We ask too much of the Supreme Court and too little of ourselves
Remember the latest scandal at the Supreme Court?
It's understandable if you don't. It occurred back in the 1960s when Justice Abe Fortas resigned after it was discovered that he'd accepted a fat yearly "retainer" for life from an indicted Wall Street financier. He then, allegedly, lobbied President Lyndon Johnson, who'd appointed Fortas, to pardon the financier. But the lobbying part was never proven and the financier was never pardoned.
He also received big fees for speaking engagements funded by potential Court litigants. (No, the Clintons didn't invent the scam of selling influence in the guise of giving implausibly expensive speeches. They just perfected it.)
In the half-century since Fortas, the Court has been scandal-free. The justices are extremely able and decent people. You may disagree with their decisions sometimes, as I do, but it's one branch of American government that works.
This system has worked well for over two centuries. But over the past few decades the job of these justices has gotten harder. To their detriment and ours, we now ask too much of them.
We now ask the Court to decide, for example, whether carbon dioxide is a pollutant and whether contraceptive benefits should be mandated for Catholic nuns. Those issues wound up before the Court because Congress refused to decide them. Instead, Congress delegated the decision to unaccountable administrators at the EPA and unelected bureaucrats at the IRS.
These are not issues of law, but issues of policy. Congress dodges them for craven political reasons. They want to avoid disappointing one or another of their constituent groups. Congress does this because it works — for Congress.
Let's restore democracy. A good start would be for the Court to invalidate vague legislation that illegitimately delegates policy-making to unaccountable administrative agencies for review by unelected judges.
That would force Congress to make the hard policy decisions. That's Congress' job.
And it would force us to hold Congress accountable for those decisions at election time. That's our job.
https://www.aspentimes.com/opinion/glenn-k-beaton-we-ask-too-much-of-the-supreme-court-and-too-little-of-ourselves/
What a Beautiful Day.
I see trees of green, red roses too
I see them bloom for me and you
And I think to myself what a wonderful world
I see skies of blue and clouds of white
The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night
And I think to myself what a wonderful world
The colors of the rainbow so pretty in the sky
Are also on the faces of people going by
I see friends shaking hands saying how do you do
They're really saying I love you
I hear babies crying, I watch them grow
They'll learn much more than I'll never know
And I think to myself what a wonderful world
Yes I think to myself what a wonderful world
How is it that NOBODY has a video of the actual plane crash???
That plane was in the air for over and HOUR!