Don't Leave All Serious Shit To This Guy...

 

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ

McALLEN, Texas | In concept as a "neutral" political body, the U.S. Supreme Court springs eternal freedom and social progress. Its task is a simple one - interpret the Constitution. That's it, on paper.

In today's reality, the highest court in the land is a stewing, plotting, conniving, revengeful stanchion of government that is now asking if we, the citizenry, should grant it its usual hallowed stage. I no longer do, and I write as a military veteran who served his country. Well, okay, it was a different country back then.

What Americans have in the Supreme Court is a political circle jerk where the biggest ejaculation will come from the numbers; that is, from the six Republican-appointees and from the three appointed by Democrats.

6-3.

That's the usual vote on matters that affect citizens directly. This from a justices who are not elected but merely appointed and confirmed by Congress. They are there for Life, by the way.

Chief Justice John Roberts, appointed to the court in 2005 by Republican President George W. Bush, has been one to chart. Every now and then, he leads a charge for sanity, as the court offered in a Republican-gerrymandering case it overturned in Louisiana.

But that one came after the Court killed Roe vs. Wade, the decision that had upheld a woman's right to have an abortion. Then came this week, when the Court issued its ruling axing Affirmative Action and a stunner in the student loan case. The former had been predictable for years; the latter seemed simply high-handed. In essence, the Court up and said President Joe Biden's program to aid college students carrying large loan debt as being one not authorized. I ask: Not authorized by the Constitution?

The explanation the Court gave was damned shallow: The Democrat president is just not authorized to grant a blanket escape-debt card. How many Republican presidents aided college students in this manner? Republican hero Donald J. Trump included student loan forgiveness in his 2020 stimulus proposal. In 2007, Republican George W. Bush signed the College Cost Reduction and Access Act approved by Congress.

But it dates back farther than that, to the 1970s, and Republican presidents have been aboard helping students pretty much all the way. No Supreme Court said shit about any of that.

To Americans, Chief Justice Roberts is a smart and Good American.

But beware.

He's doing minor stuff for the collective while plotting the drop of the axe on what most Republicans see as major rulings. Guns are next. Case on the docket: a wife-beater's right to buy and own a gun.

It says here the Court will say yes. Yes, he can. In a, well, 6-to-3 vote.

Again, that 6-3.

The 68-year-old Roberts is the Court's head coach, its store manager, its cartel bigshot.

You can laugh your ass off about uppity Black Clarence Thomas, a useless shitbag, or about gimme-gimme-Cosa Nostra Justice Samuel Alito.

But it's Roberts setting them - and the other Republican-appointed justices - straight. He herds them and they endorse his rulings. As part of that, he'll also shield them from scrutiny.

When Thomas and Alito got in semi-hot water for taking expensive vacations paid by wealthy Republicans, Congress (well, only the Democrats), asked Roberts to appear before a committee asking questions about the gifts and about the propriety of accepting them.

Roberts declined.

He's not accountable, and so the cheapened U.S. Supreme Court also is unaccountable to anyone... 

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