Stating the Obvious

L' Etat, c'est Moi

       The progressive era was the beginning of the United States having a nation that considered its people as so much cattle.  Progressives had little use for constitutional restraints upon government power.  They wished to give presidents godlike power;  the president should be an elected monarch.  

        The first president to treat himself as a god among men was the vile racist Woodrow Wilson.  The chronically dishonest Wilson pretended that the United States had no preference as to who won World War I.  Wilson censored the news, preventing Americans from knowing about the hundreds of deadly acts of sabotage conducted against factories by German agents.  In 1916, he had the temerity to run for reelection based on keeping the U.S. out of the war, only to enter the war on the pretense of outrage over German submarine attacks.  Wilson then indulged his grandiose delusions by creating fourteen platitudes, and reshaping Europe according to his own whims.

     Next came Franklin Delano Roosevelt, America's answer to Henry VIII.  A truly revolutionary president, Roosevelt seemed to think he had the right to occupy the White House forever.  His economic schemes were often ruled unconstitutional;  Roosevelt's answer was packing the Supreme Court with syncophants who would allow him to do anything he wished.  To this day, the decisions of New Deal era justices allow the Court of King's Bench to justify unlimited distortions of the Commerce Clause.

        Of course, Oh Blah Blah was the ultimate destination for the United States.  No American president ever embodied the spirit of Louis XIV better than our forty-fourth president.  Not only did Obama think he had the power to enforce only those federal laws he fully agreed with, his Justice Department was fully politicized.  And who could forget the way he ignored the War Powers Act of 1973 in order to engage us in Libya and Syria!  "I am the State," thundered Louis XIV, and Obama agreed entirely.

Conservatives Without Chests, Part Two

     It is astounding to Estase how many people act as though there is something conservative about Orange Blatherskite.  O.B. is the Republican Bill Clinton:  an oversexed demagogue with no coherent foreign policy.  During the campaign, O.B. acted as though he would avoid enmeshing us with the attempt to remove Bashar al-Assad from power.  The Syrian civil war is a quagmire that even Oh Blah Blah was smart enough to only talk about engaging us in.  But now, before his first one hundred days have even elapsed, O.B.'s dubiously qualified Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is talking regime change!  
       Despite promising a pro-life Supreme Court justice, O.B. named a milquetoast Anthony Kennedy clone to replace Justice Scalia.  Unfortunately, the Republican voter is a fool who was gulled into choosing a candidate for his image rather than for substance.  O.B. talked a big game, and that made up for his lack of fluency on actual policy.  The ignorant red state voter is himself a conservative without a chest;  this is why they fell for someone who was all talk and no emotion.  "Make America Great Again" means being eighty percent identical to Peace and Love Incorporated (AKA the Clinton mafia).  Wesley Clark may as well be our head of the JCS.  Merritt Garland may as well be our newest Supreme Court justice.

Selective Usage of Aristotle

       In its decision in Roe v. Wade, the Court of King's Bench cited Aristotle's approval of abortion in support of abortion on demand.  What the proper interpretation of Aristotle is has been cause for the spilling of oceans of ink.  (Averroes versus Avicenna being just a small part of that controversy.)  It is a sign of how little the black-letter Constitution counts for in the deliberations of King's Bench when the Praetors start invoking 3,000 year-old philosophy in their opinions.  Just to show how phony and selective the Court of King's Bench's interest in Aristotle is, will be demonstrated by this quote occurring a few paragraphs after the passage on abortion.

"The Directors of Education, as they are termed, should be careful what tales or stories the children hear, for the sports of children are designed to prepare the way for the business of later life, and should be for the most part imitations of the occupations which they will hereafter pursue in earnest.  Those are wrong who (like Plato) in the Laws attempt to check the loud crying and screaming of children, for these contribute towards their growth, and, in a manner, exercise their bodies. . . .For until they are seven years old they must live at home;  and therefore, even at this early age, all that is mean and low should be banished from their sight and hearing. . . .A freeman who is found saying or doing what is forbidden, if he be too young as yet to have the privilege of a place at the public table, should be disgraced and beaten, and an elder person degraded as his slavish conduct deserves.  And since we do not allow improper language, clearly we should also banish pictures or tales which are indecent. . . .And therefore youth should be kept strangers to all that is bad, and especially to things which suggest vice or hate."  Aristotle Politics Book VII 1336-1337.

So, obviously, if King's Bench legalized abortion because Aristotle thought it best, King's Bench should also censor speech, music, and pornography, because Aristotle favored that too!

Cokie Roberts Praises King's Bench

   Hat tip to Grabien.

       The Supreme Court is for our inability to self-govern, says Coked-Up Cokie Roberts.  The pundit says that the court exists "to take over from" the democratic process.  Because, you know, democracy just doesn't work fast enough for Ms. Roberts.
        Many of us realized that the Court of King's Bench can justify any ruling when we studied Griswold v. Connecticut/Roe v. Wade.  I mean, when the black-letter Constitution counts for absolutely nothing, what can't the King's Bench find a right to?  Abortion--just invent a Right to Privacy.  Gay Marriage--just say that everyone has a Constitutional right to do most anything they feel like.  It isn't about law.  It's about politics.  Ms. Roberts admits the same.  And if the electorate aren't advanced enough to get it done, do it by Praetorian Edict.  Because democracy, it just doesn't work fast enough!

King's Bench

       It's been a while since Estase has blogged about King's Bench (AKA, the American Supreme Court).  One ingredient of the imperial presidency created by Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, and strengthened by presidents as varied as FDR and George W. Bush, is that the court of King's Bench no longer decides on what the black-letter constitution says, but engages in dishonest though creative misreadings of this original document.  Furthermore, the Supreme Court has become an extension of the executive branch.  Justices are picked due to their predictable ability to tow the party line of whoever appointed them.  (One must concede, however, that Democratic presidents are much more adept at this than their Republican counterparts.  Anthony Kennedy votes far more like a liberal than would seem appropriate for a Republican appointee.  Even Sandra Day O'Connor had her embarassing Lemon case, which was also a lemon in another sense.)   Long ago cast to the winds was the Political Questions Doctrine as established in Luther v. Borden .  Today's Kings Bench is replete with such characters as Ruth Bader Ginsberg and "wise Latina" Sonya Sotamayor, who never saw a case of First Amendment religious freedom they thought deserved respect.  It is hard to imagine any of the more conservative members standing up to the executive, never mind the peril, in the same sense that James I and Francis Bacon clashed with Edward Coke.   It reminds one of W.B. Yeats' The Second Coming ,where the better people lack all conviction, and the worst are full of passionate intensity.   In a world where liberals think presidents are elected kings (see movies such as The American President and With Honors), Supreme Court justices are just another way to obviate the power of House and Senate.