Bush v. Gore will never be over
I see that Justice Antonin Scalia has once again been kind enough to advise us to get over Bush v. Gore. Fat chance.
I’ve got a better idea: why don’t you, Justice Scalia, try facing up to the fact that the disgrace of that decision — the raw partisan abuse of power — will stain you and the other four justices who made up the majority for as long as the history of this era is recorded.
Now, you get over that.
The comments that follow borrow extensively from something I wrote about Sandra Day O’Connor — a much more sympathetic figure, by the way — on the occasion of her retirement. But this updated version is just for you, Justice Scalia.
I’m sure you’re familiar with the old expression, popular both in retail merchandizing and neoconservative empire building, “If you break it, you own it.”
Well, you and your colleagues broke American democracy in December of 2000: Now you own George W. Bush.
As the people who put him into power, his legacy is your legacy.
You own it lock, stock and barrel.
You own the War in Iraq.
You own the foreign policy that’s left America hated throughout the world.
You own the incompetence of allowing Osama bin Laden to escape by refocusing our armed forces from Afghanistan to Iraq.
You own the corruption of the multi-billion dollar boondoggle no-bid contracts handed out like candy to Bush’s political friends.
You own the torture.
You own the ballooning national debt.
You own the lies.
You own the practice of using the Sept. 11 attacks for political gain.
You own Karl Rove.
You own the near complete disregard for our natural environment.
You own the dirty tricks.
You own the degradation of our civil liberties.
You own the slander directed against anyone who dares oppose Bush.
You own the failure to even try to address Global Warming, potentially the single greatest threat ever to confront humanity.
You own the tax giveaways to the super rich.
You own the outing a CIA operative, potentially placing everyone she’s ever worked with into danger, merely to score a little cheap political revenge.
You own the practice of filling up regulatory boards and commissions with industry insiders.
You own the near dictatorship level obsession with governmental secrecy.
You own the growing economic inequality in America.
You own the failure to even try to address America’s broken healthcare system.
You own the playing politics with stem cell research.
And you own the far right extremists Bush is appointing to the federal bench.
You own the betrayal of New Orleans.
You own the junking of the American economy.
You own the corruption.
All of this, and so much more, belongs to you now.
To be clear, your contribution to many of these sins goes far beyond Bush v. Gore. The infamy of your tenure on the Court has been anything but one-dimensional: but this is the one history will remember.
You see, Justice Scalia, you didn’t just put the losing candidate into the White House in 2000; you put there the worst president in American history. And that is something that will never be forgotten.
April 25th, 2008 at 1:15 am
Scalia long ago disgraced the Court and disgraced this country. He is a bigmouth, right-wing extremist nutcase, who misuses his position and his authority. He will not be remembered as a man of dignity nor ethics. He continually lowers the bar. His opinions will be treated with the disrespect and disgust they fully deserve. It is my hope that he finally oversteps the boundaries of ethical behavior and is removed in a full-fledged scandal. His arrogance knows no limits, so this is a definite possibility. It is no surprise that a corrupt man like George W. Bush admires Scalia. Birds of a feather flock together. Rehnquist was also an arrogant man. His Court will go down in infamy. Bush vs. Gore will be seen as the epitomy of corruption and degradation of the laws of this land. Rehnquist will be remembered for that and that alone. Scalia will join the others who perpetuated this travesty on the United States of America. That is their legacy. You have listed all of the wrongs, all of the destruction, all of the total immorality that resulted from a Court run amok. It is one for the history books, listed under “The Stolen Election of 2000:Aided and Abetted by The Rehnquist Court.” It will take decades to fully recover from the harm that came from that decision. Those that took part in it deserve to be repudiated by future citizens and legal experts. They should be relegated to the trash heap of history; and scoffed at by all who value honesty and decency. Scalia would do us all a favor if he shut his obnoxious mouth and retired to a dark hole under a rock, where he belongs.
April 25th, 2008 at 2:49 am
(inspired by Steve)
““What happened then, oh great master?” gasped one student.
“Justice Antonin Scalia yawned.”
i long for a time when
“He yawned?” came a voice in disbelief.
will be the usual reply again - when disbelief will prevail, disbelief about Antonin Scalia as slap in the face of each and every democrat…
i long for a time, when calling an asocial entity like Antonin Scalia a “Justice” will be nothing else than a bad joke, far away from any reality…
Remember the effect of “Have you no decency, Sir?”
April 25th, 2008 at 10:02 am
Stooges for the criminal Bush administration — Scalia, Thomas, Alito, Roberts — REPLACE THEM!
April 25th, 2008 at 10:38 am
Three of the five Justices who put Bush in the White House are still on the court — Scalia, Thomas and Kennedy. They all took an oath to uphold the Constitution and then turned around and spit on it in Bush vs Gore.
If/when the Democrats gain control of the White House and congress, I would hope that impeachment for these three is not “off the table.” They did, after all, greviously betray their oath of office.
April 25th, 2008 at 8:10 pm
We often speak of the sociopathic tendencies inherent in both Bush and Cheney. Here is still another sterling example of sociopathic behavior gone wild in the Supreme Court. Scalia comes out with these sort of statements repeatedly - evidence that he doesn’t even begin to appreciate the harm he and others did when they prevented poor little W from being “hurt” by having the true 2000 election results discovered.
With the Bush v Gore decision rivaling, and perhaps even surpassing the infamy of Pearl Harbor, we have watched the progression of a court that began by just leaning more and more to the conservative side into the very kind of “activist court” that conservatives had for so long despised and decried when attributed to its previous liberal leanings. Indeed, the Bush v Gore decision was nothing less than a “Pearl Harbor” attack on our democratic republic.
By contrast, the liberal-leaning courts of earlier decades in the 20th century tended to increase the effectiveness of the constitution and broadened its powers to protect those who had suffered for so long without its real protection. One needs only compare Brown v Board of Education with Bush v Gore to have a clear view of how far down the scale of humanity the Supreme Court has slid in terms of what it values and of how it now is increasingly undermining the base upon which our constitution was built.
The Supreme Court, in fact, stands as my prime motivator for getting a Democrat president elected this year. Unfortunately Democrats themselves have contributed to the weakening of our democracy, but with someone like McCain in office I’m afraid the results could, and likely would, be disastrous for the Court and for our future as a Republic. Age and health issues loom all too closely in the future for the few remaining justices who offer any sort of check on the Scalia, Alito, Thomas, Roberts voting bloc that is continually writing decisions (or refusing to consider decisions) that move us away from our constitutional foundations of justice for all.
Let’s hope that sanity will prevail in November, and that the election results will be too strongly in favor of Obama (likely Democratic candidate) for it to be stolen yet again by the sociopathic neo-conservative virus that has infiltrated and hacked our system of government.
Regards,
donilo
April 25th, 2008 at 8:33 pm
I’m w/you, Hari - impeachment should ABSOLUTELY be “on the table” for the Bush Nazi traitors!
April 25th, 2008 at 11:50 pm
If Obama doesn’t have the Democratic nomination stolen from him, and as the nominee, he doesn’t have the 2008 election stolen from him a la 2000 & 2004, his administration should “encourage” several not-so-supreme justices, including the chump in charge to seek early retirement or face criminal prosecution. Let’s face it; there’s a good case for the latter.