Is Gorsuch in the Trump dog house?

Neil Gorsuch is the man who sits on the Supreme Court of the United States because of the ideologue gamesmanship that denied former President Barack Obama a third pick to the high court; thereby allowing Donald Trump the ability to fill the vacancy in the early days of his presidency.

GORSUCH: Confounds ideologues?

Meaning I’m sure that Trump expects Gorsuch to be his reliable vote to take his stance on all issues that come before the court, and also to sway a majority of the rest of the court to do so as well.

WHICH IS WHY I’m finding some humor in the Supreme Court’s ruling Tuesday that struck down a law meant to make it easier (and quicker) to deport non-citizens who are found guilty of violent crimes while in this country.

The nine-member court voted 5-4 to rule in favor of striking down the law, agreeing with a federal appeals court in San Francisco that said it was too vague to be enforceable.

Gorsuch wound up siding with the four members of the court who usually are of a more progressive leaning on issues, even though Gorsuch is supposed to be the swing vote that gives the conservative-leaning justices the numerical advantage.

When considering that Trump is trying to base his political strength from having the support of those people whose idea of immigration reform is to deport as many people as possible, I don’t doubt that Trump felt a bit of disgust when he was informed of the court’s decision.

NOT THAT IT’S a surprise to see a judge place the law above political partisanship. It’s the way things are supposed to be, even though in this Age of Trump we have people who think that their partisanship is meant to prevail over all.

SOUTER: Often offended GOP pols

Anybody who pays attention to the Supreme Court knows there have been many justices who ruled on various cases in ways that went against the political desires of the presidents who appointed them.

Although I’m not ready to put Gorsuch in the same ranks as now-retired Justice David Souter. Remember the man appointed by former President George H.W. Bush whom his chief of staff, John Sununu, initially described as a “home run” for conservatism?

Souter wound up being a justice who aligned himself in his votes with the justices who were appointed to the court by former President Bill Clinton. He also was a justice who, in a case concerning abortion, wrote that doing anything to outlaw it would be, “a surrender to political pressure” and was amongst the court minority in 2000 who wanted to continue the recount of the presidential election ballots in Florida – when the act halting it is what gave us “President George W. Bush” instead of the man who nationally got more votes, Democrat Al Gore.

KAGAN: Wrote for the Ct majority

I’M SURE GORSUCH will come up with several votes on court cases that will appease the ideologues and Trump.

But like I wrote earlier, it is somewhat humorous to see Trump’s appointee be the guy who votes in a way that won’t appease the ideologues on immigration. Which is particularly odd in that this case originally came before the high court during the year that Republicans were thwarting Obama’s attempt to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia with Merrick Garland.

This same immigration case (based off the situation of a man from the Philippines who was found guilty of burglary in California) got a 4-4 vote then, which caused officials to want to re-argue the case with a full court – figuring that now they’d get a 5-4 vote in their favor.

Instead, they got a 5-4 vote against them, on the grounds that calling burglary a “crime of violence” was a bit of a stretch and that the law didn't really specify what a "crime of violence" was.

GORSUCH WOUND UP siding with the majority that let Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan (the old University of Chicago law school professor and an Obama appointee) write the opinion that will all up in arms in the near future about “too many foreigners” in this country.

TRUMP: Temper tantrum in Oval Office?

Personally, I think we have too many ideologues in this country. I also wonder if Kagan will be another reason for Trump to go on a "hate Chicago" diatribe. But those are issues for us to ponder another day.

Because you just know the ideologues will find something else to get all hot-and-bothered about. They usually always find something to get ticked off about, no matter what happens in "real" life.

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EXTRA: Ginsburg speaks out for society segment “right” would silence

Honey is my step-mother’s mother, and at age 95 is a bit hard of hearing to the point one has to be prepared to shout at her to be heard. But she’s still capable of carrying on a lucid conversation and holding her own in a verbal quarrel.

 

Ginsburg not alone in belittling Trump

So what is it that can trigger this woman these days into outrage and a sense of disgust and contempt?

DONALD TRUMP. THAT’S who!

The mere mention of Trump’s name or sight of him on television (and unfortunately, she’s the kind who makes a point to keep up with current events off the television newscasts) is enough to get her riled up.

She’s convinced his election come the Nov. 8 Election Day proceedings will be a major downfall for this country, and she can’t quite believe that a real majority of our nation could be dense enough to pick that man.

Like it or not, it is a viewpoint held by quite a few people – despite the idea that the ideologues of our society want to believe that everybody who doesn’t agree with them ought to shut up and learn to go along with what they tell them to think!

WHAT MAKES ME feel compelled to bring up Honey is the fact that  the ideologues are getting all worked up these days over the fact that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg felt compelled to express her own thoughts of contempt over the notion that Trump and his “know nothing” attitudes could prevail on Election Day.

Such as saying that Trump has an overblown ego and “says whatever comes into his head at the moment,” while also trashing him for refusing to make public the tax returns that most political people eagerly do to show just how ordinary they truly are. And that bit about moving to New Zealand? What a riot!

Ginsburg has since issued something resembling a retraction, saying on Thursday her comments were “ill-advised” and she “regret(ted) making them.”

 

Ginsburg has her backers most likely

Largely because the ideologues have been bashing her about with the very theoretical argument that as a Supreme Court justice, she’s not supposed to have blatant opinions on issues.

ACTUALLY, MANY JUSTICES make it clear where they stand on issues that wind up coming before the court. What really bothers the ideologues is that Ginsburg doesn’t parrot their ideals. They’d love her if she did – and the nation’s high court were truly as stacked in their favor as they wish it were! And as how people like the late Justice Antonin Scalia (whose seat still sits vacant because of the ideologues) would have made it, if they could have got their way.

Of course, if it were, then we’d have real contempt amongst the public toward the Supreme Court.

For I don’t doubt that Ginsburg merely expressed a sentiment that is felt by many people in our society – not just my elderly abuelita-type person. It seems the conservatives amongst us really don’t want to have to be reminded how despicable some of us find Trump to be.

And how we interpret the fact that he was able to get the Republican nomination more as evidence of how weak and ineffectual the GOP has become, rather than any real strength on Trump’s part.

I HAVEN’T TALKED to Honey in a couple of days, so I’m not sure exactly how she feels about Ginsburg. Although I suspect strongly she’d be in agreement.

She’d probably also think that the people determined to silence Ginsburg are the real problem our society faces – because they invariably would not favor anything that would silence those officials who happen to agree with them.

It’s a one-sided mess. They’re the ones determined to make us into a monolithic mass that invariably would wind up excluding many already in our society.

And that, inevitably, would make us so deadly dull as a people, as well as bordering on morally-bankrupt.

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