SUPREME TYRANNY AND OTHER OLD JOKES
As you know, the Supremes have been busy making part of America very happy and part of America very very sad and angry.
If you want commentary focusing strictly on the legal reasonings behind the Obamacare and gay marriage decisions, go to SCOTUSblog, though you will find commentary backing both the majority and the dissents - and they’re about as polarized as Facebook on both issues. (Lawyers, eh?)
I don’t have much to say about either decision because I’ve already stated my opinions on Obamacare and gay marriage. You can assume those still apply.
But here’s a few general comments to fulfill my 1A requirements:
1. For those liberal friends of mine who have spent the last ten years complaining about how the GOP has packed SCOTUS with activist conservatives who will kill Obamacare at the first opportunity and rubber stamp every idea that benefits Republicans and Corporate America, I suggest you take some time to reflect on the accuracy of yr predictions, as well as on how SCOTUS actually works.
2. No one ever said it wasn’t funny watching conservatives deploying the “activist judges” routine against judges they’d supported on the grounds that they would be strict constitutional fundamentalists.
3. By “activist judges”, they mean “judges who don’t vote the way I want them to”.
4. Fox news ha ha ha.
5. Ted Cruz is the new Pat Buchanan. Because what's the point of having an independent judiciary if they can’t be pressured by politicians and popular opinion to vote in your favor on your particular pet issue?
6. The SCOTUS rulings won’t end the debate. Of course they matter in terms of Obamacare carrying on and LGBTQ couples being able to be hitched, although it’s likely the states that still have hetero-only laws on the books will take their sweet time in changing their laws to comply with the ruling.
But as Point 5 indicates, conservatives don’t plan to just sit back and take this. So you’re going to see more legal challenges to Obamacare, and there will be efforts to amend the Fed Constitution to either define marriage as hetero-only or “fix” the Supreme Court. They’ll probably fail - conservatives have been proposing such things for a couple of decades now, and have never succeeded. But that's the great thing about political parties - yr always convinced yr the “real” majority no matter what the polls say. (Which proves that when you lose it’s part of some evil conspiracy against you by activist judges or whatever the hell.)
We’ll also see silly things like bills forcing SCOTUS judges to enroll in Obamacare (now called SCOTUScare) so “they will see firsthand what the American people are forced to live with.” Yes, ha ha. Given how much SCOTUS judges make, I doubt they’ll notice the difference.
On a more serious note, I do think you’ll be seeing a lot of other battles around the gay marriage ruling, like whether churches can opt out of performing gay marriages, or whether religious universities can refuse to provide housing for same-sex married couples, etc and so on.
7. Also, it’s an election year, so the bluster is going to have some momentum - at least at the Congressional level. It’s interesting to note that while GOP POTUS candidates like Cruz, Huckabee and Jindal are talking about judicial tyranny, others have opted for the “I don’t agree with the gay marriage ruling, but it’s the law of the land so we must respect it” response - which is political savviness on their part, since the majority of Americans support gay marriage, so the ruling basically lets them off the hook. (No word yet on if they feel the same way about the Obamacare ruling.)
But you can bet a whole lot of GOP candidate at other levels of govt are going to milk these decisions as evidence of liberal “lawlessness” and that you need to vote GOP before it’s too late and America becomes a nation of gay Spanish-speaking Satan-worshipping multicultural Socialist Mexicans.
Which they’ve doing for years, of course. But now that they’ve got fresh “evidence” to rile up the base, they’re almost certainly going to run off the end of the earth with it.
8. I realize I’m mostly picking on conservatives here, but given the tone of the “debate” I’ve seen on both these issues, I feel pretty confident in saying had SCOTUS ruled the other way in both cases, you’d be seeing the same amount of dithering, vitriol and teeth-gnashing from the liberal side of the aisle. Because this is 2015 - we do not lose gracefully because we’ve convinced ourselves the Other Side is a cabal of supervillains out to destroy humanity and MUST BE STOPPED.
Also, it’s pretty much how the Left reacted to Citizens United and Hobby Lobby. So it’s not like they can point fingers at how conservatives are such sore losers in court cases.
Carry on screaming,
This is dF
This entry was originally posted at http://defrog.dreamwidth.org/1529254.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
If you want commentary focusing strictly on the legal reasonings behind the Obamacare and gay marriage decisions, go to SCOTUSblog, though you will find commentary backing both the majority and the dissents - and they’re about as polarized as Facebook on both issues. (Lawyers, eh?)
I don’t have much to say about either decision because I’ve already stated my opinions on Obamacare and gay marriage. You can assume those still apply.
But here’s a few general comments to fulfill my 1A requirements:
1. For those liberal friends of mine who have spent the last ten years complaining about how the GOP has packed SCOTUS with activist conservatives who will kill Obamacare at the first opportunity and rubber stamp every idea that benefits Republicans and Corporate America, I suggest you take some time to reflect on the accuracy of yr predictions, as well as on how SCOTUS actually works.
2. No one ever said it wasn’t funny watching conservatives deploying the “activist judges” routine against judges they’d supported on the grounds that they would be strict constitutional fundamentalists.
3. By “activist judges”, they mean “judges who don’t vote the way I want them to”.
4. Fox news ha ha ha.
5. Ted Cruz is the new Pat Buchanan. Because what's the point of having an independent judiciary if they can’t be pressured by politicians and popular opinion to vote in your favor on your particular pet issue?
6. The SCOTUS rulings won’t end the debate. Of course they matter in terms of Obamacare carrying on and LGBTQ couples being able to be hitched, although it’s likely the states that still have hetero-only laws on the books will take their sweet time in changing their laws to comply with the ruling.
But as Point 5 indicates, conservatives don’t plan to just sit back and take this. So you’re going to see more legal challenges to Obamacare, and there will be efforts to amend the Fed Constitution to either define marriage as hetero-only or “fix” the Supreme Court. They’ll probably fail - conservatives have been proposing such things for a couple of decades now, and have never succeeded. But that's the great thing about political parties - yr always convinced yr the “real” majority no matter what the polls say. (Which proves that when you lose it’s part of some evil conspiracy against you by activist judges or whatever the hell.)
We’ll also see silly things like bills forcing SCOTUS judges to enroll in Obamacare (now called SCOTUScare) so “they will see firsthand what the American people are forced to live with.” Yes, ha ha. Given how much SCOTUS judges make, I doubt they’ll notice the difference.
On a more serious note, I do think you’ll be seeing a lot of other battles around the gay marriage ruling, like whether churches can opt out of performing gay marriages, or whether religious universities can refuse to provide housing for same-sex married couples, etc and so on.
7. Also, it’s an election year, so the bluster is going to have some momentum - at least at the Congressional level. It’s interesting to note that while GOP POTUS candidates like Cruz, Huckabee and Jindal are talking about judicial tyranny, others have opted for the “I don’t agree with the gay marriage ruling, but it’s the law of the land so we must respect it” response - which is political savviness on their part, since the majority of Americans support gay marriage, so the ruling basically lets them off the hook. (No word yet on if they feel the same way about the Obamacare ruling.)
But you can bet a whole lot of GOP candidate at other levels of govt are going to milk these decisions as evidence of liberal “lawlessness” and that you need to vote GOP before it’s too late and America becomes a nation of gay Spanish-speaking Satan-worshipping multicultural Socialist Mexicans.
Which they’ve doing for years, of course. But now that they’ve got fresh “evidence” to rile up the base, they’re almost certainly going to run off the end of the earth with it.
8. I realize I’m mostly picking on conservatives here, but given the tone of the “debate” I’ve seen on both these issues, I feel pretty confident in saying had SCOTUS ruled the other way in both cases, you’d be seeing the same amount of dithering, vitriol and teeth-gnashing from the liberal side of the aisle. Because this is 2015 - we do not lose gracefully because we’ve convinced ourselves the Other Side is a cabal of supervillains out to destroy humanity and MUST BE STOPPED.
Also, it’s pretty much how the Left reacted to Citizens United and Hobby Lobby. So it’s not like they can point fingers at how conservatives are such sore losers in court cases.
Carry on screaming,
This is dF
This entry was originally posted at http://defrog.dreamwidth.org/1529254.html. Please comment there using OpenID.