Trump appointed three justices.

Obviously, the first seat was stolen from Obama and the Democrats. It was one of, if not the most significant uncaring power-grab in modern history, unprecedented. I will never understand why, after six months of Garland meeting Senators and no vote, Obama didn’t simply sign a presidential order that he found the Senate’s lack of “disapproval” to be tacit consent, thus fulfilling the Senate’s role of consenting to his pick (they didn’t vote it down) and ordering Garland to the Court. Garland could’ve walked over to the SCOTUS and asked to be shown to his office.

What was the Court going to do? Hear a lawsuit? That would’ve tied at 4-4, unless Garland didn’t recuse himself and voted (Justices seem to be doing that nowadays).

The next one was even worse because people strongly suspected that Kennedy was kicked out the door in some nefarious scheme involving Kennedy’s son, a banking executive at… Deutsche Bank, the only bank that lends to Trump and the only bank fined billions for taking Russian oligarch money. And that brought Kavanaugh in front of the Senate.

Everyone knew what was at stake, THE swing seat on the court. “Precedent on precedent,” Kavanaugh said, Roe was sacrosanct, established American law. He was stating the law correctly. He was also lying. But he said the right words and, Susan Collins being Susan Collins, said she believed him. Susan Collins believes anything the Republicans need her to believe at any given time. She will often have “concerns” but never a vote reflecting them.

Amy Coney-Barrett was a torpedo against Roe; everyone knew it. It was again stolen maliciously by McConnell, but everyone was so focused on beating Trump that her hearing isn’t as memorable.

But given that the Justices all sat there and told the Senate that Roe was the law, Stephen Colbert has the same question all of us should be asking and, the court no longer deserves the same sort of deference it once deserved. There should be a mechanism to sit these justices back down and answer Colbert’s question:

Stephen Colbert on SCOTUS.

“If these folks believe Roe was so egregiously decided, why didn’t they tell the senators during their confirmation hearings?

Because Americans support abortion at 80%. They knew if they were honest they wouldn’t get the job, so they lied.”

— Jane of the North (@JaneotN) May 15, 2022

Exactly. One of Alito’s first sentences states that Roe was egregiously decided from the start. Alito is smarter than every justice before him that ever voted on Roe.

They all knew they could lie and get on the court. They all knew that if they told the truth they probably would not. So they lied. And now there’s nothing anyone can do beyond impeachment which will never happen. It was all a little too easy and, surely, these justices are smart enough to have done the mental gymnastics required to assure themselves they didn’t lie. They lied. And they knew it at the time.

****

[email protected], @JasonMiciak, with Nicole Hickman