March 5

Rain today and, oh my, what thunder, lightning and wind we had over night. The cats were not happy at all. The weather has calmed a bit for now. Needless to say, I won't be doing anything on the patio today. Glad I got some of the clean up done yesterday.

Thinking about the Supreme Court decisions over the last few years I had a stray thought: liberals and progressives have gotten too used to relying on the Court to drive their issues. That has been the case since the Brown v Board decision in the 1950s. I thought that some years ago as conservatives made concerted efforts to remake the top court and finally succeeded in Donald Trump's administration with the connivance of Mitch McConnell. What the court has given it can take away as we are finding out.

Watching the morning news coverage of Trump's latest efforts to put together coherent speeches I had another stray, and gloomy, thought: who is going to be the "gray eminence" behind Trump's throne if he wins again? Who will be his pick for Vice President? Most of the likely are, honestly, frightening. Worse, remember the talk about his cabinet invoking an Article 25 removal during the last weeks of his term. What if he wins, is sworn in, gets his cabinet in place (even if on an interim basis), and then they successfully pull off the maneuver?

Question: Is it really the job of the Supreme Court to decide "novel Constitutional issues" in a way that "insulates this court and petitioner from future controversy"? That is the comment from one of the "concurring" justices that filed a separate opinion that agreed with the basic decision (that the states don't have the power to disqualify candidates for federal office on Constitutional reasons) but disagreed with the reach of the decision (which claims that ONLY Congress has that power and then told them exactly how they should frame the legislation). That is incredibly close to "judicial activism" which conservatives claim to hate.

Stray thought: I don't know how many remember a couple of opinions that distinguished between "running" for office and "holding" office." If Trump wins will the Federal Courts have to deal with lawsuits hoping to prevent Trump from "holding" office per the 14th Amendment Section 3? If so will the court come back with the same argument that ONLY Congress can do that?

It is a day for stray thoughts. Here is the last for today: a quip I like points to American insularity. A person who speaks three languages is trilingual. A person who speaks two languages is bilingual. A person who speaks one language is---an American. I would add another line. A person who can't speak any language coherently is---Donald Trump.