Category: Politics

Kirsten Gillibrand, the junior Senator from New York, has an excellent point. Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett, and Clarence Thomas are all liars. Each of them told the same lie — under oath — during their confirmation hearings to become justices (if you will permit me to paraphrase): “I will not overturn Roe vs. Wade.”

Ah, but they will. The recently leaked opinion penned by Alito proves it. So there you have it…there is a majority of liars on our Supreme Court. (John Roberts, now Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, made a similar assurance during his confirmation hearings, but it is not clear yet whether he has joined with the majority of liars.)

They all sought to mislead the U.S. Senate (and us). Furthermore, the very specific purpose of their lie was to become justices so they could do the very thing they said they wouldn’t: — take away the right to have an abortion from U.S. citizens.

Let’s be clear, then: at least five of the majority of our sitting Supreme Court justices committed perjury — a felony — in order to cast a vote in this case.

Not that anyone was actually mislead by those lies. Everyone knew that none of these people would have been nominated in the first place if they hadn’t agreed to vote to overturn Roe at their earliest opportunity. Senators Collins and Murkowski knew, in spite of what they have said to the contrary. (They, too, are liars…though not perjurers.) Their party, the Republican Party, has been running on that promise ever since the case was decided in 1973. Of course they would only nominate anti-abortionists.

I don’t want to go too deeply into all of the arguments here, either for or against abortion. The legal reasoning behind Alito’s draft opinion, however, is worth noting. It is couched in the rationale of Originalism (a relatively new approach to Constitutional interpretation), and though it makes a kind of sense within that highly suspect theory, it is clear that the fundamentals of jurisprudence are secondary here. Alito and his fellow perjurers are not interested in the law, only in the outcome they were placed on the court to ram through.

There has been an explosion of outrage at this elicitly leaked opinion across the political spectrum. On one side, people are enraged over the snatching away of the Constitutional right to make decisions about one’s own body. I can’t help but agree with them.

On the other side, they are fuming about the leak itself. I must say that I agree with them, too. Such leaks do undermine credibility and respect for the judicial system. My question, though, is whether respect for the court is damaged more by a leak than it is by a cadre of hypocrites and felonious liars seizing control over our lives?

You decide. It’s a free country, after all.

Good ol’ Mitt Romney. He is one of the few remaining honorable Republicans holding public office. Even so, he is usually pretty circumspect about how he expresses his opinions about his fellow GOPers. Furthermore, the instances in which he shows actual human emotion are rare.

That’s why his comments yesterday were so stunning. He was speaking in particular of a group of Republicans who decided it was okay to speak to a gathering of the AFPAC. Never mind what that stands for; everyone (including them, I’ll wager) thinks they are white supremacists.

You could tell that Mitt had chosen his words with some care, but let me condense them in the interest of brevity. The one-time leader of the Republican Party referred to the speakers as “evil morons.”

Again, not his exact words. He had some cute reference to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in there, and some other language meant to soften the impact of his message. Even so, the two words that stood out in headlines afterward were there for all to see. Evil morons. He also threw in an aside that the positions held by these people were “almost traitorous.” Traitorous Evil morons.

Whatever you might say about Mitt Romney, name-calling isn’t usually part of his political shtick. I’ve never used anything so harsh as “traitorous evil morons” to describe these people. The worst I’ve said, when referring to AFPAC and their ilk, is “crazy stupids.” Not nearly so nasty.

If one is willing to expand the scope of Romney’s statement even further (as this one is), then it could be applied to the entire Republican Party. Traitorous Evil morons. This group would not include Mitt himself, of course, or Liz Cheney, or Adam Kinzinger, or any of the Never Trumpers. But it would include much of that corrupted organization. Traitorous evil morons. all the way down to your local school board.

Traitorous evil morons. Mitt’s words, not mine. Not a precise quote, to be sure, but we can honestly say that he used those words to describe some of his fellow Republicans. But are they too strong? Is this no more than childish name-calling? Perhaps, but if we were able to travel through time and ask that question of as-yet-unborn American citizens who will be living through the aftermath of these times, then we might get a much different answer.

Kyle Rittenhouse says he believes in everything that Black Lives Matter stands for. He says he’s not a white nationalist at all, and that those pictures of him hanging with some Proud Boys and flashing the white power sign were all a big misunderstanding. He was manipulated by some very bad people on his team, people who have since been fired.

I am willing to take Kyle at his word about those things. He is, after all, an impressionable young man who is in way over his head. I can easily imagine that he was swept up by events and landed, quite innocently, at the center of this highly fraught conflict in our society. I am willing to believe, tentatively at least, that that was his state of mind when he arrived in Kenosha.

But that’s just an opinion about someone’s feelings and motivations. We can never be sure about that kind of thing. What actually happened that night, however, is not in dispute. Kyle Rittenhouse came to Kenosha in response to a posting by the Kenosha Guard, a local militia group, calling for “patriots willing to take up arms” against the “evil thugs.” Rittenhouse chose to carry an AR-15 — a semi-automatic weapon capable of firing dozens of rounds in just a few seconds — into the middle of a volatile protest over the shooting and paralyzing of a black man by the local police. He was not there any official capacity, but as a vigilante.

Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber, who were among the protestors, had separately seen Rittenhouse’s weapon and dared to approach him. In each case, Rittenhouse chose to fire his AR-15. Neither man was armed; both died. Rosenbaum was hit several times, including the fatal shot in his back. Huber was struck by a single shot to the chest that caused massive (and fatal) internal injuries.

There were no other deaths associated with the protests that night. If Rittenhouse had not brought his weapon to the protest, if he had not pulled the trigger, Rosenbaum and Huber would still be alive. We cannot be certain why he did it, but he did. He chose to arm himself, and he pulled the trigger.

So is he responsible for their deaths? As so often happens in these situations, the mere presence of a firearm seems to have been enough to precipitate its use. If the person using it is uncertain, or frightened, or weak-minded, the gun takes charge. It knows what to do, even if its owner doesn’t. Just by being there, it forces a decision to use it or not. Some people are ill-equipped to make that choice, but if you ask the gun, it will always say “Kill.” That is what it was made to do.

Kyle Rittenhouse is now being celebrated by the Right. He is visiting Mar-a-Lago and entertaining job offers inside the halls of Congress. None of these new benefactors is a supporter of the BLM movement, as Kyle professes to be, but I am sure they will be willing to hear his views on the subject of racial inequality. He is, after all, a hero.

Whoever said the English lack confidence? What other country would have the nerve to call themselves Great Britain?

If it’s your country, I guess there’s no reason you can’t pick any name you want. But I do wonder whether it’s wise to go with such a self-aggrandizing moniker…especially if you insist that other countries address you in that way. Imagine, for instance, if France changed its name to Smokin’ Hot France. Or if Chile demanded we call it Best Country on Earth Chile. How about Master Race Germany? I am certain there would be some resistance among the community of nations to such moves.

Of course, there are some situations that might justify the use of the name “Great.” No one would deny that the Great Lakes are, in fact, great (at least in terms of total surface area). Same with the Great Plains. And, of course, the great outdoors. Alexander the Great had the resumé to justify the name (though you might object to the way he earned it). And I will allow Great Dane (even though the Irish Wolfhound is technically greater).

We know, of course, that Britain was pretty great for a while. Like Alexander, they established a serious empire back in the day. Not only did Britannia rule the waves, it acquired (stole) a lot of real property around the globe. But those days are long gone, and soon, it appears, we’ll be adding Scotland to their list of lost conquests. “United Kingdom?” Not any more.

I suppose it’s too much to ask that Britain undertake a formal name change. It’s already on all the uniforms and the stationery. But it is unfortunate…and a bit sad. Among other things, the name calls attention to the fact that Britain is now a long, long way from whatever greatness it may have had. Other countries might not be offended by the Anglo’s ostentation (as they would rightly be by “Great United States”), but you couldn’t blame them for snickering up their sleeves at the notion of Great Britain.

So, what to do? We can’t expect them to follow the lead of the Lesser Antilles and go completely humble. (They do, after all, have the H-bomb.) But maybe they should drop the “great,” stop talking about the “United Kingdom” altogether, and quietly let the stationery be used up and the uniforms wear out. And then, without fanfare, begin to simply introduce themselves as “Britain.” Or even “England.”

I guarantee no one would even notice, much less care.