The slide towards inevitable armed conflict can be seen from far away. I even predicted it a long ways out (See “The Rush-ians Are Coming, The Rush-ians Are Coming” December, 1994).  Now, a Federal Judge discusses the fundamental madness of this Supreme Court’s 100+ 5-4 majority, The Alter Boys:

Remembering Alexander Bickel’s passive virtues and the Hobby Lobby cases
RGK / Hercules and the umpire

In the Hobby Lobby cases, five male Justices of the Supreme Court, who are all members of the Catholic faith and who each were appointed by a President who hailed from the Republican party*, decided that a huge corporation, with thousands of employees and gargantuan revenues, was a “person” entitled to assert a religious objection to the Affordable Care Act’s contraception mandate because that corporation was “closely held” by family members. To the average person, the result looks stupid and smells worse…

A Nebraska federal judge’s [appointed by George HW Bush] blog talks about the creeping madness which consumes the Supreme Court.

Pope Leo XIII endorses his favorite wine,
a cocaine-laced brew of radical change

[* See my number one post of all time, “Catholic Bigotry Rides Again” 1 May 2009 @  7500 words — in which I argued that no one is so riven personally that one can neatly split their Constitutional views and their religious views, least of which were what I have now come to call “the Alter Boys” and was publicly bashed as “anti-Catholic” by First Things for my speech.

[Oh, as: in which I document how Pope Leo XIII CHANGED the Catholic Church’s stance on abortion, held for more than 13 centuries from the time of St. Augustine, while he was high on cocaine-laced wine. Oh, and how the Coke Pope™ also came up with “papal infallibility,” in the late 19th Century. The Alter Boys were mostly, arguably, appointed specifically to uphold the abortion prohibition based on the Coke Pope’s™ drug-induced doctrinal ravings, which, for 1300+ years had been remarkably similar to Roe v. Wade. Never mind the soupçon of minstrel-show racism involved from the new Klan GOP.]

Leo endorses his favorite cocaine-laced wine.

The judge continues:

To most people, the decision looks stupid ’cause corporations are not persons, all the legal mumbo jumbo notwithstanding. The decision looks misogynistic because the majority were all men. It looks partisan because all were appointed by a Republican. The decision looks religiously motivated because each member of the majority belongs to the Catholic church, and that religious organization is opposed to contraception. While “looks” don’t matter to the logic of the law (and I am not saying the Justices are actually motivated by such things), all of us know from experience that appearances matter to the public’s acceptance of the law.

And he offers this advice to the five justices of SCROTUS:

Next term is the time for the Supreme Court to go quiescent–this term and several past terms has proven that the Court is now causing more harm (division) to our democracy than good by deciding hot button cases that the Court has the power to avoid. As the kids say, it is time for the Court to stfu. [sic]

These days, ‘The Mystic Cords of Treason ….’

Yes, Hobby Lobby was an abomination. And the judge reminds the Court of the principle of least means:

The Hobby Lobby cases illustrate why the Court ought to care more about Alexander Bickel’s“passive virtues“–that is, not deciding highly controversial cases (most of the time) if the Court can avoid the dispute. What would have happened if the Supreme Court simply decided not to take the Hobby Lobby cases?  What harm would have befallen the nation? What harm would have befallen Hobby Lobby family members who would  have been free to express their religious beliefs as real persons? Had the Court sat on the sidelines, I don’t think any significant harm would have occurred….

In the lobby, before the Hobby

OK: I’ve quoted most of his post, and I urge you to read the whole (short) thing. Instead, I want to quote Abraham Lincoln in 1838 and 1858 in words that are not only eerily prescient for HIS time, but also for ours.

Abraham Lincoln’s famous “House divided” statement in said famous speech is now truer than it was in 1858. And 1838:

Abraham Lincoln’s Lyceum Address 1838:

At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it?– Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never!–All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

How current GOPS view Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln’s House Divided Address 1858:

In my opinion, it will not cease, until a crisis shall have been reached, and passed.

“A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.

I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided.

It will become all one thing or all the other.

Instead of slavery, add “imaginary beings invoking imaginary babies” and you pretty well have it. (Even though there are virtually no verses in their Holy Writ that decry abortion and some that actively promote it, per “Ghod”.)

Leo between snorts (1878-1903).

If you need to translate that last phrase, drink some wine and snort some cocaine and it ought to appear in all the glory that it did to the Coke Pope™ back in 1886.

And “states’ rights”?  Confederate and Libertarian ideology are virtually identical on this point (which is why there is a large overlap of Tea Party and Neoconfederate sympathies in the current Republican Confederate Party.

And, I promise Abraham Lincoln would have had none of it. But they continue to pretend that a coincidence of spelling equals “identity,” even though Lincoln’s horrible notions — federalism, the trans-continental railroad, the Homestead Act, Land Grant Colleges and equality for all male citizens, including the right to vote — are overtly rejected by the current Golem-version of the Grand Old Party.

I am happy to see ONE person of conscience on the Federal Bench decry the madness that is the Hobby Lobby decision.

Let’s see how long it takes for Congressional Republican Confederates to call for his impeachment.

There is blood on the road ahead. This blog no longer attempts to forestall it, but, rather, attempts to prepare you mentally and emotionally for it.

Oh, and HBO is doing a heretical “rapture” series. No Pope would affix his imprimatur on something that has been heresy since the Council of Nicea in 325 AD. But what the hell. The Nicene Creed doesn’t hold any water with current RepubliKKKlans, anyway.

You see, the (post-Nathan Bedford Forrest)  KKK have ALWAYS hated Catholics. The Old GOP was not much better.

Thomas Nast Anti-Catholic cartoon:  ‘The American River Ganges’
(Nast was not a KKK member, nor was Anti-Catholic “papist” bias
confined to the South. At the time of Pope Leo XIII it was widespread.

The GOP War on Drugs: This is your mind on drugs, unless, of course, you LIKE the stuff the cokehead came up with (then it’s OK):

This is your GOP on Pope Leo’s drugs. Any questions?

Courage.

========================

A  political observer for a quarter of a quarter-century more than a quarter-century, Hart Williams has a lively blog His Vorpal Sword. This is cross-posted from his blog.