The South Proves Why the Voting Rights Act Existed

The modern Confederacy is moving as fast as it can to erase majority Black congressional districts. They are doing exactly the same shit that caused Congress to enact the Voting Rights Act and reauthorize it time and time again.

The Worst Chief Justice in American History keeps saying his court only calls balls and strikes based on the Constitution. That is a bald-faced lie and even they know it. The Supreme Court is a malign political force and it needs to be counteracted like any other such entity.

John Roberts Law is Jim Crow Law 2.0

It takes an amazing amount of willful blindness for the Six Fascists on the USSC to pretend that there is no such thing as racial discrimination anymore. But that's what they did in the Callais decision.

Let's be blunt: Those fuckers would undo Brown v. Board of Ed. if they thought they could. They'd bring back Plessy v. Ferguson if the chance prevented itself.

It may be a stretch to say that they'd turn the 13th Amendment into a dead letter and restore chattel slavery if the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society outlined a plan to do so.

"John Crow Roberts"? "John Crow"?

You'd Be Dumb to Hire This Guy to Run a Fruit Stand

This is what Will Lewis, the outgoing editor of the WaPo, told the paper's employees:

"Sustainable future" means making stupid decisions that drove over a third of its readership away. "Sustainable future" means then laying off a third of its staff, including those whose work made the paper a source of decent news.

But it never was about that. It was about this:

It was about Bezos neutering the WaPo and bringing it to heel so that the Orange Sundowner didn't take out his childish pique against Bezos's web-hosting business and his rocket business, both of which have fat government contracts. Lewis is nothing more than a rat leaving a sinking ship, but he's not mentioning that he was hired to drill holes in the hull.

This is what happens when oligarchs buy up media; they squelch it down in order to not upset the government, which has a lot of power over their other businesses. That's why Ellison brought in Bari Weiss to neuter CBS News. Oh, they say that they want to promote a more even-handed approach, but what they really want to do is not make Trump mad. That's why Disney and CBS settled meritless defamation suits. Those were well-concealed bribes or, if yu like, Mafia-style payoffs.

The media is being brought to heel, the Supreme Court is doing its work to tell the lower courts to forget niceties like the Constitution and the Rule of Law and just ratify every evil thing done by the Trump administration.

Our remedy now is the soap box and, as the year goes on, the ballot box. We can reclaim our Republic, but the clock is ticking and began ever since those fuckers in black robes decided that money was speech and corporations were people.

Seems That There Are Gradations of Fascists on the Supremes

The Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to allow the Trump administration to deploy National Guard troops in the Chicago area to support its immigration crackdown, a significant defeat for the president’s efforts to send troops to U.S. cities.

The justices declined the Republican administration’s emergency request to overturn a ruling by U.S. District Judge April Perry that had blocked the deployment of troops. An appeals court also had refused to step in. The Supreme Court took more than two months to act.

Three justices, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, publicly dissented.

That gives us an idea who the True Nazis are on he Court.

And it's interesting that either the Court is signalling that they won't always roll over for Trump or they are trying to fool us into thinking that.

Johnny Roberts and His Calvinball Court

Justice Jackson nailed it by stating that the Supreme Court is playing Calvinball, with one exception.

Calvinball, as you should know, is a game with no rules. That is how the Roberts Court functions: The Consititution, the written law and prior decisions are of no import if any of those hinder the Fascist wing of the Court from acheiving the result that it wants, which is no matter what the issue is, Trump wins.

The Five Fascists all lie down and let Trump wipe his feet on them and the law.

We've crossed into an authoritarian state, thanks, to the Supreme Court and yes, to much of the mainstream press, which has been busily closing its eyes to what Trump has been doing. None of it should have been a suprise to anyone who paid attention to what he said, for years. Hell's Bells, there was even a written and detailed plan. But the press, including the motherfucking New York Times, said, repeatedly: "Oh, that's just Trump being Trump and OMG, Biden's old!"

You work for the New York Times and the WaPo, among others, then this is partially on you. He's doing what he can to crush a free press and you assholes just sat on your hands. His allies are egging him on to bring other critics to heel..

And a friend sends me this, from a prominent crypto bro 2/

[image or embed]

— Paul Krugman (@pkrugman.bsky.social) August 26, 2025 at 8:05 AM

...and do you say anything?

Not that it matters much, now. The Demented Fat Fuck of a Dictator crosses red lines and there's nothing to be done, for now.

If the electorate doesn't turn out and vote out the Trumpists in 2026, then we're prtty much done as a free country. The celebrations of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence will be hollow, as we've been busy throwing away almost everything that they fought for.

Except, of course, slavery. Which I presume is somewhere on Trump and the Heritage Foundation's dance card.

And no, I haven't forgotten the complicity of the Democrats, who tried mostly to wish away 1/6/21 as a bad dream and did little to bring the architects of that to justice. I haven't forgotten the spineless Republicans who stood aside and just hoped that the Democrats and the courts would solve their problem for them. But that's a post for another time.

Trump's Goons

As Rodney Balko lays it out, we're past the point of discussing the militarization of the police. Now, we're at the point of discussing whether or not the cops are going to be loyal to their oath, to the Constitution, or if they are going to throw that all aside and swear fealty to Donald Trump.

I believe that, in much of the country, that debate is also over. They are backstopped by a supine Supreme Court that uses the shadow docket to approve of whatever Trump does without once having to sign their names to it. The Republicans in Congress have lined up to suck the Orange Mushroom Dick.

The guardrails are down. Maybe we can re-erect them in 2026 and 2028.

But no matter how we repair things, we will always have those repaired cracks in our national psyche. No matter how we fix things, the rest of the world will always know that our dedication to freedom and liberty and civil rights is thin.

And, in the meantime, as Trump wrecks our trade relationships with his TACO tariffs, the rest of the world is adjusting to trading with each other and cutting out out the United States.

Meanwhile, stand by for a market crash.

John Roberts is the Worst Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Since Roger Taney

That pretty much sums it up, since he is busy making his court a willing partner in Trump's kaki-kleptocracy. His court basicaly held today that migrants are not people.

The Lawless Administration

A kidney transplant specialist and professor at Brown University’s medical school has been deported from the United States, even though she had a valid visa and a court order temporarily blocking her expulsion, according to her lawyer and court papers.

The Administration is operating outside of the rule of law. Which means that we're in a dictatorship and our republic is effectively dead.

Don't expect the Congress or the courts to do anything about it. Johnny Roberts and his henchmen have paved the way for this for the last fifteen years.

If you want it to change, it is up to you. Get involved or shut the fuck up.

Either way, stand by for heavy rolls.

The Orange Shitbag’s Sentencing is a Go

The Supremes have refused to step in.

The stench of corruption, what with Alito's perfect phone call the other day with the Bloated Pusbag, apparently was too much for Roberts to overlook and he likely talked Barrett into going along.

They'll be getting the ususl death threats from the MAGA morons, no doubt.

Yep, No Corruption, Here

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito spoke to President-elect Donald Trump by phone Tuesday to recommend one of his former law clerks for a job in the new administration, ABC News has learned.

"William Levi, one of my former law clerks, asked me to take a call from President-elect Trump regarding his qualifications to serve in a government position," Justice Alito confirmed to ABC News Wednesday. "I agreed to discuss this matter with President-elect Trump, and he called me yesterday afternoon."

You know how the game is played: Trump does Alito a favor and then Alito later does Trump a favor. There'll be no tangible connection between the two, but they are connected.

So when the supremes agree with the Felonious Orange Shitbag about his NY case, you'll know that the fix was in.

Donald Trump, Greg Abbott and Ken Paxton Killed Josseli Barnica

So did John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Barrett. They all have blood on their hands.

Josseli Barnica didn't have to die. She had a miscarriage. The doctors refused to treat her for forty hours, because of Texas law. She died from a subsequent infection that was entirely preventable.

Every doctor consulted by Pro Publica agreed that what happened to Ms. Barnica was nothing sort of state-mandated malpractice. She did not have to die. She died because she had the misfortune to be pregnant and miscarry in Texas, a state that places zero value on the lives of mothers because members of the Christian Taliban rule the state.

To put it succinctly, Ms. Barnica was sacrificed on the altar of the Cult of the Fetus.

Her death was eminently foreseeable. Her death was a consequence of Texan abortion law that was made known to the cultists who enacted that law and to the justices who cleared the way for the law.

They all have her blood on their hands.

If the Roberts Court Was Around in the Middle of the 20th Century: Segregation Forever!

A very long time ago, I read some history about the runup to Brown v.Board of Ed. You may recall that was the case which first tossed out segregation.

The way the NAACP and others got there was by case after case, each demonstrating that "separate by equal" was in nowise equal. In each case, the Supremes tried to fix the issue at hand. Finally, it got to the point where it became obvious that there was no way to fix "equal," that the segregationists would not comply in good faith. So the Court sucked it up and tossed out Plessy for good.

And don't forget that it was the Suprme Court in the second Nixon term which made him turn over the tapes.

Neither would have happened in the current day. The Supremes are guided by ideology, not by such things as statutes or precedent. They decide what they want to have happen and then they twist the law and the facts to reach their desired outcome. If the Roberts Court were riflemen, they would shoot at a blank wall and draw circles around the bullet holes. Like this joke:

One of the best marksmen in the FBI was passing through a small town. Everywhere he saw evidences of the most amazing shooting. On trees, on walls, and on fences there were numerous bull's-eyes with the bullet hole in dead center. The FBI man asked one of the townsmen if he could meet the person responsible for this wonderful marksmanship. The man turned out to be the village idiot. "This is the best marksmanship I have ever seen," said the FBI man. "How in the world do you do it?" "Nothing to it," said the idiot. "I shoot first and draw the circles afterward."

So if the Roberts Court was around back in the day, we'd still be dealing with segregation and Nixon would have finished out his term. He is going to go down as one of the worst Chief Justices since the Civil War, if not of all time.

What I don't know, as others have have stated, is how a law school professor teaches Constitutional Law in the era of the Roberts Court. There is no legal principle underlying their decisions, only political and ideological ones. It'll all get twisted to fit. For them, 2+2=3, if the value of 3 can be twisted. Or, to put it another way: Might makes right.

Which is a very long way of say that, as the Spremes start this term, don't expect anything from them other than decisions which conform to right-wing ideology. And, of course, more stories about Thomas's "legal" corruption and grifting.

Maybe He Is Just That Stupid; USSC Ed.

[Chief Justice John] Roberts was, we are to believe, caught off guard by the vast majority of legal scholars and public non-scholars seeing it as an egregious and crooked attempt to immunize the coup-attempters and describe a path by which they could best succeed in their ongoing attempts this time around.

That claim, if it is indeed accurate, leaves us with only two possible interpretations of events. Either Roberts is, truly, among the most vapid, hollow-headed and stupid Americans to ever be appointed to the bench, to be caught so unawares, or the man has crawled so far up his own colon that he no longer can see the sky. Dear God, he was surprised by this outcome?

Go read the whole thing, it is just delicious.

Official Acts Are Now Like Obscenity, You'll Know Them When You See Them

Presidents are now immune for offical acts, with no guidance as to what is one.

So what's an offical act? Anything a president is not impeached and convicted for?

Tell me why President Biden could not, now, send in a squad of killers to shoot those six justices of the Supreme Court and, since the Democrats control the Senate, put in six new ones? Why couldn't President Biden declare that the evidence and indicators of Russian ownership of the Asset is too storng and have him executed as a threat to national security? Or, if he loses, declare that the 2024 election was stolen by Trump and refuse to leave office.

Six justices have enshrined an elected kingship. Of course those evil, gutless trolls waited until the very last day to release this decision. And I wonder if they are going to now collect a sizeable (and legal) gratuity.

The Founding Fathers and George Washington must be whirring in their graves/crypts.

The Lochner-II Court

From about the end of the Great War to about halfway into the Great Depression, the Supreme Court was on a right-wing ideological tear, from trying to make unions illegal to invalidating every move made to amerliorate the Great Depression. It was known as the "Lochner Court", from one of the more notoriously decisions that invalidated an attempt to regulate working conditions. (The era ended when the Court caved on programs to combat the Great Depression under a threat of court-packing.)

The Lochner Court is, to this day, regarded as one of the worst since the Taney Court (Dred Scott, among others). But it seems to me that this current Court is embarked on a similar ideological rip, viewing matters not through a lens of the law or precedent, but what best suits the ideology of at least five of the "conservative" justices. Which is why they're figuring out how to overturn Griswold v. CT, Obergefell v. Hodges and probably Loving v. VA. (I suspect that if they could figure out a way to invalidate the Thirteenth Amendment, they would.)

What would you think that historians are going to call this pack of ideological thugs in black robes? "The Thomas Court" overstates his influence, "the Roberts Court" overstates his leadership.

I think callling them "The Dobbs Court" will suffice. Your thoughts?

And the way that the Lochner Court was dealt with should have been instructive in 2021. It's too late now, unless Biden wins re-election.

The Supreme Court, in its Majestic Equality, Holds That the Law Can Forbid Both Rich and Poor From Sleeping in Public Parks

Yet another ideological opinion from the worst court since the Lochner Era.

And like then, the Court isn't interpreting the law. They're making law.

But Steve Bannon gets frog-marched into prison next Monday, so it's not all bad.

Judges Who Know Nothing About Scientific or Technical Areas Now Get to Rule on Shit That They Are Completely Ignorant About

The illegitimate bastards on the Supreme Court are continuing their judicial power grab.

The Supreme Court on Friday upended a 40-year-old decision that made it easier for the federal government to regulate the environment, public health, workplace safety and consumer protections, delivering a far-reaching and potentially lucrative victory to business interests.

The court’s six conservative justices overturned the 1984 decision colloquially known as Chevron, long a target of conservatives who have been motivated as much by weakening the regulatory state as social issues including abortion. The liberal justices were in dissent.
...
The heart of the Chevron decision says federal agencies should be allowed to fill in the details when laws aren’t crystal clear. Opponents of the decision argued that it gave power that should be wielded by judges to experts who work for the government.

The Supreme Court majority is an ideological one. They twist the facts, the law and precedent to fit their ideology. And when neither the facts nor the law nor precedent suits their needs, they just forge ahead, regardless. They know nothing about what they opine on, as Gorsuch proved.

Which is why 70% of Americans view the Supremes as operating based on their twisted far-right ideology.

The Supremes Move to Protect Clarence from Prosecution

The Supreme Court overturned the bribery conviction of a former Indiana mayor on Wednesday, the latest in a series of decisions narrowing the scope of federal public corruption law.

The high court’s 6-3 opinion along ideological lines found the law criminalizes bribes given before an official act, not rewards handed out after.

“Some gratuities can be problematic. Others are commonplace and might be innocuous,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote. The lines aren’t always clear, especially since many state and local officials have other jobs, he said.

The high court sided with James Snyder, a Republican who was convicted of taking $13,000 from a trucking company after prosecutors said he steered about $1 million worth of city contracts to the company.

So if a contractor or lobbyist hands a politician a sack of cash before the politico does something they want, that's a "bribe", but if the cash is given after the politician does something for them, that's a "gratuity" and is legal.

Sounds to me that this ruling is nothing more than a move to protect Clarence Thomas from being prosecution for the millions of dollars worth of gratuities that he's received.

Meanwhile...

A solid majority of Americans say Supreme Court justices are more likely to be guided by their own ideology rather than serving as neutral arbiters of government authority, a new poll finds, as the high court is poised to rule on major cases involving former President Donald Trump and other divisive issues.

The survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 7 in 10 Americans think the high court’s justices are more influenced by ideology, while only about 3 in 10 U.S. adults think the justices are more likely to provide an independent check on other branches of government by being fair and impartial.

Even a majority of Republicans believe that. So they're not even convincing their own base that they are more fair and impartial than Fox News.

For a branch of government that has no enforcement power of its own, that depends on people more-or-less voluntarily agreeing to accept their decisions as being fair and abiding by them, this is dangerous territory to be in.

ETA: They should sell tickets to people who want to line up in order to piss on the grave of George H.W. Bush for putting that corrupt fuck on the Court.

Partisan Hacks Gotta Engage in Hackery; USSC Ed.

Justice Samuel Alito is rejecting calls to step aside from Supreme Court cases involving former President Donald Trump and Jan. 6 defendants, saying his wife hoisted the two controversial flags that flew above their homes.

“My wife is fond of flying flags. I am not,” Alito wrote Wednesday.

In letters to members of Congress, Alito said his wife, Martha-Ann, was responsible for flying both an upside-down flag over their home in 2021 and an “Appeal to Heaven” flag at their New Jersey beach house last year. Both flags were like those carried by rioters who violently stormed the Capitol in January 2021 while echoing Trump’s false claims of election fraud.

Neither incident at Alito’s homes merited his recusal, wrote the justice, who has rejected calls from Democrats in the past to recuse on other issues.

They were his fucking houses and I don't believe, for an attosecond, that he didn't know what was going on. A guy with some integrity would have said: "Dear, I'm a Supreme Court justice, we can't be making partisan displays at our houses."

But he's got no integrity and no spine. He knew what was going on, he knew what the flags symbolized and he was either too cowardly to ask his wife to take them down or, more likely, he agreed with it.

And so he throws his wife under the bus. What a brave little asshole.

So now, if he rules in favor of Don Snoreleone or the J6 defendants, a goodly section of the population will believ that he was in the tank. A partisan justice voting the way his party wants him to. (The same goes double for Clarence Thomas.)

And the reputation of the Court will slide even further. If then hardball is played, let's see what happens when the Supreme Court's budget for clerks gets zeroed out.

Alito is a Constitution-Hating Trumper (And the GOP is Full of Grifting Hypocrites)

Alito was flying a Christian Nationist/J6 flag at his beach house.

Last summer, two years after an upside-down American flag was flown outside the Virginia home of Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., another provocative symbol was displayed at his vacation house in New Jersey, according to interviews and photographs.

This time, it was the “Appeal to Heaven” flag, which, like the inverted U.S. flag, was carried by rioters at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Also known as the Pine Tree flag, it dates back to the Revolutionary War, but largely fell into obscurity until recent years and is now a symbol of support for former President Donald J. Trump, for a religious strand of the “Stop the Steal” campaign and for a push to remake American government in Christian terms.

Alito is telling us that he is a election denier, a Trumpanzee, and a Christian Fascist. He's further from being a non-partisan judger of facts and law than Clarence Thomas. He is signaling that for all to see. Is there any wonder that the level of public trust in the Supreme Court approaches that of time-share salesmen?

Meanwhile, a GOPer running for office, who has been lambasting government spending, has been suckling at the government teat for a very long time:

In his bid to become North Carolina’s first Black governor, Republican Mark Robinson assails government safety net spending as a “plantation of welfare and victimhood” that has mired generations of Black people in “dependency” and poverty.

But the lieutenant governor’s political rise wouldn’t have been possible without it.

Over the past decade, Robinson’s household has relied on income from Balanced Nutrition Inc., a nonprofit founded by his wife, Yolanda Hill, that administered a free lunch program for North Carolina children. The organization, funded entirely by taxpayers, has collected roughly $7 million in government funding since 2017, while paying out at least $830,000 in salaries to Hill, Robinson and other members of their family, tax filings and state documents show.

He's no different from Thomas: Benefiting from government programs and then seeking to pull up the drawbridge.