Blog Credo

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H.L. Mencken

Thursday, May 25, 2023

Undemocratic Backstop

 This is remarkable, even by the debauched standards of the current Supreme Court.  Samuel Alito and four other "textualists" basically rewrote the Clean Water Act, because they could. Hell, even beer soaked rage monkey Brett Kavanaugh felt it was ridiculous. This is also a clear case of obit dicter, where the courts had a simple decision before them and decided to run with it beyond the bounds of the case at hand and fuck things up. 

History's most famous example was Dred Scott, and this one is just as flimsy. Hell, it's more flimsy. Scott was, like it or not, enslaved. The Court probably thought they could resolve the issue of slavery in the West once and for all. In fact, they accelerated the coming of the Civil War and slavery's eradication. 

The fate of wetlands is unlikely to lead to civil war. The slow motion and yet rapid evisceration of the regulatory state is a pet project of "Even the Moderate" John Roberts. While Roberts might be uncomfortable with stripping away civil rights, he's absolutely motivated and on board with gutting the ability of the government to regulate economic activity.

The Dred Scott ruling was a powerful moment in delegitimizing the idea of compromising with the slave holding South. After Scott, people like Lincoln realized there was no "both sides" compromise with a rabid caste of slavers. 

Dobbs is obviously much more important in delegitimizing the Courts than Sackett will be. Again, wetlands aren't as viscerally significant as stripping women of bodily autonomy. However, at some point there will have to be a reckoning about a Court that is literally lawless enough to supersede the actual written text to make up whatever the fuck they want.

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