Some of us hard-boiled misogynistic right wing dinosaurs might be a little behind the curve on this New Woman thing. We always make such a big deal about the ‘original intent’ without being able to perceive the penumbras of the emanations. George Washington predicted in one of his best graphic novels “Georgie Goes To Girly World’ that one day, in less enlightened times, the defense of the concept of lap-dancing as Free Speech would fall on the courts.
“One day the government will be handing hurricane victims vouchers that will allow them to exercise this important freedom to the fullest,” he opined, hopefully dreaming of an expansion of government services unforeseen by the less visionary Madison, Adams and Jefferson. Washington continued, “To protect our unique lifestyle choices we need justices on the Supreme Court who aren’t afraid to expand the Constitution beyond its written limits in the name of compassion and fairness.”
The next greatest President to Washington or even better than that, possibly, has heard George’s plea across the centuries. Wiser than his years and limited legislative experience would suggest, Our Maximum Leader, The Friend Of The Auto Workers has searched far and wide for the perfect person for the Supreme Court vacancy left by the departure of one of the most slimy, inarticulate weasels ever to curse the jurisprudence of a declining nation. He was the Booby Prize we received for caving in to the left on Bork, the kind of Republican the left likes…to wit, a commie in a monkey suit. A guy who thinks it’s a great idea to let corrupt city councils use eminent domain to seize private residences and sell them to crooked developers who promise to fork over higher taxes and bribes. That’s why they would cite the Yemenese Constitution for authority on stuff like that.
But the Master Of The Teleprompter, in his wisdom, has reached out into the Pool Of The Compassionate and extracted one Sonia Chinga-mejor…did I get that right? These Mexican names always throw me off. Anyway Barry checked out Sapphomoisture’s papers and hired her. He picked her because…she’s a Chick, and doesn’t the penumbra emanating from the Constitution demand Chicks and Balances? Now Ruth Vader G will not only have someone else on the court with the memory of what it is to be a thirteen-year-old girl but she have a pal in Sagmaster who still retains the average thirteen-year-old girl’s knowledge of Constitutional Law. But, as Barry so sagely pointed out when he announced Sonia’s canonization, it was all about feelings. He didn’t mention the constitution. Isn’t a Hispanic woman more likely to rule us pitiful slobs with empathy and compassion? When a bunch of white bucks were getting ‘uppity’ in Connecticut, passing their promotion exams just to make minorities feel bad, Sonia Sockmonster wrote a one-paragraph opinion that sent those Fitzies back to the potato patch! Our Elected Demi-God swooned as Soggymugger announced that the Constitution didn’t contain any rights for white firemen that a Compassionate Woman Of Color was bound to respect. You know, the Pro-Active Constitution that The Annointed One claims was written to mandate redistribution of wealth…

Hey! But we’ve got other branches of government too, just as important as the courts, and once again the babes are making their mark! Think of it, the first female Speakerette Of The House! Nan’s a wowser! What does a gal do when the Chief Exec’s power-mad Chief Of Staff sics the White House’s media pack on her? She goes to China to talk about…North Korean missiles and nukes? Nope. The growing US indebtedness and the Chinese calls for a non-dollar world reserve currency? Not exactly. Our Chief Lawmakeress got out of Dodge with the posse at her heels and fled to Beijing to talk about Global Warming! SHE’S SAVING THE PLANET! How did we ever get along without the woman’s touch behind the gavel? I’ll bet them Chicom dictators are mighty impressed, too.

Now some of you, the ones who went to school in the fifties or earlier when they still taught these things, or those of you who might have flunked your immigration exam, are getting ready to e-mail me and remind me that we have three whole branches in this here government! Now of course the Executive Branch is headed by The Majority Winner, The Man Who Crushed The Evil Bankers, The Fixer Of The Weather, El Presidente. But even a savant who eats sleeps walks talks lives Compassion for us poor ignorant insects, who looks after our welfare like a Father, who shines upon us like a Mighty Sun of Compassion, needs help to accomplish his massive Good Works with such consummate skill. And who is more of a help and support to The One than Hillary? With the inspiring moral example of a president who is engaged in muzzling and threatening prosecution to our intelligence services, dismantling our missile defenses and gutting our military with budget cuts the redoubtable Hillary is shaming those evil dictators into ending their nuke and missile programs by holding up our noble moral example. She’s got Putin, Kim Jong Il, and Ahmedinejahd eating out of the palm of her hand. The Magic Of Diplomacy! Or should I say The Woman’s Touch? It wont be long at this pace before that thug Hugo Chavez is on his knees, with tears of repentance in his eyes, paying homage to our example of international good citizenship.

It turns out that the rejection of the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution was unconstitutional and now the court is moving one more step closer to recognizing that salient fact, or should I say injustice? Hey, where would we be without these geniuses? So Compassionate!

This Sunday my daughter graduated from American University, Washington College Of Law. It was a proud moment in my life. The ceremony took place on the campus of the University (the law school is in a separate facility off site). The commencement speaker was Supreme Court Justice Steven Breyer. After the usual run of speakers saying the usual things badly Breyer's speech was exciting and amazing. He was erudite and spoke with passion and eloquence. His speech was a tribute to the notion that the law was a higher calling and he urged the graduates not to fall into a mundane, everyday employment but to use their profession to pursue that higher calling. But the happy and elevated tone carried a sinister undertone, one which defined a fundamental changing of the governing system of our nation and the creation of a mandarin class which arrogates more and more power to itself and answers to no democratic restraints while still retaining an outward obedience to the democratic rules laid down by the Constitution and the statutes. Breyer in fact couched his remarks in the context of reverence for legality. He began by speaking of the case brought by the Cherokees against the order issued by Andrew Jackson in which he decreed that all Indians still in tribal societies should be expelled West of the Mississippi River. When the Cherokees contested this and won their case in the Supreme Court Jackson was quoted as saying, "Now let them enforce it." He then ordered the army to expel the Cherokees from their lands and marched them along 'The Trail Of Tears' to a reservation in Oklahoma from which they emerged a couple of decades later to support the Confederacy against the hated US government. Breyer then contrasted Jackson's actions with those of Dwight Eisenhower who sent troops to enforce a court order desegregating the public schools in Little Rock Arkansas. Breyer pointed to a racist and cruel illegality evolving to a humane and admirable respect for the law, a nation changing and growing under the wise tutelage of The Court and The Law.
But was Jackson's cruel act of ethnic cleansing illegal, and did the court have the authority to reverse his decision? Remember, Jackson had, only a few years previously, at the head of an ad hoc militia he raised personally, defeated the Creeks and seized all their lands and invaded Florida, which was in the possession of the Spaniards to fight a war against the Seminoles. He had no orders or authority to do that. Both Spain and Washington were forced to recognize his actions as legal because they had no alternative. This was a lawless frontier far from the learned legal theorists in Washington. Was Jackson more restrained by the law as President than he was as a local militia commander? Furthermore, Jackson was an elected leader making national policy and the court is not superior to the executive in the Constitution, it is co-equal. If the court's order to Jackson was legal and Jackson therefore a criminal wasnt Tyler's annexation of Texas and Polk's seizure of the vast, uninhabited Southwest from the anarchic and newly-formed nation of Mexico equally illegal? Is the executive bound completely by subservience to the courts? Can events occur outside the purview of the Courts? Would our country exist if they cant?
Another case, which Breyer conveniently didnt mention, was the Dred Scott decision. This travesty of a ruling not only enjoined elected governments in free states to seize and return runaway slaves against the wishes of the people who elected them ("A negro has no rights a white man is bound to respect" said Chief Justice Taney's opinion) it also overturned the Missouri Compromise, arrived at by a legally elected legislature to prevent Southern secession and civil war and set the stage for the expansion of slavery into the western territories.
Other forays by the Court are equally unedifying. FDRs administrative decision to imprison US citizens of Japanese ancestry accompanied by the confiscation of their property in 1942 was given the court's seal of approval as was segregation; Plessy vs Ferguson was in clear violation of the 14th Amendment.
But the growth in the power of the judiciary exploded after Breyer's example of the triumph of law in Little Rock. The same president that Breyer held up as an example of this evolving legality appointed as Chief Justice the former Governor of California, Earl Warren. The Warren Court took the court in a new direction, one clearly not envisioned in the Constitution but one foreseen by Thomas Jefferson in his warnings against the inherent evil of Marbury vs Madison. The courts began to make law. In fact Breyer in his speech enjoined these fresh graduates to become active in their local Bar Associations, "...because that's where laws are made." The last half-century since the Warren Court have been a study in the passage of law and governance from democratically elected officials to the courts and to a permanent bureaucracy which answers to no one. Tropes such as 'fairness' and 'the overall public good' have become vehicles to advance the power of unelected officials and any hustler savvy enough to navigate the Byzantine maze of regulations and rulings which are so complex that they lend themselves to any self-serving interpretation.
The new legal anarchy has also played into the hands of people who understand how impervious to common sense judges like Breyer have become. A seventeen year old invaded a suburban home, raped, tortured and hog-tied the woman he found inside, put a pillow case over her head, drove her to a bridge and threw her off into the river. He laughed in jail and told his fellow inmates that his tender age would protect him from the death penalty. In Roper vs Simmons Justice Breyer and four of his fellows proved Mr. Simmons correct. Anthony Kennedy wrote the prevailing opinion which quoted the law from other countries and spoke of evolving 'International Standards Of Humanity', saving the promising legal prodigy Simmons to pursue a legal career and possible judgeship. In fact, opposition to capital punishment is dear to the hearts of all liberals as is state-provided abortion, gay marriage, disarming the citizenry, conferring welfare benefits on illegal aliens, enforced racial quotas and, in the Kelo decision, seizing private property under eminent domain and reselling it to greedy developers to increase tax revenues. What Breyer worships as respect for the law is pure class warfare; the unpopular social engineering schemes of the elite go to the courts to be enacted into law so that the ignorant Rednecks cant terrify timid legislators into blocking social 'progress' by withholding their votes.
They say there's an election going on at the moment. It wont matter much who wins. The same elite, educated in these fine schools, will decide whats going to happen. We dont have a 'Living Constitution' as the liberals describe it, we have a 'Dead Constitution'. Liberals have abandoned legality. Watch. Officials of the Bush Administration, out of power, will be charged with trumped up 'war crimes' as the savage inmates of Club Gitmo are turned loose on the helpless inhabitants of the Middle East; one of these paragons who was just released blew himself up in an Iraqi marketplace the other day, killing a dozen or so people and wounding dozens of others, fortunately none were members of the ACLU or the local Bar Association. The good work the Clinton Administration pioneered in using the IRS to harass their political enemies will be expanded as the age of liberal legality descends and the dim light of freedom is extinguished.