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| Thomas Paine |
Conservative members of our Supreme Court have lost sight of this because of the Court’s political appointees nominated by the forty-fifth president. Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell, bathed in hypocrisy, led this corruption of the SCOTUS when he delayed for a year the consideration of a Justice nominated by the Democratic forty-fourth president to replace the deceased Antonin Scalia.
McConnell was hoping for a Republican president in 2016, which he got in the person of Donald Trump, who lied and bribed his way into office as is currently being revealed in litigation in New York’s courts, and who was able to put three political appointments, with McConnell’s support, on the SCOTUS bench.
Trump's total lack of ethics is being daily demonstrated in that Manhattan courtroom, where even his family is ashamed to show up as he sits alone and forlorn, except for lawyers, at the defendant's table. And this is the same person, already declared to be a rapist in a civil case, that the Republican Party will nominate to run for president in November, even if he has to do so as a convicted felon. (Bribery in connection with election funding is a felony in New York.)
This is just more
evidence that quite simply, the ‘default’ position for Republicans is that they
are very bad people, for whom playing dirty is acceptable, putting the
interests of the nation far behind those of political expediency. Because they
cannot win elections honestly, their efforts are directed at interfering with
them by making it difficult to vote and spreading lies about other candidates
and hiding shameful truths about themselves.
It is necessary,
to save democracy as Thomas Paine saw it, as a place where the law was the
people’s ‘king,’ for the Democrats to act
promptly when, as I predict and hope they will, re-elect President Biden
to the White House in November. His
immediate priority should be to nominate four additional Justices to the SCOTUS,
which still suffers from its poisoning carried out by McConnell and Trump. To do this, he would need Congress to allow
the expansion of the number of SCOTUS Justices, something not specified in the
Constitution, and a Senate majority to confirm the appointments. So in pulling this off, he would not be
playing ‘king,’ but acting within the law, of which Paine might approve.
In Biden’s hoped-for
effort to accomplish this, I am more concerned with the Democrats retaining
control of the Senate which looks like a more difficult task in 2024 than his
own re-election or taking control of the House of Representatives.
That is why I am
actively supporting Democrats whom I feel are crucial to maintaining their
present Senate majority, essential to Court expansion. Adding four Justices to the Court, giving the
Republicans a dose of their own medicine, seems to be the best way to guarantee
that in America, ‘the law is King,’ as Thomas Paine put it. This is crucial because the Republican candidate, an admirer of Vladimir Putin, Victor Orban, and other autocratic heads of state, seems to believe otherwise.
Right now, I am donating monthly to the campaigns of Debbie Muscarsel-Powell in Florida and Jon Tester in Montana, running for crucial Senate seats. I hope followers of Jackspotpourri become similarly involved in supporting Senate candidates who recognize that in America, ‘the law is king,’ and not some autocratic leader who feels that presidential power should be unlimited and unchallengable, a position the presently corrupted SCOTUS is reluctant to properly challenge.
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Required Reading
I've frequently asked you to check out the 'Letters From an American' postings by Boston College Professor Heather Cox Richardson. Those that are doing that learned a lot from her posting there dated April 28. I suggest the rest of you read that posting by CLICKING HERE RIGHT NOW. Reading it shouldn't take more than two minutes.
JL
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A Lesson for Supreme Court Justices: Justice Delayed is Justice Denied
Judges should know that
‘justice delayed is justice denied.’ There are many legal citations concerning
such delay of which the learned Justices sitting on our Supreme Court should be
aware. In addition, outside of the
courtroom, Martin Luther King Jr.,
used that phrase saying that ‘justice too long delayed is justice denied’ in
his ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail’ and the Bible goes even further in providing
legal advice in Deuteronomy 16:19 telling us ‘Don't delay justice; don't show favoritism.
Don't take bribes because bribery blinds the vision of the wise and twists the
words of the righteous’ Sounds like
there were Republicans in those days.
There was a violent invasion of the nation’s Capitol on
January 6, 2021, over three years ago.
There is a lingering question as to whether the defeated forty-fifth
president, still in office at that point prior to his successor’s inauguration,
and claiming victory without any honest basis whatsoever to do so, was involved in instigating
that riot which attempted to prevent the official tabulation of electoral
votes, and whether he can be punished for doing so. Three years is long enough of a delay!
It is clear to me that delaying resolution of
these issues prevents justice from being served. The matter, pending before Federal Courts,
and that has now reached the Supreme Court, is complicated by that defeated
former president being a candidate for the presidency in the November
elections. It should be clear to the
entire Supreme Court that the election’s results will be greatly affected by
these issues remaining unresolved. Or are their eyes closed to that?
Resolution of these issues before the
elections is essential so that justice may be served. Failure for that to happen before the
election can amount to denying justice and a permanent cloud over the next
presidency, regardless of who wins. Such a cloud still persists over the election of John Quincy Adams
to the presidency precisely two centuries ago.
In earlier years, It was acceptable for legal
actions to proceed slowly, but with the imminent presidential election, that is
not the case today. Delaying the
resolution of the current litigation regarding January 6, 2021 and events
leading up to what then happened, seems to be the primary political strategy of
one of the presidential candidates, who if the winner, is certain to make sure
that the question of delayed justice is made moot by terminating the
litigation. That would not be a good
thing for democracy in America.
If the SCOTUS had the power to do so, they
would be correct in postponing the upcoming election until the pending
litigation is resolved. But they do not have that power.
But there is nothing to stop them from
clearing everything else from their agenda and devoting their entire energies
and time to directly resolving the litigation concerning the forty-fifth
president, not only for his benefit, but in the interest of serving justice for
the nation. Any trial, if the SCOTUS decides there should be one, should take
place before the Supreme Court itself and not a lower court. By doing that, the issue can be resolved by the Fourth of
July at the latest, four months before the election. If they cannot do that, then the SCOTUS becomes
an accomplice to a delay which can result
in a denial of justice, and the Justices who support that delay do not
deserve to sit on the highest court in the land.
 |
| Possible Enablers of Delayed Justice |
The statue in front of the Supreme Court building has Lady Justice wearing a blindfold. But such blindness need not be manifested by avoiding issues. Even worse for the nation would be the SCOTUS avoiding this issue for political reasons.
(A few postings ago, in Jackspotpourri, I
suggested a twelve-year limit on the terms of Supreme Court Justices to give it
a more current perspective. Today’s
SCOTUS would be vastly different were such a limit in existence right now, with
five of its nine members, two liberals, two conservatives, and the not
quite-so-conservative Chief Justice, retired. Of
course, we do not know who would have replaced them.)
* *
But
Here’s My Bottom Line - What Really Will Happen (In My Opinion) The SCOTUS will ignore
that ‘justice
delayed is justice denied’. Their quasi-decision will come down to encouraging further
debate over what presidential ‘immunity from prosecution’
turns out to be. The
SCOTUS will diddle with this taking up some valuable time, and then send it
back to the lower court to handle, following whatever they instruct it to do,
probably passing them the buck of distinguishing between acts the forty-fifth president did as part of
his official duties (immune from prosecution) and those that were his personal acts (not immune), an extremely
hard, if not impossible and time-consuming distinction to make. There is no way this
will be resolved before the November election, amounting to Donald Trump’s
succeeding in denying justice by delaying it, whatever it turns out to be, at
least until the November election, at which time YOU will become the court of last resort, the deciders of final judgement.
SO FORGET ABOUT THE SUPREME COURT. FORGET ABOUT THE SPOUTING OFF OF ALL THE LEARNED LAWYERS ON BOTH SIDES. JUST REMEMBER THE DETAILS OF WHAT HAPPENED ON JANUARY 6, 2021, AND WHO DIRECTLY INSPIRED IT, REMEMBER THAT YOU SAW IT ALL REPORTED IN EVERY NEWSPAPER AND ON EVERY TV STATION IN THE NATION. BELIEVE YOUR OWN EYES AND EARS!
THEN GO OUT TO
VOTE ON NOVEMBER 5 (OR
EARLIER, PREFERABLY BY MAIL) TO MAKE SURE
THAT ‘JUSTICE DELAYED’ DOES NOT TURN
OUT TO BE ‘JUSTICE DENIED.’
THE FAILURE OF THE COURTS TO RESOLVE THE ISSUE
MEANS THAT THE DECISION WILL BE YOURS.
IF I HAVE TO
SUGGEST WHOM TO VOTE FOR IN THE CONTESTS FOR THE PRESIDENCY, THE HOUSE, AND THE
SENATE, (AND STATE OFFICES AS WELL) YOU HAVEN’T BEEN PAYING ENOUGH ATTENTION TO
JACKSPOTPOURRI.
Be aware that we are living in historic times! You will tell your grandchildren all about it, but the important thing is that democracy survived because you voted to preserve it back in 2024 when it was threatened.
JL
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Housekeeping on Jackspotpourri
Strange “Hits’! The large number of those accessing Jackspotpouri from Singapore has suddenly ceased. In their place, however, there have appeared large numbers of ‘hits’ on each posting in the hundreds, and as was the case with those from Singapore, but this time from Hong Kong! I suspect that the Chinese are playing around with internet transmissions, possibly to try to identify who is reading them.
Email Alerts: If you are NOT receiving emails from me alerting you each time there is a new posting on Jackspotpourri, just send me your email address and we’ll see that you do. And if you are forwarding a posting to someone, you might suggest that they do the same, so they will be similarly alerted. You can pass those email addresses to me by email at jacklippman18@gmail.com.
Forwarding Postings: Please
forward this posting to anyone you think might benefit from reading it.
Friends, relatives, enemies, etc.
If you want to send someone the blog, you can just tell them to check it out by visiting https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com or you can provide a link to that address in your email to them.
There’s another, perhaps easier, method of forwarding it though! Google Blogspot, the platform on which Jackspotpourri is prepared, makes that possible. If you click on the tiny envelope with the arrow at the bottom of every posting, you will have the opportunity to list up to ten email addresses to which that blog posting will be forwarded, along with a brief comment from you. Each will receive a link to click on that will directly connect them to the blog.
Either way will work, sending them the link to https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com, or clicking on the envelope at the bottom of this posting.
Again, I urge you to forward
this posting to anyone you think might benefit from reading it, particularly if
they are a registered voter. We are living in historic times and this is
an election year. Spread the word.
JL
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