July 2

Cloudy, I think, and we did have rain overnight. One good thing is that the weather has discouraged at least some of the people who like to fire off fireworks. Looks like it will be a quiet Sunday.

Saw this piece by Joyce Vance at her Civil Discourse site that covers the latest (NOT)Supreme Court decisions.

Almost 200 years ago the Supreme Court at that time declared that Georgia laws allowing for the seizure of Cherokee land on which gold might be found was unConstitutional because it violated Federal treaties with the tribe. President Andrew Jackson supposedly said "John Marshal (Chief Justice) has rendered his decision; now let him enforce it." Maybe he said it; maybe he didn't. Whatever--the Federal Government and the state of Georgia simply ignored it. And so began the Trail of Tears. Why bring up "ancient" history? Because while listening all of the verbiage slung at the decisions this week (and still this morning) we wondered what would happen if everyone simply ignored the rulings? The last time the court lined up against popular opinion was during FDR's administration when they invalidated a number of his legislative acts to combat the depression. Roosevelt ran against the court (among others)and won a landslide victory and the court "read the election results." They didn't invalidate any other such laws. Today the Supreme Court is held in about the same low esteem as Congress.

Bill Astore put up another good post on his substack. They say that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. However, what happens in politics rarely stays in any confined area. The so-called War on Terror has indeed come home. It seems our country has fighting wars against ideas that can't be confined to a readily identified person or group for the last half of the 20th century (communism) and for the last 22 years (terror). Conveniently, both ideas could be, and were, expanded to include who ever the people in power wanted to demonize. And we still have the anonymous idiots who will persecute whoever they demonize.

Jay Kuo poses some very good questions on his substack concerning the Supreme Court but hasn't proposed any answers.