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Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Champion Of Gender Equality, Dies At 87
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the demure firebrand who in her 80s became a legal, cultural and feminist icon, died Friday. The Supreme Court announced her death, saying the cause was complications from metastatic cancer of the pancreas.
The court, in a statement, said Ginsburg died at her home in Washington surrounded by family. She was 87.
"Our nation has lost a justice of historic stature," Chief Justice John Roberts said. "We at the Supreme Court have lost a cherished colleague. Today we mourn but with confidence that future generations will remember Ruth Bader Ginsburg as we knew her, a tired and resolute champion of justice."
Architect of the legal fight for women's rights in the 1970s, Ginsburg subsequently served 27 years on the nation's highest court, becoming its most prominent member. Her death will inevitably set in motion what promises to be a nasty and tumultuous political battle over who will succeed her, and it thrusts the Supreme Court vacancy into the spotlight of the presidential campaign.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 19 2020, @01:55AM (1 child)
There were originally four different power bases in the US system: the three federal branches plus the states. Thanks to the War of Northern Aggression, the states were eliminated as a check on federal power and are now almost entirely mere administrative districts of the now national government. The states now dance to the tune of the federal piper to get that sweet, sweet federal funding.
The Congress originally had most of the power in the federal government, but with power comes responsibility, and responsibility might mean not being re-elected. So each Congress delegated more of its power to the other two branches, and also to the new power base that is the bureaucracy. The Founders thought each branch would jealously guard its power from the other two. They were wrong. Far easier for Congresscum to take the corporate bribes, er I mean campaign contributions, have the staff write whatever laws the corporations paid for, and spend all that cash on hookers and blow.
Power now lies nominally with the President and the Court(s), but the bureaucracy is always the big player, as they control most of what the President knows/sees, and if no court case ever gets brought up the judges can't do shit. All those non-profits that the bureaucrats bop off to in between their government gigs? Most of them are the ones who pay for court cases that might get up to the Supremes. Do you have enough money to get a case up to the Supreme Court? No, no you don't. Non-profits do. That (along with tax dodging) is what they're for.
I think that's what has constrained Trump the most. He knew (I hope) that he'd have to work with Congress and that judges wouldn't always judge his preferred way. I don't think he expected even most of the Republicans in Congress to hate him and not even have their staff work with him, and most of the judges to be Hawaii judges that just made shit up to rule against anything he tried. But most of all I think as a businessman he expected that the bureaucracy, or the executive branch's portion of it at least, to act like his employees and do what he told them to do. Nope. The bureaucracy does guard its power jealously.
So, those checks and balances? Gone, baby, gone.
When I was a kid, I often heard this kind of government we have (or used to have, or were supposed to have) referred to as "the American Experiment". Well, the experiment is over, and the results are in. It failed. Oh well... it was worth a shot. It's a shame it turned out this way.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 20 2020, @07:56PM
and America the country is gone too. We gave it away through greed and stupidity. The sooner Whites realize this, the better. We need to form an ethnostate, but first we have to deprogram all of our brainwashed White brothers and sisters.