Dateline March 13, 2024

FIAT JUSTITIA RUAT CAELUM VS. MOM ON THE BRINK

Last week was quite notable with Biden’s State of the Union speech to Congress, with a followup cooking show immediately following, by the junior Republican senator from Alabama, Katie Britt. In what was supposed to be a rebuttal to Biden’s address, Katie proceeded to give a breathless, whispery message in which food recipes were evidently revealed in coded speech, reminiscent of Donald Trump’s recent insistence that “languages are coming into this country” that no one speaks. As ‘The Daily Show‘ revealed, “As a way to familiarize himself with these new languages, Trump is working some of the new words into his everyday vocabulary. Linguists say it’s only a matter of time before Trump becomes fluent so that he can dehumanize these new populations in a language they can understand.” So we can only assume that Senator Britt has taken up the mantle of the presumptive GOP nominee’s ‘Rosetta Stone‘-like instructor, or that of a ‘Babbel‘ tutor. The Alabama senator claims she was speaking from her immaculate kitchen, in her infomercial-like address, like any decent, God-fearing Republican woman would do, as she fought off flop-sweat, nervousness, and stretching the truth, i.e., lying. Her theatrical, creepy, campy speech was compared by many observers as a reading for a ‘Mom On The Brink‘ tryout, with some appealing for donations to their local arts programs in light of her wretched acting.

Katie was hard to track for some, as she shifted from happy to laughing, from tearful to angry, out-Struthering Sally Struthers who we remember from her TV appeals for donations a few years ago to help starving African kids. Longtime GOP operatives, right-leaning pollsters, conservative Capitol Hill staffers, MAGA attorneys, and even some members of Trump’s campaign torched Britt’s absurdly over-dramatic rebuttal. A GOP consultant rated Biden’s speech over Katie’s, and a House congressional aide termed her remarks “cringeworthy” and predicted correctly that it would be a ‘Saturday Night Live‘ skit. Charlie Kirk wrote on Xwitter, “I’m sure Katie Britt is a sweet mom and person, but this speech is not what we need. Joe Biden just declared war on the American right and Katie Britt is talking likes she’s hosting a cooking show whispering about how Democrats ‘don’t get it.'” Radio host Jesse Kelly wrote that Britt’s rebuttal was not what he’d “prefer out of the GOP response, but there’s no question Katie Britt has mastered the ultimate weapon…the fake cry. That’s a seasoned pro right there.” Business Insider interviews a Republican staffer who compared it to a high school freshman speech. “She thinks she’s really killing it. But it’s comical, like ‘Saturday Night Live’ quality,” he offered. “Everyone’s losing it. It’s one of our biggest disasters ever,” another said. Alyssa Farah Griffin, a Trump White House advisor, posted on Xwitter, “I do not understand the decision to put her in a KITCHEN for one of the most important speeches she’s ever given…bizarre. Women can be both wives and mothers and also stateswomen. So to put her in a kitchen, not in front of a podium or in the Senate chamber…fell very flat and was confusing to some women.” Luke Russert on MSNBC posted, “Looks like it’s written to be chopped up into 100 different social media quips.” Steve Schmidt, on The Warning, shared that the rebuttal was “historic for its strange and astonishing tone, filled with crocodile tears and fear-mongering.” Bill Palmer on The Palmer Report posted, “These days there simply are no rising stars within the Republican Party, only creepy weirdos and Trump loyalists and extremists, and well, morons like Katie Britt.”

Daily Beast columnist, David Rothkopf, wrote, “This is ‘Handmaid’s Tale’ coming to life,” referencing Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel. During Britt’s speech, someone edited her Wikipedia page, saying she is “a member of ‘The Handmaid’s Tale,’ and not one of the good ones.” New York Magazine’s Ed Kilgore noted, the substance of Britt’s speech “was right out of the Donald Trump American Carnage repertoire, treating the condition of the country as a vast hells cape of rampaging immigrants, blighted commutes, and terrified, impoverished families.” For this we can thank Stephen Miller for his contribution as a Trump speech writer, as they fight for environmental degradation, privatized healthcare, and education/Social Security cuts and draconian rollbacks of fundamental freedoms. Britt said in her rebuttal that sexual assault is the worst thing that can happen to a woman as she encourages American women to vote for a convicted sexual predator. She misrepresented the truth about sex trafficking by Mexican cartels, attributing one incident to Biden’s presidency, though it occurred during George W. Bush’s tenure, and in Guadalajara, not in the US.

‘Saturday Night Live‘ chose Scarlett Johansson to mock Katie Britt in their cold opening, and from a spotless kitchen set, she told us, “Good evening America, my name is Katie Britt, and I have the honor of serving the people of the great state of Alabama. But tonight, I’ll be auditioning for the part of ‘scary mom.’ I’ll be performing an original monologue called ‘This Country is Hell.’ You see, I’m not just a senator. I’m a wife, a mother, and the craziest bitch in the Target parking lot. First and foremost, I’m a mom, and like any mom, I’m going to do a pivot out of nowhere into a shockingly violent story about sex trafficking. Rest assured, every detail about it is real except the year, where it took place, and who was president when it happened.” Johansson started hawking a bejeweled cross necklace, a la the QVC channel, that “goes with anything, and you can wear it from da’ church to da’ club.” Continuing, she says, “You know, my husband Wesley and I spend a lot of time in this kitchen – worrying. Kitchens are where families have the hard conversations like the one we’ll have now about how mommy freaked out the entire country. It’s like I tell my kids every night: We are steeped in the blood of patriots in a castle made of bones. Goodnight kids!” Johansson concluded with mimicking Senator Britt’s words, “The American people who are struggling right now, know this: We hear you. We see you. We smell you. We’re inside your kitchen right now looking through your fridge. And what’s this on the top shelf? Migrants!”

While Donald Trump may be considering adding Katie Britt to his list of possible running mates, HBO’s Bill Maher recently earned some ridicule from the former president on his Truth Social media platform, being unhappy with quips regarding the “Supreme Court’s delay” of Trump’s trials. “Bill Maher is the worst! He never got it, and never will. Bad ratings, a big fail on CNN shot, major case of TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME.” Maher’s “failure” of a show is now in its 22nd season. Trump says, “Not worth the watch!” but he seems to be checking it out himself. Maher’s monologue mentioned the numerous trials facing Trump, noting that some polls show him losing the election if convicted in any of the cases, adding that his defense lawyers are doing all they can to delay the proceedings. “And when I say ‘his defense lawyers,’ I mean the Supreme Court,” Maher explained, calling the claim that former presidents are immune from prosecution “ridiculous.” “They’re just trying to run out the clock. This is so typical of that court: always protecting the baby,” Maher said of Trump’s immaturity. Maher also joked that Trump wouldn’t acknowledge Leap Day, surmising that it’s only a ‘woke plot‘ to make Black History Month a day longer.

Attorney George Conway writes that the US Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v Anderson, which unanimously reversed the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision barring Trump from being on the state’s presidential-primary ballot, wasn’t decided on its merits, resulting in an utterly flimsy legal argument. He says, “Law is never perfect, and never will be. Trump’s brazen example to end constitutional democracy in America should have been the textbook example of the sort of behavior that would lead to someone being barred from holding public office under the Fourteenth Amendment. But it was not to be, and never was to be.” Conway believed the Colorado decision was unimpeachably correct, but did not imagine that the high court was likely to agree, nor could he find a single person willing to wager the Supremes would uphold the ruling. The pessimism arose not from legal reasoning, but understanding that it was too much to expect in this political context, by applying the Constitution in the manner the Court normally should: by impartially examining the text, historical contexts, and letting the chips fall. He says it may be noble-minded of him, sitting in the cheap seats, to offer his favorite Latin legal maxim, Fiat justitia ruat caelum – “Let justice be done though the heavens may fall.” The decisions of the justices are obviously affected by their perception of what public reaction may be. He concedes that he gave the Court more credit than was warranted, having previously written, “…the people who think the Court is going to reverse no matter what…may well be right.” However, he had convinced himself that if the decision was reversed, the High Court would come up with a stronger opinion than was forthcoming. And the fact that the unsigned per curiam opinion, signifying there was not a stronger opinion to provide, makes it painfully, embarrassingly clear that no justice wanted to put their names to it. Conway feels that the justices made up a holding that “utterly unmoored from the text or history of the provision it was interpreting, Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. That bottom-line holding: ‘States have no power to enforce Section 3 with respect to federal offices, especially the Presidency.’ The Court’s four women justices who wrote separate concurrences seemed to agree with at least this statement of the holding, as far as the presidency is concerned.”

Conway explains further, “But here’s the problem. The Fourteenth Amendment does not say that. It could have, but it doesn’t. It says, in Section 5, ‘Congress shall have the power, to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article,’ meaning all of the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment. But just because Congress has the power to enact legislation to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment’s various provisions – which include, most notably, the guarantee of ‘the equal protection of the laws’ in Section 1 – doesn’t mean that state officials, of federal or state judiciaries, are disempowered to apply the Fourteenth Amendment. To the contrary, because the Constitution is the supreme law of the land, they have a duty to do that. State officials and state courts have an obligation not to ‘deny to any person within [the state’s] jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws,’ regardless of what Congress does or doesn’t do.” In Conway’s estimation, Section 3 may require some congressional action to be enforced, in some circumstances, but in the end they carved out Section 3, without any textual or clear historical basis to do so. His article is worth reading in its entirety, and is searchable. Who do we appeal to after a High Court decision? The voters need to get involved!

Despite the profusion of whining from the throat of Citizen Trump, Charles Sykes in the Washington Post writes, “A federal judge has declared him liable for rape. He faces paying a half-billion dollars in legal judgements for fraud and defamation. Twice impeached, then defeated for reelection, he has been charged with 91 felonies. He has been arrested and his mug shot published; he will spend much of the year in and out of courtrooms. On the campaign trail, his rambling speeches are gaffe-ridden and prone to malapropisms and meltdowns. In a normal universe, this would not be the description of a fortunate man. But we do not live in that universe, and we must consider the very real – and infuriating – possibility that Donald J. Trump is the single luckiest politician who ever lived.” Sykes says we have watched for almost ten years as Trump trips, dodges, totters, oversteps traps, all the while thinking: finally! THIS is it! Only to watch him escape again, and again. After recounting his list ofTrump’s close calls, Sykes continues, “It must feel almost providential to Trump that his rise to power has also coincided with the downfall of much of the traditional fact-based media, as well as the emergence of just the sort of alternative-reality information silos that he needed to shape his narrative and platform his bluster, bombast and fakery…has anyone ever been so lucky?”

Rex Huppke posted in USA Today, “The US Supreme Court ruled in favor of Donald Trump on Monday, affirming what those of us who’ve studied the Constitution already knew: each president is entitled to one free insurrection.” Colorado sued to remove him from the state’s primary ballot, claiming that the former president and current criminal defendant had engaged in insurrection, something he quite clearly did, and, by his ongoing denial of the 2020 presidential election results, continues to do to this day. He has been nothing if not insurrection-y.” Rex believes the Supremes must have viewed the Constitution and spotted a hard-to-read footnote, smudged by aging parchment or whatnot, clearly stating: “Each president shall be granted one insurrection free of consequences on a case-by-case basis. Upon the fomenting of a sixth insurrection, the president shall be awarded one foot-long turkey and Virginia ham sandwich.” Sure, the “Constitution doesn’t say WHO should enforce the Fourteenth Amendment, so the Court decided that it ‘rests with Congress and not the States,’ which is sort of the opposite direction took with abortion rights, saying that issue is up to the states and the federal government can pound sand.” We can agree with Huppke’s statement, “Those justices sure do keep us on our toes! I’m sure the nation’s highest court will be much harder on him after the second insurrection, but this one’s a freebie. Rules are rules. Sort of.”

Speaking of Sykes‘ mention of the downfall of the traditional fact-based media, Andrea Junker posted, “The fact that we know more about Fani Willis’ and Nathan Wade’s relationship than about the crimes committed by Ginni and Clarence Thomas shows exactly what is terribly wrong in today’s political mainstream media.”