Opinion: the Supremes…and January 6

I really hope a few of you take the bait on the below….  Read the paragraph that begins with “Below, I speculate”.  The rest is your choice.

The word is that the Supreme Court ruling on a woman’s right to choose will be sometime this month, as will the public report of the Congressional Committee on the Insurrection of Jan 6, 2021 and surrounding months post election 2020.

And, of course, the Uvalde tragedy and the place of weapons of war in public use is and will continue to be front and center.  And on and on…we are a nation horribly divided, with no good outcome in sight.

“Extra Credit”: Now talk is actually beginning about the possibility of peace talks between Ukraine and Russia.  If/When, what are your feelings about a possible outcome.  Same rule as with the others, express your opinion before such talks actually begin…bearing in mind that this is still in the possibility phase now, and there is a long, long way to resolution.

Given the topics of this post, I think the most recent Letter from an American by Heather Cox Richardson deserves your time as well.

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Below, I speculate about the Supremes and the Insurrection, and invite your pre-opinion opinions as well, BEFORE the respective report and public hearing.     And, Guns are fair game as well.  And Ukraine.

Deadline for any comments to be published here the day before the Announcement of the Supreme Court opinion, or the first public hearing of the Insurrection Committee, whichever comes first..

If you wish, here is my blog written January 6, 2021, the day of the insurrection.

Here is my May 4, 2022 blog about the leak of the Draft of the Supreme Courts potential ruling on abortion.  (There are two significant additions to this blog at the end of the comments section, both added on May 29.  Carol’s letter in last Sunday’s St. Paul Pioneer Press, and a long article from the Twin Cities Catholic Archdiocese, give added and opposing perspectives).

I’m also including here my first blog in which George Floyd’s name appears after he was murdered on May 25, 2020.

I have no more knowledge about any of these, than anyone else ‘outside the walls’.   What I write below is as well- or ill-informed as anyone else.

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January 6 Committee: I think the Committee has accumulated an immense amount of relevant and legally significant testimony and evidence implicating individuals at the highest levels of government during the period following the 2020 election.  Best I know, the Committee deliberations relate only to Congressional matters, not to Court.  But their evidence is very important to potential legal challenges.

The Committee, I believe,  knows a whole lot more than thus far revealed.  This terrifies the ultimate targets, who may never actually testify on the record.  The Committee record has been provided by persons with direct knowledge, pieced together over many months.

I don’t believe that the Committee considers it necessary to call in the then-President or even the co-operators who have dodged subpoenas.  I doubt there is a court in the land which would actually indict #45. He is a pathological liar and if they somehow got him in the dock, he’d lie anyway.  Their paths to the truth have thus been from other sources.

(I’m certain there is plenty of internal debate over process – this is totally normal.  They know how the system they are part of works.)

There are additional dilemmas.  Many folks, such as intelligence officials, police officers and the like, do not and did not have clean hands.  Some want #45 to win.  Some were allies, actively or passively complicit.

The Department of Justice. separate,  is criticized for not proceeding more quickly and publicly, but I think its actions are justified by its knowledge of how the law works.  Any of us can have our opinions.  In the court of law, the rules are different.  This is an immense case without precedent in our history as a country.

The Congressional Committee has its own rules and procedures, and the Department of Justice is not part of Congress, rather the agency empowered to enforce the laws of the nation.  Our system of co-equal branches can seem inconvenient but it is essential to a functioning democracy.

I think the Nuremberg Trials after World War II are a reasonable analogy to today.  The persons who followed the orders in Germany basically were allowed to go home after the War ended.  The legal targets then were the major leaders who were the reason the violations of human rights took place.

At this point, we in the public really know nothing.    So, I await the public hearing which I will watch with great interest.

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The Supreme Court: Choice, Abortion, Roe v Wade or whatever you call the topic.

The leak of the Draft of the majority opinion of the Supreme Court – the Alito Draft – occurred on or about May 4, one month ago.

To my knowledge all there has been since then is hot air.  There has not even been much public speculation about who did the leaking, or why they did so.

In personnel terms, the Supreme Court is a small organization, with a long history of ‘close to the vest’ control of information, including amongst the Justices themselves, who often are not of the same opinion or in agreement about rationale.

This is even more true in these days of intense ideological polarization.

I think back to recent history about intentional political leaks (actually dirty tricks) that appeared to be real, but may well have been false flags from the beginning, intended to mislead.

The two particular cases which come to my mind are the time years ago in the Karl Rove years when mysterious ‘evidence’ appeared: a computer file ‘discovered’ in a park that had information about the enemy.  More recently a computer taken in for repair which supposedly had the goods on someone else, second or third or fourth hand….  Both were big news at the time they were reported.  Both were empty….

Lots of people believe nonsense, just because they want to believe it.  “False flags” work.

Q-anon  also comes to mind.  No one seems to know who Q is, and all that matters is the question.  The receiver can & does make up his or her own answer.

In the matter of the Supreme Court Draft, it is as reasonable to assume, as anything, that it was intentionally leaked, perhaps not even by or with the knowledge of any of the justices or their staffs, to assess and manage public reaction present and future.

It makes absolutely no difference which “side” did the leaking – it wasn’t an accident, I’d guess, and the leaker had a motive.  I’ll be surprised if we ever learn who the leaker actually was.

Legal issues in a complex society are complex.  As I learned over many years, there is no such thing as “clearly” in Law.  If Law was clear, in our society, there would not be need for swarms of lawyers whose job it is to argue a case, one way or another.

I don’t know how the Supreme Court will rule.  I will be most interested in the exact verbiage in the final ruling compared to the leaked document.  What the Court individually and collectively doesn’t know is how the public at large will accept whatever ruling eventually is published; and we in the public will be well advised to think about how we can accommodate differing beliefs about what “life” means for the mother of an unborn child.

It isn’t as simple as the most avid pro-lifer, or pro-choicer, likes to portray.

I’m pro-choice, but by no means a ‘baby-killer’ as I have personally been described.

Stay tuned.

Agin, weigh in at this space BEFORE the opinions actually are revealed.