Posts Tagged → john roberts
Back to basics, America
We have a Republican Party crisis here in Pennsylvania, and in Dauphin County, and this blog will be addressing these problem children soon. However, the real friction happening between lawless, rogue judges and the Trump Administration is the most defining issue of the day.
As most politically interested and involved readers already know, a real contest of wills is developing betwen the Trump Administration on the one hand, and politically radical / rogue/ lawless politically activist judges on the other hand. This contest may seem alarming to some people, but it is a perfectly natural and healthy aspect of how our Constitutional republican form of government is designed to operate.
With three separate but co-equal branches of government forming an equilateral triangle, but made of living, breathing people, and usually the most aggressive, power hungry, conniving people at that, American government is designed to have friction. That friction results in constant contest, and a constant creative renewal, as all three branches naturally seek to exert as much dominance as they can get away with over the other two branches. Or as much outright control of the decision process as the other branches will concede.
So when grotesquely overreaching politically corrupt activist judges, like James Boasberg, “order” the executive branch to turn around planes carrying lawfully deported violent gang members to foreign destinations, and return said violent deportees to American soil for the judge’s evaluation, we can expect some friction to result. The executive branch, and its chief executive/ military commander in chief (the president), is well within its rights and within its sole discretionary function when it engages in illegal alien deportation, as defined by the US Constitution.
The Trump Administration is under no duty or obligation to do whatever some judge tells them to do. Judicial Tyranny might be a goal for some Americans, but it is not something anticipated or accepted by the Founders and writers of the Constitution.
Not every situation or question or policy is justiciable, meaning that not every question can be resolved in a court of law. Some things, like deportations and war and a host of other subjects and government functions, are the sole purview of the executive branch. Neither the legislative branch nor the judicial branch have anything to say about it. It is not their “lane.”
Or, the judicial and legislative branches can try to say something about a given policy, but the best way to force the executive branch to follow is to pass a law requiring it.
In this particular case, President Trump blasted Boasberg’s unconstitutional overreach, and called for his impeachment, which is built right into the Constitution. Then US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts in turn criticized the President for his calls to impeach said America-hating radical, James Boasberg. While Roberts personally dislikes Trump, he is defending his judicial branch more than anything, and trying to take power away from the executive branch.
This is all normal stuff, even if America has not seen this kind of constitutional friction in a long time. To my mind, this activity just shows that the various parts of the government machine are working properly. It took a Donald J. Trump to actually test run the American machinery for the first time in about seventy years. What is scary is how aggressive the judicial branch has been about hogging power over the past fifty years, and how little pushback the executive branch did until now. Presidents and Congress alike keep conceding judicial review as though the judicial branch is some sort of hallowed gathering of super smart and pure minded arbiters of fairness. Ha! Judges are just politicians in black robes, as one of my Penn State professors used to say.
Don’t worry, America has been down this path before in recent times. The Obama Administration, especially, engaged in a ton of simply ignoring judicial holdings and decisions and demands and orders; Obama DOJ lawyers were repeatedly held in contempt by a number of judges over the tenure of that administration. Not one judge got up out of his or her chamber to go enforce their order in person…nor could they.
And that’s the rub here: Crazy judges and even crazier Justices who allow some members of the judiciary to run wild, without restraint, can expect constraint by the branches they impact. Especially the executive branch.
Judicial review is not sacrosanct, it is not wide-open, nor can judges simply demand obedience to whatever or wherever their egos or political interests take them (or in the case of corrupt Judge James Boasberg, where his family’s wallet takes him on policy questions). Judges’ credibility depends upon the dignity and caution with which they discharge their duties.
When judges like Boasberg run bloody roughshod over America’s Constitutional geometry, and when justices like John Roberts do nothing to rein Boasberg in, but rather defend the indefensible, then they pretty much deserve what they have coming: Impeachment by the US House of Representatives, and being simply ignored by the Chief Executive and Commander in Chief as he does what his job requires him to do.
As one US president said in a similar moment of great friction, “Let the judge come and enforce his order himself.”
And no, that judge did not attempt to personally force the executive branch machinery to bend to his will. He astutely stood down and granted to the Chief Executive that which was his, and which still remains his. If Justice John Roberts wants Americans to respect his office and his decisions, then he must act similarly. We have to get back to the basics of running American government.
US Supreme Court disgraces itself even further
In the past few weeks America’s social fabric has been deeply marred by a US Supreme Court unwilling to hear two critical lawsuits bearing directly upon the obviously fraudulent election results. One lawsuit was brought by Pennsylvanians, the other by Texans. Each suit on its face had incredibly compelling facts and merits, and yet the US Supreme Court declined to hear either of them, essentially saying that whatever bad election stuff happens in a state stays in that state (as if a state behaving illegally must be expected to go back and correct itself).
And then along comes a Kansas voting rights law, which protects the sanctity of “one-citizen-one-vote” in Kansas, and then the same exact US Supreme Court strikes it down just two days ago. So much for the Court’s prior statement that what states do with their individual elections laws is solely at the discretion of that state!
You would never know that this same Court was operating in this same universe, let alone in the same country at the same time period. Because if its decisions about the Pennsylvania and Texas cases meant one set of principles were operating, the Court’s holding in the Kansas case means the exact opposite is now true. And there is no democratic institution anywhere on Earth worth its salt that can operate as arbitrarily and capriciously as our Court is right now, and expect to be taken seriously by the governed.
Arbitrary and capricious government decisions strike at the heart of democracy and representative government, and it sure looks like the US Supreme Court is trying to run a dagger through America’s very heart.
The Court is wildly swinging here, for everyone to see in broad daylight. Refusing to even discuss unimaginably evil fraudulent voting behavior on the one hand, and then making a decision that strips Kansas voters of their rights and their expectation that Kansas elections will be free and fair on the other hand….this is a Court that is quite clearly out of control. And a Court that is out of control is a Court that has impeached its own credibility and standing, and which will lose the support of the governed.
Dear US Supreme Court members: If you will not even hear our pleas for relief, then why should we listen to anything you say? You work for The People, not the other way around.
Why does the US Supreme Court exist? Was it not established in order to address the most pressing legal issues of the nation, to preserve the sanctity of the US Constitution, so as to avoid political bottlenecks that are otherwise always resolved through bloodshed? The entire purpose of democracy is to give all citizens equal standing in every way, and equal opportunities for making their voices heard. Citizens whose voices cannot or will not be heard become alienated from the body politic, and they must choose alternative routes for resolving their grievances.
Here the Court is making it abundantly clear to all Americans that at least five of its nine members can be just as volatile, just as unprincipled, just as un-serious, just as politicized and arbitrary, just as in-your-face unaccountable to We, The People, as either of the other two branches of government. Despite the past role of the Court to always serve as a serious and somber place to resolve our thorniest differences in the deepest contemplation. Which is so obviously lacking now.
Some people say the Court is behaving this way in order to shield itself against a Democrat Party super-majority that has promised to add more seats to the Court, or to dissolve it altogether. Others say that most justices cannot help but go native when they spend too much time in Washington, DC. Which is a kind way of saying the justices lose touch with the common citizen, and begin to view us all as mere serfs, with no rights.
I don’t know if anyone else was struck by Chief Justice John Roberts’ snitty little minority dissent in the California religious freedom case a few weeks ago, but his snotty and arrogant tone was shocking to read. This is a man who is completely out of touch with the American people and without a thought in his head for the US Constitution, upon which all of his decisions are supposed to rest. Obviously he has at least four other justices who share his arrogant feelings about us little people.
In just a few short weeks, the US Supreme Court has disgraced itself, made a mockery of the law, of our system of government, of the guiding processes that are supposed to be public and fair for all to see, of itself, and thereby impeached its own credibility, its believability, its wonder and respectability. A court has no army, and all it can do is rely upon its respectability and integrity to persuade Americans that its rulings are just and fair, and must therefore be followed. The Court of Chief Justice John Roberts gets an F-minus, and why on Earth should Americans give a fig for what this Court ever holds again?
This Court is an important public institution that has just bombed out and fatally failed America right in front of all of us. So help us God, may this failure not be fatal to the Republic.