Trump judges rule the roost
Unqualified judicial appointments prop-up Republican agenda ... Gerrymanders tip democracy off its perch ... Tame media recycles the fictions ... CJ Roberts changes sides ... Government torture back on the rack ... America the not-so-beautiful ... Roger Fitch, Our Man in Washington, reports
The apostate Democrats Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema joined the full party caucus of 50 senators in confirming Ketanji Brown Jackson for the supreme court.
Justice Jackson also received the votes of three Republican senators clinging to shreds of decency while their fellow senators engaged in shameful displays of dog-whistle racism.
One of the three, former presidential candidate Mitt Romney, now represents Utah. Sadly, the state's other senator, Mike Lee, is the first Republican to announce the emerging Republican Party consensus that America is not a democracy, or, as Tocqueville inferred, need not be.
Republican-fascists (as some call them) are now running rampant, while American media daily validate AJ Liebling's view of the press as "the weak slat in the bed of democracy".
The Republican Party, whose practices are sometimes compared to those of the Stasi, already controls a supreme court that shares its ideology.
Once, the joke was that the only consistent principle found in supreme court decisions was that the government always won. Now, it's the Republican Party. How else to explain the court's selective use or abandonment of precedent and even oral argument?
The court has emboldened partisans stuffed on lower federal courts by Trump's rubber-stamp senate, judges that are now President Biden's biggest impediment to governing, e.g, cleaning up the Trumped-down environment.
One such is a Trump appointee to the 9th circuit, the rude and bonkers Lawrence VanDyke. VanDyke was a Trump nominee found "not qualified" by the American Bar Association, and at his confirmation by the Senate, the ABA summed him up thus:
"Mr. VanDyke is arrogant, lazy, an ideologue, and lacking in knowledge of the day-to-day practice including procedural rules ... the nominee lacks humility, has an 'entitlement' temperament, does not have an open mind, and does not always have a commitment to being candid and truthful ... [he] would not say … he would be fair to any litigant before him, notably members of the LGBTQ community."
Judge VanDyke: bonkers
Trump's district courts are also doing their part, issuing astounding orders along Republican Party lines, including this one by another Trump acolyte the ABA found "not qualified", Florida district court judge Kathryn Mizelle, whose anti-science face mask ruling conceals what Michael Dorf calls an ideological opposition to the administrative state.
As Dorf noted:
"Judge Mizelle's ruling ... reflected the sort of extreme right-wing ideology in which she has been marinating for her admittedly brief career - an ideology that is hostile to government agencies addressing even the most pressing social problems."
The Biden administration appealed the decision to the 11th circuit, where a majority of judges were appointed by Trump. There, as in the 5th circuit, where 12 of the 17 judges are Republican-picked, and in the 6th circuit, where 11 of 16 judges are Republican choices, the administration faces steep odds against success, with many Trump-appointed "movement" judges willing to set-up Party causes, e.g, those involving state voting rules and national immigration policy (more here) for supreme court success.
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Ohio was once the Republicans' key to stealing presidencies (e.g, George Bush's "re-election" of 2004), but lately it's let the side down, with a state supreme court that refuses to go along with party-favoured gerrymanders.
The solution? An appeal to the 6th circuit, where a panel of three judges - two appointed by Trump - swept aside the decisions of the Ohio supreme court respecting legislative districts and pushed back redistricting to the 2024 election cycle.
It was a blatant ploy to ensure the Republican gerrymanders that followed the 2010 Census will be used in the 2022 elections.
The future of such circuit decisions on appeal may be surmised from the supreme court's treatment of the Wisconsin districting dispute, with its contorted ruling on the state's court-ordered redistricting.
Wisconsin is one of six states Republicans rely on to steal the next presidency, and the supreme court seems determined to keep it Republican. On remand, the Republican-controlled state supreme court gave the party all it desired.
Gerrymanders aside, research indicates Trump voters are not the sharpest tools in the box, and are highly vulnerable to the continuous lying of Republican Party surrogates like Fox News. It's alleged election fraud and other misinformation from which new voting obstacles arise - in Texas, Republicans are already reaping spectacular benefits that this court won't disturb.
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Roberts CJ: court derailed
There are signs that American lawyers are fed up with their country's new right-wing activist supreme court. Even the conservative chief justice seems to be distancing himself from the five most feverishly-political judges.
In recent cases, CJ Roberts has changed sides, joining the liberals in their dissent criticising the right-wing majority's misuse of the "shadow docket", i.e, emergency orders, made without full briefing and argument.
Apart from court expansion, there are few options for fixing a court that has run off the rails.
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When tiring of Trump's unpunished crimes, we can reflect upon those of George Bush, and one of Mr Bush's greatest crimes, official government torture, is back in the news.
In March, the supreme court decided Zubaydah, accepting the government's "state secrets" claim which blocked the testimony of CIA contractors accused of torture.
Captured by the FBI and CIA, Abu Zubaydah was the first to endure the CIA's "Enhanced Interrogation" (Gestapo "verschärfte Vernehmung"), a program for the systematic torture of "war of terror" prisoners.
Zubaydah spent four-and-a-half years in CIA torture camps operated at sundry sites including Thailand, Poland and Lithuania (both paid damages), and Guantánamo. He's been held now for 20 years.
The FBI agents John Kiriakou, who led the capture of Zubaydah, and Ali Soufan, who first interviewed him, opposed the takeover of the case by the CIA, who sent Zubaydah to Thailand for "interrogation" by James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen.
Water-boarding began, Zubaydah nearly died, and no productive intelligence was derived. Nevertheless, water-board torture continued under the new camp director, Gina Haspel.
Later, when Zubaydah was held in Poland, the morbidly-curious CIA agent Alfreda Bikowsky made an unauthorised visit just to see him being tortured.
Where are they all now? John Kiriakou is out of prison (another story) and blogging on Zubaydah. Ali Soufan heads the Soufan Group security consultancy, and sponsors Fordham Law's Center on National Security, and Mitchell and Jessen aren't testifying in Poland's investigation, thanks to the supreme court.
Gina Haspel, since rewarded as Trump's CIA director, advises King & Spalding clients on cybersecurity.
Scheuer: torture team
And Alfreda Bikowsky? Since retiring, the Agency's "Queen of Torture" has been hawking beauty products and life advice for a living. The fabled red-haired member of the Agency's torture team, now married to the equally-odious torture team member Michael Scheuer, recently gave an unrepentant interview to Reuters.
Is this a great country, or what?
