Supreme Court

Lets get the bad part out of the way first. The Supreme Court— in a totally predictable partisan 5-4 decision— told the states to gerrymander all they like without worrying about the Supreme Court doing anything about it.

Will the U.S. Supreme Court expose itself to the public as a failed institution in this term or the next? (Iconic Portland Oregon poster showing future mayor Bud Clark and a downtown statue. Title: "Expose Yourself to Art." Story here.)by Thomas NeuburgerThe second point ... about the illusion of the Court's legitimacy, is just as important as the first.

Yesterday, the Alabama House went for the big enchilada-- overturning Roe v Wade. The state House has 77 Republicans and just 28 Democrats. (The state Senate has 27 Republicans and 8 Democrats.) The executive branch is also controlled by the GOP. There are no checks; there are no balances.

As I look at America today, I am not afraid to say that I am afraid.
— Bertram Gross, Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America

The allegations contained in the complaints [against Judge Kavanaugh] are serious, but the Judicial Council is obligated to adhere to the Act. Lacking statutory authority to do anything more, the complaints must be dismissed because an intervening event – Justice Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court – has made the complaints no longer appropriate for consideration under the Act…. Because it lacks jurisdiction to do so, the Council makes no findings on the merits of the complaints.
— Order of the Judicial Council of the US Tenth Circuit, December 18, 2018

On June 29, 2015 the United States Supreme Court argued in Glossip v. Gross that executions may continue with the use of lethal drug cocktails including the use of midazolam, an extremely painful drug, which in effect, burns to death the condemned by scorching internal organs. The use of midazolam, according to the Court, does not constitute “cruel and unusual punishment” under the Eighth Amendment. The Court found that condemned prisoners can only challenge their method of execution after providing a known and available alternative method.

Disproportionate numbers of First Peoples are in Canadian prisons. Society arranges this fact to not seem that extraordinary. It could be argued that aboriginal peoples are political prisoners in North America, in or out of prison. Or that this is true for all minorities. Or that as the war on terror proceeds all Canadians may find themselves in a political prison.

"William Doyle Ruckelshaus [seen above c2009] served as the first EPA Agency Administrator, from December 1970 to April 1973.

[T]he US government no less than the government of Canada is required to obtain the consent of the Indian nations’ before assuming jurisdiction to invade, occupy and govern the yet unceded Indian national territories.
– Bruce Clark, Ongoing Genocide caused by Judicial Suppression of the “Existing” Aboriginal Rights (2018), p 25-26

Barely a month has passed since the conclusion of the Senate hearings on Brett Kavanaugh yet the event is already beginning to fade from public memory. What was obviously set up to be a partisan Democratic attack on Justice Kavanaugh quickly descended into an attack on Reason and that should never be forgotten if one cares about the future of the American republic.
Here is why…
The origins of Western thought in Ancient Greece that heralded the Age of Rationality began with Socrates who used epistemic self-doubt as a way towards finding answers.