Posted on

The Séance Court: Original Intent and the Fraud of Speaking for the Dead

Nine lawyers in black robes sit in a marble temple in Washington and commune with the dead. They ask James Madison, silent since 1836, how he feels about bump stocks. They ask a Virginia planter to rule on geofence warrants and a Boston merchant to weigh encrypted messaging, and they transcribe the answers with straight faces into the United States Reports. Every other corner of American life has a name for this ritual. When a widow pays for it in a candlelit parlor, we call it a séance and we call the medium a fraud. When five justices perform it in October Term, we call it originalism, and law schools award tenure for defending the candles.

Continue reading → The Séance Court: Original Intent and the Fraud of Speaking for the Dead

Posted on

We Burn Our Women and Children on the Altar of Madness

Over the last few months in the USA — and across the world ashore — it appears we now prefer to burn our women and children on the altar of a consecrated, conservative, authoritarian, religioso, madness! It’s Leda and the Swan now embedded forever in The Marble Palace — and there’s no clear way out of separating alarming myth from tragic reality. Now the majority women don’t control their bodies anymore. Now the minority swans own their bodies.

Continue reading → We Burn Our Women and Children on the Altar of Madness

Posted on

John Fetterman Will Punch You in the Mouth!

[[[ UPDATE 05.15.22: John had a stroke the day this article was published! Please feel better soon, my friend, and yes, he’ll still punch you in the mouth from his hospital bed! ]]] John Fetterman is currently Pennsylvania Lt. Governor and he is also running to be a Senator from the same State. Sure, he’s 6’8″ tall. Yes, he doesn’t wear a tie. Of course, he prefers to wear hoodies. Because John Fetterman is tough. John Fetterman is what a Democrat used to be — and must be again: Of the land, against the elite power, for the common good. Now, I realize John Fetterman may not want to punch you in the mouth right now, but I am confident he would if he needed to, and the idea he could punch you if he were threatened into it is just the sort of inherent, but unspoken, return to earth the Democrat party needs in order to deal with the ongoing foolishness, and intimidation of, far Right Wing radicals. John Fetterman suffers no fools. A year ago, in my Human Meme podcast episode — The Great White Bridge as Throughline — I celebrated John Fetterman as a possible future Democratic President, along with the now self-politically immolated former mayor of Atlanta, Keisha Lance Bottoms as his second.

Continue reading → John Fetterman Will Punch You in the Mouth!

Posted on

The Inescapable Return of Donald Trump

Donald Trump is a disgrace to America and a verified liar in the specific; and yet, I cannot get over this obligation of wonder that he has never left the consciousness of America. He is resurrected. He will return. Vengeance against us will be his. Trump still rules us from afar. He decides us. His hold over the feeble-minded, and the uneducated, is as strong as ever after his election loss and yet, for some reason, he is immaculately venerated by those he reviles. Does any reasonable person paying attention to abortion rights, the evisceration of voting rights, and the incongruous dismantling of OSHA worker protections not believe the game is already set and staged for a victorious Trump return in 2024? It appears to be all but inevitable now. The one chance we had to stop him — by standing up to the GOP in the Senate — failed miserably and miraculously. The Democrats are a proud, but unwily, gang of magnificent losers.

Continue reading → The Inescapable Return of Donald Trump

Posted on

Why Democrats Will Save President Trump From Impeachment

Donald Trump is not a Republican. He was a Democrat for 50 years of his life. He is a liberal. He ran for president as a Republican because Hillary was already coronated as the presidential pick of the DNC before the primary even started. Trump would have LOVED to run for president as a Democrat AGAINST Obama — and the result would have been the same: President Trump — the Democrat version!

Continue reading → Why Democrats Will Save President Trump From Impeachment

Posted on

Too Pretty to Work Here

Did you hear the one about the Iowa Supreme Court ruling that you can be fired for cause from your job because you’re just too pretty and tempting?

Standing by a December decision, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled Friday that a male dentist who fired a female assistant because she was too attractive and threatened his marriage did not commit sex discrimination.

The all-male court ruled against Melissa Nelson, who sued her former employer James Knight, alleging Knight’s wife told Knight to fire Nelson because “she was a big threat to our marriage.” Knight fired Nelson in January 2010 after more than 10 years working for him, later testifying that she was not fired for performance reasons.

Continue reading → Too Pretty to Work Here

Posted on

DOMA Goes Down in Defeat

Justice Kennedy, writing for the majority:

DOMA singles out a class of persons deemed by a State entitled to recognition and protection to enhance their own liberty. It imposes a disability on the class by refusing to acknowledge a status the State finds to be dignified and proper.

DOMA instructs all federal officials, and indeed all persons with whom same-sex couples interact, including their own children, that their marriage is less worthy than the marriages of others.

The federal statute is invalid, for no legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and to injure those whom the State, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity.

By seeking to displace this protection and treating those persons as living in marriages less respected than others, the federal statute is in violation of the Fifth Amendment.

This opinion and its holding are confined to those lawful marriages.

The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit is affirmed.

It is so ordered.

Continue reading → DOMA Goes Down in Defeat