Tag Archives: John Roberts

As Sordid an Example of “Legislating from the Bench” as We’ll Ever See.

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How the Federalist Society came to dominate the Supreme Court – Harvard Gazette

Not that there was really any question, you understand. But with this “leak” of the Supreme Court’s imminent abortion ruling we can pretty well dismiss the notion that there is ever a “settled” argument in this great, grand democratic experiment of ours. Given sufficient connivery, bad faith and partisan fervor, nothing is ever truly decided and settled.

Court watchers and other sage heads — like Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick — are at the moment undecided about why and who leaked Sam Alito’s 98-page screed/draft of the court’s upcoming opinion. Was it someone trying to gin up enough public outrage to … do something about it? On a court where there’s a locked-in-stone five votes to decide in favor of anything the Federalist Society/evangelical right has on their to-do list?

Or was the leak from someone sympathetic to overturning Roe? An arch-partisan wet dream that has never polled higher than 30% with Americans since 1973? The thinking being that given Americans’ inability to focus on anything longer than two weeks would mean the howling and protesting — from the majority of citizens — will be exhausted by June when the formal decision is expected to be handed down?

Predictably, FoxNews world is already declaring that the “real scandal” here is … the leak … not Alito’s thinking.

Whatever, there’s little doubt that overturning a “settled law” that has maintained 70% support for 50 years will be the signature decision of John Roberts’ court. This vote will be his legacy. And as I’ve followed the news since last night, Roberts has neither said or signalled anything about how he will vote or whether he’s trying to work the team to modulate the greatest example of “legislating from the bench” in modern American history.

The Roberts angle of this is interesting because from everything I know about the guy he is the classic between-the-forty-yard-lines institutional conservative … getting trampled like so many others of his fading ilk by hyper-partisans with a truly hypocritical regard for constitutional integrity. Like so many old-school, country club Republicans, he’s watching the cumulative effect of so many of his status quo/progressive-resistant decisions coming back to wreak havoc on the dignity of the institutions they claim to so revere.

The abortion argument is so treadworn there’s nothing fresh to be said about it. My personal attitude — shared by many in polling over the decades — is that while I could never consent to it in my relationships, and certainly not as “casual” birth control, the idea that The Government has any standing to dictate to a woman what she can and cannot do — even in the case of rape or her health for chrissakes — is about as anti-democratic, anti-libertarian and anti-American experiment as it gets.

What makes the pro-life argument even worse — which is to say even more hypocritical — is that poll after poll and study after study shows that Godly-divined, Christ-sanctioned anti-abortion partisans are nearly as rabidly opposed to social welfare spending — for people like single-mothers — as they are to choice. For them, support for life stops at birth.

Here’s George Carlin’s classic “pro life” rant.

Amy Klobuchar popped up on Rachel Maddow’s show last night making brave sounds about how this means liberals and everyone else in favor of Roe as it stands has to, you know, band together and gird for the fight to change Congress before this authoritarian stampede gets any worse.

To which I say, “Well, good luck with that.” As someone pointed out on Twitter this morning, over two million people have signed a petition to cut Johnny Depp’s ex-wife out of the next “Aquaman” movie because she was so so crazy mean to Johnny.

By contrast, the outrageously sordid tale of Clarence Thomas’s wife cavorting with abject nutjobs and insurrectionists — with his full knowledge — trying to subvert the Constitution by overthrowing an election has faded from public interest with no apparent legal consequences.

Minnesota Health System Needs Obamacare Too

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On a weekly basis, Garrison Keillor reminds Minnesotans that we are above average.  But we didn’t need him to tell us that.  We’re a pretty innately smug bunch when it comes to our state.  Call it “Minnesota Exceptionalism.”

We’re especially smug about our health care system.  Therefore, some of us were not all that sure we needed Obamacare’s private health insurance mandate, which is presently the only politically feasible way of improving health insurance coverage and banning pre-existing condition restrictions.

But we do.

It is true that Minnesota is better off than the rest of the nation. Nine percent of Minnesotans lack health insurance coverage, and that’s much better than the nation as a whole, where 16% are uninsured.

We can rest assured that we aren’t suffering nearly as much as many other states, such as Texas (27% uninsured), Mississippi (24% uninsured), Louisiana (22% uninsured), Nevada (22% uninsured), and Oklahoma (22% uninsured). These GOP strongholds are suffering more at the hand of the GOP’s shameless health reform stonewalling than we are.

But let’s not delude our exceptional selves.  Minnesota needs the private insurance mandate too.   After all, using the same kind of health insurance mandate the Supreme Court just upheld, Massachusets has a much better record than Minnesota.  Under ArneCare in Minnesota, we have 9% uninsured, which is better than average.   But under ObamneyCare in Massachusetts, they have only 5% uninsured.

Moreover, we self-congratulatory Minnesotans should never forget that in the shadows of Minnesota’s overall 9% uninsured rate are pockets of much deeper health care despair. For instance, more than a quarter (27%) of low income adult Minnesotans are uninsured. That’s a little bit of Texas in our midst.

No, 9% is not good enough. That’s 463,100 of our Minnesota friends, neighbors, and coworkers who are just one metastasized cell or black ice sheet away from a mountain of medical bills, and the bankruptcy that so often goes with it.

That’s 463,100 Minnesotans delaying medical care until medical care becomes much more expensive, and often much less effective.

That’s 463,100 Minnesotans who obviously don’t stop getting hurt or ill, and therefore are forced to shift their enormous medical expenses to the rest of us, which in turn forces more of us to drop our own coverage.

That’s 463,100 Minnesotans — the population of Rochester, Duluth, St. Cloud, Eagan, Plymouth, Lino Lakes, Willmar and Ramsey, combined.

That can’t be ignored.  Minnesota needs the insurance mandate, and the rest of Obamacare too.  So thank you Heritage Foundation, Newt Gingrich, Don Nickles, Mitt Romney and, now, John Roberts for giving it to us.

– Loveland

Note:  This post also was featured as a “best of the best” on Minnpost’s Blog Cabin feature.