In Maine, two news headlines illustrate our bipolar nation. One story highlights the finishing touches the Maine legislature is putting on its voters’ decisive support of a referendum legalizing cannibis.
After overriding Trumpie Governor Paul Le Page’s effort to nullify the popular will, Vacation State lawmakers are sorting out the specifics of recreational and medical pot use, culminating in a 2019 roll out of a functioning marketplace for marijuana sales and regulation. For now a citizen can possess up to 2 1/2 ounces or grow up to six plants of ganja without penalty. By 2019 boutiques should begin full operations, tax paying enterprises on the cutting edge of medicinal and recreational weed consumption.
Meanwhile, with the announcement of SCOTUS Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement, all eyes are on Maine’s own Susan Collins, who now passes for GOP moderate in the US Senate, and along with Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, suddenly has a very strong hand to play regarding any Trump nominee to the Court. Today’s editorial in the Portland Press Herald called on Collins to show “less deference to the President than (she) usually demonstrates”, while appreciating Kennedy’s “unique position on the court over the last three decades.”
Whether Collins, who despite nurturing a political brand of independence, has been as reliable a yes vote for Trump initiatives as Ted Cruz or Orrin Hatch, decides to actually approach the nomination process with fealty to womens’ reproductive rights as a guidepost, there is little doubt that who she will be considering will have no regard for such concerns. And the likely ascendence of a newly solid vote against Roe v Wade means in 2019 Maine women will be able to do bong hits in their back yard without fear of incarceration, but if they take a “morning after” pill may be ripe for felony prosecution. Talk about one step forward and two steps backward! Trump’s America in a nutshell.
What the new SCOTUS reality clarifies is this will fully become John Robert’s court. With his breezy assent of Trump’s travel ban, and servile participation in deleting 70 years of established labor law, Neal Gorsuch confirmed he is Scalia with a fraction of the intellect. Alito joined Thomas in the “originalist” section long ago, and it’s sadly doubtful Trump’s latest nominee won’t follow along. So that leaves Roberts as the sole hope for any sort of discretion in what will surely be a wave of challenges to what were established cases. Reproductive and gay rights, minority protections, voting rights and limits on police conduct are likely to fill the docket.
Only Roberts appears to any degree amendable to something other than a rubber stamp. Of course the long term implications are enormous and will define how far social progress, paid for with blood and toil, will be rolled back by those imbibed only with grievance and resentment of groups they have no problem excluding from protections they take for granted.
So how reasonable is it to hope the Chief Justice will abide stare decisis at the expense of political ideology…in other words what he promised up and down to do during his own confirmation? In short, not very. The travel ban opinion Roberts himself authored requires one to ignore the most divisive political figure in US history and focus only on the authority previously granted by the court to his station. Roberts stipulates that, since the formal wording of the ban is “neutral”, Trump’s endless, fully documented, rants and rages behind the action are irrelevant. In other words, tidy legalese inoculates malignant intent.
While it certainly is true past SCOTUS rulings have sided with broad Executive power, considering action without intent makes no sense unless one accepts the democracy killing proposition that any POTUS can define “national security emergency” as he sees fit and all constitutional bets are off. The fact that Roberts declared Korematsu, the basis for Japanese WWII internment made exactly under such circumstances, unconstitutional 70 years too late, demonstrated breathtaking inconsistency by the Chief Justice on exactly that subject. Such constitutional acrobatics will come in handy if he decides to rule against Roe V Wade.
The American ship is sailing in the midst of a mutiny by the old and drunken tars of its crew. While the course of its voyage has yet to be brought about face, a war for control of its helm rages on; and right now the mutineers are pushing their advantage. Whether, after so long and costly a journey, they will be able to force heading back toward the nothingness of past failures we moved away from now seems to be in the hands of a very few, who have yet to inspire in their service to the mission’s success. We need to more fully engage the battle and tilt the balance. BC