Curing the Supremes

The notion of Judicial Review has led to the Supreme Court of the U.S. to be the strongest power within the government.  It is not in the Constitution that the Supreme Court has the power to review the Constitutionality of a law. 

If the framers of the constitution had had in mind this power be given to the Court the notes and minutes from the discussion of the writing of the document would have show that to be so.  It is not mentioned.  It is not part of the intended power of the Court.

Another oddity of the high court is that it is not meant to have 9 members.  That is, the Constitution simply makes it a number as determined by congress.  Other ideas have been posited over the years.  For instance, Franklin Roosevelt put the idea of Emeritus Vote out there and it was gaining steam when the court slowly turned its votes to favor precedent of prior decisions.  The Emeritus idea was that all justices over the age of 70 had a combined single vote on the court in any decision and that, further, the President would appoint additional justices until the total vote would reach a total of 9 (nine).

Judicial Restraint is the law for all federal judges EXCEPT the Supreme Court.  What that says is there is a code of conduct for judges that keep the system from an appearance of bias.  The current Court has failed miserably to eschew all appearance of bias.  Justices Alito, Thomas and Scalia have all done things that show influence and bias.  They have turned the Supreme Court into an arm of the partisan bickering that has overtaken the Congress of the United States.

A current political reality is that because the House of Representatives has been so heavily populated by the Republican party in 2010 there is near zero likelihood that these shameful judges will be impeached.  There will probably need to be another solution to turn the court back into a less biased group.  If Congress enacted a LAW that the Supreme Court Justices had to adhere to Judicial Restraint it would go a long way toward bringing the rogue members into the center… into the core of their job.  If the President begins talking about the issue and proposes Emeritus Vote or some similar rule along with the idea that no President can appoint more than two justices during any single term it would go a long way toward correcting the current problem.

Figuring it Out

Sometimes it takes awhile to sort out why I get to feeling lopsided when I watch TV Nooz.  Not just that it is biased.  I mean, it is biased, but so what?  It's the echo chamber effect that the "talking points" are there no matter where I look.  This little chart is impressive for the way it makes this easy to understand why I feel beaten up some of the time.

So little of the time we watch TV should be devoted to the news.  I read a lot more these days than I used to because I don't like the echo effect.  The so-called minorities may soon not be, in the aggregate, minorities much longer so their lack of coverage is to say that they don't count in the national debate when, in fact, they very much do count.

On a different note I have been following the in's and out's of the Darrell Issa witch hunt/political theater.  The Limbaugh twist on the "story" tries to make this about 2nd amendment rights.  This charge has been taken up by the trollz on places like the Huffington Post comments.  It is insanity of the first order and even pushing back to show the illogical in the conspiracy theory is combating the nickle-posters... an impossible task. 

Issa demands documents that the Holder (the AG) is restricted from giving out.  These doc's have names of agents (of the undercover variety) and informants in both the U.S. and Mexico as well as indications of on-going operations.  They are the deliberative notes of those inside the AG's office that no AG would ever allow to go outside their office.  These notes are only from AFTER the Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was shot and killed... most likely with one of the "gun-walked" guns that ATF lost track of.  They (the ATF) had run this sort of operation before (under the Bush administration) and had lost track of guns before.  The trollz now say that because the President invoked executive privilege it PROVES his complicity in the operation of Fast & Furious.  Got the picture??  It proves nothing of the sort. No witnesses have been called from the Bush administration to date.  No evidence what-so-ever has surfaced that even the head of the ATF (much less Eric Holder or the President) even knew what the rogue agents in the Phoenix ATF office were up to.  Yet, it is the huge cry from the republicans that this is a plot to create a demand for further gun regulation.

On its face this is a laughable line of ill-logic but it has deflected a vast number of people from thinking or talking about the strengthening economy.

Lastly, I spent some time meandering through a junk art show in the park today.  There were petition workers there trying to get signatures to put Charter Schools on the ballot.  That is, pro-charter schoolers.  When we said it took money away from the public schools they insisted that it did not.  My freedom of speech for this particular occasion was to flip this guy off.  I know, I know... it put me on his level but frankly one more lie in my day (it was nice and sunny) was a bit too far to accept.

Have a great day and enjoy the coming week.

Sliding Down the Polling Razorblade

Polls are informative but they are also the basis of some bias.  From the Huffington Post article by Mark Blumenthal about polls:

"The dirty little secret of telephone surveys now conducted by most media outlets is that their unweighted samples alone cannot provide reliable estimates of population demographics like race and Hispanic ancestry. A dramatic fall in response rates has led to what pollsters call "non-response bias" in their raw data. Partly because survey response rates are typically lowest in urban areas, unweighted samples routinely under-represent black and Hispanic Americans."

Hence the sometimes seemingly poor tracking of public opinion by the polls.  The more a poll leans in a direction the more it seems it is believed.  That is, when a poll serves to bolster a particular position the more often it is cited.  This about far from what the pollster is trying accomplish as it gets.  Polls do not or perhaps should not lead opinion... but, often enough they do.

Huffington Post article

By the end of this read you will have to allow that the pollsters are doing their level best to account for a ton of input and not, in any way, lead us down a primrose path.  But in the end there is a bunch more science that will tweak  and refine this in the future.  The best we can hope for is that the presentation of the massive data gathered will show us how to manage the brain plug poll junkies need.

Fire Storm Alert!!

 The legal status of young illegals in our country needs more clarity and the President has done a lot to make it clear.  This is only a small portion of our policy and needs to be fleshed out by Congress... but then, they are mired in a do-nothing abyss by the GOtP.


Right wing fact check does not agree with current Right wing Alarm!!

The dog whistle word "amnesty" is being trotted out in an attempt to UNinform us too.  Enough of this already!!  The President did NOT give anyone amnesty.  More on this later.

Senator Sanders and truth

Senator Sanders is great at saying things plainly.  Calling out the Republicans for their stance on tax give backs to the rich and ubber-rich.  There is a huge bill coming due from the Bush wars run up on the national credit card and we need to pay that debt down... NOW.  There is a time for debate but on this issue every second costs us more later.  No tax give back for the super rich, and ease the burden on the middle class.  The middle class is on the defensive and is disappearing.  The Bush recession has pummeled the middle class and the Republicans have gone into "do nothing" mode and have stopped the economy as much as they can.

YouTube of Senator Sanders

Spending...

The picture is worth a bunch of words analogy applies here.  The right likes to give out the talking point, that is completely without foundation, that the Obama administration is spending us into some new hole.  Let's have a restructuring of tax law.  Let's have a real conversation about single payor health care.  Let's have a fresh look at sending jobs over seas.

There is just so much to do to fix the real ills of the country.  Get off the talking points and start to actually talk with each other rather than AT each other.

This smells and sounds more like a hoax leak... a fabrication of the Right than any sort of Democratic party reality.  There is a lot more to this than meets the eye and I can't wait for the follow up to this "story".

Obama in sights of the Righties