Supreme Court

ObamaCare At Three Years: A Significant Moment In American History!

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It has now been three years since ObamaCare became law, and the full extent of the law will take effect in 2014, but already millions of Americans have benefited from the provisions, including children covered to age 26, lower drug costs for seniors, and pre-existing conditions no longer a reason to deny a child or adult’s ability to gain health insurance coverage.

The health insurance companies have raised rates in a desperate attempt to harm ObamaCare, and the Republican House of Representatives has voted 36 times to repeal the health care legislation, but it has all been for show, and there is no way that ObamaCare will be repealed, even if the Republicans gained the Senate in 2014, as the President would be able to veto a repeal, and the GOP could never gain a two thirds override to overcome the Presidential veto.

And any attempt to repeal, were it possible to achieve, would so disrupt the health care being made available to up to 50 million or more people, that it would be a crime to take away what has been gained by those who did not have health care coverage before!

Health care has been transformed forever, thanks to the support of Chief Justice John Roberts, who had the decisive vote last June, and he will go down in history in a positive light, and it is hoped that his views on constitutional matters will become more moderate, and that he will back gay marriage, support continuation of the Voting Rights Act, and take an enlightened position on other issues.

But even if he does not, Roberts has changed the course of history, with the assistance of the four Democratic appointments to the Supreme Court!

Hillary Clinton’s Endorsement Of Gay Marriage: What It Portends

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Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has finally endorsed gay marriage in a strong public statement, mirroring her husband’s statement that the Defense of Marriage Act, passed during his Presidency in 1996, was a mistake, and that it was time for it to be repealed.

Hillary Clinton has always been a strong supporter of gay rights, but avoided gay marriage until now.

The question is why, and there are three answers:

The Supreme Court is about to hear a case that could transform this nation on the subject of marriage, unlike anything since Loving V Virginia in 1967, which finally declared interracial marriage to be constitutional. Extra pressure on the Court at a time like this cannot help but possibly influence Justice Anthony Kennedy and Chief Justice John Roberts, either or both who could be the decisive votes on the case.

Many Democrats have endorse gay marriage, including President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and potential Democratic nominees for President, including Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York and Governor Martin O’Malley of Maryland, so if Hillary Clinton is soon to decide to run for President in 2016 she would, obviously, need to get into line on the issue.

Also, Hillary could be taking this step out of pure principle, and belief that the time is right for this significant social advancement.

No matter what the motivation, and it is probably all three, it is proper to salute Hillary Clinton for speaking up, once again, for human rights and human dignity!

50th Anniversary Of Civil Liberties Victory: Gideon V. Wainwright!

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Fifty years ago today, the United States Supreme Court made one of its most important civil liberties decisions in American history, and in the history of the Warren Court.

Chief Justice Earl Warren, appointed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1953 to lead the Supreme Court, and doing so for sixteen years until his retirement in 1969, led a Court that greatly expanded civil liberties in so many ways, and had an impact beyond the retirement of Warren himself.

Gideon V. Wainwright would guarantee that all criminal suspects were entitled to a court appointed lawyer in court if they were indigent, as to do otherwise would deny equal justice under the law.

It meant that lack of financial assets, or a state of poverty, would not prevent someone accused of a crime from having representation in court.

Many might not think this could apply to them in some future scenario, but this was an important victory for civil liberties and human rights, and would have the effect of equalizing the balance between prosecutors and defense in a criminal court case, and that is a good thing for the image of equal justice under the law!

Senator Rob Portman, Gay Marriage, And The Republican Party Future

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Ohio Republican Senator Rob Portman, former Budget Director for President George W. Bush, one of the few moderate conservative voices in the Republican Party in the US Senate, has come out in favor of gay marriage, making him the first Republican Senator to do so, and unlikely to have others follow him. This seems, clearly, due to the fact that his younger son Will is gay, and Portman wants his son to have a happy life, and the rights and privileges of marriage someday.

One could point out that Portman only spoke up because of his son, which is clearly the case, but it still took courage for him to do what he did.

And it is interesting to see former Senator Rick Santorum spew his usual narrow minded hatred, and one has to wonder what if one of his children came out as gay or lesbian. As a “devout” Catholic, he probably would do what so many “devout” Christians have done, sadly, and that is to throw out their child, disown him or her, have no more contact with him or her, act as if that child no longer exists, rather than understand that gays do not choose to be what they are. Why would anyone want to be facing hate, prejudice, discrimination, and bodily threats if one could avoid it?

So for anyone claiming to be “devout” and “religious” and act like Rick Santorum and so many others, is hypocrisy, and until and when the Republican Party stops allowing the religious Right to control the party agenda, it will never win over the vote of the younger generation, which is totally tolerant on the issue of sexual orientation.

Many non office holding Republicans have come out for gay marriage rights, and Ted Olson, former Solicitor General under George W. Bush, is leading the case to be presented before the Supreme Court, and there is a feeling that the majority of the Court, led by Justice Anthony Kennedy, who made for the success in the Lawrence V. Texas case in 2003, on gay privacy rights, will declare gay marriage rights to be constitutional throughout the United States, although churches and synagogues would not be required to marry gay people. Such a decision for gay marriage would involve the right of civil marriage alone.

The Republican Party needs to change its view, or else, like in many other ways, it will go into the dustbin of history!

“Don’t Drone Me, Bro”—The Self Destruction Of Rand Paul AND Ted Cruz!

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When Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky spoke yesterday at the first day of the Conservative Political Action Conference, a supporter yelled: “Don’t drone me, Bro”, referring to Paul’s 13 hour filibuster demanding an answer from President Obama that he would never use a drone on an American citizen on American soil, a stunt which gave Senator Paul a lot of attention, and led to his promoting the idea of the likelihood of his Presidential candidacy in 2016.

Meanwhile, Texas Senator Ted Cruz showed just what a bully, and an arrogant, overbearing person he is, making himself very unpopular even among fellow Republican Senators with his loony absolute interpretation of the Second Amendment, and showing lack of respect for Senator Diane Feinstein, who lived through the carnage of the murder of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone in 1978. The fact that even Justice Antonin Scalia has stated that there are limits to the Second Amendment does not phase Senator Cruz, as he fancies himself to be a “constitutionalist”!

Both of these Republican Senators fancy that the nation is ready for their looniness—Paul, the libertarian, who wants to bring about a utopian world of little government in people’s lives; and Cruz, using Joseph McCarthy type demagogic techniques to create turmoil and mistrust, and also to throw a “firebomb” as a method to grab for more power and influence!

Both Senators are upstart freshmen, who are showing total ignorance and total disrespect for the institution of the Senate, and their style and methods are designed to promote their own ambition, but will have the effect over time, if not fought bitterly by sane elements, to destroy the Republican Party and its long, much of the time, respectable history and leadership!

The nation is NOT going to accept either Senator Paul or Senator Cruz as their Commander in Chief, as they both, in different and competing ways, are promoting anarchy and chaos in the political arena, and are both VERY dangerous!

The Coming Right Wing Takeover Of Most News Media: A Threat To America’s Future!

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The right wing LOVES to claim that the news media are overly liberal, when that is a massive falsehood, and has been so for many years.

YES, the New York Times and Washington Post, and CBS, NBC, ABC and MSNBC are liberal, and there are others.

But talk radio has been dominated by the right wing for twenty years; Fox News Channel, owned by Rupert Murdoch and operated by Roger Ailes, has been spewing right wing propaganda for 17 years; the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post are also owned by Murdoch, and now the greatest threat to the promotion of truth over propaganda is emerging with the report that David and Charles Koch, the infamous Koch Brothers, who tried to fix the Presidential Election of 2012 with their engagement in spending hundreds of millions of their assets on Congressional races and the Presidency, allowable under the disgraceful Citizens United case of the Supreme Court, are now attempting to buy the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun, and the South Florida Sun Sentinel, along with other smaller papers owned by the bankrupt Tribune Corporation!

This will mean that the Koch Brothers will be able to extend their evil influence, already affecting our political and legal system,. our educational system, and having worked against health care and labor as part of their goal to control the American future in a deleterious way!

Of course, our system allows anyone to use their wealth to purchase and use their influence in any way they wish, but it is a sad day for American journalism, nevertheless!

Commemoration Of The Selma To Montgomery March 48 Years Ago: Bloody Sunday Cannot Be Forgotten

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On March 7, 1965, a civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, for voting rights for African Americans, was the location of brutal police action at the Edmund Pettus Bridge against the peaceful civil rights demonstrators.

John Lewis, now a long term Congressman from Georgia, incurred a cracked skull that day, and today, he and Al Sharpton and many other people of all races converged on the site to commemorate the horrible events of that day 48 years ago, which had the effect of galvanizing action by Congress and President Lyndon B. Johnson within four months, with the passage of the Voting Rights Act.

Joining them today was Vice President Joe Biden, giving his usual inspiring speech, and making clear that the Voting Rights Act is now, now under potential threat of having the crucial Section 5 declared unconstitutional by a conservative Republican majority chosen by Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush. The Court may be ready to show they have either forgotten history, or choose to ignore the history of that day, and trust that the Southern states, which have worked to make voting more difficult in 2012 and earlier, can be trusted to avoid undermining the basic right to vote for all citizens, which is supposedly guaranteed by the 15th, 19th, and 26th Amendments,

This is a day to recall and to commit to prayer and statesmanship, hoping that the Supreme Court will do the right thing, and retain Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, since Congress has constantly renewed it, and ignore the call of states rights, which has been constantly tied to bigotry and discrimination!

Supreme Court Bitterly Divided Over Possible Curbing Of Voting Rights Act: A Repeat Of The Compromise Of 1877 Abandonment Of African Americans!

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It is clear that the Supreme Court is bitterly divided over the Voting Rights Act, which is hanging in the balance after the oral arguments this week, with Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan strongly challenging Justice Antonin Scalia, who said the act was a “racial entitlement”, which demonstrates that Scalia has no understanding of the history of the denial of voting rights, and the need to continue to monitor what those states that have discriminated are now doing.

The Republican Party abandoned African Americans on this day in 1877, when they agreed to the Compromise of 1877, making their candidate for President, Rutherford B. Hayes President, despite the clear cut lead of Democrat Samuel Tilden in popular votes. Part of the deal was for the GOP to stop being the party that had advanced civil rights through two laws during Reconstruction, the creation of the Freedmen’s Bureau, and the passage of three amendments to the Constitution.

The southern states went ahead and continued a policy of discrimination for the next ninety years on voting, and imposing Jim Crow segregation, and the GOP, the majority party until 1932, did nothing about it, due to the deal set up in the Compromise of 1877.

After ninety years, finally, voting rights, supposedly guaranteed under the 15th Amendment, but not enforced, were restored under the Voting Rights Act, but not before civil rights marchers were beaten up, such as Congressman John Lewis of Georgia, and others slaughtered in the name of promoting civil rights in the South.

But along comes Antonin Scalia, who conveniently forgets that even Jews, and also Italians such as himself, were lynched in the South in the near century in which African Americans were denied their basic rights, including voting.

And he wants the Court to become “activist”, when that is precisely what conservatives claim they hate about the Supreme Court. And so therefore, to hell with the overwhelming vote of the Congress to extend the Voting Rights act in 2006, and let’s wipe out all progress and return us to the states “deciding” if any group can vote, instead of “guaranteeing” the right to vote, the basic element of democracy!

So just as the Compromise of 1877 brought us a President who had NOT won the popular vote, and followed through on taking the GOP out of its civil rights activism, so now, two appointments of another President, George W. Bush, not elected by popular vote, and instead put in by a partisan Republican Court including Scalia, shall repeat history and deny Africans Americans the guarantee of the right to vote granted in the 15th Amendment in 1870!

Associate Justice Antonin Scalia And “Entitlement” To Voting Rights: An Outrage!

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Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, who has been on the Supreme Court for 27 years now, has become a literal nightmare with so many inappropriate, arrogant statements on and off the Court in the past few years!

His latest outrage was in oral argument on the Voting Rights Act today in the Supreme Court, when he stated that the Voting Rights Act was a “racial entitlement”!

In so stating, he demonstrated that he has learned nothing about past racial discrimination and denial of the right to vote, which necessitated passage of that law in 1965!

With the record of many Republican states, particularly in the South, infamous for past discrimination and Jim Crow segregation laws when they were Democratic states, moving to make it more difficult to vote, as with Florida and Governor Rick Scott as just one example, how can anyone justify getting rid of the requirement of accountability on voting law changes by the federal government?

Voting should not be an “entitlement”, as it is a right that all Americans over the age of 18 should have, and no voter ID laws should be used to disenfranchise anyone, or require a 102 year old woman to have to wait six hours to vote in Florida or anywhere else!

Sadly, the Republican majority Supreme Court is likely to knock down the Voting Rights Act, which will stain the court of Chief Justice John Roberts, if it happens. Roberts’s reputation, improved by his support of ObamaCare last June, rides in the balance of what happens on this, as well as the gay marriage and expansion of the Citizens United cases that are before the Court!

It also could be argued that Scalia may be showing signs of instability at his age of 77 next month, and it will be a great day when this most right wing member of the Court in nearly a century finally retires from the Court at some point in the future!

As Rosa Parks Statue Is Unveiled In The US Capitol, Voting Rights Act Comes Under Review By Supreme Court!

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This morning, a 9 foot statue of Rosa Parks, the “Mother” of the Civil Rights Movement, for her heroism in allowing herself to become the center of the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955-1956, was unveiled in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol Building.

This is a wonderful event to commemorate the greatest human rights movement in American history, and the excitement over how far we have come, with President Barack Obama leading in commemorating the event, and the feeling of satisfaction that we have gone far enough in the half century since 1955, that we have an African American President in his second term in office!

But at the same time, ironically, a challenge by the state of Alabama, which arrested Rosa Parks for refusing to change her seat on a bus in Montgomery, is arguing a case before the Supreme Court today, which if successful, will negate Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which requires nine Southern states and portions of seven other states, which have been shown to be discriminatory in voting regulations in their past, to have to submit any voting law changes to the Justice Department before they can be put into effect.

The argument is that the law is outmoded and no longer necessary, but that is not the case, as last year, there were attempts in many states to make it more difficult for African Americans, Hispanics and Latinos, young people, the elderly, and the poor to be able to register and or vote, plus restrictive days and hours of voting, designed to help Republicans and Mitt Romney gain an unfair advantage in the elections.

Just because Alabama claims the law is no longer needed is belied by history and recent events, and the Congress has renewed the Voting Rights Act multiple times, and it should not be the right of the Supreme Court to repeal a law in effect for nearly a half century!

But this conservative Court just might do that, which would be a miscarriage of justice, and another example of how the Court has started to get out of control of promotion of true justice! Their decision on this case, along with the move to make Citizens United just the beginning of special interest investments to fix elections, and the gay marriage case, will make the Court’s decisions in the next few months extremely significant, and worrisome for those who believe the John Roberts Court is reckless and dangerous, with its conservative majority put on it by Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush!