The Rule of Lawyers

The only people more hysterical about Bush's latest Supereme Court nominee than the liberals I know? Conservatives.

They're freaking out because they never bought the idea that any member of the Bush family was much more of a conservative than Al Gore. Not really, it was more a evil of two lessers choice for conservatives.

The real difference between Bush and the two alternatives we've been offered? Modest tax cuts, that's the ONLY difference. Both so-called alternatives are capable of spending money like Paris Hilton loaned them her credit card. Both will continue the holocaust of unborn babies by extending a ridiculous 'privacy' theory to children who can't legally consent to tattoos and ear piercings, much less sexual intercourse. Bush as proved almost as able as Clinton in the area of lying and then denying it in the face of irrefutable proof.

And in any case, does anyone really believe that the individual playing the role of 'President' has any say in anything at all? Of course not. He's an actor, reading the TelePrompter for whatever the goons figure he should say next. That's why Reagan comes off as a good President, it wasn't a change for him from what he'd done his whole life. It's why the Governator isn't more of a conspicuous boob. I mean, yeah, he's a conspicuous boob, but the only reason he'd stand out at a State Governor's Convention is he's a Kennedy by marriage and has an Actor's Guild card. No weirder than being a WWF wrestler.

So who makes these decisions? As far as I can make out, it's a kind of mob-rule situation, where people who have their jobs by virtue of patronage tell their patron what to say. Ever see the movie 'Amadeus?' The emperor and the goons around him, I think it works along those lines even if the emperor is ostensibly elected. Elected in a pageant or born to the throne, the result differs little.

As far as the Supreme Court goes, I don't know that you even have to have a law degree, technically, to serve on the court. That would be a refreshing change, put someone who's not a lawyer in the robe.

On the plus side, being a life appointment, people get awfully independent when they have that kind of power with zero accountability. Unfortunately, to even be visible to the selection team, you have to be a political animal. Bad enough that you should have to be a lawyer.

Justice Black was a Klansman, bona-fide KKK, but since he was a member of the Senate, he was confirmed without hearings. They called that 'courtesy.'

Justice Marshall was deficient in everything except the pigment to make him the 'first black justice.' He was never an intellectual powerhouse, but in fairness, how many black folks got into law school at all when he was in his early 20s? That lifetime appointment has some drawbacks though, he spent his final years watching soap operas and letting his clerks write his 'opinions.' He had little regard for the Constitution, the document he was supposed to be interpretting; at the same time, it was a Constitution that had been used to protect slavery for six decades, so if I was him, maybe I'd wipe my ass with it.

In any case, cats like Souter and Kennedy have been abominable choices in the eyes of 'conservatives.' Clarence Thomas is the only Supreme Court Justice to even come close to the Scalia or Renquist model, despite the fact that except for GOP has held the White House for 25 of the past 37 years. Thomas may be the smartest cat on the Court, even though I don't always find myself agreeing with him.

What would I want from a Justice? Someone who would point out that the 'privacy' laid out in Roe is largely an excercise in semantics that profits a few doctors and leads to such ethically problematic theories as 'benign demographics.' For the uninitated, 'benign demographics' is a quietly voiced liberal theory that boils down to the drop in crime in the late 1990s correlating to the rise in poor (mostly black) babies aborted after Roe. Down that road lies concentration camps, enforced eugenics, things that (much to liberal's chagrin) were championed by Maragaret Sanger, the Patron Saint of Aboriton.

I'd also like a justice who would uphold privacy where the ingestion of drugs is concerned. The same people who say a 12-year-old should be able to abort her father's incestuously conceived child without so much as parental consent (much less notice to the authorities that, barring a virgin conception, someone's been fucking a 12-year old), these people say that Indians who's continent they stole should be jailed for ritual peyote use that predates written language in Europe. They say the government should be able to kick down my door if I buy glass lab equipment that might be used for yeast culturing (legal) or methamphetamine production (curiously illegal). Where's my right to be free in my home from unreasonable search and seizure without due process?

For that matter, the Income Tax, I know there was an amendment that allowed the creation of the IRS and the taxation of income, but since when does Uncle Sam have the right to even know what I earn? That's a very private thing, my income. I don't share it with my neighbors, my friends, very few members of my family. My daughters don't know what I earn, my parents have a vague notion. But the Federal Government not only knows what I earn, but what I can document I spent earning it. Hello, privacy???

The burden should be on the state to prove I've engaged in a crime, not a livelihood. The fact that I make art for fridge magnets instead of making crank is irrelevant. Advertising is, arguably, at least as destructive as drug abuse. Give me a Supreme Court nominee who will strike down IRS audits as a violation of my privacy, burden those fuckers with due process and proof. A nominee who will say that it doesn't matter if a drug is fun to take, it's up to the individual to decide what they take. If you do three rails of coke and have a heart attack, I hope you go out happy. But if you do three rails of coke and just talk a lot for the rest of the night, don't expect me to provide you with food, shelter, and a public defender with a 'Born To Lose' tattoo for the next few years.

Or like Tom Lehrer's perfect summation of the obscenity issue: give me a justice who will admit that it's enough that dirty books are fun.