The Lasting Legacy

With any luck, Donnie Destructo is a one-termer at most.  The midterms ought to be a preview of coming attractions.  And as awful as he's truly been, a lot of his damage to Obamacare, the EPA, foreign policy, etc. can be and must be reversed in fairly short order.

But what cannot be reversed as quickly are Supreme Court appointments.  A confirmed presidential SCOTUS pick may remain on the Big Bench for 40 years or more.  This is of paramount importance in choosing our presidents.  Policies come and go, but Supreme Court Justices last for generations.

Recent history in this area is vomitous.  Asshole Mitch McConnell stubbornly refused to allow even a Senate hearing on Merrick Garland, let alone a vote, and thus denied President Obama his right to an appointment.  (I still can't believe this was legal/permissable/whatever.)  But the Kentucky Turtle had no hesitation in letting the Clown Prince pick well-vetted right-winger Neil Gorsuch for that same seat, and letting him be promptly confirmed, and there you go -- the 5-4 conservative advantage was nauseatingly preserved.

And then Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement.  He was in reality one of the five conservatives, but had moments of reason -- upholding Roe v. Wade and establishing the rights of gay marriage -- which allowed him to enjoy the undeserved reputation as a "moderate" swing-vote guy.  But he's outta there.

So Trumpolini gets another pick, and it's Brett Kavanaugh, a career conserva-tard thoroughly checked out and endorsed by the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society.  No matter what he says in his confirmation hearing, Kavanaugh has promised his big-money backers that he'll never, ever make those mistakes of moderation that Kennedy did.  No way.  He'll be a doctrinaire ideologue on issue after issue, right down the line.

What will that mean for our future?  The new guaranteed-conservative SCOTUS majority, according to legal analyst and author Jeffrey Toobin, "will overrule Roe v. Wade, allowing states to criminally prosecute any physicians and nurses who perform them.  It will allow shopkeepers, restaurateurs, and hotel owners to refuse service to gay customers on religious grounds.  It will guarantee that fewer African-American and Lationo students attend elite universities.  It will approve laws designed to hinder voting rights.  It will sanction execution by grotesque means.  It will invoke the Second Amendment to prohibit states from engaging in gun control, including the regulation of machine guns and bump stocks.  And these are just the issues that draw the most attention.  In many respects, the most important right-wing agenda item for the judiciary is the undermining of the regulatory state.  The Constitution grants only those rights that the Supreme Court says it grants, and a new majority can and will bestow those rights, and take them away, in chilling new ways."*

Is that what you want?  It's not what I want.  But that will be Yam Face's lasting legacy -- decades of Gorsuch and Kavanaugh.  Is there anything we can do to derail Kavanaugh's confirmation?  It appears unlikely, but write your Senator anyway.
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(*New Yorker, 7/16/18)