It really doesn’t get that much press. But there is a decades-old war on our democratic system’s judicial branch.
We all know about the war on taking power in the other two branches — gerrymandering, voter suppression, money dominating the system, the right-wing media machine, etc.
But at least we have the judicial branch to enforce SOME limits, right?
Wrong, more and more.
They’ll not completely take over the judiciary any time soon — but they don’t have to any more than they need all the seats in Congress. Minority votes against their corruption aren’t a problem.
It doesn’t matter how well written a correct a Supreme Court dissent is written — it has zero effect.
As we should be even more clear about in this era of alternative facts and the Green Bowling Massacre, words don’t mean much in the hands of the wrong people.
And that includes the words of the constitution.
(Disclaimer: we’re not innocent. For example, the Obama administration interpreted a law limited to ‘imminent threats’ to define imminent as ‘some possibility at any point in the future’.)
But the judiciary is designed to be a wall against the possible (and current) corruption of the two elected branches of the government — therefore it needs a full assault. And it has one.
The Federalist Society could be called “alternate interpretations” of the law and constitution.
Just as Reagan cloaked his first-time-ever huge peacetime debt in a PR campaign of his saying how much he hated debt, the legal radicals cloak their campaign claiming they follow “original intent.”
Just as the phrase “liberal media” has convinced a huge percent of Americans the media is liberal, their simply saying they’re for original intent has convinced a huge percent they’re the honest ones.
Just as trump’s giving priority to Christian refugees with the false reason that they’ve had an almost impossible time getting into the US, and only a small percent of Americans will actually fact-check that and find it’s false, the countless cases proving the Federalist judges are radical, that they’re the ones re-writing the constitution, that they’re hypocrites when convenient some of the time, are facts only checked by a small percent of the population, so the PR works great.
This society is simply a movement. It has an ideology, and it is at war to take over the judiciary.
In order to do that, while the ‘other side’ is careful to remain ‘impartial’ and do things ‘right’, the Federalist openly uses incentives and networking to gain power.
It has its members give strong preference to other Federalist Society members, so there is always — absent a backlash to discriminate against them that doesn’t exist — an incentive.
And it has an effect. More and more lawyers, judges, appellate judges, and with the help of the political right-wing Supreme Court judges, are Federalist members as this silent war is won.
And what do they do? I can’t do it justice here, but just one example is their stripping away the right of the people to place any limited on the use of money to control our elections.
These people who talk so much about not inventing the rights they want in the constitution have corporations to be people with legal bribery a constitutional right that can’t be outlawed.
It’s as bad as it sounds.
They reached a new level of prominence during the Bush administration. From Eisenhower through Bill Clinton, the American Bar Association had reviewed and rated all judicial candidates officially.
Bush replaced them with the Federalist Society in that role, as he appointed more of their members.
And now, they have reached another new level of power, as trump has said he will only appoint judges from the Federalist Society — and his first Supreme Court appointment keeps the promise.
You would think that the takeover of our judiciary and the resultant destruction of our constitution would get more public attention, but it hasn’t.
Because, I guess, a name like ‘the Federalist Society’ and people arguing for ‘their views’ seems a normal part of the system. It’s just another part of our healthy democratic system.
It’s not.
This Slate article last week has some good information on the history and power of the group.
We go to war to protect our constitution and spend trillions on non-threats. This is a real one.