The Corrupt, Un-American Supreme Court
Impeach And Expand
The Supreme Court didn’t just become a problem for America over the last couple years. The highest court in the land has been a right-wing playground for years, despite the outlier decisions in favor of same-sex marriage and Obamacare. The conservative court has worked overtime to restrict the rights of millions of Americans, from minority college applicants to women to potential victims of gun violence and beyond.
The court is out of control, making decisions based on specious arguments that expose — once again — what a ridiculous joke the concept of conservative “originalism” is. Essentially, when it comes to this crackpot legal theory the device used to decide the intent of the founders is “whatever makes Republican voters happy.”
But the court’s problems, as revealed by the journalists at ProPublica (and NOT the New York Times or Washington Post, who are too busy canoodling with justices or actively hiding their behavior), go far beyond their right-wing interpretation of the law. The court is corrupt.
Clarence Thomas has been exposed as an easy date, happy to be the plaything of right-wing sugar daddies who ply him with gifts and trips and bribes in multiple forms. And Clarence, ever the willing enabler, is happy to make court decisions that favor the ridiculously named Harlan Crow and other big business profiteers. And then there’s Samuel Alito, de facto captain of the abortion banning team, openly embracing the unconstitutional overthrow of the government and offering up a weak “my wife” in defense.
I personally became disenchanted with the court when they came up with a one-time only interpretation of the law to install George W. Bush in the presidency in 2000, and I’ve been an opponent of the mythology around the institution ever since. The justices appointed by Presidents Clinton, Obama and Biden have tried to hold the line but the Republican court infection largely fostered by the likes of Mitch McConnell, has overwhelmed the minority.
The court needs to be reined in. Unfortunately, the chief organization tasked with this function is woefully unprepared to meet the moment. The Senate Judiciary Committee, currently chaired by Sen. Dick Durbin, is under a mandate to provide oversight of the court. But Durbin and company have publicly rejected even holding a hearing about the court crisis.
While it was good to see Senate Democrats bring a court ethics bill to the Senate floor and to have Republicans again on the record as being objectively anti-ethics, it isn’t nearly enough. When Democrats do address the court it has largely amounted to a plaintive wail for ethics rules and for Chief Justice John Roberts (another vestige of George W. Bush’s disastrous legacy) to pretty please do something about the court. That is a woefully inadequate response to the disaster the most important court in America currently is.
Justices Alito and Thomas have shown open disloyalty and corruption and should be removed from their positions via impeachment. The Republican operation to pack the courts with unqualified ideologues deserves the political equivalent of a nuclear response, and the court should be expanded without delay. Instead of getting on their knees and begging Roberts for favors, this should be the demand of the Democrats.
I really dislike holding on to this idea that the court is a nonpartisan entity free from the dirty politics of the parties. It hasn’t been and we shouldn’t pretend it is. Democratic presidents nominated members of the court to protect cornerstone laws like Roe, and the Republicans put up their nominees to tear the law down and hurt women. We all know and see this and the result was plain in Dobbs. It’s long past time to give up the pretense that these nominees are merely going to treat previous decisions as “settled law,” rather than making rulings through a progressive or conservative lens.
Like Congress and the presidency, the court is a political battleground, and the views of a majority of the American people spanning from the center-left to the way left, are being squashed out by a gaggle of compromised black robes.
The court has to be fixed for America to experience the liberty and freedom it deserves. The court needs to be fixed so corporate sugar daddies do not have an outsized influence over decisions, crowding out the masses who will feel the direct impact of the body’s choices.
Fix the court. Remove the judges. Now.
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— Oliver
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“But Durbin and company have publicly rejected even holding a hearing about the court crisis.”
Durbin is useless. A coward, terrified of being Chair of his committee because it means he’s actually supposed to do something. WORSE than useless because he’s actively working to keep the corrupt Court in place.
Well said. I think the term “unpacking the court” is more to the point. Expand the court sounds like a power grab by progressives when in fact, the power grab was on the other side. The number of justices would not really need to be changed if McConnell had not packed the court with two ultra conservative justices by bending the normal rules of appointment to favor his right wing masters. Using the term and hashtag #UnpackSCOTUS calls attention to the questionable maneuvers that were used by the right to create the situation that exists now and conveys the need to reverse the packing of the court in order to reestablish affair and balanced Supreme Court.