Tag: Supreme Court

Oral Arguments and Severed Horse Heads: The Supreme Court and Birthright Citizenship

Yesterday the Supreme Court heard arguments in Trump v. Barbara whether Trump’s Executive Order stripping birthright citizenship from children of non-citizens was constitutional.  Every lower court hearing cases regarding the Order ruled that it was unquestionably unconstitutional. The arguments before the justices of our country’s highest court should have taken on the patina of well worn rituals and procedures. However, it was far from normal.

Last year, at an initial hearing before the Court, a majority of justices kept an injunction on the order in place, staying the implementation of Trump’s Order indefinitely.  The vote was 6-3.  Not shocking, given a radical core of conservative justices seem hell bent on overturning everything that smacks of small “l” liberal governance.  The Court could have left the appeals court in ruling in place, basically saying that the lower court’s ruling was sound.  They did not.  Instead, a least four justices voted to hear the case.

Yesterday, in an unprecedented move, Trump attended the oral arguments. His attendance, for all intents and purposes, was a direct attack on the separation of powers enshrined in our Constitution.   Trump did not stay for all of the arguments, leaving after the first hour.  His message sent, I think.  

Most of the justices, it seemed, were skeptical of the government’s argument that birthright citizenship should be limited.  The government’s argument hinged on the words “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” and the word “domicile” in the seminal 1898 Supreme Court ruling United States v. Wong Kim Ark.  Their arguments rehashes of earlier losing arguments.  This should be a slam dunk case, but it isn’t.

In a previous post, I predicted with despair that Trump and the government would prevail.  I thought perhaps I was wrong, and was heartened when the justices in a 6-3 vote kept the injunction in place.  That signaled the government would most likely not prevail in court.  Yet, I worried that at least four justices wanted to hear the case.  

This case should not be a nail biter.  It has been settled law for 128 years.  But with today’s Court consisting of a super majority of conservatives with a hard-core troika of ultra radical conservative justices, anything is possible.  

Enter Trump.  No sitting president has ever attended oral arguments at the Supreme Court. It is unseemly, and I think, an assault on the doctrine of the separation of powers.  His presence was like a dog pissing on a tree, marking its territory.  Trump was marking his Order and signaling to everyone, ‘do not rule against me and my Order.’ It was designed, I argue, to intimidate the justices that are on the fence, so to speak.  That is Barrett and Gorsuch.  Like the Godfather movie, Trump was the decapitated horse’s head laying at the foot of the bed.  A warning of bloody consequences. 

I would not be surprised that folks acting on Trump’s orders engage in a campaign of intimidation, influence, and ever terror against Barrett and Gorsuch in the coming weeks. He will use similar tactics that he has already used on his other perceived enemies.  His no holds barred attack on the Chair of the Federal Reserve is just one very recent example.  DOJ investigations, insinuations of wrongdoing, grand juries, threats of impeachment against other federal judges.  This will get nasty.

Even though many of the justices seemed skeptical in whole or in part of the government’s arguments; to include the Chief Justice Roberts, the majority opinion is far from settled.  The final vote is in doubt in my mind.  Congress abdicated to Trump.   Will the Supreme Court do so as well?   Surrendering the Judicial Branch to Trump, so that he can hang its stuffed head next to all the gold and gild bling in the Oval Office.   That is to be seen.

Break Glass in Emergency: Vote Yes by April 21 in Virginia’s Redistricting Referendum

If things were normal, which they are not, I would oppose returning the drawing of Virginia’s congressional district maps back to the state’s legislature, even temporarily.  America is in deep trouble, however. Democracy is in retreat; the country is ruled by decree out of the White House. Congress sits mute.  A President ruling from his gold encrusted throne threatens to “nationalize” the elections and seems indifferent to his paramilitary police brutalizing communities and shooting and killing citizens.

The Constitution – our written social contract as to how the government is organized and how power is shared – is shredded day-by-day by Trump.  Our representative in the 5th District, John McGuire just voted for the Save Act to make it harder for Americans to vote and agrees with Trump’s call for Republicans to nationalize the vote, or at the least, has not repudiated Trump’s demand.  He thinks he works for Trump and not we the people of his district.  It is time to fight back, it is time to b break the glass because there is a constitutional emergency.

The fastest and best way to check Trump’s unchecked power is by electing Democrats to the House of Representatives – the people’s house – and the senate.  Sensing a coming defeat this November and a loss of a Republican majority in the House of Representatives, Trump demanded that red states redraw their congressional districts, immediately.  If you can’t win fair and square, cheat, lie, and steal is this administration’s mantra.

Texas obliged instantly, without consulting their people.  Another example of rule by dictate far too common in red states.  At least the people of California had a choice whether to redistrict (they voted ‘yes’ this past November).  We the people of Virginia will have our chance to give voice to whether we redistrict.  That vote is April 21.  Early voting starts March 3.   

Democrats did not ask for this redistricting fight, but Trump threw down the gauntlet.  We the people of Virginia must take drastic steps to reclaim sovereignty or lose our democracy to one-party rule and dictatorship. 

Vote YES to temporarily redistrict Virginia’s congressional seats.  

For those constitutional law geeks like me, below are some Frequently Asked Question:

How many other states are redistricting (or counter redistricting) based on Trump’s outrageous demand?

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, five states have already redistricted (Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, California); A number of states have introduced legislation to redistrict (Maryland, South Carolina, Washington, and Virginia):  Florida is in the process of adopting legislation with additional states contemplating redistricting, but awaiting state court decisions (Alabama, Louisiana, North Dakota, and Wisconsin).  Other states have already moved forward and many plan to do so.  Indiana rejected Trump’s redistricting demand.

Why does Virginia need a vote on whether to redistrict its congressional districts?

In November 2020, Virginians voted overwhelming (66 percent) to amend the state’s constitution to appoint a 16-member bipartisan commission to draw Virginia’s congressional districts.  Virginia is one of about a dozen states that have independent commissions to draw congressional maps.  A majority (29) still permit their state legislatures to draw congressional districts.  The referendum vote in April is the only constitutionally sanctioned method to temporarily amend our state constitution so that the Generally Assembly can redraw Virginia’s congressional districts.  

Why hasn’t the Supreme Court ruled that partisan redistricting is unconstitutional?

They did rule, by not ruling.  They took the easy way out and said it was out of their hands, that there were no ‘judicially discoverable’ or ‘manageable standards’ to adjudicate claims of unconstitutionally drawn districts, with one exception, drawing districts to favor white voters (e.g., diluting concentrations of black or brown voices into majority white districts).

A brief recent history:  In 1986, the Supreme Court ruled that the federal courts could hear challenges to how congressional districts were drawn, however, the court offered no standards.  Some years later in 2004, the Supreme Court ruled there were no “judicially discoverable or manageable standards.”  The conservative court inches it way toward legalizing partisan gerrymandering.

In 2019, in Rucho v. Common Cause, the Supreme court ruled that federal courts could not hear claims of partisan gerrymandering because they – the court — could not articulate any standard by which to judge partisan gerrymandering.  Out of very thin air, they could invent the legal fiction that President Trump is immune from crimes committed for official acts, but these Harvard and Yale legal brains are damned clueless as to how to fix the scourge of gerrymandering.  This legal punt basically legalizes partisan gerrymandering no matter how egregious, at least at the federal court level.  State courts can still hear cases, nonetheless.

To make matters worse, the Rucho decision gave states a “partisan” get-out-of- constitutional jail card for race-based gerrymandering.  In 2024, South Carolina drew racially gerrymandered congressional districts.  The South Carolina NAACP sued.  South Carolian argued it was not racial gerrymandering, but ‘partisan’ gerrymandering.  In a 6 to 3 decision, the Supreme Court agreed with South Carolina and let the racially drawn maps stand.

After Texas redrew its congressional districts after Trump requested it do so, The League of United Latin American Citizens sued.  A federal district court, after 9 days of testimony and review of thousands of documents, concluded that Texas illegally redrew the congressional districts based on race.  In a shadow docket ruling, however, the Supreme Court, overturned the district court and said Texas could use the newly drawn maps.  

The reasons given by the Supreme Court’s were: 1) The District Court failed to “honor the presumption of legislative good faith;” 2) The District Court did not produce a viable alternative map; 3) It was too close to the election to redraw the redrawn congressional maps.   My only response:  What the fuck!  I did not know there was a ‘legislative good faith’ exemption to unconstitutional laws.

So, there you have it.  Go out and vote. And vote Yes.  

“Guards of this Kind:” A Brief History of the Original Intent of Madison’s Second Amendment.

New York Times Reporter: “Do you see any checks on your power….”

Donald Trump:  “Yeah, there is one thing.  My own morality.  My own mind.  It’s the only thing that can stop me.”

No Mr. President, we the people can stop you.

What is happening in America is not normal.   When a president sitting in the White House, stewing in his own grievances and thirst for vengeance and proclivity to spectacle, says he is only bound by his “morality,” we as a nation are in deep trouble.  As is the world.

I know this essay’s title may make some folks uncomfortable, but please bear with me (yes, a pun). I am self-aware enough to understand that invoking the Second Amendment can be provocative. I struggled while writing this essay on a number of levels. First, is that it even had to be written. Given the words and actions of Trump, I feel it is necessary. On another level, I don’t want to be interpreted as calling for armed revolt. I do not want that. That would be insane.

My whole adult life was living, working, or traveling to conflict and war zones, failed and failing states, police states. I know that option to be unacceptable. On a third level, I feel too many Americans are indifferent or distracted or worn. down and just don’t give a shit, that only some people are impacted and they will never by touched. Inevitably, in a dictatorship, even it you agree with the dictator now, you will be touched and your soul will be crushed eventually as you tire of being told what to watch, what to read, and what to think. Because you are reading this, you know I hit the publish button.

I want to lay out my thoughts on the limits of power of the central government and what States can do once Trump and federal government blows past those limits.  The origin and intent of the Second Amendment figures prominently in any discourse about how to create “guards” to a tyrannical central government.

Blue states continue to get pounded by the Trump administration.  It routinely withholds funds from blue states as punishment for resisting his policies.  Incongruously, it is the blue states that provide most tax raised monies to the federal government, with red states getting more federal tax dollars in terms of spending than they actually put in. In essence, Trump is super charging the transfer of wealth from blue to red states.  Oh, the irony.

Trump targets blue states and cities with mass deployments of militarized immigration agents as punishment for deigning to treat migrants as human beings.  As the result of protests against these deployments, Trump federalized and deployed national guard units without traditional requests from state governors, and in all instances in blue states, against the wishes of the governor and the majority of the state’s peoples, to quell, he alleges, widespread violence, but we know it is to smother the people’s voices.  

Now he is deploying hundreds of additional Homeland Security agents to investigate alleged fraud in Minnesota’s social safety net programs, according to DHS’s secretary.  A calculated and chilling response to the protests over the killing of a woman by an ICE agent and the states demand to be included in the investigation of the homicide of Renee Good.  Incongruously, Trump condemns the death of protestors in Iran, but claims an American protestor shot and killed by an ICE agent was a domestic terrorist, and, intoned, deserved to die.  

Hey, Ayatollah in Iran.  News Flash:  Just rebrand Iranian protestors as deranged left wing domestic terrorists.  Then you are good to go.

This is what despots do.  They flood the streets with thugs and faceless paramilitaries and then sanction investigations to cover up murders. Nazis Germany’s Brown Shirts of the past are being reborn as combat fatigue wearing ICE agents.

This is what he will do to Virginia now that we will have a democratic governor and a state legislature controlled by democrats.  Expect payback with canceled programs, stopped federal grants, and deployments of Homeland Security agents to intimidate citizens.

The ability of a state to resist a tyrannical central government is how the Second Amendment was born.

What became the Second Amendment was not intended as an individual right to bear arms but a collective right of a state to bear arms to maintain its’ citizens inalienable rights.  Lord Dunmore, the English Governor of Virginia’s, attempt to seize the militias’ arms in Williamsburg, Virginia, at the outset of America’s first civil war was still fresh in the mind of the founding generation.  

It never crossed the minds of folks back then that the constitution needed to enumerate the right to own firearms for defense or hunting at the federal level.  Gun ownership – mostly muskets — was so ubiquitous and a traditional right in the colonies that enumerating the right would be ridiculous.  States had the right to regulate firearms and did so, most notably restricting possession primarily to whites.  

The Second Amendment was intended as a state’s right to maintain armed militias for their defense against a tyrannical central government.  It was a meant as bulwark of self defense against a large standing Army used by the central government to impose its will on a state or states. If you follow how the language of the amendment changed and unfolded, I think one can get a sense of what the intent was and how the amendment was seen and understood within a broader conception of constitutionalism, tradition, common law, and gun possession in the early republic.

On June 8, 1789, James Madison introduced nine propositions or resolutions for amending the Constitution. From these propositions the House of Representatives would derive 17 amendments, of which, ten would eventually become the Bill of Rights. Way down the list, buried in proposition four, after statements about religious freedom, freedom of speech and press, the right to peaceable assembly and petitioning for redressing of grievances, Madison, proposed what would become the second amendment.

The Annals of Congress contains the record of the running debates surrounding the amendments to the Constitution and reflect contemporaneous conceptions of the meanings of these amendments, and how they changed over the debates. Madison, borrowing from the other state constitutions and even the 1689 English Bill of Rights, proposed the following language regarding the right to bear arms (House Records, pp. 451-452):

“The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country: but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person.”

Madison’s propositions did not gain much traction in Congress. Members of Congress were more concerned with the mechanics of setting up a functioning government. The debates preceding and surrounding the discussions on the proposed amendments centered on funding mechanisms and structure of the various executive departments being contemplated. Madison nonetheless persisted, and on July 21 requested further consideration of the amendments. After “desultory” conversation on the amendments, they were referred to a committee of eleven, which included Madison.

Just short of a month later, the committee of eleven finished their work on the proposed amendments and presented them to the House of Representatives on August 17. Madison’s language on bearing arms was revised and read:

“A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, being the best security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; but no person religiously scrupulous shall be compelled to bear arms (House Records, p.778)

Eldridge Gerry of Massachusetts, a veteran of the constitutional convention in Philadelphia in 1787, and who was one of three delegates who refused to sign the Constitution at the end of the convention, led the debate regarding the amendment to bear arms. His remarks are crucial, I think to understanding, the intent of this amendment. He states:

“This declaration of rights, I take it, is intended to secure the people against the mal-administration of the Government; if we could suppose that, in all cases, the rights of the people would be attended to, the occasion for guards of this kind would be removed (p. 778).”

Not one person during the debate contradicted or challenged Gerry’s assertion, which seems to state that the ability to keep and bear arms referred to the people’s ability to form militias as a collective defense against a tyrannical central government. The remainder of the debate that day on this amendment surrounded primarily the question of religious scruples and service in the militia.

After more “desultory” (I love that word) conversation, 17 proposed amendments to the Constitution were sent to the Senate on August 24. The bearing arms amendment was number 5 and read after some minor tweaking (Senate record, pp. 63-64):

“A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, being the best security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed, but no one religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person.”

On September 4, the senate, whose records of debate are not as detailed as the House’s records of debate, showed that senators objected to a number of the amendments, but without comment as to why. “On the motion to adopt the fifth article of the amendments proposed by the House of Representatives, amended to read as followeth: ‘a well regulated militia, being the best security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed:’ It passed in the affirmative” (Senate Record, p. 71).

So, there you have it, a brief but spectacular history of the origin of the Second Amendment.

Trump’s advisor Stephen Miller’s call to abandon America’s social contract and resort to a ‘state of nature’ where brute force is the first and only response should scare the shit out Americans.  This new dogma of ‘power, strength, and violence’ will fundamentally rewrite the world order but also crush America’s social contract between the people and the government:  the annihilation of the separation of powers, the demise of a democratic central government, and the eradication of shared sovereignty between the states and the central government.  That, good reader, is why we have “guards of this kind,” the Second Amendment. 

Let me be clear, I am not calling for armed revolt or violence against our central government or secession, I still believe in the vote and the power of the American people to reign in Trump.  But as Congress and the Supreme Court not only fail to curtail Trump’s excesses, and in fact enable him, what are the people to do?  

States are the peoples last bulwark against Trump and a despotic central government.  A new pposition is rising, however.   Not from spineless democratic leaders like Schumer, but from Republicans.  Republican Senators that voted to restrain Trump’s war powers received threatening profanity laced phone calls by Trump.  A sign he is losing control and trying to bully folks back into line.

What I ask is that our new, incoming governor, think long and hard about how to deal with an increasingly authoritarian and despotic central government that continues to ratchet up the level of violence against the people in targeted states and cities – maladministration as Eldridge Gerry put it.  The governor needs to develop contingency plans on when and how to resist, to include using the National Guard to defend our natural and inalienable rights as a free people of Virginia.  

It seems to me America cannot long remain a nation if Trump puts his boot on the neck of blue states while red states happily bend the knee to the tyrant in the White House. Time to mobilize once again, stay engaged, and get family and friends to vote this November.

Yes, Virginia, There is a Trump Clause

I am damned angry.  The democrats once again appear prepared to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory on promises of talks later. Coming off great results in Virginia and New Jersey and California in last week’s elections with national consequences, it did not take long for the Democrats to deflate like a pricked ballon once again at the national level.

My first thoughts on hearing a number of Democrats defecting on the shutdown showdown:  Mother Fuckers!  (not really, it was longer and more expressive) Why, after 40 days of standing up to, and resisting Trump and his autocratic agenda, did Democrats cave on their supposed principles?  Why?  Senator Kaine, what were you thinking?

You claimed to stand fast with American workers who were going to get slammed with extreme health insurance premium increases because subsidies were cut by Trump’s big, beautiful bill.  You lobbed the health insurance ball firmly into the Republicans court — who control the House, the Senate, the White House, and the Supreme Court — in order to extend the subsidies, hoping to provoke a compromise.  They held fast.  

In this standoff, the only power left to the Democrats was solidarity and the senate filibuster to force negotiations.  But no, you give up that last bastion of protecting minority rights in Congress to force negotiations and compromise.  So, after 40 days you have nothing to show if you cave in.

You gave up the two hallmarks of democracy with a half assed fight. Can you be trusted to fight Trump’s trespasses when he invokes the insurrection act or martial law or challenges the results of the 2026 mid-terms; to fight for the working and middle classes?  I think you will be halfway to the hills with your tail between your legs, that’s what I think, leaving state and local democrats holding the proverbial bag of shit.

No wonder Democrats in national polls  aren’t trusted to do the right thing at the national level.  The public, given the asymmetric power relationship in Congress, blamed the Republicans for the shutdown and associated pain. I think virtually overnight that blame will shift to you. 

I supported the principled stand on health care subsidies, but I also thought it was about resisting Trump’s autocratic gains, protecting the rule of law, and our constitutional system of checks and balances.  Apparently not.   You now own the shutdown. For taking a stand, you were essentially unwilling and incapable of following through on.  

Come on man, get some balls, some chutzpa, some spine.  Why all the pain and suffering and angst endured by millions when you collapse like a mud hut in a rainstorm?  All for promises of future talks in December, exchanging your principles for a bag of magical beans.  The Republicans have chutzpa at least. They lie to the Supreme Court that they don’t have the cash to pay out full SNAP benefits yet a day or two later, after the Court agrees with Trump, Trump announces taxpayers will get $2000 each from a so called tariff divided. What don’t you get about them? Did you not read the fine print under the Trump Clause?

Trump Clause:  Any and all agreements made with Donald Trump are conditional, subject to change, lies, misrepresentations, and omissions.  You take his word at your own peril and risk.

I don’t know whether this round of spending bills will pass the hurdles before it, but I do predict that should the spending bills pass to reopen the government, that promise to have December talks to extend the ACA subsidies will vanish like a cheese burger on Trump’s lips.  The House and Senate will adjourn without passing the subsidy bill, and you know it.  The Republicans have stolen Christmas from millions of Americans and you are his accessory after the fact if you give in. 

In Congress, July 4, 1776

It is good now and then to read some of our founding documents. The Declaration of Independence is a good place to start as any. It basically is two documents. The first part is a declarative statement that both King and Parliament have, and continued to, violate the the fundamental and inalienable rights bequeathed to Englishmen since time immemorial. Such trespasses forced the colonists, so they wrote, to form a new government to secure their rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The second part is a jeremiad of those violations. Of the 27 listed grievances, our president has also committed many of these same trespasses. These include, (1) obstructing the administration of justice; (2) he has attempted to make judges dependent upon him; (3) deployed members of our “standing army” among us in times of peace; (4) he is attempting to render the military independent of and superior to Congress; (5) he has threatened to send Americans overseas to serve time in foreign jails for pretended offenses; (6) for cutting off our trade with the world with illegal tariffs; (7) of imposing taxes on us without our consent (illegal tariffs); (8) depriving many inhabitants of due process virtually suspending habeas corpus; (9) and threatens weekly, if not daily, to declare certain cities out of his protection and insinuate waging war against them.

About 30 percent of the fundamental rights listed by our revolutionary founders they claimed the King and Parliament violated are the same inalienable rights Trump is violating, attempting to violate, or wants to violate. To this list of violations, we can add end birthright citizenship; shutdown the government; hijacking the enumerated rights of Congress; the president not subject to criminal jurisdiction (a King).

What is at stake is not just our Constitution — our written framework of our government and how it should function to protect our inalienable rights — but to the unwritten fundamental rights and laws that make up our social compact with our government. These rights go back to not only the Magna Carta and the English Bill of Rights, but to the traditions, customs, and common law of England. They predate our Constitution, Bill of Rights, and other constitutional amendments. Our Constitution and Bill of Rights don’t grant us these rights, they are an acknowledgment of the collective rights we inalienable have had since time immemorial. Trump has no right to deny or suppress them and he must be resisted.

The Declaration of Independence

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

The Strange Death of Liberal Congress (Small l)

 Elected assemblies were no stranger to colonial Americans before the Revolution.  Virginia’s General Assembly first meet in 1619.  The American colonies’ long experiences with representative assemblies informed the debate on the creation of our national government as expressed in our Constitution.

The Constitution created three separate and equal branches:  Executive, Judicial, and Legislative.  The legislative branch was divided into two.  A House of Representatives, directly elected by the people every two years, and a Senate.  The Senators were not elected by the folks of their states but picked by state legislators.  This changed in 1913 — in an age of reform after Gilded Age excesses when ‘robber barons’ (proto-tech bros) bought and sold senators – when the 17th Amendment was adopted.  This amendment made senators directly elected and accountable to the people of their various states. 

As the drafters of the Constitution debated structure of the national legislature, it is clear many mistrusted rule by the masses.  The solution was another level of checks and balances:  A divided Congress.   The House was meant to represent the hot and passionate voice of the people, hence the two-year election cycle.  The Senate was meant to temper and cool the passions of the people, hence the six-year terms.  A ying-yang type of thing. 

In its time, it was a liberal creation (small l).  A directly elected national assembly rare.  Although one must add a huge asterisk to that claim as suffrage was primarily reserved for men who owned property, and in many instances in the early republic to white men only.  Eventually the franchise did expand, with women being the last added. As a side note, I should comment that white immigrant men could and did vote in national elections as voting rights were not tied to citizenship until well into to the 19th century.   Many states permitted immigrants the right to vote into the early 20th century.  The nationalism of the post-world war I era ended that practice.

The enumerated duties of Congress were listed in the Constitution, but, it’s primary duty was a check on the power of President (king) — in the liberal tradition of Great Britian since the Glorious Revolution of 1689.  As such, the list of congressional powers was long and gave congress the power to declare war, the power of the purse, the regulation of the militia and Army, the power to regulate domestic and foreign trade, to list a few.  For the Senate, the power to ratify treaties and confirm presidential nominees to high office was added.  

This system basically worked for close to 236 years, until it didn’t.  It’s not the structure.  Our political party system is fatally broken.  You need two parties, not one party and one cult lead by a messianic Daddy Trump.

Congress is dead.  Long live Trump.  

A postmortem would reveal the cause of death as neglect followed by blunt force trauma.  The manner of death?  Democracide.

 Et Tu, Johnson and Thune?  Speaker Mike Johnson and senate majority leader John Thune have murdered Congress, finishing the job started by Mitch McConnell.   Johnson won’t even call the House back into session and Thune has attached himself to Trump’s scrotum like a sucker fish attaches itself to a shark. This week Sec Def Hegseth severely constrained congressional oversight by severing most routine formal and informal discourse between congress and the Defense Department and one trillion dollars in spending.  

Trump literally shits on the people in his AI generated fantasies and Congress defends him. He frequently moves money without congressional official approval and routinely uses rescission to ignore legislative funding bills.  In short, Congress ceded most of its enumerated powers to Trump.  Even the act of declaring war has been ceded, permitting Trump to order extra judicial killings on the high seas.  In the old days we called that piracy.  Congress is dead in name. 

The Supreme Court is the undertaker.

I have no concluding paragraph.  What is there left to say any more?  The phrases “that’s illegal” or “that’s unconstitutional” are deader than a door nail in a post law and order America. Might as well stop using them as they are as useless as Congress and a spittoon full of spit.

Where Have our Better Angels Gone? Four murders, four Americas

“The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely, they will be, by the better angels of our nature”

Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address

George Floyd, Brian Thompson, Melissa Hortman, and Charlie Kirk were murdered.  Yet, how America responded writ large to these individual murders is a telling insight into today’s divisions in America, of who has political capital, the power to weld it, and importantly, who lacks it.  

Murder is not unusual in America. In 1991, for every 100K Americans there were almost 11 murders.  By 2014 that number dropped to about 5 per 100K.  In 2024 that number was relatively the same after a pandemic spike in 2020 of 7 per 100k.  Most were gun related murders, averaging about 17K to 18K per year.  The leading cause of death of kids under 18 in America is gun violence.  As a nation we offer them prayers, for a select few, we fight over their deaths.

It is not surprising then, that three of the four persons mentioned above were shot to death.  Floyd’s death was unusual, a prolonged public spectacle when a police officer used a knee to compress Floyd’s neck for a prolonged period on a busy street, in broad daylight ,while two other police officers stood by, and witnesses filmed the unfolding murder while pleading to not hurt him.

Today, I am not concerned with their manner of death but with American’s reaction to them.  

In 2020, George Floyd’s murder sparked nationwide protests over policing practices and culture in America and the disproportionate killing of black men by police officers; along with other issues of mass incarceration and disparate treatment by the justice system.  The Black Lives Matter movement emerged from these protests.  Backlash was immediate.  Conservative media outlets pointed to Floyd’s criminal record or his alleged drug use to exculpate the police officer’s actions.  

Despite the backlash, some reforms did occur at local and state levels, but not at the federal level.  Today, physical representations of that protest movement that pushed for nationwide police reform are literally being bulldozed.  In March of this year, the Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington DC was torn up and paved over after pressure from President Trump.  

In 2024, Brian Thompson, the CEO of the major health insurance company United Healthcare, was gunned down in midtown Manhattan in the early morning hours by a lone gunman.  Unlike most murders, it garnered national attention.  After a five-day manhunt the alleged shooter was arrested.  Again, unlike most murders, the shooter became something of a social media folk hero, a modern-day Clyde of Bonnie and Clyde Fame.  He even was given the nickname ‘the adjuster.’  This reflected deep anger by everyday Americans on both side of the aisle against health insurance corporate bureaucracy and greed.  Not much empathy for Thompson or his family.

In June 2025, Melissa Hortman, Minnesota’s state legislatures House Speaker, and her husband were gunned downed at their home by a lone gunman.  The gunman also shot two others at another home.  The nation was stunned and shocked by these politically motivated killings and shootings.  However, the right-wing and President Trump unfortunately decided to use the killings to score political points.  Attacking Minnesota’s Governor Walz, a political opponent who ran against him on Kamal Harris’s ticket, Trump called him “wacked out Walz” and refused to call him to offer condolences, saying it would be a “waste of time.”  Some on the right said the killer was a ‘Marxist.’ Elon Musk blamed the “far left” for the shooting.

For her and her husband, no reforms, no National Day of Mourning, no flag at half-staff, no White House rage at a political killing.  The other day, when asked about the double standard of ordering the lowering of the flag for Kirk but not Hortman, Trump, whose better angels are dead or deported, responded that he “wasn’t familiar” with the Minnesota shooting.  

On September 10, Charlie Kirk, a right-wing activist and influencer, was shot to death at an event at Utah Vallery University by a lone gunman.  Shock once again swept the country.  National leaders on the left expressed near universal regret and sadness.   The right expressed near universal outrage and anger.  Over the past week, that rage and anger grew, it seemed.  On the right, vengeance was promised and the White House vowed to investigate far left networks or groups for the Kirk killing, without evidence of a conspiracy.  

Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, who has already called the Democratic Party a terrorist organization, vowed to “identify, disrupt, eliminate and destroy this network.”   The Justice Department said it was going to investigate “hate speech,” although the Attorney General did back track after criticism.  Nonetheless, calls to criminally investigate the Soros organization and the Ford Foundation as terrorist funders were made.  Even labelling some domestic left leaning groups ‘terrorist organizations” was floated, to include by Trump, who said he wouldn’t mind appending the terrorist label to Antifa.  Antifa has no known organization to which to attach it to.  It’s more idea than organization.  

The Pentagon vowed firings and crack downs on posts deemed critical of Kirk or celebratory or his death. The Department of State also vowed a crackdown on visa holders who criticize Kirk or celebrate his death.  I don’t recall similar vows when Representative Hortman and her husband were killed.   

Elon Musk in a video played at a far-right protest in England said, “We either fight back or die.”  And in a post, demanded the arrest of one rapper for criticizing Kirk and accused universities of “programming people to murder.”  Some right-wing social media called for mass arrests and even civil war. 

It’s one thing for social media influencers, cranks and crackpots, and fringe elements to threaten and intimidate and engage in conspiracy theory spin.  It is completely another thing for senior government officials to threaten vengeance and engage in conspiracy theories while calling for the extirpation of left leaning speech and organizations. Is the criminalization of dissent coming in a forthcoming executive order?

In an example of our government’s authoritarian shift,  yesterday ABC cancelled Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night comedy show after threats by the Chair of the Federal Communication Commission to pull licensees after Kimmel made remarks about the Kirk’s killer’s political affiliation.  Meanwhile, Fox News host Brian Kilmeade said on-air last week that mentally ill homeless people should be executed.  His co-hosts offered no rebuttal.  No threats from the FCC to cancel licenses for advocating mass executions. Another example of our authoritarian government’s willingness to control speech of those that do not conform to the governments messaging.  

So, here we are.  Four murders, four different reactions, four different Americas it seems.  I do not want to flatten or simplify the reactions to the murders because there were many individual and collective responses by a broad range of folks, some good, some bad, some ugly.  But as a nation, we have struggled to find common ground or cause over politically motivated killings because we now instinctively split into our respective camps, which increasingly aren’t ideological – like a working-class consciousness — but ones based on race and religion.  80 percent of Trump voters were white.  

It is clear we are now led by a sectarian national government, a government increasingly narrow-minded and protective of ‘tribal’ affiliations.  Kirk was the personification of this sectarianism and white Christian nationalist identity politics for young Americans, young American men in particular. This white Christian nationalism movement dominates our national government.  

Kirk didn’t deserve a violent death for his racist commentary, trans bigotry, or anti-Islam sentiment.  However odious someone’s speech may be, they are engaging in speech protected by the First Amendment.  We must disagree through discourse and words, not violence and bullets.  Unfortunately, our government seems to have abandoned this principle and is playing favorites as to who has the right to speak freely without fear of government discipline and punishment.

How then, as a nation, can we find common cause and ground to express our views openly and without fear of retaliation when even our government has abandoned the principle of free speech, plays favorites?  Can we ever find that common ground as a nation, bring out our better angels?

It’s not coincidental that I end I began this essay with a quote from President Abraham Lincoln’ first inaugural address.  He too died from a cowardly assassin’s bullet. He spoke these words when secessionist war clouds threatened America over an intractable issue:  slavery.  I think as a nation we are at a similar inflection point over a myriad of seemingly intractable issues.  

Liberty’s Chrysalis

“The love of power is natural; it is insatiable; almost constantly whetted; and never cloy’d by possession.”

Henry Saint John, 1st Viscount of Bolingbroke

This spring my wife and I planted a small rain garden.  The plantings included several swamp milkweeds, the preferred plant for Monarchs to lay their eggs on.  It’s Latin name is Asclepias incarnata for the serious gardeners out there.  The other day, to our delight, we discovered a dozen monarch caterpillars denuding the milkweeds.  

It took several days for them to consume every leaf.  Fully fueled with toxic bitterness and relatively immune from predation, they slowly wandered off to other plants, leaving the bare stalks of the milkweed as testament to their presence.  One by one they moved on, rambling off into the garden seeking leaves or branches to safely transform into chrysalises.  

Within several days of the caterpillar migration, we spotted two bright green chrysalises hanging under leaves.  A third caterpillar wasn’t quite there yet. We hope that within 14 days, given the mild weather, the caterpillars will be reborn as butterflies.  A well-tended garden brings unexpected joys.

The discovery of the caterpillars reminded me of the words of Henry Saint John, that liberty is like a tender plant.  He penned these words close to 300 years ago and the metaphor could not be more relevant in our time: “liberty is a tender plant which will not flourish unless the genius of the soil be proper for it; nor will any soil continue to be so long, which is not cultivated with incessant care.”  

He wrote these words in the early 18th century, a time of upheaval in England: political factions vying for power in a deadly struggle.  He didn’t always choose wisely, backing the Stuart’s claim to the crown and the ensuing Jacobite Rebellion, ending up in exile in France for some time.  He is most famous, I think, for his essay “The Idea of a Patriot King,” arguing that a King should be above faction.

This idea of a King above faction is important in our own history. It informed how Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and John Quincy Adams saw the presidency.  A president above faction.  They tried mightily to be above faction, not always successfully, however.  Andrew Jackson threw the notion of a patriot president out a White House window along with the contents of a chamber pot.   

Today, we are ruled by an unsound and troubled president hell bent on hyper factionalizing our country, resorting to violence and armed soldiers patrolling city streets.   He has taken the notion of faction to new extremes in America, not seen since the late 1850s.   This includes sending the military to occupy blue cities to show his political muscle;  flaunting the rule of law; criminally investigating critics; ruling solely by dictate; musing publicly about being a dictator; rewriting our history; engaging in extrajudicial killings on the high seas off Venezuela; and setting the stage to nullify next year’s mid-term election results unfavorable to him.

Our garden of democracy needs tending.  And damn quickly.  

We must steadfastly feed and nourish our democracy.  Stay informed in the face of daily trespassing against our liberty.  Although in today’s world where most Americans get their ‘news’ through social media, ‘informed’ is perhaps obsolete.  There still are reliable news sources out there.  Social media is not one of them.  Social media is an avalanche of computer driven feeds designed to elicit clicks, rage, and profit.  Curate your news sources. Go old fashioned and read books, lots of them.  The more you read, the more you realize how little you actually know about things you thought you knew a great deal about. That’s a good thing.

We must clear out the authoritarian weeds that plague our garden of democracy.  We must elect leaders that reflect our values and are in tune with today’s generation and willing to fight.  The continual reelection of octogenarians does the party no good.  

We must go to the polls this November and elect Abigail Spanberger governor and weed out the noxious plants occupying Virginia’s governor’s mansion.  We must not just elect her but elect her in a historical landslide. We don’t want to become an autocratic state like Texas or Florida. 

We must seed our garden of democracy with plants that are robust and acclimated to our current political reality:  An opposition party bent on one-party authoritarian rule.  We can do that by supporting new faces and ideas in the Democratic party at all levels.  Starting with David Rogers who is running for the Mineral seat in our local board of supervisors.

We must amend the soil of our garden.  Get friends and family to register to vote, get them to the polls on election days.  Attend rallies or local meetings.  Donate to candidates you support.  If you can, canvas for that candidate. Volunteer with the Louisa Democrats.

We must not only resist the orange piped piper of Mar-a-Lago but fight him at every junction.  Write or call your representatives, write the Supreme Court Justices, write our governor.  Tell them your story and how you are impacted by Trump’s dangerous and illegal actions.  That food, housing, and healthcare will be unaffordable and unattainable once the full impact of Trump’s tariffs, deportation of farm and food processing workers, and regressive taxes are felt.   

Plant a garden an act of subversion against Trump’s war on climate science.  Whether you have only a south facing front door stoop, a small balcony, or quarter acre, or ten acres, plant a garden in the dirt or in pots.  Every plant you grow feeds or houses an insect or animal and soaks up carbon.  Get radical and grow a victory garden.

Our garden of democracy is in big trouble, but with our incessant care and nourishment our democracy can flourish once again.  Together we must tend the garden of democracy and create the space and time to protect and nurture liberty’s chrysalis from Trump’s insatiable drive to possess absolute power. 

Creeping Normalcy: America’s Long Slide to Autocracy?

Using alleged claims of ‘blood thirsty criminals’ running rampant as a pretext, in an extraordinary move Daddy Trump virtually seized the Federal District this week.  Is it another deliberative act of incrementally normalizing authoritarian behavior and a conspicuous display of white supremacy.

It is a symbolic military occupation of the nation’s capital.  Deploying 800 (maybe a 1000) guardsmen and taking control of the Metropolitan Police Department is more symbol than practical, but a dangerous one, nonetheless.   The capital is the heart of our democracy and conspicuous displays of military power at checkpoints and patrols smacks of authoritarianism.  But in a week or two, it will be normalized, like the deployment of National Guard troops and Marines in the heart of Los Angeles.  

In addition to the deployment of DC national guardsmen, the Pentagon announced plans today to increase the readiness of National Guard units to deploy forces to contain civil unrest. They call them Quick Reaction forces, which you normally find in combat zones.  Why I ask, when there is no civil unrest, does the pentagon need to stand up National Guard quick reaction forces?  Is this foreshadowing? Perhaps Trump plans some actions that would provoke civil unrest.  Like declaring martial law in blue states.

It is also a conspicuous display of white supremacy.  Last week the White House announced that two statues of confederates removed several years ago will be reinstalled in the district.  It is not coincidental, I believe, that he juxtaposed announcements of the return of symbols of white supremacy with an out-of-control criminal element in a District ruled primarily by elected African Americans.   Weekly it seems, the Trump administration continues to normalize white governance and supremacy.

The takeover of the capital must be understood in the context to other incremental actions by the president and his regime.  These recent actions follow weeks of an agitated Trump going on rants about treasonous presidents and former cabinet officials.  Histrionics that seem more likely to come out the mouth of a tweaked-out meth head than a president.   

Aiding him is a Justice Department that no longer pretends to wear the mantle of independence, creeping ever closer to Stasi-like policing:  purges, investigating political opponents, grand jury inquests against state’s attorneys and independent counsels that investigated Trumps varied criminal acts, and flipping civil rights investigations on their heads.  Even the Department of Labor is not immune from purges as the head of Bureau of Labor Statistics was fired by Trump after a jobs report that showed dismal growth.    

Three in the morning tweets from Daddy Trump alleging criminal mischief by his political enemies are now normalized behavior – endless fodder for late night comedy no doubt– when in fact they are disturbing displays of Trump’s unstable state of mind.   They invariable result in leaders at the Justice Department and FBI to order criminal inquiry’s days later.  This is how authoritarians do business and it’s become normal.  That the Justice Department, FBI, and Department of Homeland Security are morphing into Trump’s personal praetorian guard should scare the crap out of Americans.  They are loyal to him, not us. I am surprised at how easy it was to do.  

In an earlier piece, I cautioned my fellow federal law enforcement officers that they have a choice when the president orders them to do immoral and illegal things, that they will have a decision to make.  Sadly, too many in the Department of Homeland Security have already made their decision it seems.  They went to the dark side…. apparently succumbing to promises of bonuses that run in the thousands of dollars.    More 19thcentury slave catcher than 21st century federal agent.

Our much-cherished separation of powers is gone, it appears.  Congress?  Absent as usual.  Speaker Johnson basically prorogued the House of Representatives to prevent hearings regarding Trump’s deep involvement in a sex trafficking pedophilia scandal.  A bit later the Senate left the Capital like a lover slips out of a lovers window as a spouse arrives home.  When they return, they will be returning a different Washington, one militarily occupied, at least symbolically, and controlled by Trump. So much for the conservative mantras ‘liberty or die’ or ‘don’t tread on me.’

And where is the Supreme Court?  Oh, never mind.

There’s a term of art for what is happening in America: creeping normalcy.  The incremental normalization of the abnormal through gradual shifts in behavior.   It is plain and clear what is happening, but it feels like most Americans, clutching their myth of American Exceptionalism like a security blanket, are in denial, unwilling to acknowledge the incremental normalization of authoritarian behavior as we slip and slide toward the demise of our democracy.  

At this point in time, I fear, momentum alone will take us to that place we don’t want to go.  The enablers – Republicans in Congress and the Supreme Court – keep handing Trump increased power, acting like there will never ever be another elected Democratic President to use those new powers.  Perhaps that’s the plan, starting with normalizing National Guard deployments to quell so-called civil unrest.

A Virginian’s “Notes” on the Constitution

This week, after another dismal showing by the Supreme Court, I asked myself whether our Constitution is all smoke and mirrors.  A Potemkin Village.  A parchment signifying nothing.  Like Macbeth’s soliloquy for his dead wife, “a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, full of sound and fury signifying nothing.”  

At least that is how I interpreted a recent series of Supreme Court’s shadow docket rulings.  As someone who spent 29 years in law enforcement and for decades closely read the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center’s quarterly summaries of federal court rulings as they pertained to constitutional rights, it is my considered judgment that the Supreme Court has abandoned sanity and the rule of law in favor of partisan power.  

One of my favorite references as to the intent of the framers of our Constitution is James Madison’s ‘Notes on the Constitutional Convention.’  My copy is well worn, with markers and scribbles in the margins and since January 20 has been a constant companion.   I even had Chief Justice Scalia sign it when he visited the embassy in Lisbon when I was assigned there between 2005 and 2008.

Every time the Supreme Court makes a ruling, I go to Madison’s ‘Notes’ — and the Federalist essays — and read the debates at the convention relevant to the issue the Court just decided.  The delegates at the convention did not leave many stones unturned in their debates, disputes we continue to dredge up and debate to this day. As for the conservative super majority, who fancy themselves die hard textualists and originalists, they seem to ignore the intent, spirit, and tone of the constitutional convention when it suits them, if not the very text of the Constitution.  

The ‘Notes,’ are a compilation of Madison’s minutes of the daily proceedings of the constitutional convention in Philadelphia during the scorching summer months of 1787.  It was published posthumously some 50 years after the convention.  Revised and amended by Madison over the 50 years before publication, one must approach the ‘Notes’ cautiously.  Nonetheless, they are a remarkable account of the discourse and debates that resulted in our Constitution.  Madison’s summaries of the day-to-day debates, however flawed, provided unique insights into the worldview of the delegates that created our government and fundamental laws of the land. 

Our Constitution was radical and captured the spirit and ideas of over 300 years of renaissance and enlightenment thinking, enshrining into a written constitution the primacy of the people as sovereign:  We the people.  Nonetheless, our new Constitution was far from perfect.  In fact, it was deeply flawed because those at the convention convinced themselves that slavery was on its way to extinction, that it would diffuse and extinguish itself soon.  Instead, they ended up sacrificing generations of captive African Americans to slavery for the sake of white national unity.  As it turned out, they only deferred our country’s reckoning with slavery until 1861.  It would take a ‘second’ founding after a Civil War to amend the Constitution to reflect the original premise of the Declaration of Independence, the bit about equality. 

Our founding thinkers did not invent democracy, republics, or even the concept of separation of powers.  The ideas that animated their debates go back to Greece and Rome,16th century Republics such as Florence, Renaissance writers such as Machiavelli, and later enlightenment thinkers such as Montesquieu, Hume, and Rousseau.  If anything, our founders took their history seriously.  They believed in the ancient notion of virtuous leaders and feared the mob, that is the tyranny of the majority.  

The result a novel invention of a republic with two sovereigns – sovereign states within a sovereign federal union – and a hybrid government mix of the one, the few, the many (President, Senate, House of Representatives).   The key ingredient: built in checks and balances.  In short, compromise.  A word now considered a pejorative by right wing conservatives.  

They codified their fears into hard checks and balances into our founding document.  Co-equal branches of government, designed to check one another out of jealousy for one’s own power.  That is the foundation, the spine, the bedrock, whatever metaphor you want to use, of our Constitution.  Without checks and balances it collapses like a dying star.  

Our history is complex.  On the one hand, America has a legacy of horrific racist policies since independence from England: slavery, ethnic cleansing of Native Americans, Chinese Exclusion Act, Separate but Equal segregation, interment of Japanese Americans are but a few.   But there was also the New Deal, the long Civil Rights movement, and women’s suffrage. Through all this our constitutional system – the mechanics — functioned as designed for the most part.

The mechanics of our system is collapsing.  Since January 20, ruling by decree, Trump is squashing America’s rule of law like a junkyard car crusher.   The cowards in Congress mute as they render themselves into useless piles of worthless scrap.   While Democrat leaders twirled and lurched like bungling idiots during the initial onslaught of presidential decrees, the lower courts held their ground, pausing many of these orders after hearing arguments.  Unsung men and women if you ask me.  For the most part the appeals courts also held firm.  

The Supreme Court on the other hand is a disaster, ripping out the valves, pistons, and belts that kept our system humming.  They continue to hand Trump unprecedented powers one shadow docket ruling after another.  And in their own power grab, kneecapping the lower courts.  In many cases, rulings are announced without even offering an explanatory opinion: the ‘why.’  Mostly I think because they don’t have a legally sound ‘why’ to back up their decrees.   Yes, that is what their rulings have become in essence under this regime of shadow dockets: Decrees.  Like a solar eclipse, the proliferation of these rulings is thrusting the rule of law into darkness, something one sees in authoritarian regimes. 

So, here is where we are now. 

In Philadelphia 238 years ago, a group of delegates representing 12 of the 13 states, assembled, debated, and drafted the rudimentary structure of a new type of government never seen before.  The great experiment began.  They knew the document they produced wasn’t perfect, and they recognized the need to be able to change the document with the times, outlining a process to amend the Constitution through considered debate and argument.  They were also cleared eyed about power and how it corrupts, building in checks and balances.  

Those checks and balances are disappearing like Epstein’s client list.  We now have a President who unilaterally rewrites the Constitution through edict and is immune from official acts that are criminal in nature; a Supreme Court that unilaterally changes the Constitution through opaque shadow rulings; a Congress and Supreme Court willfully and energetically empowering a tyrant King.  Like Macbeth’s monologue, I ask myself, “Is American democracy on its way to dusty death?”  Our candle snuffed out? 

It is not too late. The candle can be relit but will take time and effort.  We should focus on what we, in Virginia, can control.  The next step is to vote Abigail Spanberger in as Governor this November and keep our state legislature majority blue.  This November’s election will be a bellwether for the mid-terms the following year.  It is an opportunity for Virginians to send a message to Trump, the do-nothing Virginian Republican sycophants in Congress, and the Supreme Court.