How the Bush Presidency will be screwing us for years - The Supreme Court shows it's colors
posted by
Wally
8:16 AM
I've had it hanging above my desk for 6 1/2 years now. Unfortunately, it's only become more and more prescient as the years go by. There's as much reason as ever to worry about Bush's presidency, even as his power wanes, his popular support plummets, and his time in office winds slowly to an end. For even after Bush is long out of office, he will still be causing problems.
When we are working to clean up all of his messes, struggling to pay down the $9 Trillion national debt ($30,000 for each of us), striving to restore our tarnished reputation in the world, even if warrantless wiretapping is outlawed and stopped, we're out of Iraq and have denounced torture, endless detainments, and illegal wars, when environmental, health, and workplace safety protections are being enforced to keep us all healthy and safe, when we're working WITH the international community - maybe even leading it - in such endeavors as addressing climate change, AIDS, poverty, etc., when "Free Speech Zones" have been restored to their rightful place of "anywhere in the whole frikking country," when we think we're "making progress" to fix the damage done during his administration, Bush will still be causing problems.
Because even after George is safely out of office, tooling around in his golf cart, clearing brush in Crawford, where the most damage he can do is knocking over trees with his face when he falls off his bicycle, Justices Roberts and Alito will still be holding session. Based on their rulings over the past few days, that does not bode well for our nation or our freedoms.
Taxpayers have to pay for religious activities. We don't have the right to file suit against the government to stop them from using our tax dollars to violate the separation of church and state. SCOTUS ruled that the King President can do whatever the hell he wants with the money given to him by Congress and if you don't like it, you can suck it, even if it violates one of the primary tenets laid down in the Constitution.
In a pair of somewhat contradictory rulings, the Court declared that your "Freedom of Speech" is only protected if the speech in question agrees with the right wing ideology. If the speech involves anti-abortion ads being put on TV just before an election to help put an extremist right-wing Republican into office - that's protected by the Constitution. In that case, Justice Roberts said "Where the First Amendment is implicated, the tie goes to the speaker, not the censor." Somehow, that standard doesn't seem to apply when the court doesn't agree with what the speaker is saying. In the "Bong hits for Jesus" case, they ruled that a high school student, standing on a public sidewalk, does not have the right to hold a sign that has the words "bong" and "Jesus" in the same sentence.
And finally, when the decision came down to big business versus endangered species and the environment, you don't even need to guess which way the court went. I mean, there are hardly any of those pesky endangered species that will be impacted, as opposed to thousands of people (and billions of dollars). In a ruling that sets a potentially dangerous precedent, they ruled that states can ignore the Endangered Species Act when issuing building, development, and water discharge permits. Because you know, what gets dumped into a river or stream in one state has no impact across the border in the next state.
So, yeah. Worry.
We're stuck with Roberts and Alito for a long time after Commander-guy is gone. Be sure to thank your Democratic Congresscritters for approving them.
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