Dwain Northey (Gen X)

The 3 branches of our government are meant to be checks and balances against one another so that there is balanced power, and one branch doesn’t supersede. The House, Senate and the Executive have to answer directly to the American Voting populist every 2,4, and 6 years, we are their boss, I know they don’t act like it be we are. Now the Supreme Court… no one elects these individuals, and they have a lifetime appointment… 9 people that don’t answer to anyone but themselves… seem a bit contradictory to our democratic system.

The court’s job is to interpret a 250year old document and determine if a case before them is supported by the document written in 1789 or not. Seems like a crazy notion, right? Let’s see if a document that was written by slave owners, who thought women were property, truly believed that they had manifest destiny over a continent that was inhabited before they arrived is attributable to a much different world than the one they lived in. Yes, it is true that we have amended the document 27 times and the first 10 were before the Constitution could be ratified, so that leaves 17 changes over 233 years… How much has changed over the past 233 years? How much has changed in the past 50 years?

In 1920 the 19^th Amendment was passed giving women the right to vote, 104 years ago, yet we still haven’t passed and Equal Rights Amendment… Sadly the only way that the Supreme Court can’t technically change a law is if it has been written into the Constitution as an Amendment. Roe was just a ruling in 1973 based on the 14^th Amendment right to privacy, it was challenged multiple times but won out, until recently after a 6/3 loaded court decided that the 1973 ruling wasn’t good enough for women to have sovereignty over their own bodies.

This court has recently decided that gifting elected or appointed officials after a ruling isn’t a bribe, it is a gratuity. Wow that is an amazing twisting of language by a 6/3 conservative court. They have also declared the government experts on pollution and climate science know far less than the corporations that want to continue to extract resources for profit, that Jan 6 rioters can’t be labeled harshly, even those who beat capitol police. They will also be putting forward a ruling if the President has universal immunity… I am sure with this 6/3 count would really want to put forward ruling that Presidents are immune but the caveat is that it only applies to Presidents elected before 2020, and of coarse if Donald were to win in 2024 the court ruling would be amended to only exclude Presidents that weren’t named Trump.