Sunday, January 24, 2010

Impeach Roberts by Anthony McCarthy

As mentioned at the time, everyone in the room knew that John Roberts lied under oath to the Senate Judiciary Committee in his confirmation hearings when he said he would respect precedent even if he didn’t like it. Well, he has shown in just about everything he’s done since taking office that he had no intention of doing that, and he hasn’t.

There is a special kind of lie that is told in these Judiciary Committee pantomimes, the kind that Roberts and any number of other nominees have told. The prospective lie that is told about the future, one whose evidence is yet to be created. That form of intentional deception is as deserving of punishment as one told about the past which leave witnesses and available evidence, certainly in the case of a Supreme Court justice who has absolute power and life tenure. Though as with the lies Rehnquist told about his voter intimation, it is not deemed to be sporting to look too seriously at those.*

I’m no lawyer or legal scholar and I knew Roberts was lying and I knew that the Senators did as they pretended otherwise. His opponents knew he was lying and his supporters certainly did, his intention to overturn precedent was one of the reasons they were so hot to get him on the Court.

It’s one of the most unattractive features of Anglo-american “justice” that it doesn’t deliver justice but its opposite. So much of it is a twisted and niggling means to find excuses to not deliver justice to those who need it and to so often deliver privileges to the privileged. That, dear lawyers, is why you are so widely despised by so many. It has been the privilege of courts that a courtly ceremony of respect and deference is shown to them even as they prove their basic corruption.

The few periods when the Supreme Court has consistently produced justice are used as PR by the corrupt majority of justices and the legal establishment with a vested interest in the charade. No doubt, liberals with bad memories of the “Impeach Warren” signs that American fascists put up during his term, will be horrified by anyone pointing out that the large majority of “justices” don’t deserve to be considered by us in the same way. If they were deserving of our respect, the enemies of the common good would have signs out calling for them to be impeached or “called home by the Almighty”. We, The People, are under no obligation to follow the hypocritical pose of judicial impartiality towards the various members of the Supreme Court. Maybe if we’d been more vocal in opposition of those who wrong us and in support of those who do justice, there would be more of the latter to look back on. Maybe the biggest obstacle for progressives is their observance of staid decorum when populist fury is needed and desirable.

Roberts, Alito, Thomas, are all obvious perjurers. They lied under oath about important issues during their confirmation hearings on TV, in public, to a room full of lawyers. The Senators, too finicky and fussy to do their jobs, pretended not to know it and so now we are under their judicial tyranny. Connecting those dots isn’t all that hard, though apparently it is for lawyers.

* As the lies told by Alito when he said that he would be impartial in the application of the law. There was no reason to believe that based on his previous record, as Professor Ronald Sullivan’s testimony in the hearings demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt.