New World Water--SCOTUS Strikes Again

Apparently, back in 2001, with its Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County v. United States Army Corps of Engineers decision, and in 2006, in Rapanos v. United States, that lovely Supreme Court of ours basically gutted the Clean Water Act. The problem for the Supremes was the phrase “the discharge of pollutants into the navigable waters”. It seems that they just couldn't figure out what "navigable" meant. I guess none of them had dictionaries at the time. I have two at my fingertips right now. Let's see:

"deep and wide enough to provide passage to ships: a navigable channel."

--Random House


"capable of being navigated : deep enough and wide enough to afford passage to ships"

--Merriam-Webster

Hm. I guess the whole controversy would stem on what your definition of "ship" is. Let's take a look, shall we?

"1. a vessel, esp. a large oceangoing one propelled by sails or engines.

2. Naut.
a. a sailing vessel square-rigged on all of three or more masts, having jibs, staysails, and a spanker on the aftermost mast."

--Random House

[AUTHOR'S NOTE: I knew seamen could get a little kinky, but what's a spanker?]

"1 a : any large seagoing boat b : a sailing boat having a bowsprit and usually a square-rigged foremast, mainmast, and mizzenmast each composed of a lower mast, a topmast, a topgallant mast, and sometimes higher masts

2 a : a boat intended or used for navigation and propelled by power or sail b : a boat or structure used for purposes of navigation or intended or used for transportation on a river, sea, ocean, or other navigable water without regard to its form or means of propulsion"

--Merriam-Webster

Since the act's inception in 1972 (those "Strict Constructionists" sure do respect their precedents, don't they?), regulators have meant these oh-so-ambiguous definitions to mean that "navigable waters" to mean any large wetland areas and streams that flowed into major rivers. But the Supreme Court has suggested that the term did not include "waterways that are entirely within one state, creeks that sometimes go dry, and lakes unconnected to larger water systems ... even though pollution from such waterways can make its way into sources of drinking water."

Funny how we hadn't heard a word of complaint during the Bush Babee administration. But now that we have an EPA that might actually employ regulators, these same regulators have found themselves stymied by these rulings to the point that they might as well be selling isotope ice cubes at their neighborhood lemonade stand.

According to the New York Times:

Thousands of the nation’s largest water polluters are outside the Clean Water Act’s reach ... As a result, some businesses are declaring that the law no longer applies to them. And pollution rates are rising.



In drier states, some polluters say the act no longer applies to them and are therefore refusing to renew or apply for permits, making it impossible to monitor what they are dumping, say officials.



More than 200 oil spill cases were delayed as of 2008, according to a memorandum written by an E.P.A. official and collected by Congressional investigators. And even as the number of facilities violating the Clean Water Act has steadily increased each year, E.P.A. judicial actions against major polluters have fallen by almost half since the Supreme Court rulings.

Gotta love it.

Sen. Ben Cardin is leading the charge to get the Clean Water Restoration Act passed in the Senate. But, you can only imagine, every industry has pulled out the big guns--aka Glenn Beck--threatening that the government's trying to "take over our rain puddles!!!" EPA Chief, Lisa Jackson, has the power to draw up new regulations, but she wants this done through Congress.

I say we take action into our own hands. I'm not advocating revolution here. I just think that we, the people of these here United States of America, need to do everything it takes to change the composition of this Supremacist Court and get some justices in there who aren't so flummoxed over the definition of "rule of law" (or who at least believe that such a term actually exists).

So, starting today, I want all of us to ban together, pool our resources, and send all chitterlings, pork chops, spare ribs, and any and all other pork-related projects to:


Justice Clarence Thomas
Supreme Court of the United States
Washington, DC 20543


With good ole American know-how and ingenuity and the proper hot sauce, we can get this brother off the Court in no time and have The Big Brutha replace him with someone who acts like they got some gotdamned sense!






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Prepare to be Pissed: Skilling Will Go Free

The Supreme Court is preparing itself to hear the appeal of Jeff Skilling's appeal. Yes, Enron's Jeffrey Skilling, who was given a 24-year sentence at a cushy Club Fed on conspiracy and fraud charges.

According to Reuters, Skilling's defense is going to argue that his trial should've been moved away from Houston, that failure is not a crime, and that the prosecution theory of "honest services" that was used to convict him was, basically, full of shit.

I'm no legal scholar here, as I've said many a time, so I'll let Reuters sum up the "Honest Services" theory for you:

"That theory holds that Skilling robbed Enron and its shareholders of his 'honest services' by setting a corporate agenda met by fraud while he and other top executives hid the company's troubles with lies and murky financial statements."

Honest services fraud was originally adopted by Congress in 1988 as an addendum to federal mail and wire fraud statutes. It was originally intended to prosecute government fraud but has been used to convict fraud and corruption in the private sector. Here's a list of recent public and private sector scalawags who've had "honest services" thrown in with their other charges of malfeasance:

Jack Abramoff

Rod Blagojevich (who's about to give a talk, “Ethics in Politics: An Evening with Former Governor R. Blagojevich," at my alma mater--I shit you not)

Former Illinois Governor, George Ryan;

and newspaper magnate, Conrad Black, whose six-and-a-half-year jail sentence for mail fraud and obstruction of justice may also be overturned tomorrow.

One can only imagine how a law that was originally intended to prosecute government corruption but is also used to address corruption in the private sector will fare in the Roberts court. Though Roberts had promised Congress that he wouldn't legislate from the bench, that he would only "call balls and strikes," he and his conservative co-conspirators have decided, as I heard one journalist say, "create their own game," caring nothing for precedent, practicality, or even common sense if they run counter to their own ideology.

Remember their Lilly Ledbetter decision, when Alito decided that: "We apply the statute as written, and this means that any unlawful employment practice, including those involving compensation, must be presented . . . within the period prescribed by the statute." In other words, if you're being paid less because of discrimination, you have to fail your lawsuit while you're being employed--as though all our wages are public record and we can just walk up to our bosses and/or H.R. Departments, say, "Hey, I think you guys are paying me less because I'm [fill in the blank], could you open your books so I can see if I'm right?"

How about when SCOTUS upheld Congress's Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act? These self-proclaimed preservers of precedent were all of a sudden responsible for, as WaPo put it at the time, "marked the first time justices have agreed that a specific abortion procedure could be banned. It was also the first time since the landmark Roe v. Wade decision of January 1973 that justices approved an abortion restriction that did not contain an exception for the health of the woman." Justice Kennedy said, in his decision, "The government may use its voice and its regulatory authority to show its profound respect for the life within the woman."



In Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, the Court ruled against assigning students to public schools solely for the purposes of creating some sort of "racial balance" and that said racial balance was not a compelling state interest. Roberts also snarkily added, "[t]he way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race."

And we all know how the Roberts court overturned a century of legal precedent and gave "personhood" and Free Speech rights to corporations in their Citizens United decision (though, in Morse v. Frederick, this same Court stated that high school students don't necessarily have the right to free speech if that speech gets in the way of their meting out school discipline).


As Jeffrey Toobin noted in his New Yorker piece about Roberts, "No More Mr. Nice Guy," last year:

In every major case since he became the nation’s seventeenth Chief Justice, Roberts has sided with the prosecution over the defendant, the state over the condemned, the executive branch over the legislative, and the corporate defendant over the individual plaintiff. Even more than Scalia, who has embodied judicial conservatism during a generation of service on the Supreme Court, Roberts has served the interests, and reflected the values, of the contemporary Republican Party.

So, it doesn't take a significant use of one's imagination to figure out where Roberts' court will dump the notion of "Honest Services." Scalia has already been noted as saying that the statute is soooo sweeping it could be used against "a mayor for using the prestige of his office to get a table at a restaurant without a reservation."

Expect Scalia to right the majority opinion. Expect an effective weapon to prosecute graft and corruption (Lord knows, it's hard enough as it is) to be blithely swept aside by this (retro-)activist Court, who has absolutely nooooooo problem with obliterating laws they simply don't agree with. Expect the usual sturm und drang that's becoming all-too-familiar with each reactionary Roberts decision. Expect Jeffrey Skilling, Conrad Black, and any millionaire Club Fed prisoner with a dime-store lawyer to be set free any moment now. Expect placing any limits on corporations and/or their malfeasance to become that much harder. And definitely expect to be pissed for days to come.

I expect you to come back here so I can say, "I told you so."

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You Think the Health Care "Debate" Was Bad ... Just Wait

There was not a single progressive, liberal, and/or Democrat in this country who did not wake up Wednesday morning with a WTF?! Moment staring them straight in the face. As we all know, the night before the People's Republic of Massachusetts did the unthinkable and elected a Republican, Scott Brown, to fill Ted Kennedy's vacant seat in the US Senate.

Since one of the major keys to his election was Brown's staunch opposition to health care reform (which he seems to be backpedaling on a little already), everybody's pretty much thrown in the towel on health care reform. Obama's said that he didn't want Congress to ram anything through before Brown's seated; Reid halted all proceedings in the Senate; and yesterday, Pelosi declared that she didn't have the votes to pass the Senate version of the bill in the House to pull an effective end-around and get the legislation through. Sure, Republicans are disingenuously claiming that they simply want to start over--but how can they possibly further water down such an amazingly ersatz bill and still call the end result "reform"?

So, one must assume that this health care legislation which has tied up our government for almost a year has gone down in flames.

There's plenty of blame to go around, but this loss will ultimately be his to swallow. But hey, every Icarus has his Sun. As many have often pointed out, no American President had ever been able to pull off significant health care reform. But what I think is more important is something I heard on the radio on Wednesday: no significant piece of progressive legislation has been passed into law since the Nixon administration.

Now, Nixon's presidency was what I consider to be the logical conclusion of the New Deal/Great Great Society era in American governance--where Uncle really thought he could solve everyone's daily problems. Nixon's dabbling with price and wage controls in the face of stag- and inflation sounded the era's death knell. Watergate simply confirmed it. Ford and Carter were the wake. And then, in 1980 the US woke to "Morning in America" and the Reagan era.

Of course, no major, progressive legislation would be passed when even the sole Democratic president proclaimed that "The era of Big Government is over."

But Obama's election was supposed to spell the end to all that. After all, the Bush Babee administration took us to Reaganism's logical conclusion: repeated tax cuts despite massive government spending gave us record-shattering deficits; a "Government is the problem" mentality became all too true when the FDA couldn't even protect us from poisoned broccoli and dog food; no one was around to protect us from toxic children's toys; EMA was nowhere to be found during Katrina; cowboy militarism and the "Imperial President" have given us two wars, "extraordinary rendition," and torture; we've eroded our manufacturing base to the point that China actually manufactures our smart bombs; and large-scale deregulation led to the greatest financial collapse since the Great Depression.

In the face of all this, we elected Democrats to, we hoped, right the ship. Finally, we'd get people in there who actually believed in governance, who could run FEMA, end the wars, fix this Wall Street debacle, and get us back on the right track.

Health care was to be the first, shining example of this new age. After all, the Dems had the White House and unprecedented majorities in both houses of Congress. The Republicans simply didn't have the power and votes to stop them.

So, we imagined Pelosi or Reid coming out, saying something like, "We've been studying this problem for the last 20 years. Here are the pros and cons of our system. These are the things we'll be cherry-picking from those countries with universal coverage. And we're going with _________________." Thereby ending one of the many grievous matters that is crippling this country and its citizenry.

Sure, we knew that no American president had ever been able to pull this off before. But what we didn't realize that, as I stated before, no piece of progressive legislation has become law since the friggin' Nixon administration.

Yes, Reagan happened in the interim. But so had Bill Clinton. His liberal-conservative-Democrat "triangulation," where he talked about lending a helping hand to "the people" while really constantly having his hand out to take corporations' money and constantly scratching their backs, has been the prevailing model for most of these Dem pols for almost 20 years now. You might as well call him the Patron Saint of the Blue Dog.

But, more importantly, the nature and expense of political campaigns has changed dramatically. Presidential campaigns run into the hundreds of millions; Senate and House races run in the tens of millions; and even local contests around the country cost seven figures.

And it seems, in order to raise millions, you've got to already have millions. We simply don't have too many working- and/or middle-class politicians in either house in either party fighting the good fight for the "little man." Oh, they give good lip service. They certainly "feel your pain." But they are so far removed from any of the suffering. These "pains" they speak of are no more than abstract concepts--you know, like Calculus 2--in their minds.

Even if this weren't the case and Archie Bunker, Fred Sanford, Chico and the Man were running things alongside Maud, we'd still have to look at the money flooding into their campaigns and who's providing those funds. We know you can't raise all that dough at a couple of bake sales. We know that our nation's political leaders have to constantly spoon our nation's business leaders for all them cookies.

After all, people get you votes, but money gets you elected. These two camps don't necessarily have to be at odds with each other, but they almost always are. This can only lead to conflict. And in almost every conflict, those with the biggest guns constantly win the war.

This is especially true with the health care debate and its apparent demise. No, the Republicans didn't have the Dems cowering in the Senate with their impotent 40 votes. No, the Teabaggers didn't have them quaking in their boots. Glenn Beck's insane ass wasn't riding roughshod over Congress. The American people weren't storming the barricades demanding anyone's head.

In fact, even through all the madness, the American people showed unwavering support for health care reform through most of '09. It wasn't until recent months that people had finally become disgusted with the process. Senator-Elect Brown claims that voters were turned off by the "sausage-making" of legislation.

I disagree. It wasn't the sausage-making at all. I'm a fan of Italian sausage and German bratwurst. If we would've gotten something like that--a perfect piece of spicy pork perfection--we would've been satisfied. Instead, the Dems were trying to cram a tasteless lump of lard in intestinal casings that promised to leave us fat, bloated, broke, and still in need of serious health care.

No, it was the obvious buckling the Dems did in the face of their corporate donors. It was Obama's meeting with the insurance companies, and saying, "Single-payer's off the table," before serious debate had even begun. How Big Pharma left the White House bragging that they were still going to be able to charge us whatever they wanted for their drugs. It was Max Baucus dismissing the public option because way too many private interests contribute to his campaign slush funds.

It was finding out that every delay, every compromise, every setback, every challenge the Dems faced was being thrown up by fellow Dems who were somehow on the health care industry's payroll.

(And don't even get me started on how the Democrats were leading the charge to roll back reproductive rights!!!)

It was becoming all-too-clear that the Democrats now serve two masters--corporate donors and real, live people--and that we people were clearly losing the battle. We expect that shit from Republicans. That's why we voted them out of office. We weren't expecting it from the Democrats. They're liberal! They're progressive! They serve the people! The common man!

But how long has that not been the case. Remember, no progressive legislation since Nixon. What have Democrats considered "progressive" since then? The Great Society? No. How about the Family and Medical Leave Act?

Sure, you can leave your job and return to it if you happen to have a six-week emergency. But you won't get paid in the interim (perhaps causing a minor financial emergency in one's family). And what happens when your emergency runs into the seventh week?

How about COBRA? Sure, if you lose your job, you can keep your medical insurance ... and pay 10 times more than your employer ever paid for the same benefits. And how are you supposed to pay for it when you're un ... em ... ployed?!!!

The Democrats' brand of Progressivism never really seems to address the problem, seems to oddly benefit the employer, and, if used, ends up costing us commoners more than if the law had never been passed in the first place.

The same was probably going to be true with their health care "reform" legislation. They were going to cram mandates down our throats, force us all to buy insurance, and never, ever cap what insurers could charge us. They were going to force insurers to take us if we had pre-existing conditions, but they were going to let those insurers still bankrupt us for those pre-existing conditions. And we were going to be legally bound to keep that insurance ... all the way to the poor house.

Who would that bit of "Progress" really have benefited? We commoners or the Democrats' corporate donors?

But that's what the Corporate Democratic Party offers in the form of relief these days. Their brand of Progressivism leaves their corporate donors relatively unscathed and sometimes even flush, while they dump bags of shit on our heads and call it sunshine. Then they charge us exorbitant rates for the privilege and expect us to praise them for their generosity. After all, it's not every day you get to go to bankruptcy court covered in shit.

That's why this health care debate was so long and convoluted and painful: they just hadn't figured out a way to turn shit to sunshine.

But what's even sadder about this charade is that it may just be the last time Dems even try to pull it off in the foreseeable future. With yesterday's Supreme Court decision to destroy the caps on corporate campaign spending, one can only assume that corporations and their bottomless coffers will be the deciding factor in any election in which they choose to participate (read: "every election").

They will simply have the power to contribute as much as they want to the candidate of their choosing, flood any local market with favorable ads for that candidate and attack ads against their opponent. They'll be able to reward politicians with untold campaign riches if they vote their way and rain down fire and brimstone on any heretic who dares to oppose their will.

Last year, the health care industry spent tens of millions of dollars lobbying against reform. Just imagine what they'll spend if the issue's brought up again. If a bill promising them 30 million new, captive customers was too "radical," one can only scream in horror at the health care "reform" they'd actually approve.

And what about other issues? Climate change? Any kind of environmental legislation? Transportation bills? What about ending the wars? Will Halliburton protect its billions it's making by spending millions saying, "The terrorists will win!!!" if we pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan?

Bank re-regulation? Obama finally FINALLY!!! came out yesterday talking about re-regulating the banks, breaking them up, separating commercial banking from investment banking, in order to protect the American public and our tax dollars from another financial meltdown. Yet, we've already heard the pundits saying that those reforms are already dead in the water in Congress.

In light of this sweeping Supreme Court decision, you've gotta think they're right. If anybody has the money (our money, you sons-of-bitches!!!) to influence the way Congress votes, it's most definitely the banks. What politicians will have the moxie to stand in the face of the billions of dollars of wrath the banks can rain down on them?

So, you best be ready to kiss bank re-regulation good-bye.

Kiss health care reform good-bye.

Kiss any progressive legislation in the near future good-bye.

Oh yeah, and Roberts, Thomas, "Scalito," and Kennedy ...




KISS MY BIG, BLACK ASS!!!!

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Sotomayor the Terrorist Update

Remember way back in May, when I told you the Right would peg Judge Sotomayor as a terrorist? Well, it's taken a bit longer than I'd originally thought, but "The Committee for Justice" has finally gone and did it:



Told ya so!
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Jackass du Jour

It's really not hard to believe that a Supreme Court "Justice," who was ridiculous enough to rule against Lilly Ledbetter in her discrimination suit, would also be ass enough to rule in favor of the Massey Coal Co., who basically paid out $3 million in campaign financing to get a judge on West Virginia's Supreme Court just to avoid paying $50 million in damages to a former competitor. Of course, it makes total sense to buy your own judge to rule in your favor. That is capitalism! That's the American way!

What chaffs my chaps is Assinine Scalia's "dissent":

"The court today continues its quixotic quest to right all wrongs and repair all imperfections through the Constitution"

Yeah, those silly liberals on the Court. Who are they to even think that someone might go to court to "right a wrong"? What would that poor slob be thinking of, filing a law suit like that? What the hell could he expect?

I know it's asking too much, but maybe Scalia should pull his ideology out his ass and look up what the hell his job title means!
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You Heard It Here First: Sotomayor Is a Terrorist!

As you've probably heard already, The Big Brother has chosen federal appeals court judge Sonia Sotomayor to replace Justice David Souter on the Supreme Court bench.

As you may have heard, the Republicans have been itching for this fight for awhile now--even without a nominee.

They've even named Alabama Republican, Jeff Sessions, to be top elephant on the Senate Judiciary Committee. This is the same committee (then Republican-controlled) who rejected Sessions himself for the bench back in '86 because, as a young US attorney, he called the ACLU and NAACP "un-American," "communist-inspired," and that they "forced civil rights down the throats of the people."

So, though they'll be howling in a wind tunnel, expect the Republicans to start screaming over this woman.

But Tio Memo, why do you think they'll call Judge Sotomayor, a respected federal judge, an alumnus of both Princeton and Yale, a George H.W. Bush appointee, why do you think they will call her a terrorist?!


Well, boys and girls, Judge Sonia Sotomayor is a self-proclaimed "Nuyorican."

[TRANSLATION: A Puerto Rican of New York descent.]

Now, unless your name is either "Little" Louie Vega or Kenny "Dope" Gonzales and you make some dope-ass house music, the mere use of this term marks you as "out of the mainstream."

[TRANSLATION: You made them Google the damned word just to figure out what it means.]

The Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional (TRANSLATION: Armed Forces of National Liberation, or simply FALN) were also Puerto Rican, fighting for the island's full independence. They were terrorists. They bombed the shit out of us. Between 1974 and 1983 they bombed over 100 US targets--mostly in New York and Chicago.

Hm? ... Bombs? ... New York? ... Puerto Rican? ... Nuyorican? ... Terrorist!!!





That's right, boys and girls. You see, a certain Nuyorican future judge was a mere, impressionable 20-years-old in 1974. You know, terrorist age. And those were heady, radical times back then. Patty Hearst, the Symbionese Liberation Army, the Black Panthers, Brown Panthers, Gray Panthers (no shit!), American Indian Movement. Black was beautiful, Wounded Knee was under siege, "PR"s were suddenly calling themselves "Nuyorican"! That was like Che Guevara's "Chicanos" out in California!

(Yeah, I know. If you haven't figured out, I've changed voices here.)


This wasn't your momma's West Side Story. Natalie Wood (born Natalia Zacharenko) wasn't singing about feeling pretty and witty and wise. That bitch was throwin' bombs!!!





And before you can blink an eye, there's going to be some right-wing nutjob website (probably the same one that said Obama was Malcolm X's love child) that will claim that Sonia Sotomayor (aka "The Boricua Bomber") was right alongside Natalia, al Qaedaing America before the World Trade Center was even a gleam in Osama's eye.

If not her, I'm sure they'll claim that the future justice (that's right, you ain't stoppin' this one!) had a father, mother, first cousin-twice removed who was part of the FALN. Or better yet, Lucy and Alicia Rodriguez are Sotomayor's notorious Independentista aunts who were released by Clinton and Attorney General Eric Holder!


(They already call him a terrorist sympathizer.)


Yes, those godless liberals are about to do us again! Not only do they insist on being soft on terrorists, making our country less safe with each drop of water not poured over Ahmed's face, but now these traitors are going to actually put a full-fledged terrorist on the bench of the Supreme friggin' Court!!!!





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