Guest Post by Steve-O-in NJ

Yesterday, the Democratic party, or at least an element of it, unveiled legislation which is history- making, but not in what I think is a good way.

I’m talking about Jerry Nadler and Ed Markey’s proposed legislation to add four justices to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has been composed of nine justices since before the beginning of the 20th century. The last time anyone even considered anything like this was in 1937, when FDR developed a plan to add six more justices to “pack”  Court so that he could continue to push through his ambitious New Deal programs. SCOTUS had been slapping them down as unconstitutional. He cloaked is as an attempt to make the court more efficient, since justices tended to serve well past the average retirement age even then, and the idea was that the institution would benefit from younger judges. Both his own party in Congress and the public saw this for what it was, and the backlash was swift. The President would not get to stuff the Supreme Court with his own judges with rubber stamps in hand.

Still, some said that the message was sent and received, as  Justice Owen Roberts, who had previously sided with the conservative block on the Court, known as “The four horsemen,” suddenly sided with the liberal wing of the Court in the matter of West Coast Hotel v Parrish, upholding the constitutionality on minimum wage legislation.  We will really never know, since the earlier Justice Roberts took the unusual step of burning his notes and papers before the end of his life. Supposedly, however a memo he provided to Justice Felix Frankfurter indicates that he was planning to rule that way before FDR threatened to pack the court.

In any case, FDR continued past two terms and was able to stuff the federal judiciary with his own people more than any President, since the rest were limited to two terms either by self-restraint, tradition or law. The influence of his justices  and those appointed by his successor Harry Truman cast a very long shadow over the Supreme Court for quite a while, although not as long a while as you might think. In fact, Richard Nixon was the president who appointed Harry Blackmun, author and longtime defender of Roe v Wade,  arguably before the question of liberal versus conservative justices became so pronounced. It wasn’t until Carter couldn’t nominated a single Supreme Court Justice and Reagan and Bush the Elder nominated five between them that the question of liberal versus conservative justices versus qualified justices became as divisive an issue as it is now.

No president has had enough slots open during his administration since then to decisively move the court one way and give it either a solid liberal majority or a solid conservative majority. Part of that, no doubt, was due to so many justices hanging on to their seats long after they should have retired, so as to not allow a President who disagreed with them to appoint their successors. That’s why Harry Blackmun remained until Bill Clinton was safely elected; that’s why Antonin Scalia died in the saddle, and that’s why Ruth Bader Ginsburg gambled and ultimately lost her  battle to last until the 2020 election before her 86-year-old, cancer ravaged body giving out.

Neither party likes the idea of the needle moving farther away from them on the Supreme Court and possibly undoing their significant and important legislative accomplishments. The Democratic party is particularly bitter now, since it had counted on Hillary being elected right after Obama and being able to add more liberal justices on top of the two that Obama had appointed.

They are also bitter because of the dangerous but ultimately successful gambit that Mitch McConnell managed to pull off after the death of Justice Scalia. The Democratic party believes Merrick Garland should be sitting on the Supreme Court right now, and two more liberal justices should have joined him. They should be enjoying a solid liberal majority on the Supreme Court and be watching Hillary lick her chops waiting for the three remaining conservative justices to die or retire, with the dream that either she or her Democrat successor can create a fully liberal and transformational Supreme Court.

That dream has been pushed out of reach now, and the Democrats are facing a 6 to 3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court that is likely to foil many of their plans. So they are ready, willing, and able to use the political capital that they  have from this past election and the Black Lives matter movement to change the rules so they don’t have to wait for the Court to change the old fashioned way.

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That’s the April 18, 1906 San Francisco Earthquake as portrayed in the 1936 Clark Gable-Spencer Tracy-Jeanette McDonald classic “San Francisco.” Jennette had just finished singing “San Francisco,” the song, and then all hell broke loose. The scene is evidence of some outrageous unethical behavior by the director, W.S. Van Dyke, wanted the crowd to react spontaneously, so without their knowledge or consent, he had the nightclub set built on giant foundation that would start shaking violently at the push of a button. They thought a real earthquake had hit, and many of those terrified expressions are genuine.

Of course, the best ethics story on an April 18 was memorably told—I should know: I memorized it!— by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five:
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.

He said to his friend, “If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry-arch
Of the North-Church-tower, as a signal-light,—
One if by land, and two if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country-folk to be up and to arm.”

…

So through the night rode Paul Revere;
And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm,—
A cry of defiance, and not of fear,
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo forevermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
And the midnight message of Paul Revere.

And imagine: All for slavery! Paul’s fellow midnight rider, who never gets proper credit, was William Dawes. He rode through my home town, Menotomy, Mass., now Arlington.

1. Bill Maher is shocked—shocked!—that his fellow Democrats believe mainstream media propaganda about the Wuhan virus. On his HBO mostly anti-conservative bitchfest, the comedian, sort of, expressed outrage that according to a Gallup survey, Democrats flunked the question of how likely it was for someone who had the virus needed to be hospitalized. Just 10% gave the correct answer—less than 5%. 41% of Democrats believe more than 50% of those infected would need to be hospitalized.

Really Bill? That’s a surprise? Your pals in the mainstream media hyped the virus mercilessly—they still are doing hit. Ethics Alarms has followed that story. You’re the one who said on your show that it would be worth crashing the economy to get Trump out of office, and that’s what the pandemic hysteria helped accomplish. You should be thrilled: it worked!

Bill also professed to be upset that that the same survey shows that Democrats greatly over-estimate how dangerous the Wuhan virus is for children. Why, Bill thinks this could be why the majority of schools systems that have remain closed are in Democratic Party-controlled cities and states!

Ya think, asshole????

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1. On this day in 1947, April 15, one of America’s many lucky breaks occurred: the perfect individual, with exactly the special qualities of character required for a daunting challenge, was on hand to take on that challenge, and the nation was never the same. The individual was Jackie Robinson, and when he too the field as a member of the Brooklyn Dodgers, American society began it’s long post-Civil War climb out of the damning twin curses of segregation and Jim Crow racism.

The Ethics Alarms essay, from 2012, is here.

2. I know, I know: polls. But these two sets of results, both from Rasmussen are interesting, and to me at least, not surprising:

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