History is full of men who somehow managed to be wildly successful, only to be revealed as lunatics, madmen or incompetent. It is an incredible thing to read about Caligula or Nero and think about what it must have been like to serve in the Imperial government during their reigns. According to Seneca, Caligula was presiding over games and ordered his guards to throw an entire section of the crowd into the arena during intermission to be eaten by animals because there were no criminals to be prosecuted and he was bored.
Imagine being in the next section over.
The thought that always comes to my mind is how it was possible for such lunatics to get into power. In most cases, it was simply the result of a faulty system of succession. A favorite example of this is Christian VII of Denmark. He became the king of Denmark because he was the next in line, despite his mental illness. Christian was a chronic masturbator who made visiting dignitaries play leapfrog with one another. He also would slap people in the face for no reason.
In the case of legendary madmen like Caligula and Nero, their madness came on after they assumed power so maybe it was just bad luck. Tiberius, Caligula’s predecessor started out as a perfectly sane and normal ruler, but slowly became a paranoid tyrant. Of course, there are example of men who rise to power simply because they are devious schemers. They finally get to the top and find they have no skill for the job.
The madmen and lunatics get all the attention, but history is littered with examples of mediocrities managing to thread the needle somehow, ending up on top, only to be undone by their own stupidity. In my lifetime, Jimmy Carter is the most obvious example. Carter was a smart man in an extremely narrow sense, but he was a terrible politician and he suffered from delusions of grandeur. His four years as president featured a series of unforced errors that still boggle the mind.
The point is life is big and complicated with lots of variables. Under the right conditions, the dice can land the wrong way and we end up with a lunatic on the Supreme Court, which is why we have an impeachment system. if a nut winds up in the White House or on the bench, they can be removed. It does not happen often, but it’s a remedy, just in case we end up with someone like, say, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor submitted a racially-charged dissent in a Fourth Amendment case on Monday, which commentators hailed as a “Brown/Black Lives Matter manifesto.”
The case, Utah v. Strieff, was occasioned when police stopped Salt Lake City man Edward Strieff on leaving a house suspected to quarter drug activity. The state of Utah concedes the initial stop was illegal, as the officers in question had no probable cause to seize and search Strieff.
During the course of the stop, officers discovered Strieff had an outstanding warrant for a small traffic violation, and methamphetamine in his pocket. The Court was asked to decide whether the exclusionary rule — which prohibits police and prosecutors from using evidence obtained illegally — applies when an officer learns during an illegal stop that there is a warrant for an individual’s arrest, and finds additional contraband while executing the arrest on said warrant.
The High Court ruled 5-3 that the arrest, and the evidence obtained during the arrest, were legitimate, even if the initial stop was not. Justice Thomas wrote the majority opinion, joined by the Chief Justice, and Justices Kennedy, Breyer, and Alito.
Sotomayor filed a peppery dissent, joined in part by Justice Ginsburg.
“The white defendant in this case shows that anyone’s dignity can be violated in this manner,” she wrote. “But it is no secret that people of color are disproportionate victims of this type of scrutiny. For generations, black and brown parents have given their children ‘the talk’— instructing them never to run down the street; always keep your hands where they can be seen; do not even think of talking back to a stranger—all out of fear of how an officer with a gun will react to them.”
“We must not pretend that the countless people who are routinely targeted by police are ‘isolated,’” she continued. “They are the canaries in the coal mine whose deaths, civil and literal, warn us that no one can breathe in this atmosphere.”
Elsewhere in the dissent, she characterizes the United States as a “carceral state,” and pillories the “civil death” endured by those subject to arrest, a process she describes in vivid terms. She also accused the Court of treating minority communities as “second class citizens.”
The dissent’s citations are as interesting as the text itself, which read like a survey of the American black literary tradition. At various points, she cites “The Souls of Black Folk,” by W. E. B. Du Bois, Michelle Alexander, a law professor who has written extensively on over incarceration, and the more radical works of James Baldwin and Ta-Nehisi Coates.
Where does one start with this? This is a Supreme Court Justice, not a college freshman writing her first college paper. The nonsense about blacks being the victims of police harassment has been debunked so many times, even race hustlers have dropped it. The facts on black crime are simply too easy to lookup. Here’s a study from the Obama administration that tells us that young black males are 3% of the population but commit 27% of homicides. You would think a judge would know about this.
Of course, that misses the elephant in the room. Sotomayor is launching off on a Black Lives Matter rant over a white guy, who was the alleged victim. A fanatic is someone who cannot change their mind and will not change the subject. When you layer in the references to guys like Genius T. Coates, it is not unreasonable to wonder if this woman has not lost her marbles. She may not be randomly slapping people or demanding members of the gallery be fed to the lions, but she is acting just as nutty as those legends I mentioned at the start.
How did we end up with a mentally disturbed dwarf on the high court? The same way Christian VII landed on the throne of Denmark or Caligula donned the purple. The process for selecting judges means ticking the racial boxes and a willingness to catch spears for the One True Faith. Obama nominated this woman because she was a Latin lesbian. Finding someone who checks those boxes and is competent in the law is impossible so he just took a loyal fanatic. The result is we have a mentally disturbed woman on the high court – for life.
Someone said that Sotomayor was a “wise Latina.”
Well, she’s sure shot that idea all to hell with this unhinged rant. She’s not even smart enough to be embarrassed!
Speaking of mentally disturbed women, gotta love our Attorney General’s brazen, deranged, and sociopathic public statement that the Orlando gunman’s motive “has yet to be established” and “may never be known” — and this after her minions deleted every reference to Allah and ISIS from the 911 transcript.
“The process for selecting judges means ticking the racial boxes and a willingness to catch spears for the One True Faith.”
It’s the same process that installed a retarded Communist hick as Pope. Taine said “There’s nothing as dangerous as a general idea in a narrow, empty mind.” Pope Shitty the First is a good example. His “general idea” is “The Poor!” Everything else comes out of that. Communism? Yeah! It talks about the poor! Free-range fucking, without the complications of marriage? Sure! The poor do that all the time, so he’s for it. Gangs of drifters surging into Europe and grabbing what they can? Well, they’re poor, so more power to them!
Oh, and just as in the case of Judge Mamacita, *theoretically* there are ways of ridding ourselves of these fleas, but in practice, nothing ever happens. Only death will deliver us, and if it takes 40 years, people are resigned to wait for it.
If this article is true, it’s a wonder more of your supreme court justices aren’t also crazy. With over 300,000 criminal offenses, how does one do through a normal day without breaking a law??
“With more than 4,000 crimes in federal statutes and more than 300,000 more crimes specified in various federal regulations, every complex commercial enterprise is inevitably vulnerable to federal prosecution-and thus, given federal prosecutors’ leverage, to oversight through a deferred- or non-prosecution agreement. What that means is that the Department of Justice has sweeping regulatory authority, which according to the D.C. Circuit’s April decision in United States v. Fokker Services, federal judges have next to no power to review.”
It’s a feature, not a bug. It’s a given that you’ve broken some law, some time. They just wait to charge you with it. If you are well connected, you can ignore all laws.
I’m not generally a fan of genocide, if one can call this that, but I am reminded of The Eagles lyrics from the song “Get Over It” that say “Let’s kill all the lawyers, kill ’em tonight.” Way too many lawyers in America, maybe the whole world. The world would definitely be a better place with fewer of these scum.
I’ve been getting to thinking that the only real way to limit the damage from the bench is the Andy Jackson approach. The Supreme Court made some rulings about Indian policy at the time and Jackson just refused to enforce the decisions. That’s something that a real leader in an executive role could easily get away with. It would be wrong to keep someone incarcerated if a Court ruled he be released, but what about judgments that require the co-operation of other branches of government. Remember that Federal judge in Kansas that ordered the legislature to raise taxes to build state of the art school facilities in the ghetto? What if the legislature had just told him to stuff it? Was the President going to order out the National Guard to go door to door and confiscate money at gunpoint?
But of course, once you consider the possibility then you also realize that the reason no one does it is because they are happy about the rulings. Imagine how much the legislature in Kansas enjoyed raising taxes to spend on their cronies while claiming that they were absolutely blameless because their hands were tied by the court? It’s even easy to become convinced the GOPe actually loves activist judges on the bench. They can go out every four years pretending to be pro-life and pro-marriage and in favor of religious freedom in order to hit the rubes up for contributions while at the same time throwing their hands up and saying “Can’t really do anything about it! The Court has ruled!”.
“do not even think of talking back to a stranger” Right, because we all know how young black folks never, ever talk trash to strangers. Especially white people. ????? How the hell could someone in a position of her authority not only be that dishonest but seriously expect other people to buy into her lunatic BS? The alternate universe the progressive nuts have constructed and expect the rest of society to live in is what is truly, genuinely dangerous.
The progs are going to be running the show until system failure. The Puerto Rican firecracker’s arguments fit The Narrative perfectly. Why would she pay any attention to a system of logic created by Old White Men?
So, being a chronic masturbater is a sign of mental illness, eh?
I have some things to think over.
My theory is that the Founding Fathers couldn’t conceive of a justice that would try to make laws. They thought lawyers would only interpret the law. I think that is why they didn’t give us a better way to remove judges.
From what I’ve read the Founders mostly thought (or hoped) some modicum of wisdom would be employed in the selection of the people that would select the Judges. That’s what the, “… if you can keep it,” remark implied. They hoped that the electorate wouldn’t become mired in a constant state of FUBAR.
Term limits and fast track impeachment are, by definition, a day late and a dollar short. By the time those kick in as a remedy the only Judge anyone will be listening to is Lynch.
Nitpick: I think you meant ‘throne of’ rather than ‘thrown and’ in the second sentence of the last paragraph. Those kinds of things can make the reader take the writer less seriously, so proofreading matters.
I know. In fact, this will be my last post. I just can’t live with myself know.
That’s how they got Steven Den Beste too … ignore the scolds!
Bad zman, bad bad bad.
Would that Sotomayer were as easily censured/discouraged.
How is it all other American positions of government are limited terms and the Supreme Court is a life-time appointment? Can you briefly explain the history and rationale behind this?
The traditional answer is to prevent them from getting thrown off the bench for making unpopular decisions. Put another way: to encourage them to make decisions that might be unpopular but that comport, in their opinion, with the constitution.
Yes, to give them a buffer against political retribution for an honest legal opinion.
When the Constitution was written and ratified the understanding was that the Courts would be deciding exclusively criminal or civil cases and no one was so naïve as to believe that politicians wouldn’t try to coerce or intimidate Judges in cases that involved friends, family, or business interests. The concept of Courts becoming involved in disputes between the Executive and Legislative Branches, or deciding what is or is not Constitutional, wouldn’t appear until the Jefferson administration.
By the way all Federal Judges are lifetime appointments, not just the Supreme Court.
Oh great!
Sotomayer – despite prior details of her racial animosity against white americans – was confirmed by a number of republicans to enable her to be confirmed into the Supreme Court. Her racial views were known far in advance, her intent to ‘get justice for her brown people’ was also no secret. When politicians forget their oaths – and go with the PC crowd – that is the result. Why the surprise?
Then we have Lynch as AG – also confirmed with a majority of republicans to enable her confirmation. Yet – she too has not only dividing racial views but she is also a supporter of the muslim brotherhood who has given her ‘awards’ one after another, the last one in 2015 at the White House during the Muslims of American Associations …yet, we are surprised that she withholds ‘jihad, islam, jihadist, terrorist, allah is great shouts while murdering gay patrons at ‘Pulse’?
On and on it goes – there was a coup beginning in 2008 – and nobody noticed. Why were 800 active/inactive files purged from the Homeland Security Dept, FBI, DOD and other law enforcement? Every manual from every law enforcement and military investigators were stripped of the same: islam, muslim, jihad and terrorist. Why have our politicians failed to call attention to the placement of muslim brotherhood agents throughout our government into the most sensitive, security-related and intelligence as well as military related intelligence? And we wonder why we such a cluster$uck and traitorous leadership?
It was to be expected that Sotomayer at one point during her time in this court would begin to rage and let her true color explodes – it is who she is and just another affirmative action candidate without any sense of loyalty to the US and her laws.
“… there was a coup beginning in 2008…” WRONG! The real coup began in 1931, with FDR.
I did not intended to go back that far and rather chose to stay in a more current era however, you are right and if we want to be historically correct – the coup began in 1917 at the commencement WWI.
It was also the time where the Federal Reserve and other control entities were placed directly into the US as a control mechanism as well as means to manipulate and condition the political apparatus and selection of presidents.
“This is a Supreme Court Justice, not a college freshmen writing her first college paper.”
Meh, Sophomores are WORSE!
A LITTLE bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing!
Sophomores have over heard “big words” being used.
Ruth, when not taking a siesta, prefers the South African constitution dontcha know.
Me too. Oh, wait. I’ll bet it’s a different one.
Hillary Clinton, 80% of the Senate, my former Battalion XO, and several former bosses – all “mediocrities managing to thread the needle somehow.” In most cases it was due to NCO’s / employees running around fixing their stupid mistakes and pointing the idiot in the right direction (usually without the idiot even noticing).
He became the kink of Denmark …..
I thought that was brilliant — until the “landed on the thrown” part later in the post made me think the “kink of Denmark” just a speech-to-text glitch. Too bad.
Actually, the “kink” was accidentally on purpose. I typed it and laughed, so I left it.
The thrown/throne was a typo. I was still laughing at the thought of Caligula having the crowd thrown to the lions, I guess.
I changed both so the grammar Nazis don’t have a riot in the comments section over the next 24 hours.
Disturbed dwarf, that’s a good one. That makes her a dwarf ring wraith, a black robed dwarf Nasgal, us dirt people live in middle earth, and Mordor on the Potomac has sent out swarms of Ork and Oraki to eat out the dirt peoples existence. The two towers are the left and right party’s of cultural marxism.
This topic–crazies given the helm–reared it’s ugly head for me this past weekend as I watched the movie Fury with Brad Pitt. Brutal and honest depiction of war. The take away was the staggering reality of how so many (millions) can be rallied to a bogus cause, to obey the call to destroy land and lives for nothing more than serving the power lust of lunatics. Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini were just the beasts du jour of the first half of the 20th century. We have a whole new set today. I’ve concluded that lunatics find their way to power because that is the way of things here in a fallen world. We lack discernment, we prefer good sounding lies over tough truth and thus we are useful idiots and ripe for the picking.
Hitler and Mussolini were true “pikers” when compared to Stalin! It was the infiltration of Communists into the FDR Administration that sold out this country to the Soviets, beginning in 1931 when FDR formally recognized the Soviet Union, without conditions, despite knowing of Stalin’s crimes against his own people in the Great Kulak Starvation effort; 12-20 million died under Stalin’s hand, but since they were only fellow Russians (and capitalists at that) that was okay….Uncle Joe was a great ally against Hitler, right? 6 million dead Jews versus 12-20 million dead Russians….wonder who had the better PR agents?
Leftist historians rarely tell us how many tens of thousands of White Russians, Ukrainians and Belo-Russians tried to join ranks with Hitler to try and defeat and remove Stalin. FDR’s regime betrayed those who attempted to leave the Soviet Union, by agreeing to allow the Soviets to repatriate some 2 million dissidents, most of whom died as slave laborers in the Soviet Gulag. So, Uncle Joe ended up his score card with between 14 and 22 million dead (not including those Soviet Army troops who were driven to the battlefields by force and told to die fighting the Germans or they would be shot by their own fellow soldiers if they hesitated or retreated)
Bush, Sr. paved her way, appointing her to the District Court in New York. Madness.
In fairness to Bush Sr., candidates for district court judge positions have traditionally been forwarded to the Executive branch by the Senators for a given state. It’s one of the privileges of being a Senator. Sotomayor was recommended for appointment by both Patrick Moynihan (D) and Al D’amato (R). She had worked as a prosecutor and there was nothing in her background which would have indicated she would become a leftist loon. Bush had little reason to oppose her nomination to a district court.
I do fault the Bush administration for failing to maintain strict conservative criteria as a baseline requirement for judicial appointment. If the administration had made it clear that only candidates with strict conservative credentials would be considered for appointment then candidates like Sotomayor would never had been considered. But Bush was not a conservative so he had no reason to support such policies.
In the final analysis I’m not sure how much good criteria do. George W’s administration had strict criteria in place. John Roberts ran the gauntlet and was supposed to be the conservative wunderkinden of Justices. Instead he gave us one of the worst decisions in Supreme Court history, ignoring precedent, the explicit language of the ACA, and the Government’s own arguments to hold that Obamacare was constitutional as an exercise of the government’s taxing authority. Robert’s only defense of his decision was to mumble that it’s not the Court’s job to protect the electorate from the consequences of their political choices. Utterly pathetic.
In fairness to Roberts, he was blackmailed into the ObamaCare decision. Although he shouldn’t have illegally adopted those two Irish babies via South America in the first place.
Bush, Sr. is part of the Establishment and absolutely NO conservative!!! he is entitled to no fairness or other consideration. Nor is “W” who is even more of a NWO central government Establishmentarian. “W” gave us the Patriot Act, the most dangerous assault on our rights ever passed and the Department of Homeland Security, the largest most intrusive, bureaucracy ever. And the one designed to enforce the unconstitutional Patriot Act, when push comes to shove.
And look how close the Bush Crime Family has become with the Clinton Crime Family! Sweep them all w away!
May all my enemies be of such poor quality. There’s a lot more damage to be had by a shrunken communist Jew than a disturbed dwarf Latina dyke. Nobody’s laughing at Ginsberg.
Your salient observation points out the ugly truth the axiom there is no voting our way out of this. Not with the ballot box.
As with the need for term limits for Senators, SCOTUS needs a mandatory retirement age. This lifetime appointment crap is way too much. So just when will the States Convention happen? We need some amendments to strengthen our freedoms.
The states, too, have been corrupted beyond repair. By the turn of the 20th century Conservatives were so weary of hearing Progressive bullshit about bringing on an Income Tax that they took it to the states just to shut them up, and what do you think happened?
But, if you check the historical record, there is a serious question as to whether the 13th Amendment truly and fairly passed all the states necessary for ratification. In other words, the deal was rigged!
That was the original intent of impeachment. For both impeachment and term limits, it requires a representative republican form of government to work. A government ruled by rule of law, not by rule of men who’s sole motivation is enriching themselves at out expense. Why would they have any motivation to limit that power and wealth?
I’m not picking on you, honestly it is a logic question: How have those Amendments been working for you?
It is like the great joke about the guy who says “We have to vote the bums out!” And the other guys asks “How did they get there in the first place?”
Yep, I know what you mean. I pointed out those two specifically because they are always on my mind. In the Senate you get professional white collar criminals who are in office for 20-40 years! And SCOTUS, till death do us part? Really? Ginsberg looks like she is already on life support. How do we know she isn’t brain dead already? Just asking cuz she sure looks like the walking dead.
I know what you mean too. It would be a really great thing if Amendments worked as advertised. The reality is those who usurp them, also hide behind them. And it is fast becoming our responsibility as freemen, to show the bastards what it is like without the protections the Constitutions affords them.
Appointments for life assumes that the appointees aren’t political operatives. The Lefties on the court are clearly partisan creatures with an agenda. While one might wonder which way a Kennedy or a Roberts might swing, nobody considers for even a minute that Kagan or Sotomayor or Ginsberg will, reflexively, 100% of the time, support the agenda of the Democrat party. It’s such a given that it doesn’t even garner a moments attention anymore.
As such, the Justices need to face the voters, just like any other politician. And term limits for the lot of them, of course.
No tinkering with systems can make up for the lack of decent human material in the country as a whole.
Certainly it might be preferential to play Russian Roulette every couple of years rather than maybe twice a decade, kinda like playing with two loaded chambers rather than one.
The problem with Senators is the Seventeenth Amendment, after all they’re already limited to 6 years. Repeal the 17th and to control government requires winning hundreds of elections. As it stands now a super-faction, which is what the 17th instigated, only has to control 52 elections to rule the country (51 senate seats + the executive). With all wealth transferred to the national government under the 16th there is more than ample motivation.
Ultimately, in a representative republic, selectivity in granting the franchise is the only way to even have a shot at coherent, much less rational, governance. Term limits are by definition after the fact. Start with minimum age of 25 to hold any public trust office, sit on juries, purchase intoxicants, and vote. Next, anyone on public subsistence or in public housing, excepting earned pension or housing as compensation (military housing for example), cannot vote. Conviction of public intoxication relieves a person of voting responsibility for a period not less than 6 years, 12 for a subsequent conviction prior to the restoration of the responsibility.
Caligula appointed his stallion to the Senate. Obama appointed a dwarf to the supreme court and made a moron Vice President. This is a trend that is wide spread and quite troubling.
Hey, useful dupes and sycophants come in all sizes and shapes. Every tyrant needs them. It is tyranny 101. It is how it works. Sotomayer isn’t an outlier, she is the norm. It is the lowest common denominator in action. You think psychopaths like obama appoints people smarter than them? It is surviving your tyranny you got to be concerned with when your a mad emperor in a corrupt system of organized crime.
Two dwarves.
I do not get out much, and definitely not in your circle, but I listen and I read. This is the first time I have heard that woman called a Latin lesbian. I knew she was not a good choice and that I would hate to be trapped in an elevator with her but …… Why haven’t the gays prattled on and on about her being one of them? He really does not care what he does to this country.
Corrupting elements of a governmental system while preserving their outer form is recommended by Machiavelli.
Appointing the incompetent to positions of power is essential when the plan is the destruction of the Republic.
Aristotle described that very method as being in use in Athens.
“From the top down, inside to out”.
Was it Socrates who mentioned internal domestic enemies are a cancer to a republic?
There is a clause in the Oath of all enlisted solders that mentions domestic enemies. Written by men who employed reason and history in formulating those words of that Oath. Who just got through fighting the loyalists of King George.
I wonder how deliberate it is. That will require a level of intelligence we don’t see on display at any time. I tend to think it is just good old fashioned religious fidelity. She checked the boxes, is a true believer and will always vote the partisan line. The fact that she is possibly insane is never considered.
As is often the case, bad results are just as likely from incompetence as from design.
Never attribute what you can to malice, what you can to intelligence what you can to stupidity?
I ‘m thinking it is a moot point for the fact the Sotomayer’s of our civilization, once admitted into our centers of learning, our government, notice I said our government, into our courts, intruded and meddled in our personal and economic affairs, it somehow nourishes them, like a super cultural booster, and they have multiplied like cockroaches. It is Yankeedom whose roots are those loyalists, their decedents are todays statists, old money and families, they are todays elitist loyalists of Tory heritage, they never forgot nor have given up on the power they lost when the Patriots won, they despise the dirt people and Liberty like no other hate on Earth. America as it was founded and all it’s sanction of primal rights of Men is repugnant to them, their tribal knowledge of the decadence and privilege, control of the wealth and resources, they possessed during colonial times never forgotten, the return of which is institutional motive. They are masters of the proxy, using others to do their dirty deeds. (don’t misunderstand me on my observations, they certainly are mine, but I have a perspective lot of people don’t. I was born and raised next town over of one of their den’s, Fabyan NH, next to Brettonwood’s, across the Ammanoosuc River from big and little Deception Mountains. I know them natural born marxists like the back of my hand. Nasty creepy creatures who skulk around like the world is their private play toy. Even if they have forgotten most of their past, old blood and tribal/feudal money runs deep, old Brahmin/Beacon Hill wealth, the real white supremacists, and their hoity toity berkenstock trust fund brats, goes back to the King’s Grants and appointments. Why do you suppose Massachussets is such an enclave of statist power to begin with? They remember the Massachussetts Colony was the hot bed of resistance, the birth place of actual action against their tyranny like no other Colony. Talk about hedonistic inbreds. These are the true one worlder’s, the original statists by blood and inheritance, it is no coincidence they hold the Brettonwood’s conferences up at the Washington Hotel. Their colonial bugouts are those vast acreage compounds they constructed before the war of 1812, tucked up around Sandwich, North Sandwich, Notchland, Tamworth, the Ossipee Mtn’s, Carrol, Albany, Chocura, etc.)
It is part of the Left’s design to put incompetent buffoons in positions of great importance.
So, just when in the Hell is enough enough? These people will not go away unless they are put down. Killing these people is essential if the republic is to be saved. …Crickets…