High court manages to upset everybody's beliefs w/ pair of rulings

Perhaps this is the Supreme Court of the United States’ idea of what constitutes bipartisanship – rule in ways that manage to offend the sensibilities of just about everybody.

The nation's Supreme Court issued a pair of rulings that … 

I couldn’t help but have that reaction myself when I learned Thursday of the way the court ruled with regards to gerrymandering and the Census.

WITH REGARD TO the latter, the Supreme Court ruled against the desires of President Donald Trump – who wanted the Census Bureau’s official population count next year to include questions about one’s citizenship.

Making it seem that Trump and his ideologue minions want to officially regard non-U.S. citizens as non-people who wouldn’t get fully counted.

Who knows? Maybe Trump fantasized about compiling all that information into some sort of hit list of people who could then be harassed openly – so as to appease the jollies of the xenophobic types who are inclined to think that Trump himself is the equivalent of a “royal highness” of the Americas.

Which we all ought to realize applies only to states whose political majorities lean toward Trump-type Republicans.

THE SUPREME COURT ruled against that notion, with a 5-4 vote in favor of a legal opinion saying the official argument that such information is needed to enforce the Voting Rights Act is fraudulent.

For what it’s worth, that’s the same voter tally the high court reached in another measure – one that said lawsuits challenging the setting of political boundaries based on political considerations are not proper.

In short, all of those Republican-leaning states whose legislatures chose to draw boundaries meant to benefit their own partisan interests aren’t necessarily doing anything illegal. For the court ruled that such action is a state issue – and not one for the federal courts to go about trying to overturn.

… struck down Trump's desires to use the Census, ...

I don’t doubt that the people who would have wanted some sort of singling out of so-called foreigners when it comes to the Census will be pleased the court left the composition of their Legislatures alone.

WHILE OTHERS WHO would have seen the population count measure as a blatantly-partisan political move that deserved to fail now are wondering how in the heck did those nitwits on the high court blow it so badly with regards to undoing the practice of gerrymandering – the rigging of electoral boundaries for political purposes.

Maybe it’s all that time walking around wearing those black robes that look like dowdy dresses.

There is one key to comprehending these two actions – the votes were similar. By and large, the people who wanted to single out non-citizens in the Census count also wanted to protect the Republican-leaning Legislatures. The people who wanted to stop the Census from becoming a political weapon also wanted to have the court undo Legislature composition they consider to be unfair and unjust.

The difference was in the form of Chief Justice John Roberts, who as it turned out voted against the Census count measure and for the measure saying that gerrymandering is not an issue for the Supreme Court to decide.

REINFORCING THE CONCEPT that Roberts is the “swing” judge on the court whose opinion breaks a tie either way. Meaning that much of America probably despises him these days – although for different reasons that say much about our own partisanship leanings than anything about the merits of the laws themselves.

Personally, I don’t doubt the Census question was a hate-inspired proposal. Seeing it die off is a good thing.

… while indirectly benefitting Madigan

While as for gerrymandering, I wonder if the court would have viewed it differently if the legal case at hand regarded the structure of the Illinois Legislature. Would the ideologue-minded people have been willing to approve a measure that targeted the Democratic-leaning Illinois House and state Senate – rather than the measures that focused on blatantly-Republican leaning states.

Which may be the way I wind up viewing the latter ruling – it offers some protection to the political set-up we have in Illinois, which means it sort of benefits the interests of Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan. Most definitely a concept that will offend the conservative ideologues as much as their own partisan rants offend me.

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EXTRA: Bureaucracy (sadly) rules!

We’ve been hearing a lot in recent weeks about these caravans of people from central American nations who’d like to have a chance at a better life in the United States.

Within sight of United States, Trump creates more bureaucracy to thwart caravan

The ones that have been traveling throughout Mexico, and some of whom have actually made it as far as Tijuana. Meaning they’re literally here. Right across the border from San Diego and U.S. territory proper.

WE’VE ALSO HEARD the stories of U.S. military personnel being amassed along the border, so as to appease those people who approve of the Age of Trump we now live in who want those foreigners kept out of the country in whatever way possible.

It was encouraging to learn of military officials expressing objections to being used in such a manner. Yet in some ways, it is equally discouraging to see the tactic being used by Trump to achieve the ultimate goal of keeping those people out of the country.

Let the bureaucrats rule!

As in throw so many legal obstacles in the way of actually being able to enter this country (the one that claims it is all about helping “your tired, your poor. Your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free”) that maybe, just maybe, many of them will merely give up and go back home.

Leaders of U.S. and Mexico (below) … 

IT SEEMS THE U.S. officials have actually reached an agreement with Mexico; by which the people now waiting their turn in Tijuana to have a chance at seeking asylum here will have to wait in Mexico.

Even though their cases will be decided in U.S.-based courts, they won’t be able to wait it out here. And it will be a wait – because the number of individuals now seeking and likely to seek asylum will take months for the courts to properly dispose of.

If anything, this has been the attitude that our federal government has taken in dealing with immigration – creating a bureaucratic mess meant to thwart the desires of those who’d want to be a productive part of our society here.

Rather than try to reform our immigration laws so as to deal in any sensible way with the masses who want to be part of life here, we’d rather create as many obstacles as we can dream up.

… work out deal that lets bureaucracy rule

ANYBODY WHO TRIES to say that we’re merely trying to deal with the masses of people passing through Mexico on the way to the United States in logical manner is spewing nonsense-talk. Trump, after all, also let it be known he’s prepared to close the U.S./Mexico border outright “if for any reason it becomes necessary.”

Such as perhaps if too many of the people who have caravanned their way from central America to Southern California actually manage to get the U.S. court system to approve their desires to live here.

It’s not surprising that, in Mexico, there are people who are getting upset at the notion of these central American natives having to be held within their country just because the United States has certain officials who wish they could make the issue go away.

It’s like our ideological nitwit officials are trying to dump a problem off on someone else – exactly the same way they always try to claim other countries are dumping their problems off on U.S.

THIS WHOLE SITUATION is one that is bound to become an embarrassment to the United States. It will be one of the biggest buffoonish acts to be committed by the Trump presidency.

ROBERTS: Challenging Trump viewpoint

Not that I expect the fanatics who approve of The Donald to ever admit any of this. All they’ll hear are the words “foreigner” and “Mexico” and they’ll be desperate to accept it, no matter how absurd the mechanics of it all are.

Because if they really had faith in this nation and its systems of operating, they’d be willing to trust the courts to weed through the large number of people seeking asylum in this country.

Then again, these people are the ones who these days are denouncing Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts for his recent statement that, “there are no Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges. An independent judiciary is something we should all be thankful for.”

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Time passes, but ideologues use same nonsense to try to justify themselves

It is a line of logic I have heard so often from so many different conservative ideologue pundits that I don’t know who deserves credit (or blame, if you prefer).

A colossal mistake?

It is the theory that the whole Civil Rights movement and the passage in 1964 of the Civil Rights Act was a mistake because it antagonized the “right” into being so opposed to the idea of equality for all regardless of race.

I HAVE HEARD it said that the Second World War was a major change on our society that forced people of different races together. It would have caused a gradual change that eventually would have brought about some form of integration.

Letting black people agitate and political people use the rule of law to thwart those people who insist the “American Way” of life is a segregated one caused distrust and hate. Black people harmed their own interest, and brought upon themselves all the ill will some continue to feel upon them.

Which is a load of nonsense!!! This was a case where someone was going to have to force upon the ideologues the sense of equality that our nation theoretically is based upon.

So excuse me for thinking that Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and other ideologues are full of it when they suggest that gay activists screwed themselves over by pushing for gay marriage and having the high court implement it with their 5-4 ruling last week.

IT’S LITERALLY THE same line that society was gradually headed in their direction, and how people would have become accepting enough that we eventually would have had Legislatures in all 50 states enact something to wipe out their old laws that prevented marriage from being valid for gay couples.

Now relegated to the 'junk' drawer?

“Stealing this issue from the people will for many cast a cloud over same-sex marriage, making a dramatic social change that much more difficult to accept,” Roberts wrote in his legal dissent to the high court’s ruling.

While Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote of how the desire by gay couples to marry shows just how much they respect the institution that they want to be included, Roberts insisted for the record that equality is not a Constitutional issue.

There also was Justice Clarence Thomas, who argued that people cannot be demeaned by the actions in opposition to their desire for gay marriage. Then again, he also argued that the Negro slaves of old “did not lose their dignity because the government allowed them to be enslaved.”

Put sign next to Klan robe at Smithsonian

OF COURSE, IT means the government loses any dignity and respect it might want to claim for itself by permitting such things.

As for the people who want to complain that five justices imposed their will on the masses, that is nonsense. Because the whole point of the balance of powers between the branches of government is that it is the courts that resolve disputes and intervene when the legislative and executive branches act improperly.

Which is what one can say was the situation where some states, including our own Illinois, willingly implemented gay marriage, while others such as Indiana had to have it forced on them by lower courts and a few states where the Confederate battle flag prevails despite its repulsion by the masses were determined to be the holdouts – fighting the issue to the very death.

There are those people who were never going to be swayed on this issue – and were eager to use their powers of intimidation to ensure that political people of a cowardly nature would never take a firm stance on the issue, one way or another.

SO IT ONLY became natural that the Supreme Court would have to intervene. It can be argued that had the court taken the approach its minority suggests, it would have been neglecting its duty.

Will we get 'gay marriage' coin in 2065?

On Sunday, we got to see a wilder-than-usual celebration at the Gay Pride Parade in Chicago. The annual event’s timing just two days after the high court’s ruling made it an occasion for the act’s backers to let their joy out in public. I don’t doubt the parade images will offend certain people who will never get over what the court did.

Then again, isn’t the fact that this issue is now resolved legally so we can start the process of moving forward the ultimate benefit.

Or do you really think we’d be better off on racial issues if the civil rights movement of a half-century ago hadn’t happened and we still had pockets of the country using “state’s rights” rhetoric to justify segregation?

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What happens now that sanity has prevailed over Supreme Ct., society?

Back in the days a half-century ago, you knew you were passing through “nut country” when you started seeing the billboards reading “Impeach Earl Warren.”

Would you have wanted to receive this postcard in the mail?

Referring to the one-time chief justice of the Supreme Court of the United States who presided back in the days when many of the significant civil rights decisions were made.

IT WAS THE opinion of certain people in our society that the court should have been enforcing “the law” by striking all these actions down. Instead, the Warren-era court helped advance us out of the days when segregation was considered an “all-American” value of our society.

Those people are largely dead. By and large, it’s their grandchildren who are now the overly-vocal ideologues who are trying to perpetuate a certain vision of what the United States should be about.

And their vision took two highly-visible blows from the Supreme Court this week – the high court issued a final ruling that upholds the attempts by President Barack Obama to impose health insurance for all and strikes down a lower court ruling that tried to keep laws in place against gay couple from being legitimately married.

The end result is that gay couples can now not be denied a marriage license in places like Alabama and Mississippi. And the political people who will continue to strike down the Affordable Care Act that provides for subsidies to help people in need afford health insurance will have to admit it’s their own personal ideological hang-ups at work – and not any legitimate flaw in the law.

HOW LONG UNTIL we start getting the “Impeach John Roberts” billboards popping up in crackpot land?

ROBERTS: Will ideologues blame him?

Roberts is the Supreme Court justice appointed by a Republican president who was supposed to keep the high court’s rulings in tune with conservative ideologue desires, but wound up siding with health care reform because he saw how ideologically-motivated its opponents were.

To someone who is concerned about the letter of the law above all else, it makes sense to be scared off by ideology.

As far as gay marriage is concerned, Roberts was among the justices opposed to the idea. Although he wasn’t able to persuade a majority of the court to back him. To the ideologues, what good is being “chief justice” if you can’t strong-arm your colleagues into doing what you want?

SO THEY’RE BOUND to despise him. Even though the bulk of the country will wind up supporting him.

KENNEDY: 'Equal dignity'

Because both of these issues are ones of great importance to our society.

The lack of health insurance by people is a problem that hurts us all because the fact that the United States offers access to the best health care in the world doesn’t matter much if one can’t afford it. If those people wind up relying on emergency rooms for their health care, then being unable to pay the bill, the public will wind up paying.

As for gay marriage, I honestly feel it’s none of my business who someone else wants to marry. I don’t think it is anybody’s business what a couple does. Until the day comes when a man is forcibly married to another man (or woman to woman) against their will, this isn’t an issue for the law to be concerned with.

THE COURT WOUND up siding the way they did, despite the outspoken criticism of justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Antonin Scalia – the latter of whom was once a professor of the same University of Chicago Law School that Obama was once an instructor at.

Scalia was particularly snotty in his written diatribe against the gay marriage ruling, saying the line of logic used to defend marriage, intimacy and spirituality as Constitutionally-protected rights is at about the level of “a fortune cookie.”

As opposed to Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wrote the opinion that supported gay marriage, saying the fact that gay couples wanted to be able to marry was actually the utmost respect for the concept that they wanted to share in.

“Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions,” Kennedy wrote. “They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.”

SCALIA: Will ideology die with him?

WHAT I SUSPECT truly bothers Scalia and his ilk is the notion that they were appointed by ideologically-motivated presidents whose intent was to create a conservative tilt to the high court that would long outlive them. Perhaps Scalia thought his ideological leanings would outlive him and become a permanent part of our society.

Instead, it seems the court would rather follow the law than his ideology that won’t even outlast his term on the Supreme Court, and he and his followers will be the ones “condemned to live in loneliness” that they ultimately imposed on themselves.

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What will the chief justice do? Will ‘gay marriage’ issue set his legacy?

I’m starting to wonder about those justices of the Supreme Court of the United States who get appointed by presidents named “Bush.”

ROBERTS: Unpredictable?

Because they have the potential to be so unpredictable.

THERE WAS THE elder George Bush who gave the high court Justice David Souter (now retired). Bush was among a series of Republican presidents who were determined to load the court with conservative ideologues to ensure that certain policies were kept in place – even if the American people made the “mistake” of voting them out of office.

Souter’s interpretation of the law became one that wound up infuriating those same ideologues – who were more than willing to place blame on Bush, even if other appointments he made to the high court (Clarence Thomas, anyone?!?) were, are and always will be in line with their beliefs.

Now let’s move to the present, where we have Chief Justice John Roberts – who got his post from now-former President George Bush the younger.

Yet Roberts wound up being the justice who swung away from a predicted ideological leaning to give us the ruling that kept Barack Obama’s health care reform as federal law – and ensured that all the efforts by Congress to abolish it will be perceived as the leanings of ideological crackpots.

AND ON TUESDAY, Roberts took some actions that are being interpreted by some as ruining the desire of ideologues to have the high court knock down all this gay marriage “nonsense” – at least that’s how they perceive it.

Tuesday was the first of two days that the Supreme Court heard arguments concerning a California measure known as Proposition 8 – an attempt to cut off efforts to make marriage for gay couples legal by specifying that is most definitely illegal.

SOUTER: Predictability predecessor?

There were some attorneys arguing on behalf of those ideologues. Yet Roberts publicly questioned what legitimacy those people had in this legal proceeding. As though perhaps he thought they ought to just “pipe down” and let the real attorneys handle the legitimate issues involved in this case.

Admittedly, this is just one moment in this particular legal battle. It may not turn out to be a key point in this argument.

OR, IT MIGHT be over-interpretation on the part of some people to try to put a specific viewpoint into Roberts’ mind – and into creating a potential 5-4 vote of justices to strike down Proposition 8.

Instead of a 5-4 vote (Roberts, along with justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor) that upholds it. Although I suspect a real majority of the court wishes this issue were not before them, and they'd like to figure out a way to do as little as legally possible without appearing to be completely cowardly.

I’m not about to predict what the Supreme Court will do in ruling on this particular case – a ruling expected sometime in June. Legal issues at this level are just too unpredictable.

Although I’m pretty sure that if Roberts winds up being part of a Vote of 5 majority that enables marriage for gay couples, he will be well on his way toward demonization by the ideological right. Of course, those same ideologues will find someone else to rant about. That’s what they’re good at!

HE’LL PROBABLY BECOME more despised than Souter ever was. I wonder if he’d become despised as much as Earl Warren – the justice whose court in the 1960s that upheld much of the Civil Rights reforms wound up being the target of all those billboards throughout the South.

Will we get 21st Century take on these billboards?

“Impeach John Roberts!!!” Most likely from the very same people who absolutely want to believe that Obama wasn’t born in Honolulu back in 1961.

Some people are just determined to complain. And a part of me suspects that the reason they oppose gay marriage is because it gives legitimacy to another group of people they would prefer to rant about – thereby showing all the more how ridiculous their rants are.

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EXTRA: A Thursday surprise!

I must confess, I expected a more partisan ruling from the Supreme Court of the United States when it came to health care reform.

Destined for an encore?



Although I’m sure that no one is going to have an epiphany after learning of the court’s ruling. The grand-children of the people who used to go around ranting that Earl Warren should be impeached will now probably be saying the same about Chief Justice John Roberts.

IT SEEMS THE high court got around to accepting the idea of a mandate that people buy insurance (or else face a fine) by thinking of it as a tax. And the federal government does have the legal right to impose taxes on people – as we all well know every time we hear from the Internal Revenue Service.

Does this mean that the anti-taxers will be the leading element in the political fight to try to overturn a measure that is meant to provide health care coverage to as many people as possible in our nation?

Will Jim Tobin of National Taxpayers United be coming out with his Taxpayer Villain of the Month designation and issue a graphic depicting Roberts and the rest of the Supreme Court in a jail cell?

So it seems that President Barack Obama’s primary initiative during his first term as president will survive into law. It likely will get so entrenched in the operations of federal government that even if we do someday get an entirely GOP-dominated government, they wouldn’t be able to undo it – no matter how hard they try!

Will Gov. Quinn soon have company...



ALTHOUGH I HAVE no doubt they will try. As House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, has already pledged.

Does this mean that our federal government in the near future is going to become bogged down in a partisan hissy fit, with the hardheads of the conservative movement engaging in rhetoric that shows just how cold-hearted they can be?



Because for all the times those people claim that the United States already has the best-quality health care system in the world, I’d argue that it doesn’t matter how good the quality is if there are significant numbers of people in our society who can’t afford it.

... from Chief Justice Roberts?



And those people threaten to be a drag on our society. Which is why I always have thought that Obama deserved praise for trying to address that aspect of the issue.

NOT THAT I expect future years to be filled with praise for Obama.

Just imagine the outrage we’ll hear when the actual implementation of health care reform gets botched and somebody gets deprived of proper treatment.

Even I will be offended if/when that happens.

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