The Supremes reign supreme...and weirdness ensues.

I should have known when I woke up Wednesday morning in a cold sweat from a feverish dream in which George Will – dressed like Angus Young – was licking Antonin Scalia’s neck with Clarence Thomas singing Windmills of Your Mind in the background that things were about to take a weird turn.  I couldn’t have known just how weird things were going to get though – the media since yesterday morning has been like a terrifying and inexplicable front page of the World Weekly News being read aloud by Chet Huntley on acid.  In other words, thanks to the unexpected courage of Chief Justice John Roberts, the shit has hit the fan.

The ominous tsunami of bad news that has been wounding Obama like so many banderillas is suddenly overshadowed – at least for a few days – by the outraged cries of right wing pundits, congressional drones and empty-headed Faux News commentators as they try to figure out what the fuck happened.  How did their carefully orchestrated take-down of Obama get scuttled by one of their own – a George W. Bush appointee and heretofore conservative stalwart like Roberts?   It is puzzling but certainly not inconceivable if you think about it from his perspective.

Remember that the health care reform law – the ACA – was born out of republican DNA as a response to that uppity bitch, Hillary Clinton, and her bridge-too-far attempt to reform health care in Bill’s first term.  The fundamental aspects of what is derisively called Obamacare came straight from the lineage leading back to Hillarycare that passes right through Romneycare to the present.  And the intensity of the opposition has the same roots, going back to backroom fascist and nativist Bill Kristol, who devised a no holds barred obstructionism-as-policy strategy and whose threats to Bob Dole, waiting in the wings for his chance to run for president, galvanized the entire unruly republican mob, led by Newt Gingrich.  This rabble’s subsequent fervent overreach over Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky’s blow job provides a direct link to the extreme partisanship we see all around us today. 

Roberts is 57 years old and appointed to the court for life.  That could be a hell of a long time, time enough to create a lasting legacy akin to the great Chief Justices of the past.  Does he want his legacy stained by extremist partisans – traitors, really – who expect him to march in lock step, bowing to their every whim?  Probably not.  Instead he has begun what we can only hope becomes a legacy of even-handed, well thought out decisions that aren’t overtly political – a course of action that is anathema to the right wing intelligencia who feel like their ideas, as promulgated on some wrinkled and blood stained piece of ancient parchment somewhere, are the only ones with any merit. 

And that doesn’t take into account hallucinating conservative wing-nut scholars like Michelle Bachman who was quoted as saying – and we’re paraphrasing because her transmission was garbled – “Anytime the Supreme Court renders something constitutional that is clearly unconstitutional, that undermines the credibility of the Supreme Court. I do believe the court's credibility was undermined severely today.”  That counts as a relatively lucid comment from her but illustrates what I call “the new treason”; pseudo-patriotic gibberish hiding what is really borderline sedition and, in some cases, borderline criminal behavior in the name of righteous but poorly thought out principles.  If a Supreme Court decision regarding what is constitutional is subject to a mob gathering with burning torches and political opposition simply saying, “No it isn’t”, what does constitute the rule of law?   Who is going to decide in their stead?  Bachman?  John Boner and the other semi-criminal elements that pretend to represent Americans in Congress?  Grover Norquist?  Newt Gingrich? 

No, Roberts somehow put on his big boy robe and decided to make a decision based on logic as he saw it and more’s the honor in that. 

Meanwhile Scalia and his dim-wit sidekick, Mumbles Thomas, revealed themselves to be the overtly political creatures they are.  Scalia went off on a foaming-at-the-mouth rant about a decision against which he dissented in the question of Arizona’s immigration policy, slamming Obama in a virtually unprecedented partisan screed, essentially accusing Obama of criminality in his executive order imposing aspects of the long-obstructed Dream Act.  Never mind that the issue at hand was an Arizona law regarding overt usurpation of federal laws governing in immigration; Scalia decided to vent.  This is the guy who said that riding out to the lake in Cheney’s four-by-four for a weekend of duck hunting wasn't enough to require him to recuse himself from a case involving the Vice Reptile because they weren't actually sharing a duck blind.

And the weirdness is peaking around the contempt of congress vote against Attorney General Eric Holder, led by oily southern California congressman Darryl Issa, high school dropout and a charter member of jarheads for Nixon.  Issa is a repugnant little creature, who became a multi-millionaire selling car alarms – not exactly a constitutional scholar. 

I have no idea of the details of the infamous botched gun operation in Mexico – "Fast and Furious". I didn't pay any attention to it when it was happening and don’t know the details.  But from what I gather, some kind of sting was initiated during the last days of the Bush administration and carried out by Holder and his justice department brown shirts.  It got screwed up through who-knows-what bureaucratic bumbling and incompetence and then – as is often the case – the pointy-headed apparatchiks running it scattered once the lights came on and a massive cover-your-ass operation swung into action.   

Issa has admitted that there is no evidence for Holder being guilty of anything, nor is there any evidence that the White House was involved in anything remotely resembling a cover up.  Evidently there is still some kind of investigation going on requiring a certain amount of discretion and Holder is not turning over every piece of paper that Issa asked for.  But they have turned over thousands of papers related to the operation, they have agreed to meet privately and provide any information that Issa and his boys want and still they ask for more. 

Now none of this is particularly unusual – the list of Attorney Generals who have dissembled and obfuscated and stone walled etc., is a long list containing the name of virtually every Attorney General who ever served.  But never has congress voted to accuse them of contempt.  Think about that – is this sordid little fuck up so unique and extraordinary that it warrants this blathering partisan outrage?   My guess is, no.  Is it a coincidence that the NRA – a cowering herd of paranoids who spend their weekends firing semi-automatics at imaginary black helicopters – let it be known that anyone who DID NOT VOTE YES for the charge of contempt of congress would be held accountable by them come November?  Is this a congress that represents you?  A sniveling pack of cowards with not 1% of the political courage of John Roberts? 

Of course he does have that “appointed for life” thing going for him – no denying that.  But unless all you ever wanted in life was to be a politician, you just can’t be afraid to have principles and put them on display instead of shoving them into the nearest closet at the slightest hint of political blow back like they were porn tapes and your mother-in-law was pulling into the driveway.   Issa is nothing but a creepy political opportunist who has probably been promised some special donations if he can just hump Obama’s leg like a rabid Pekinese through August and then his work will be done.

I am continually astonished and repulsed by the level of pure hatred overwhelming our national politics in the last 20 years but this nasty grease fire is threatening to burn down the house and the barn and the whole damn works if we don’t all get off our asses and do something about it.  The next few months are crucial.  If Obama loses to Mitt the cyborg, there will be a pall of darkness that falls on this country the likes of which haven’t been seen since 1850.  Republicans with their hair on fire are already talking about taking up arms in rebellion against the tyranny of the Awful Negro.  We’re running out of time to give ourselves a chance for the country we were all expecting in the 21^st century.