The Supreme Court Is Like An Onion!

Ogres are like onions. Ogres have layers and onions have layers, so ogres are like onions   Shrek

Maybe because there are only two major political parties in this country, we have a national tendency to see and evaluate everything that happens connected to politics only in absolutes. Everything is either black or white. Period. And of course that’s ridiculous.

While politically made decisions may be black and white, often times the decisions themselves turn out to be ogres, made up of layers, and you have to peel them back. As Forrest Gump famously said, Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what’s inside until you open it up.

And nowhere is that more true than in judicial appointments, especially the Supreme Court. Each President carefully vets each candidate to find the one that most closely aligns with his own personal and political beliefs. But half the time, the President doesn’t know jack sh*t.

Because potential Justices already know what the boss wants to hear. And like a 17 y.o. who wants the car will tell his mother he’ll mow the grass and do the laundry, the potential nominee tells the President whatever will get him the job. Because, as Mom soon finds out, if the little bastard doesn’t do the lawn, what are you going to do, retroactively take away the car? It’s over. You got conned. Get over it. Former President George HW Bush lamented after leaving office that the greatest tragedy of, and his biggest disappointment as President was nominating David Souter to the Supreme Court. He felt personally betrayed by Souter. Yeah, in that box of chocolates Bush got the ear wax flavored Jelly Belly.

You’ve been patient, so here’s where this all ties together, ear wax candy and all. Ever since Bitch McConnell and Traitor Tot tromped all over Notorious RBG’s freshly sodded grave, and rammed Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court ,it has automatically become known as, and referred to almost exclusively as a 6-3 conservative Super Majority Court. And while it’s true that the conservatives have 6 justices, we’re already seeing that they’re having a problem making a workable majority out of it.

And that’s because the word conservative is also like an ogre, it too has layers. As Chuckles Todd opined today on MSNBC, the personality of this Supreme Court is actually three 3 justice buckets. On the left you have progressive liberals Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson. On the right you have far right bomb throwers Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch. And in the middle, you now have three moderate conservative swing justices, Kavanaugh, Barrett, and Roberts. And that delicate balance is already starting to show up in recent decisions.

Lordy, Lordy, this Supreme Court onion has so many layers. It appears that Justice Barrett has become fast friends with Justice Sotomayor, to the point that they now appear together on the road for judicial town halls. Roberts and Kavanaugh seem to have a more cordial relationship now that the media has stopped referring to it as The Kavanaugh Court. And Thomas and Alito have settled into a permanent off Broadway production of Grumpier Old Men.

Which is driving the conservative wing nut legal community insane! The whole object of a 6-3 super majority was for far right legal gutter feeders to cobble together bullsh*t lawsuits for favorite far right legal chew toys, so the SCOTUS could craft the results to their liking. And for a while it worked, but then like greedy little piggies, they went too far, and now they’re getting stuck.

The most famous, or infamous as it were was of course the Dobbs decision. I wrote at the time that Roberts was a moron. These idiots actually thought that by sending the abortion issue back to the states, they were washing their hands of it once and for all. But as I predicted at the time, all Roberts did was to assure that for at least the next 10 years, the court is going to have at least 1-2 major state abortion rights challenges on their docket. This is the song that never ends. It just goes on and on my friends.

But while it worked for a while, people lost sight of the fact that this is still the Supreme Court, and the rulings it issues will become a part of John Roberts historical legacy as Chief Justice, something he cares deeply about. And the far right ambulance chasers started getting stupid time, so they had to be whacked down. To wit;

• The Mifepristone case never should even have gotten to the Supreme Court, much less out of the district court. The plaintiffs had no standing to file the suit in the first place, but as it climbed the ladder, the far right Evangelicals got their hopes up, only to be dashed by the court, who are now all rank turncoats
• In the 2nd Amendment rights vs orders of protection case, only that brainless yahoo Clarence Thomas could decide that the NRA is so powerful that an abusive ex spouse or lover should still get a hunting license to go after his ex
• In the accidentally pre released apparent first draft of the US v Idaho ruling, again it appears that sanity will prevail. Briefly, Idaho has abortion exceptions only for rape, incest, and saving the life of the mother. But federal law says that hospitals taking federal funds, such as Medicare and Medicaid must provide emergency abortions to protect and safeguard the health of the mother. It appears that the court will restore the lower court’s injunction prohibiting the law from taking effect, while letting it weave its way through the liberal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. And only Sleazy Sam Alito could craft a dissenting opinion comparing a woman bleeding out from a doomed pregnancy to a cancer patient deciding what treatments to choose or refuse
• The end result of the Dobbs case is why I predict that the court will let the Chevron Doctrine stand. As I’v written, Roberts is already going to be up to his ears in abortion cases for the next 10 years, the last thing he wants is to pile a never ending series of petrochemical pollution suits on top of it

One more dynamic before we go. It appears to me that the Gruesome Twosome, Thomas and Alito are passing their shelf life, even with their cohorts. It has been reported that Justice Barrett has expressed disapproval and disgust with some of the dilatory shenanigans of Alito and Thomas. And the two of them are an embarrassment to the court, especially to the other conservative justices. Lately I’ve seen a few rulings that I would have expected to be 5-4 coming up as either 6-3 or even 7-2, leaving the two misfit toys on an island. I’m guessing this is pressure to at least try to rein in their excesses. We shall see.

I thank you for the privilege of  your time.

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