

[...]

The ruling "certainly is a blow to those of us who want more transparency and more regulation of money in federal elections," Heck said.

He added that the ruling appears to overturn portions of the court's 2003 decision that upheld the law's ban on issue ads that feature a candidate's name or likeness within 60 days of a general election.

Add it all together and you've got a court with an extremely distorted view of the First Amendment. When it comes to the separation of church and state, you get to enjoy a nice glass of shut the hell up -- unless you're against it, then you get to spend limitless amounts of money buying campaign ads.

If you're a high school student and your principal doesn't like what you're saying -- pretty much anywhere in the damned world -- you likewise get to shut up.

So, the message the Supreme Court sent americans yesterday was 'shut your piehole! (Unless you've got a buttload of money).' Call the Supreme Court and ask them, "Why do you hate America?"

--Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; religion; free speech; elections; propaganda; religious right; Bush; Meet the Supreme Court -- enemies of the First Amendment

Republicans Don't Stand For Things, They Stand Against Things

It may be the most insulting decision of our time. Speaking for the majority of the Supreme Court, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote of the abortion procedure intact dilation and extraction, "It is self-evident that a mother who comes to regret her choice to abort must struggle with grief more anguished and sorrow more profound when she learns ... what she once did not know: that she allowed a doctor to pierce the skull and vacuum the fast-developing brain of her unborn child." [full decision here (PDF)]

In other words, women can't possibly understand what a doctor tells them. Somehow, right wing conservative magic will set in later on down the road, giving women a brief flash of the superior understanding usually reserved to Republican men, and they'll be overcome with grief to learn that they had an abortion.

It's the sort of ruling that reeks of being written in his head long before he heard the case. It's not an opinion about abortion or law, it's Kennedy's opinion that women are children and incapable of informed decisions. The line of reasoning comes not from the last century, but from the century before it.

Meanwhile, Kennedy's -- and the majority of the court's -- pre-suffrage mindset creates real world problems with real world consequences. Ironically, Kennedy may come regret what he's done -- but I doubt it. That would require wisdom.

ABC News:

Many physicians who provide obstetric and gynecologic services to women are concerned that the ruling will have a negative impact on women's health by taking some medical decisions out of doctors' hands.

"From a public health perspective, today's ruling will not advance the health of women and children in America," said Dr. David Grimes, former chief of the abortion surveillance branch at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"It allows [an] intrusion into the relationship between doctors and patients. What would Americans think about that?"

When I was fundraising for a living, one of our clients was a national abortion rights group. There were people you could always count on to give every year and, among those most reliable were retired ER nurses. These were women who remembered what things were like when abortion was illegal and how the law forced desperate women to gamble with their lives. The women who took that gamble wound up in these nurses' emergency rooms and many of them lost.

The court's ruling puts women in a similar situation. Women who have abortions this late in the term do it because they have to. So the ruling and the law won't prevent any abortions -- they'll just force doctors to perform procedures that are less safe. One of those who ABC spoke to, Dr. Carla Lupi, assistant clinical professor of the department of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, said, "As a physician, I am aghast that a jurist, with no professional licensure or experience in the care of women facing very complicated medical and personal decisions, should have the power to dictate my medical practice. These cases are often challenging even for the most seasoned practitioners."

Part of the problem is the modern conservative reflex to ignoring scientific knowledge -- which is basically ignoring facts and the truth. If you believe one thing and the universe is set up another way, what you believe is truer. It doesn't make any damned sense at all, but there ya go. If the Bible said that one plus one equals three, people would be trying to get this creationist math taught in schools.

But the other reason is, to me at least, more disturbing. Modern conservatives believe that you have too many rights and too much freedom. That's why conservatives define themselves by what they oppose. And that's why their position on just about anything is 'against it.'

Women have too many choices and, as a result, make too many decisions. Much better that wiser Republicans make all those choices for them. Bottom line -- they don't trust you. That's why we had the FISA wiretap scheme, that's why we had the PATRIOT Act, that's why we have Republican ops screwing around with elections, and that's why we have decisions like this.

They'll talk about freedom and liberty as if they own them, but the truth is that they're against it. If a woman wants to make a decision about her health, Anthony Kennedy writes that she can't be trusted to understand that decision. Here's a fun game; in the six lousy years that Bush has been president, name one instance where a Republican has advocated for an expansion of rights or -- *gasp* -- a new right.

I can't think of any. Modern conservatives stand for restricting rights and limiting freedom. Maybe it's projection. Maybe the corrupt think everyone is just like them. The self-hating closet case thinks everyone's a self-hating closet case. Republicans are convinced of widespread voter fraud, mostly because they know how easy they've made it to steal an election. Look at Mark Foley, a pedophile who made his career fighting pedophiles. Or Alberto Gonzales, corrupt to the core and throwing elections, turning up the heat on attorneys who didn't investigate nonexistent cases of voter fraud and democratic corruption.

If you want to see just how sick one of these whackjobs is, look at what they oppose most. The problem is that they believe that everyone is as sick, untrustworthy, and hypocritical as they are.

But, if that were true, the republic would've collapsed a long time ago.

--Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; republican; religious right; the recent SCOTUS decision on abortion demonstrates how conservatives believe you can't be trusted with freedom or rights