Arrest the Supreme Court
Biden, we need an Abe Lincoln, not a James Buchanan.
The coup by the Supreme Court has removed the regulation of greenhouse gases, abolished the right of a woman to control her own body, allowed religion in school and mandated atheists support religious institutions, made impossible the right of states to regulate guns within their states, ended the right of those under arrest to protect their 4th and 5th amendment rights, undermined binding treaty obligations vis a vis native nations, and removed any control on abuse of power by the border patrol. This undemocratic coup is predicated on the assumption that those who oppose this power grab are wimps and incompetent bumbling sheep.
This assumption about the opposition to the coup plotters on the court seems to be correct. Were the opposition serious about preventing a climate apocalypse, the right to bodily integrity, the right of states to regulate their own territories, or for democratic government in general, the President, for example, would detain and remove the Supreme Court.
Article I, Section 9 of the US Constitution: “The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.” The President, in this case, sadly, Joe Biden, should declare the US Supreme Court in rebellion, suspend habeas corpus for those particular actors only, detain all or some of the members, and send them to Guantanamo Bay. Then he could further declare The United States District Court for the District of Columbia to be the temporary highest court in the land.
This action would have to be taken quickly and secretly at night with only a few trusted people involved, then announced publicly in the morning. The governors of the blue states would learn about the action first and be expected to appear at the announcement behind the president. The President, Speaker of the House, Majority Leader of the Senate, and governors would suggest that the Supreme Court would need to back down, disappear, be dramatically changed, or the country might fall apart before we figure it out.
Better do something now than live through a 105-degree summer in a theocracy later.
The moral justification for this action — beyond the technical language in any document — is that an unelected body of judges appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote cannot rule. More legalistically, the US Constitution does not explicitly give the Supreme Court the right to judicial review. The fact that the principle of judicial review may have been tolerated until now does not mean that the precedent cannot be overturned: the court overturned precedents of 50, 70, 100, 200 years this week. The separation of church and state is more fundamental to the US Constitution than judicial review. Tactically, immediate direct action by the President is the only way to quickly end and effectively stop this coup now.
Judicial Review was shocking to the people of the 1780s. No colony in America, no English precedent, allowed a judge or group of judges to nulify a legislative decision prior to the US Constitution. Juries could rule a law unconstitutional in some colonies, but not judges. We can go back to that: abolish judicial review and let juries handle it. Twelve randomly-chosen citizens cannot be more wreckless and uneducated than the current panel of nine nitwits. Knowing that anyone might rule on a matter of constitutionality might also motivate the nation to improve our level of education generally.
Act quickly, surprise your opponents, and win. Shock them. Show them that you won’t take their shit. If someone had stood up to South Carolina on December 20, 1860 (when Buchanan was president) at the first succession instead of waiting until April 12, 1861 the Civil War would have been quicker. Don’t pussy foot around with a direct slap to democracy. Hit back, hard.
On April 27, 1861, Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus between Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia to give military authorities the necessary power to silence dissenters and rebels. He didn’t wait around and hope for the best.
Act now.
