The U.S. Supreme Court is Not Just Lost, It’s Dangerous

I am so disgusted with the Unites States Supreme Court. If this was a marriage, I probably started thinking about getting a divorce in 2000 after Bush v Gore. But I’m an eternal optimist. And I’m forgiving. I’m also loyal. I don’t like quitting. I’m not a quitter. So for 25 years I’ve remained a believer in the overall integrity of our highest court.

And I’ve always believed that no matter how conservative they’d become, no matter how draconian their right-wing extremist rulings would be, we could always count on the them in the end to at least protect and defend the Constitution, the rule of law, and our very democracy.

But then in 2010 Citizen’s United came along, turning campaign finance on its head, enabling the wealthy, corporations and other outside groups to spend unlimited funds on elections. The consequences of this ‘dark money’ have been devastating on our democracy and the war on political corruption.

In attacking election integrity directly, the court, in its 2013 Shelby v Holder ruling, gutted the most powerful provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, essentially saying we didn’t need these protections anymore because voter disenfranchisement had all but vanished. This argument was as ridiculously as saying in the middle of a heavy rain that you don’t need your umbrella anymore…