Today's Supreme Court has turned its guns on we the people

The Supreme Court doesn’t give a rat's patootie about you and me..

Today, Republicans in the Senate sent a bill approving the construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline to President Obama’s desk. President Obama has repeatedly said that he will veto that bill, and we can expect that veto later today or tomorrow.

After all, despite claims from Republicans and Big Oil, the pipeline wouldn’t create American jobs, wouldn’t lower fuel prices, and wouldn’t make the United States more energy secure.

Instead, as renowned climate scientist James Hansen famously pointed out in a New York Times op-ed, the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline would be, “game over for the climate.”

Of course, even if President Obama does veto the Keystone legislation, that doesn’t mean the fight is over.

The State Department still has to rule on the pipeline, and theoretically, the pipeline battle could find its way to the Supreme Court.

And, if it does end up in the Supreme Court, we almost certainly know how the conservative justices of the court will rule.

Last year, a group of five teenagers and two non-profit organizations representing thousands of young Americans, filed a federal lawsuit at the Supreme Court.

In the lawsuit, the youth of America sought to require the government , “to immediately plan for national climate recovery according to the scientific prescription of Dr. James Hansen and other leading international climate scientists that will restore our atmosphere to 350 parts per million (ppm) of CO2 by the end of the century and avoid the disastrous scenarios of 2°C of warming.”

The lawsuit was relying on a legal principle from the Public Trust Doctrine, which says that our government must do everything in its power to protect and maintain survival resources for future generations.

Unfortunately, this past December, the Supreme Court announced that it would not be hearing the case brought up by thousands of young Americans who want to save their planet.

While that decision was a blow to the climate change fight, it really didn't come as much of a surprise.

That’s because today’s Supreme Court is all about protecting the rights of the wealthy elite and protecting the rights of giant corporations to do business without interference from the government.

In American society, we’re told that the Supreme Court is a neutral body, free from influences of the other branches of government, which makes well thought-out legal decisions.

While that may have been the intentions our Founders had for the Court when they wrote the Constitution, that’s simply not the case anymore.

Ever since their infamous Citizens United decision, the conservative justices of the Supreme Court have decided in favor of wealthy billionaires and corporations, while leaving the rights of the average American in the dust.

Speaking about Chief Justice John Roberts and the conservative Roberts court, legal analyst and scholar Jeffrey Toobin once said that, “In every major case since he became the nation’s seventeenth chief justice, Roberts has sided with the prosecution over the defendant, the state over the condemned, the executive branch over the legislative, and the corporate defendant over the individual plaintiff.”

And, a study by the Minnesota Law Review which looked at nearly 2,000 Supreme Court cases and rulings between 1946 and 2011 found that Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito were the most corporate-friendly justices on the bench during that period.

The conservative justices of today’s Supreme Court are simply not concerned about the rights of you, me, young Americans, the planet, or anything that doesn't have money written all over it.

In an 1807 letter to John Wayles Eppes, Thomas Jefferson wrote that, “The original error [was in] establishing a judiciary independent of the nation, and which, from the citadel of the law, can turn its guns on those they were meant to defend, and control and fashion their proceedings to its own will.”

Today’s Supreme Court has turned its guns on the American people, our country and even our planet.

Thomas Jefferson’s worst nightmare has become reality.

Comments

ckrob's picture
ckrob 8 years 14 weeks ago
#1

I use a celll phone; it doesn't work without a cell tower.

I started a business; it doesn't work without a government.

Ayn Rand was an idiot.

DHBranski's picture
DHBranski 8 years 14 weeks ago
#2

Actually, I had wanted to comment on the segment, "Progressives Shaped America, Why Republicans Want to Change History Books," but this all fits in with explaining our situation today. The Clinton New Dems made extraordinary use of the media marketed to libs, effectively re-writing history, reshaping America itself into an ongoing pep rally for the better off, those still in the middle class. They play the key role in deeply pitting the middle class against the poor, workers against the jobless, wiping out nearly a century of progress. Had we paid attention to history, we would have known why the greatest danger to our form of govt/society is that of creating a significant "sub-population" of people who no longer have anything left to hope for, anything left to lose. And I think more and more of the middle class gets it. As the US grew increasingly brutal to our poor, survival itself brings the poor together to organize as much as possible, with as many people being armed as possible. This is the generation that made the abuses, beatings, and killings of the very poor, by police and citizens alike, fairly routine. As more middle classers are, on some level, becoming aware of this, more of them become armed. This, folks, is what class warfare comes down to.

leighmf's picture
leighmf 8 years 14 weeks ago
#3

TJ's worst nightmare is the Federal Reserve.

The Op-ed does not say Keystone PL will be "game over for the climate." Hansen specifically said that Obama said no matter what we do or don't do, Canada will continue to pursue their climate-destroying activities.

So did anyone actually read this Op-ed?

Which actually says, "GLOBAL warming isn’t a prediction. It is happening. That is why I was so troubled to read a recent interview with President Obama in Rolling Stone in which he said that Canada would exploit the oil in its vast tar sands reserves “regardless of what we do.”

"If Canada proceeds, and we do nothing( i.e. no KPL) , it will be game over for the climate."

So God Save the Queen and British Petroleum. Why our detrimental never-severed counting house relationships with England are not revealed to the American Commoners by our liberal media is a great surprise. Perhaps that is why Americans fail to recognize the influence of Germany, Switzerland, England, and Italy on our Supreme Court.

Perhaps even liberal media gets paid to avoid certain topics or plant red-herrings. No one is above corruption in the marketplace.

For example, I am an environmental scientist. When I was attending State land-grant universities there were many subjects Professors were forbidden to teach, such as the story of the environmental destruction of Florida. They were not allowed to name banks, companies, or railroad executives. We were only taught the state was destroyed, not that the 1917 Florida Legislature ordered that the Everglades be drained. They then passed a law which required residents of the state to pay for it.

Good information is not easy to come by.

ckrob's picture
ckrob 8 years 14 weeks ago
#4

Since petroleum refining means taking out everything that doesn't fuel a car, a big pile of crap from the Keystone pipeline has to be spread over a big part of Texas to the benefit of Canada and the Koch Machine.

leighmf's picture
leighmf 8 years 14 weeks ago
#5

I think a big pile of crap should be spread over Texas, sooner the better, but not by another pipeline mortgage.

But too late -The Kochs have already been served as theirs was Phase One to Wood River to Hardisty Terminal in Canada.

"The Keystone Pipeline (Phase I), delivering oil from Hardisty, Alberta 3,456-kilometre (2,147 mi) to the junction at Steele City, Nebraska and on to Wood River Refinery in Roxana, Illinois and Patoka Oil Terminal Hub (tank farm) north of Patoka, Illinois, completed in June 2010.[2]"

2950-10K's picture
2950-10K 8 years 14 weeks ago
#6

FDR warned us...." The first truth is that liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of Koch Industries, to where it becomes stonger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence, is fascism....ownership of government/supreme court by a group or any other controlling power."

The very first thing the Kochublican party did when they finally gained a majority in the Senate was to pass Kochstone pipeline legislation.....So with the potential end of life on earth as we know it, why do we continue to tolerate the growth of this complete madness? I'll tell you why.....corpse media has deemed the god almighty dollar has far more value than the god almighty truth.

PFNELKAK 8 years 14 weeks ago
#7

we the people? representing the people? on earth?

Mark J. Saulys's picture
Mark J. Saulys 8 years 14 weeks ago
#8

Conservatives don't want to remove government from society, only the democratic character of it. They want to remove any power or influence of it from "we the people". They don't want the people's government having an influence on society or the economy.

They absurdly conflate a government that is democratic and thus serves the people, establishing many programs and services that help people in the U.S., with Soviet dictatorship.

Economic powers, e.g., business, are really political powers that are not really separable or distinguishable from government as they would have no efficacy or influence without the backing of government. Government is indispensible to the control of society by business.

Government's definition and enforcement of property rights and economic propriety makes business the authority controlling society. Their collaboration makes them one. Thus removal of the democratic character of government and leaving only its function of enforcing property rights and contract law makes for tyranny.

ckrob's picture
ckrob 8 years 14 weeks ago
#9

Kochpublican Kongressional Konference has a certain ring to it doesn't it?

RichardofJeffersonCity's picture
RichardofJeffer... 8 years 14 weeks ago
#10

The Supreme Court has become the US five person democracy. Yay!

RLTOWNSLEY's picture
RLTOWNSLEY 8 years 14 weeks ago
#11

Thanks for your accurate assessment, The Clinton New Dems (aka, Neo-Liberals) are about as far from the promises of The New Deal as they can get !

mathboy's picture
mathboy 8 years 14 weeks ago
#12

Interestingly, Mark, conservatives want to retain the appearance of democracy, because this gives them a regular opportunity to kick out of office anyone that doesn't do their bidding and install a new meat puppet. It's odd that having a monarchy might protect us from another sort of tyranny. Of course, we the people are supposed to use that replacement opportunity, but we still allow an incumbency rate of 95% or so, and often use it on the wrong office holders.

Mark J. Saulys's picture
Mark J. Saulys 8 years 14 weeks ago
#13

Quote PFNELKAK:

we the people? representing the people? on earth?

Sure, locally or internationally, small "d" democracy.

chuckle8's picture
chuckle8 8 years 13 weeks ago
#14

leighmf -- I love the details. Thanks.

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