When Criminals Pick Judges

Brace yourselves for what’s going to be the shittiest and most disgraceful clusterfuck of a Supreme Court Justice Selection Process ever. It will end with the appointment of some “pragmatic” and “moderate” individual, which really is code for an unprincipled, spineless, results-based judicial politician.

But oh the steps leading up to that....Here's what I'm imagining:

The President will pick someone. This person will suck, at life. Reactionary Obamatons will love her - yes it will be a woman. Conservatives will freak out like someone just beat up their grandmas and complain that the nominee is totally "out of the mainstream." This will be a wildly inaccurate statement by any reasonable measure, but old things the person said will be twisted and taken out of context to support this insane statement. The media will focus entirely on these few statements and these ridiculous arguments, and then there will be the dumbest and most insane hearings ever, where politicians and not the nominee talk for most of time, then the nominee refuses to answer basically any questions on the grounds that they might be prejudging a potential case (which is so stupid) and then, the person will get confirmed.

What will be missed is that the same man picking the new potential Justice, will be a man who is either claiming or extending unprecedented Presidential powers; A man who is rather plainly breaking the law in a few ways, by, for example, ordering American citizens killed, insisting on not prosecuting torturers even though such prosecutions are required by American law, and instituting a policy whereby human being are to be detained forever based on suspect evidence at best, and merely his whim at worst, to name a few. But fuck all that, no one's really gonna mention this.

I mean, sure it would be worth debating how interesting it is that a person doing such things is then in a position to appoint a member to the entity that is most likely (which is to say at all)to rein in those activities (read: crimes). It might make for informative and important discussion to talk about where the nominee stands on those issues and whether they believe in allowing the President to do whatever he wants as long as he uses magic words like "terrorist" or "war" or whatever. Shit, it might be nice to actually have a substantive discussion, as a nation, about what the Constitution is, says and does, and what it means to have a "Constitutional Philosophy."

But none of this will happen. Because Democrats AND Republicans all agree that the President and Congress can do whatever they want when it comes to fighting things like drugs or terrorism. They all agree that (accused) criminals and (accused) terrorists don't have rights. They ALL agree that the Constitution is something to be championed when it helps you and ignored when it stops you. So why should anyone else care about those things?

Besides, laws are just stupid and annoying and for lawyers to figure out. The Supreme Court is no longer about the law, but about political consequences. That's why the discussion this next appointment creates is going to be a national disgrace. Sadly, we don't really deserve any better.