Justice on the Brink
I sent poor Mykala a 1,361 word screed, generously quoting Linda Greenhouse, about why the Supreme Court is broken for the foreseeable future. Before I paste in parts of that here, consider this:
New York Times public editor Daniel Okrent said that he has never received a single complaint of bias in Greenhouse’s coverage.
Greenhouse wrote for the Times for thirty years.
Anyhow, onward, beginning with a quote from a recent Fresh Air interview:
DAVE DAVIES: I guess the Trump appointees were unwilling to grant that request by the Trump administration on the election cases, particularly the election cases alleging fraud and theft of votes. The court pretty much shut those down quickly with the Trump appointees agreeing with the majority. What can you say about the extent to which these three appointees were willing to, you know, go by the president’s wishes?
LINDA GREENHOUSE: Well, what I say in the book is that they assisted in saving the court. And what I meant by that was had the court granted any of these Trump election cases, it would have been an institutional disaster, not only for the country because, obviously, there was no fraud in the election and, obviously, Trump was not robbed of an election victory. That’s clear. We can agree on that. But for the court to have given in to the series of requests that came, including that crazy case that Texas brought against the states that Texas claimed should have gone for Trump but didn’t - you know, it just would have been an institutional disaster for the Supreme Court. And obviously, the court was well aware of that.
Like, holy shit, Linda Greenhouse, three-decade expert on the Supreme Court, is saying that the fucking Supreme Court of the United States of America was just saving its own ass when it came down on the side of the facts and our democracy in 2020 election disputes. And not only that, the Court did so with the least amount of effort: they didn’t even take the opportunity to set a PROBABLY EXTREMELY USEFUL SOMETIME SOON PRECEDENT about election disputes. I mean I’m hyperventilating with anger just writing these sentences.
Comments
Alexander Micek
Here’s an unfun update, also from Greenhouse reporting on the current Supreme Court abortion argument:
Alexander Micek
And I have to add, from what I can see from that piece I linked above, the favored argument from a majority of justices is the fallacy of false equivalence. Apparently it’s also called the fallacy of inconsistency. So sure, that’s a great thing to have in a court of law. Woo.
Greenhouse’s summary word of the mess is even better: gaslighting.