Today in Supreme Court History: September 12, 1958

9/12/1958: Cooper v. Aaron is decided.

Comments

[Dan Schiavetta]

Aaron v. Cooper, 358 U.S. 1 (decided September 12, 1958): in a per curiam decision issued quickly due to the school year beginning, the Court affirms the Circuit Court’s order desegregating Little Rock High School, overriding opposition of the Governor and State Legislature (the full opinion, unanimous, came down on Sept. 29, also 358 U.S. 1)

[apedad]

Although a lot of folks look at this case as a civil rights case, I see it more of a federal/state issue.

Facts of the case

The Governor and the Legislature of Arkansas openly resisted the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education. On February 20, 1958, five months after the integration crisis involving the Little Rock Nine, members of the school board (along with the Superintendent of Schools) filed suit in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas, urging suspension of its plan of desegregation. The relief the plaintiffs requested was for the African American children to be returned to segregated schools and for the implementation of the desegregation plan to be postponed for two and a half years. The district court granted the school board's request, but the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit reversed.

Question

Were Arkansas officials bound by federal court orders mandating desegregation?

Conclusion (Unanimous!)

In a signed, unanimous per curiam opinion, the Court held that the Arkansas officials were bound by federal court orders that rested on the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education. While the Court noted that the school board had acted in good faith, that most of the problems stemmed from the official opposition of the Arkansas state government to racial integration in both word and deed, it was constitutionally impermissible under the Equal Protection Clause to maintain law and order by depriving the black students of their equal rights under the law.

More importantly, the Court held that since the Supremacy Clause of Article VI made the U.S. Constitution the supreme law of the land, and Marbury v. Madison made the Supreme Court the final interpreter of the Constitution, the precedent set forth in Brown v. Board of Education was the supreme law of the land and was therefore binding on all the states, regardless of any state laws contradicting it. The Court therefore rejected the contention that the Arkansas legislature and Governor were not bound by the Brown decision. (oyez)

Justice Frankfurter wrote a concurring opinion where his opinion did not directly contradict the majority opinion, but it did reemphasize the importance of judicial supremacy and expressed disdain for the Arkansas State Legislature's actions. (wiki)

[Dan Schiavetta]

Thanks!

Frankfurter practiced judicial restraint to the point of judicial abnegation, but he made an exception for desegregation. As a Jew growing up at the turn of the century he knew about being segregated and discriminated against.

[apedad]

Side note

I was reading an online German newspaper last night and there was a story about a woman in Wiesbaden who was arrested because she had sent threatening letters to various politicians, and also Jewish and Muslim centers.

I kinda chuckled about that last part; who sends threatening letters to both Jewish and Muslim centers?

[Magister]

Christian nationalists.

Actually sending letters is more surprising.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

I kinda chuckled about that last part; who sends threatening letters to both Jewish and Muslim centers?

Nobody who grew up in the average American small town during the 1960s would need to ask that question. Instead, the natural question would be 'why aren't the letters to the Asians, Mexicans, gays, blacks, and uppity women mentioned?'

Also, the targeted Jews and Muslims probably were not provided enough respect to be called Jews or Muslims.

[Dilan Esper]

It was indeed a federal power issue. You can see this with Eisenhower's reaction too. Once the courts ordered the Arkansas schools desegregated, the entire credibility of the federal judiciary rested on the enforcement of those orders. Everyone got on board, which is why every Justice signed the Cooper opinion.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

"since the Supremacy Clause of Article VI made the U.S. Constitution the supreme law of the land, and Marbury v. Madison made the Supreme Court the final interpreter of the Constitution, the precedent set forth in Brown v. Board of Education was the supreme law of the land"

By that same logic, separate but equal was the supreme law of the land for over half a century. What are we to say of the heretics during that era who said the Constitution forbade racial discrimination altogether? Were they against the supreme law of the land?

[Intelligent Mr Toad]

OFF-TOPIC: more on bullet-labels which survive impact and are too small for gun-owners to see

Yesterday I wrote: "There are no “ghost guns”. There are no “untraceable bullets”. There are only guns (and bullets and shells) whose serial numbers you cannot see. A year from now this will be common knowledge. The only guns you will be able to trust will be guns whose parts you make yourself, starting with pieces of raw metal (or high-endurance plastic)."

Some of you out there in VC-land questioned my intelligence and sanity. So I'm thinking a bit more explanation might be in order.

How do the ammo companies label a bullet – a small piece of lead, whose shape will likely be distorted by high impact? It’s actually pretty simple: a very small bit of micro-layered material is imbued in the bullet – a few nanoliters in volume. (A nanoliter is one thousandth of a microliter, and a microliter is the volume of two or three grains of sugar or table-salt. A bullet is usually anywhere between half a milliliter and a few milliliters of lead.) The nano-label is made with a small amount of radioactive material – not radioactive enough to hurt anyone but enough to be detectable so the forensic analysts can find it in a post-impact bullet. The material is like a very tall layer-cake: a few hundred ultra-thin layers of differently-doped metal. Instead of pure lead, one layer might be lead with 0.1% iron - one out of a thousand nuclei being iron instead of lead. Or copper, or nickel, or cobalt, or any cheap, inert metal dopant. Or a combination of dopants: a layer could be lead with one atomic nucleus in a thousand a cobalt nucleus and one in every ten-thousand nuclei a nickel nucleus. The combinations of different metals at different densities allows for a virtually endless toolbox of usable layers. So you put together a stack of a thousand layers; that’s enough to code (A to the thousandth power) (A^1000) different bullets, where A is the number of different layer-compositions in your toolbox. Note that this wouldn’t require you to use a thousand different alloys – the same layer-composition could be used several times for several of the layers (as one letter of the alphabet can be used several times in a word or a text, or only one time, or none at all).

So each bullet is uniquely identified by the order of layering in its little nanoliter-sized bit of label-layers.

When a structure like this gets distorted, all the layers tend to be distorted the same way, according to basic fluid mechanics. Even if the label gets flattened, or strung out like spaghetti, or twisted like a pretzel, or grossly distorted in any other way when the bullet hits something, the layering order of alloys will still be preserved and (usually) readable.

To old-timers, this labeling by layering differently doped lead will sound like a prohibitively expensive proposition. We baby-boomers tend to think of surface-microfabrication as a matter of choosing useful two-dimensional shapes to etch onto a silicon surface using laser-induced photochemistry. But this kind of scaled-up, inexpensive multiple-thin-layer micro-fabrication has been the subject of very intensive research for a long time, and the industry has grown into the third dimension, far beyond the old flat limits, which is why we have things like very small Josephson-junction-based superconducting quantum interference detectors (“SQUIDs”), and layered materials with interesting useful physical and electromagnetic properties. (Tetrataenite, anyone?).

We’re not just writing happy-birthday messages in frosting on the top of a birthday-cake any more; we’re making very thick club sandwiches and coding the information into the order of meats, cheeses, vegetables, and solid condiments.

The equipment for analyzing and retrieving the information stored in the layering order has also improved (and gotten orders of magnitude cheaper) since the the atomic-force microscope was invented, in the 1980s. You don’t need a hundred-thousand-dollar cutting-device-and-vacuum-chamber to retrieve layered information any more.

[Mr. Bumble]

Wow. Just wow!

[Drewski]

"The only guns you will be able to trust"

. . . Says a lot that your notion of trust involves your ability to get away with doing bad things, rather than what a sane person would think of: Reliability or effectiveness.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

I wonder how people who dread and despise traceable bullets get through a day of license plates, social security numbers, VINs, and cell towers -- not to mention stop signs, red lights, center lines, and other infringements on their sovereign citizenship rights.

[Krayt]

Nobody denies the technology exists, or could. The question is is it widespread in actual use, and unknown to the public.

[apedad]

You got any formal links to this info or is it some fantasy novel writing?

[Intelligent Mr Toad]

Of course there are no links to this! It's not published yet. Surfing the web and reading general-access sites is not the only way to get information, you know.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Speaking of gun enthusiasts . . . does anyone know the screen name Charles Doty of Tennessee uses at the Volokh Conspiracy and other right-wing sites?

[David Nieporent]

Probably Arthur L Kirkland. Nobody is doing more to make liberals look bad here than that poster.

[Dan Schiavetta]

today's movie review: Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, 1939

A United States Senator dies and Mr. Smith (James Stewart), a boy scout leader, gets appointed to fill out the term by a governor who is controlled by the corrupt publisher/land tycoon Taylor (Edward Arnold -- no, not Eddie Arnold from "Green Acres"). They figure Smith will be harmless and easily "led". He is mentored by his late father's friend, Senator Paine (the great Claude Rains). Unfortunately Rains is also in Taylor's pocket, voting for federal projects which would line Taylor's pockets and looking the other way as to his graft. Which Smith finds out to his great chagrin, and the movie is the tale of his increasingly hopeless but ultimately successful fight to stay honest.

Arnold is a great bad guy. The slit-eyed look he gives Smith when Smith makes clear he won't "play ball" with him is chilling. His character is cool, efficient. And if you do play ball he takes care of you. That's how successful mobsters operate.

Paine is in a more sympathetic position than the movie depicts. Yes, he does kowtow to Taylor, but it allowed him to stay in office "and serve the people of my state in a thousand honest ways". Also he doesn't seem to be personally corrupt. His mindset is tested when he finds himself participating in Smith's destruction and attempts suicide.

One debate at the Constitutional Convention was whether office holders should have a certain amount of wealth. The theory was that not needing money, they would not be tempted to corruption. But that is not how the human mind works. For some reason that is unclear to me, no matter how rich people are, they always want more money. And in real life the officials caught taking bribes are not exactly trying to finance their mother's back operation. They are already quite well set up. Anyway, Paine does not seem to be "on the take". Being beholden to Taylor simply allows him to do his job on other issues. And the projects that Taylor lines his pockets with do create jobs.

The Senate is depicted as a good-natured set of pals, presided over by the avuncular Harry Caray as the Vice President who, unrealistically, actually presides over the Senate. Usually the job is handed over to a junior Senator to give him/her practice in enforcing the rules. (We see Kamala Harris a lot in that chair, but that's because they need her tie-breaking vote.)

The big scene is supposed to be Stewart, at wit's end during a 24-hour filibuster (this is when they hadreal filibusters), swamped in hostile letters (which he doesn't know are fake), looking up at the heavens in prayer. It seems like too obvious a case of "breaking the cutie". Also Stewart supposedly screamed himself hoarse and really went without sleep to prepare for this scene. As Laurence Olivier said to Dustin Hoffman, when Hoffman showed up dead tired for a scene where his character was dead tired, "Why not try acting? It's much easier."

For me the big scene is Smith's nighttime visit to the Lincoln Memorial where his inspiration is rekindled. I've been there several times; when my wife's family visits us in New York they always want to go to D.C. to see the monuments. Indeed they are impressive and give a sense of timelessness. Approaching the Capitol district for the first time (in 1979, driving down from upstate New York with my then-girlfriend), those gleaming white buildings seemed like a higher and better world that one should feel privileged to enter. Anyway, when in that cavernous room with the big statue I always feel weepy. There's a sign there urging quiet and most people comply. The words above Lincoln are recited in the movie: "In this temple, as in the hearts of the people for whom he saved the Union, the memory of Abraham Lincoln is enshrined forever." I get choked up just tapping this out on my keyboard. This country has been lucky in so many ways, and one of which was having such a man as President in such a crisis.

The best moment is when the camera lingers on an elderly black man who ascends the steps and looks up at Lincoln, his hat on his chest. This was 1939, when a lot of former slaves were still alive, and the implication is clear. Perhaps the camera could show Stewart's reaction, or play it up more by having the man helped up the steps by his young children, perhaps holding a link from an old shackle (like the old man in "The Invisible Man"). But Hollywood at the time could only go so far. Perhaps understated was best.

[Drewski]

The worst Jimmy Stewart movie. A simple-minded, deliberately unrealistic morality play for children. Pollyannas giving speeches and Snidely Whiplash-grade villains for ninety minutes. I watched it in my 30s and found it a huge slog, like I was reading "Chicken Soup for the Patriot Soul." It's a depiction of the America that never existed that MAGAs think they can restore.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Wait, you're saying Hollywood made an unrealistic, tearjerker movie?

How long has this been going on?

[CJColucci]

There's a reason someone coined the word "Capracorn."

[Bob from Ohio]

"simple-minded"

You should have liked it then.

[Intelligent Mr Toad]

James Stewart is/was a badly overrated actor (IMHO). He had one persona which he played again and again. He did not have the actor's craft of changing his personality to fit different roles. At least, I've never seen him do so successfully.

This is different from being typecast: many actors who spent their careers playing nearly-identical roles over and over nonetheless had the ability to play against type. Humphrey Bogart could do it; so could Errol Flynn. (If you doubt me, watch Mara Maru (1952) in which Flynn plays a typical Bogart character: a cynical, beaten-down working-class sucker on the skids.) Another was Ginger Rogers, who broke out of her "classy-dancing-dame" type to play gangsters' molls and other types. Another one-personality type whom I love dearly was Basil Rathbone. I don't think he ever played any vulnerable or weak characters.

[Magister]

Harry Carey, not Harry Caray the sportscaster.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Thanks

[SRG2]

The actor previously known as seppuku, perhaps?

[bernard11]

Holy Cow!

Great catch.

[Syd Henderson]

Edward Arnold played a more sympathetic fat cat in “Come and Get It” and actually played Jim Fisk of Fisk and Gould in “The Toast of New York.” He also was the first to play Nero Wolfe. Good actor.

By the way, the actor from “Green Acres” is Eddie Albert (maybe you confused his name with Arnold Ziffel.) To confuse matters, he had a son, Edward Albert, who played a creepy rapist on Falcon Crest which made him difficult for meto watch after that, much as Anthony Perkins is hard to watch after “Psycho.”

[Dan Schiavetta]

Thanks.

I should have said the confusion was with Eddy Arnold, the country singer (my mother had his albums).

Edward Albert (Jr.) was very good in “Butterflies Are Free”. Nowadays they would probably insist on an actual blind actor for that part.

Similarly with Arnold Ziffel -- nowadays they would insist on an actual pig. (The makeup job on that actor was amazing!)

[Syd Henderson]

We had some of his albums, too.

[David Nieporent]

For some reason that is unclear to me, no matter how rich people are, they always want more money. And in real life the officials caught taking bribes are not exactly trying to finance their mother’s back operation.

The corollary of this is that the graft is often small. We would of course condemn a politician (or any person) who took $100,000 in bribes (or embezzled it), but we can understand it: that's a lot of money. If you can get away with it, you’ve got something. But politicians often engage in such trivial stuff — a few thousand dollars worth — that you have to wonder what kind of pathology could lead them to that.

[Bob from Ohio]

How can you do a review of this without mentioning Jean Arthur?

[Dan Schiavetta]

I had to leave some things out. She plays Paine's secretary whom Smith rescues from world-weary cynicism. IIRC she accompanies him to the Lincoln Memorial. A justly praised actress. Including making a great drunk.

[Commenter_XY]

Today, a formal impeachment inquiry will be launched, and the eventual end of this process is that POTUS Biden will be impeached. He will not be removed from office.

Cue in breathless 25A speculation.

[David Nieporent]

Biden will not be impeached. The GOP doesn't have the votes and won't have the votes. (We have empirical evidence of this: McCarthy originally said that he wouldn't unilaterally open an impeachment inquiry, that it would take a vote of the House, not the whim of one person. But the GOP didn't have the votes, so he just unilaterally announced it today.)

[Commenter_XY]

There will be a steady drip-drip between now and the holiday break, David. Do you really think the impeachment inquiry is going to conclude with anything other than: Impeach? If you do, I hear the Brooklyn Bridge might be for sale, could you loan me the money to buy it? I pinky-swear to pay it back with interest. ????

David, the impeachment shoe will shortly be on the other foot. I did tell you (and others) this would be the outcome. We are going to be treated to an unholy spectacle of an impeachment inquiry, plenty of ‘leaks’, and breathless anticipation for the next 2-3 months.

It is an unfortunate position for the country.

[Magister]

The impeachment inquiry is likely to recommend impeachment, because it will be stacked with pro-impeachment Republicans. It's unlikely that the full house will actually impeach, given how much trouble they had with the straightforward task of electing McCarthy as Speaker.

[Dan Schiavetta]

This will be the first time impeachment proceedings go forward without any idea of the charges. With Trump, Pelosi quashed any talk of impeachment until Trump gave her a clear reason to (the documented call to Ukraine). Here, the point is just to impeach Biden. The reason doesn't matter. As McCarthy said, "We will go where the evidence leads us."

[David Nieporent]

This will be the first time impeachment proceedings go forward without any idea of the charges.

"Tit for tat" is kind of a charge.

[Dan Schiavetta]

It's more like "I know you are, but what am I?"

[Sarcastr0]

From Politico, the two areas of focus will be:

"1) Interference at the DOJ to protect Hunter Biden from federal charges and arrange a "sweetheart" plea deal.

2) The idea that Biden was accepting bribes indirectly through Hunter Biden from 2013 through 2019.

Even though none of the money went to Joe Biden, they allege that the foreign entities paying Hunter Biden were doing so in exchange for official favors from Joe Biden that were favorable to China as well as Kazakhstani and Russian-affiliated oligarchs in Ukraine. The payments to Hunter prevented Biden from having to support his son, so they were in effect a payment to Joe Biden that was sent to Hunter Biden instead.

They also expect that the White House won't comply with all of their document requests and are prepared to add obstruction of justice to the impeachment charges as well."

While a factual predicate is of course not required, this is crazy anemic to anyone not already overdetermined.

[David Nieporent]

2) The idea that Biden was accepting bribes indirectly through Hunter Biden from 2013 through 2019.

"Through 2019" is the funniest part. Are they admitting that Trump didn't win in 2016? But that still would've made Hillary/Kaine president/veep, not Biden. What exactly was private citizen Biden being bribed to do from 2017 through 2019?

[Magister]

They could have impeached over the obstruction of justice detailed in the Mueller report. (Or at least had a formal inquiry.)

[Dan Schiavetta]

This is another time to remind people that the "smoking gun" recording which guaranteed Nixon would be impeached and convicted, was not nearly as clear a case of obstruction of justice as what Trump boasted about on national TV to Lester Holt on May 11, 2017, not four months into his term. On the recording, in a confidential conversation Nixon agreed with Haldeman's suggestion that the CIA lean on the FBI to put the Watergate investigation on the back burner. Trump actually fired the FBI director so as to stop the Russia investigation.

[grb]

captcrisis : "...as what Trump boasted about on national TV to Lester Holt on May 11, 2017...."

Yes, Trump bragged on national TV that he fired the FBI Director because of an ongoing investigation concerning him. But even before that, he made the same boast to Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov in an Oval Office meeting. Trump's words:

“I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.”

[Dan Schiavetta]

As bad as the Watergate revelations were, that casually-mentioned-with-live-microphones-present remark was off the charts as far as brazenness, corruption, and stupidity. It says a great deal about how different today’s Republicans are from Nixon’s, that it did not hurt Trump politically in the least.

[David Nieporent]

There will be a steady drip-drip between now and the holiday break, David. Do you really think the impeachment inquiry is going to conclude with anything other than: Impeach?

Yes. The GOP can only afford to lose 4 votes. There are at least 4 non-crazy GOPers in the House.

EDIT: Oh, to address what Magister said: yes, I can see the committee recommending impeachment. But I do not think there's any chance the whole House will impeach. (And, of course, there is less than zero chance of conviction in the senate.)

[Commenter_XY]

I totally agree on this: No chance of removal from office. VP Harris is the best insurance for that.

[Sarcastr0]

No no, this is all House. The Senate removes.
The committee recommends, but it takes the full House to impeach.

DMN, and I agree, thinks the House won't even impeach. To narrow a margin, which you can tell from the lack of a House vote going in.

[Commenter_XY]

Sarcastr0, it is September 12th. I'll check in December 12th, just before the Congressional break for Xmas. We'll see just how many more 'drips' there are between now and then.

The best outcome, of course, is that the 'drip' number is zero. And there is no subsequent impeachment. Human nature being what it is, and the Biden Family being who they are....the 'drip' number won't be zero.

Let's see what happens. But my money is on impeachment.

[Sarcastr0]

You said the same thing about drips in July.

the Biden Family being who they are….the ‘drip’ number won’t be zero.
I am sure you will see stuff you call a drip, because you're pretty in the tank already.

[Commenter_XY]

Yes, I know = I said we would see a steady 'drip drip' in July. We have.

Ands here we are: It is September and the impeachment inquiry is launched.

I'll check back in December. 😉

[Sarcastr0]

We have seen nothing. The GOP was going to do this independent of any factual predicate - and they have!

You can say I'm in denial, but I say look at this inquiry. Look at how it was made, and now it is aimed.

You claim it's a signal that Bidens crimes are slowly coming to light. I claim that says a lot more about you than Biden.

[grb]

Commenter_XY : “Yes, I know = I said we would see a steady ‘drip drip’ in July. We have.”

Total bullshit. For two years the Right has regularly promised evidence of Joe Biden corruption and has failed every time. Today Rep. Scott Perry of the Freedom Caucus was asked what evidence they have. After sputtering over the effrontery of the question, he produced three items:

1. “The homes that the Bidens own can’t be afforded on a congressional or Senate salary.”

2. “It’s not normal for family members to receive millions of dollars from overseas interests.”

3. “We have the vice president on record saying that the prosecutor was fired.”

What a joke. Let’s demolish each in turn :

1. In 1974, Biden bought a home in Greenville for $185,000. Monthly payments on that were maybe a little high for a Senate salary of $44,000, but well within normal. In 1996 he sold the house for $1.2 million and used the money to buy a smaller house in Greenville that was, at the time, easily affordable on a Senate salary of $133,000. Then, a few years ago, using money from speaking fees, he bought a vacation home in Rehoboth Beach for $2.7 million. And that’s it!

2. “Family members” have indeed received a lot of money doing lobbying for overseas interests. You can decide for yourself what you think of this, but none of the money went to Joe Biden. Again, nothing.

3. Of course the Shokin shtick is simply pathetic. Biden was following White House policy, State Department policy, policy supported by the U.S, Ambassador to Ukraine, policy supported by a bipartisan coalition of Senators, policy supported by all our European allies, policy supported by the IMF & World Bank, and policy supported by every anti-corruption group in Ukraine. They all wanted Shokin fired.

Yep, the Right’s Shokin meme is only for the most gullible and ignorant. But then that’s true of all this Biden corruption crap. Only a fool could fail to notice the GOP promises & promises, but never delivers.

[Magister]

More than 33 Democratic senators is the best insurance; if they had enough votes to remove Biden with no good reason, they'd just remove Harris the same way. And then McCarthy would become president, and that's actually some pretty good insurance right there.

[Sarcastr0]

Commenter, unlike previous impeachment inquiries this is a leadership designation, not voted on by the House.

That's fine, but it makes this much more of an exercise than previous inquires.

You've been saying drip drip for a while, but there have been no actual drips. Now, the GOP's smoke blowing and yelling fire has worked before, but don't pretend there is some real issue being kept back strategically. There is not.

the impeachment shoe will shortly be on the other foot. I did tell you (and others) this would be the outcome.
Yeah, fuck this smugness. This is not a game, even if the GOP thinks it is.

[Commenter_XY]

Sarcastr0, if you want to live in a state of denial (no drips), you are welcome to do so. You're going to get a lot of shit from other commenters when he gets impeached; I won't pile on.

What saddens me is what the country will be subjected to for the next several months. That is what happens when the shoe is switched to the other foot. Maybe DC will learn, but I doubt it.

[Sarcastr0]

You want to believe. But look at the quote from Politico - the GOP, who has been trying their best for quite some time, has got nothing so far.

This is the GOP acting crazy, and you are blaming the Dems for it.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

You're butthurt about accountability for Trump, Commenter_XY, so you're joining the most extremely partisan and unhinged Republicans in lashing wildly at anything within reach, including a Hunter Biden investigation that began in 2018.

This makes you a lousy person and nearly worthless as a forecaster.

[Commenter_XY]

Arthur, I think I am the guy who said the following, The best outcome, of course, is that the ‘drip’ number is zero. And there is no subsequent impeachment.

We will see, Arthur whether I called it or not. I'll check in with you 12/12/23. 🙂

[grb]

Commenter_XY : “….state of denial (no drips)…”

What drips? After two years, what do you have? Nothing on Joe Biden except third-hand gossip supporting a conspiracy theory (Shokin) that’s refuted by a Mount Everest of facts. The GOP can’t safely take that anywhere outside of their whore media because it’s child-level absurd. Imagine dozens upon dozens of witnesses lining up to testify Shokin’s firing was the policy of the entire U.S. government and all of our allies. It would probably add five points to Biden’s polls. The GOP would look like idiots.

And that’s it except Hunter, and the Right hasn’t made anything of him for two years running. The most recent attempt, the testimony of Devon Archer, blew up in their face. He testified against every one of their talking points. Seems like the “drip, drip” always has the Righties underwater and struggling to reach the surface. It sure hasn’t produced any evidence of scandal.

[grb]

It’s worth a comparison :

1. Trump was investigating Joe Biden for over two years before the ’20 election campaign. He had Giuliani crisscrossing Ukraine with his low-grade criminal henchman, Parnas & Furman, trying to buy dirt from disgraced politicians, corrupt oligarchs and Ukrainians under U.S. indictment. At one point the CIA warned the White House Rudy was negotiating with Russian spies. Meanwhile, Trump repeatedly tried to trade U.S. government favor for Biden dirt. Zelensky’s top aide was told Ukraine could have a presidential summit if Zelensky would agree (in writing) to publicly announce a Biden investigation. That was the White House meeting where Bolton stormed out, saying he “wasn’t going to be part of any drug deal.” That was also two weeks before Trump tried to trade U.S. military aide for Biden dirt.

This was followed by the election season, and the search for Joe Biden scandal grew white-hot. Then came Joe’s presidency, and the pursuit for evidence of corruption grew more frantic still. After the midterms, the effort tripled in intensity.

And 5-6 years of frenzied searching has produce exactly what? Zilch. The only bigger failure has been another scam: The endless quest for voting fraud.

2. Compare and contrast with the investigation into Trump’s Russian ties. In way less than half that time we’d learned Trump’s campaign manager had secret meetings with a Russian spy. Trump’s fixer Cohen held secret negotiations with Kremlin officials on a massive business deal while the presidential campaign was underway. Trump’s son responded with glee (in writing) when told the Russian government wanted to help his daddy’s campaign. An official in the Trump campaign got drunk and bragged about advance knowledge of Russian efforts against Clinton. A top Trump support (Stone) had secret communication with the Russian intelligence group that stole Clinton-related email. Trump’s National Security Advisor pick had lied about his Russian contacts to other Trump officials, the Vice President and the FBI.

Of course there’s much more, but you get the picture. In much less time we saw a true example of “drip, drip”. Meanwhile, about six years in and the Right has found diddly squat. That’s what happens when there’s nothing to find….

[Dan Schiavetta]

+1

[Nameless But Highly Opinionated]

I've long thought that judicial supremacy can be viewed as a necessary evil to dismantle Jim Crow. But given where we are today, there's no reason to retain it.

The laziness it encourages on everyone else's part causes the constitution to go underenforced. It hurts people - people of all sizes, shapes, incomes, etc. And that's to say nothing of its democratic and legal unsoundness.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

They were, by your logic, arguing against the supreme law of the land. Not different interpretations of the supreme law of the land, but the law of the land itself.

The judicial supremacists have to put so many asterisks next to their position. First they say it’s not an attack on the SLL if the Court changes its mind. Then they might proceed from this to saying that of course lawyers can tell the Court that the Court’s precedent is not SLL. Then they should confront the implications of their view – that it is legitimate (not only protected by the First Amendment, but fully legitimate) to teach and advocate against the Supreme Law of the Land, if only to prepare the way for persuading the Court to change its mind.

Where will the concessions end? These “exceptions” seem to destroy the whole rule. Where is the judicial supremacist who actually believes the doctrine he professes, without filling it so full of escape hatches that it degenerates from a doctrine to a nonsense talking point?

If they just mean "obey court orders," they could get there by saying the court had jurisdiction and must be obeyed however the decision comes out - but if the decision is pro-segregation then political action may be needed to restore the actual constitutional meaning and get rid of separate but equal.

[Magister]

Supreme Law of the Land and no criminal penalties for violating it, the usual heuristic for how serious a law is? Our nation is doomed to roving gangs of droogs ultra-violating the SLL.

"Gee, Brain. What are we going to do tonight?"
"The same thing we do every night, Pinky. Violate the Supreme Law of the Land."

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Agreed. MAGA fans are not trying to build anything; they're just trying to flash a last-gasp middle finger to a mainstream, modern America that has passed them by.