​Following a series of patently partisan political decisions, three Supreme Court justices came out within a week to protest that we are wrong to label the Court just a bunch of partisan political hacks. Like the unctuous Captain Louis Renault (in the film, Casablanca), who professed himself “shocked, shocked that gambling goes on at Rick’s” while pocketing his skim off the roulette tables, Justices Stephen Breyer, Amy Coney Barrett and Clarence Thomas went public with their claims that they are above the level of the political actors in the other two branches of government.
 
“…the media makes it sound as though you are just always going right to your personal preference. So if they think you are antiabortion or something personally, they think that’s the way you always will come out. They think you’re for this or for that. They think you become like a politician,” Justice Clarence Thomas said in a lecture at the University of Notre Dame. “That’s a problem. You’re going to jeopardize any faith in the legal institutions.” He then had the temerity to claim that he and his Court colleagues call them like they see them, even if they conflict with their personal beliefs.
 
Right. Or, should I say, far right?
 
This after five right-wing justices, who got their jobs because they oppose Roe v. Wade, (1) essentially eviscerated that 48-year old decision, upholding Texas’ abortion ban at six weeks and its enforcement by opportunistic bounty hunters, and (2) the same less-than-Fab Five, joined by the Chief Justice, decimated what little was left of the 1965 Voting Rights Act in an endorsement of Republican efforts to steal forthcoming elections via a barrage of voter suppression legislation.  It is noteworthy that both decisions were courtesy of the “shadow docket” whereby the Justices don’t have to explain their shameful decisions.
 
Justice Breyer, in an ABC interview, warned Americans not to view the Texas abortion decision as political. “I am worried if people don’t understand it, they won’t have trust in our institutions.” The public is not buying this hokum. In just one year, approval of the Court has plummeted by 28 percent, according to a recent Quinnipiac poll. If you thought Breyer should remain on the Court instead of walking off into the well-deserved retirement sunset, his spewing of nonsense like this might cause you to change your opinion.
 
Justice Barrett joined this chorus of Court fantasists while standing next to Mitch McConnell at a Louisville event honoring him, among other things, for his long service in the cause of packing the Supreme Court with ultra-conservative jurists who would do the Republicans’ bidding: banning abortions; suppressing the vote; allowing racist gerrymandering; permitting guns to flourish; and cementing minority rule. “My goal today,” she said, ”is to convince you that this Court is not comprised of a bunch of partisan hacks.” McConnell’s smile while Barrett spouted this absurdity would have done the Cheshire Cat proud.
 
The fact that one-third of the Supreme Court feels it necessary to deny that the Court has become a center of partisan hackery proves that it has. In a modest paraphrase of Hamlet, “Methinks they doth protest too much.”
 
Given that partisanship consistently influences Court decisions, it can no longer be said that the Supreme Court is the “least dangerous branch.” When you overlay ideological rigidity on top of the natural human inclination (and judges are, contrary to what many believe, human) to go with one’s biases, it should go without saying that the five far right justices are partisan political hacks. When Barrett and Thomas, and remarkably even Breyer, claim otherwise, rarely has the gaslight burned so brightly.
 
Dick Hermann
September 24, 2021

​Political parties traditionally form around philosophies and issues they believe will advance society’s quality of life, economic prosperity and well-being. They often champion dramatically different means of achieving those ends, but there generally is consensus regarding the goals.
 
But then there is today’s Republican Party, the first political party in a century whose core principles no longer envision a better world. Quite the contrary. They risk the lives of Americans—via their policies that promote guns, disease, and environmental devastation.
 
In its latest of a recent barrage of actions that consciously put American lives in jeopardy, Senate Republicans forced President Biden to withdraw his nominee for the position of Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). Why? After a 25-year career in ATF, nominee David Chipman became an advisor to a number of gun control organizations. Heaven forbid that someone concerned about gun safety should be in charge of the federal agency tasked with gun safety.
 
The Party of Death supports and actively encourages gun-toters and inevitably, gun violence, through its advocacy of open carrying of guns, including automatic weapons suitable for little other than mass killings. In Texas now, you do not even have to have a permit or any weapons training to strut around with your guns showing.
 
They are staunch defenders of the right to life…but only up until birth. After that, you take your chances. If you believe that life begins at conception, then Republicans will vigorously defend your right to life for less than 1 percent of your tenure on Earth. The other 99+ percent of your time here, you need to keep a very low profile because the POD is doing everything it can to do you in.
 
The ink was not yet dry on President Biden’s speech in which he mandated Covid-19 vaccinations for all federal employees and contractor personnel, as well as businesses employing at least 100 people, before the Republican National Committee said it would go to court to challenge Biden’s executive orders. In essence, the POD is arguing on behalf of the Delta variant (the virus has no standing to sue on its own). This is, of course, in line with the many Republican governors who inveigh against vaccinations and masks as some kind of affront to one’s personal freedom to (a) die, and (b) kill others. POD governors are so incensed about Biden’s attempt to save lives that many are vowing to defy federal directives to get vaccinated and wear masks.
 
South Dakota Governor and super-duper Covid spreader, Kristie Noem, tweeted that her state, which has put out a red carpet for the virus, would “Stand up to defend freedom,” adding, “@Joe Biden see you in court.” Georgia Governor and voter-suppression enthusiast, Brian Kemp, tweeted that he would “pursue every legal option available” to stop "this blatantly unlawful overreach.” Ask them to distinguish between Covid vaccines and other vaccine mandates that they support and they cannot do it.
 
Despite fires, floods and storms of biblical proportions and unprecedented frequency, there are still prominent Republicans claiming that climate change is a hoax. Eventually, the warming temperatures will kill many more people than even Covid-19. The POD apparently welcomes that.
 
On top of all this, the POD does not want millions of Americans to have health insurance coverage. Despite the popularity of the 12-year old Affordable Care Act, they still rage against it.
 
What can explain the POD’s contempt for life? Does it fear losing the support and campaign contributions of the funeral industry? Being pro-death also makes no sense politically. Americans by large majorities support gun safety, abortion rights, Covid vaccinations and mask-wearing. The Trump base, fueled by the Big Liar/Sorest-Ever Loser and the poisonous bad-faith right-wing media, only comprises about one-third of the electorate. You don’t win general elections by promoting mortality.
 
What makes even less sense is that the POD’s vigorous opposition to life-saving measures aimed at overcoming the pandemic is killing its own voters. The unvaccinated are, by a huge margin, disproportionately Republicans. Go figure. It looks like the POD has a death wish. If you vote Republican, better get your affairs in order.
 
Dick Hermann
September 17, 2021

“Years ago someone pointed out that Texas is hell on women and horses. He was wrong about horses, for most horses are considered to be valuable, and are treated very well.”
--Larry McMurtry
 
I’ve been to Texas twice, both times on business. I thought San Antonio was a marvelously fascinating city, a blend of some of the best of two cultures. Discovering that the Alamo was in the middle of the city and not in the middle of a desert was a revelation to someone who grew up watching Davy Crockett. In contrast, a week in insanely hot Houston (which felt like a year in Purgatory) signaled to me that if this rapidly growing, concrete megalopolis fueled by fossils was the future, I much prefer the past.
 
In just a few short weeks, the Texas legislature, for decades a source of relatively harmless mirth chronicled brilliantly by the late, great socio-political commentator, Molly Ivins, went completely bonkers and enacted three new laws that will define it as a deadly, out-of-control coven of villains intent on bending the arc of history into the fetid swamp of neo-fascism. In breathtakingly short order, the Republican-dominated body--

• banned abortions upon detection of a fetal heartbeat (typically six weeks, before most women even know they are pregnant) with no exceptions for rape or incest, and deputized private citizens to serve as vigilantes/bounty hunters, allowing individuals to sue an abortion provider or anyone who may have helped someone get an abortion after the time limit and seek financial damages of at least $10,000 per defendant;
  
  
• authorized Texans to openly carry a gun without either a permit or training; and
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• made it much more difficult for minority and low-income citizens to vote.

 
This is a trifecta that would warm the hearts of Donald Trump and Kevin McCarthy if they actually had hearts. It certainly appealed to the three Trump justices on the U.S. Supreme Court who joined with the Court’s two holdover “Doctors No”—Justices Thomas and Alito—to allow the Texas abortion ban to become law for the time being despite its language that flies in the constitutional face of the half-century old Roe v. Wade decision. As long as the Texas law remains on the books, it means that back-alley abortions awash in coat hangers will be the only option for the state’s indigent women. It also means that once reproductive health clinics close their doors, the other important services they provide—free mammograms, STD testing and treatment, pregnancy testing, etc.— will no longer be available from them.
 
The new gun law was vigorously opposed by every law enforcement organization in the state. Not only does it make it harder for police to do their jobs. It also puts their lives, and the lives of every state resident and visitor, in danger.
 
With respect to voting, the legislature’s Republican majorities, fearing that their days in power are numbered due to the demographic changes Texas is experiencing, decided to rig the system and put major obstacles in the way of traditionally Democratic constituencies seeking to exercise their constitutional right to vote. Despite the 2020 election being a model for how to conduct a free and fair vote, the legislature raised the false flag of “election integrity” in order to start the steal of the 2022 and 2024 elections.
 
It’s impossible to ignore what happens in Texas. It’s big and brash and mightily influential. After all, one-third of our presidents since 1964 hail from there. Worse, other deep red states look to Texas for their lead regarding what they can do to diminish their own citizens’A quality of life.
 
There is no easy counter to what Texas is doing. Congress and President Biden appear paralyzed in the face of the outrages wrought by the Texas legislature this summer. At this writing, the Justice Department is planning to file a lawsuit against the Texas abortion law. However, the eventual outcome is uncertain. Maybe the time has come to beg Mexico to take Texas back.
 
Dick Hermann
September 10, 2021

​What do Ron DeSantis, Greg Abbott, Doug Ducey and Kristi Noem have in common? If you say they are all (1) Republican governors (of Florida, Texas, Arizona and South Dakota, respectively), or (2) Trump wannabes, you are correct. However, the tie that really binds them to one another is that (3) they are all complicit in deaths of constituents.
 
Knowingly and with intent, these four governors are forcing the residents of their states to engage in high-risk behaviors that have already resulted in thousands of deaths. While they have a considerable way to go before they come close to the number of Covid deaths perpetrated by their Dear Leader, Donald Trump (medical experts say that 80 percent of Covid deaths during Trump’s watch could have been avoided if he had not totally mismanaged the national response), even one avoidable death is too many.
 
This “Gang of Four” is leading the charge of anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers. They proclaim some perverted notion of “personal freedom” as the rationale for not getting vaccinated and not taking the modest safety precaution of wearing a mask. Worse, some of them aggressively issue edicts prohibiting mask mandates, even in schools. That makes them the most reprehensible of murderers—child killers, since children under 12 cannot get vaccinated. If you ask DeSantis, for example, to explain why every Florida student must present a Certificate of Vaccination against seven other diseases in order to enroll in school, he has no answer. I guess for him, freedom is a selective concept. It also does not matter to him that his anti-vax, anti-mask insanity is jeopardizing hundreds of thousands of Florida children who are immuno-compromised or have other underlying conditions that make both their susceptibility to Covid-19 and their survival should they contract it problematic.
 
All four of these low characters have national political ambitions. For those to bear fruit, they need to suck up to the Trump base, a demongraphic that demands that its candidates be hostile to science, logic and humanity and believe in wild, laughable conspiracies. In pursuit of them, the Four Horses A***s of the Apocalypse are perfectly willing to sacrifice the health and lives of the people they represent.
 
DeSantis, arguably the worst of this contemptible bunch—and that is saying something!—is even fundraising off his disdain for community health, selling cheap goods on the Internet that mock responsible behavior, e.g., T-shirts bearing the phrase, “Don’t Fauci My Florida.”
 
Fortunately, there are sensible school districts in these states that are mandating anti-Covid steps designed to keep their students and employees safe. An increasing number of companies are also defying their governor’s politicization of public health measures and mandating that their employees be vaccinated. Providentially for the health of Floridians, at least one court has for the moment shot down the governor’s murderous executive order. That has not prevented DeSantis from defying the court order and withholding salaries from school boards that are doing the responsible thing and mandating masks.
 
As if this imprudent behavior by these governors were not enough, DeSantis gets Covid medical advice from the California physician who is pushing the veterinary horse paste drug, Ivermectin, as a treatment for Covid. This same doctor calls people who wear masks “retarded.” He joins Dr. Scott Atlas on De Santis’s advisory team. You may remember Atlas as the Trump advisor who opposed taking any action against the virus, instead advocating that it be allowed to run its course.
 
Note: Ivermectin, an equine deworming treatment, is ineffective against Covid and can cause severe adverse reactions in humans. Calls to state and local poison control hotlines have skyrocketed in the last month. Honk if this reminds you of Trump recommending ingesting bleach and UV light suppositories. Unbelievably, some doctors are actually writing prescriptions for Ivermection for their patients. Hopefully, state medical boards will revoke these physicians’ licenses. If Fox, social media or your physician tries to push this snake oil on you, just say “neigh.”
 
How did America get to this point? Regrettably, there is no vaccine against depravity and stupidity.
 
Dick Hermann
September 3, 2021