Gutting Roe Was Not Just Trump's Fault

 

     On Halloween 2005, appropriately, George W. Bush nominated Sam Alito to the Supreme Court to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Bush being Bush, we all knew he was going to nominate someone who wasn't so much a legitimate jurist but a shambling fever dream right out of the Federalist Society. That we got with Alito, who was confirmed by the Senate exactly three months later to the day by a 58-42 vote.

     Some time during those three months, the Young Turks did a live radio show where they fielded calls from listeners and I was one of them. I told Cenk Uygur that what people were forgetting is that Alito at the time was only 50, meaning he would almost surely remain on the court for decades and could do untold amounts of damage. Cenk said I'd brought up a good point.

     Shit like we all saw yesterday and the day before was what I was talking about. I was a new blogger, one of many that had jumped into the fray in 2005, but I was 46, going on 47 and knew what the stakes were. Then when Rehnquist did his last hospital hallway sprint in a detox rage and it came time to replace him, he nominated John Roberts, a dim-witted boob who had all of two years on the federal bench, to be Chief Justice.

     Alito had proven to be over the last 16 years a radical bomb thrower and Roberts the clueless organ donor who has let the more radical elements of his court run amok. The SCOTUS' decisions over the last two days are proof that he's lost control, indeed, that he never had control, over the High Court. In several ways, he's jurisprudence's answer to Kevin McCarthy, a shameless meat puppet who so desperately wants to be Speaker that to this day, he's still sucking up to the Sedition Caucus for their votes even though they have proudly said he's not going to get them.

     And, yes, in the mercifully brief time he pretended to he president, Trump installed on the High Court three of the lunatics who wound up axing Roe v Wade as well as ruling that all Americans everywhere can conceal-carry guns in all 50 states. Both rulings are guaranteed to get people killed. But Bush is also largely to blame for these rulings. And as for the one that was nominated by neither Bush II or Trump? Well, that's Clarence Thomas, the pornography-obsessed Uncle Tom who was nominated by Bush's Daddy, HW.

     During Clarence Thomas' circus of a confirmation, three women wanted to testify after Professor Anita Hill against Thomas and the then-Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Coimmittee wouldn't let them. And who was that chairman? Well, just to show that I'm not slamming only Republicans over this SCOTUS clusterfuck, I'll simply say it was Joe fucking Biden. So, yeah, Joe owns a piece of this, too.

     It's impossible to see how the so-called pro-life zealots on the court can square either decision with their pious pro-life bromides when both rulings when one essentially paints a target on the backs of anyone, especially minorities, without a gun who is interpreted as being threatening to someone who does have a gun and the other on any woman in a redneck state who wishes to exercise some biological agency over her health choices.

     Now, thanks to the Supreme Court, which is looking more and more like the judiciary cobbled together by Hitler in the 1930s, all a gun owner has to say when asked by a cop or a judge why they need a gun is, "I feel my life is endangered."

     Perhaps not so oddly, considering the never-ending hypocrisy of the right wing, it never seriously occurred to the court that a woman who is carrying a non-viable fetus through an ectopic pregnancy or preeclampsia may need an abortion because she feels her life is endangered.

     Most nauseatingly, the High Court and those doing victory laps over Roe's demise are saying that the pro-life faction is all about love (Like these two idiots out of Florida) and that Roe's coathangering actually gives choices to women.

     AOC had the last word when she simply stated, "This is going to get people killed."

     I'm afraid the lady from NY-14 may prove to be right again.