Double Standards

And democracy on the brink

Although I wasn’t gone that long it’s been hard to settle back in. We had a great vacation but a vacation in the time of COVID isn’t entirely relaxing. And we returned to a city and a country that has COVID cases, hospitalizations, and deaths increasing by over 100% every day: once again, hospitals and hospital staff are overwhelmed.

• Ironically, in the midst of the Omicron surge the Supreme Court is hearing two cases that challenge Biden’s COVID mandates. Justice Sotomayor is participating remotely because, as a diabetic, she is at high risk for complications if she were to get COVID. But she’s not the only one who couldn’t be there in person. In a nice bit of irony, two of the lawyers arguing against the mandates are also doing so remotely because they tested positive for COVID.

  Now that the court is again meeting in person there are strict rules in place if you want to be in the chamber. The requirements include a negative COVID test, social distancing, and wearing an N95 mask.

  But Neil Gorsuch did not wear a mask at all during oral arguments (oral being the operative word) which lasted for four hours with him sitting close to his colleagues.

  Maybe Gorsuch’s performative intransigence was simply a way to illustrate what he thought of the vaccine mandates he and his colleagues were there to adjudicate. As Ruth Marcus puts it in a recent column, “No one is the boss of Justice Gorsuch.” And that’s the overarching problem—nobody is the boss of any of the nine justices. In this instance, Gorsuch was the only person who could not be bothered to follow the rules—and there is nobody to hold him to account because there is no ethics committee overseeing the behavior of the Supreme Court Justices.

  

  Breathe . . .

• Women are found guilty:

  • Elizabeth Holmes, former CEO of Theranos, was found guilty of four out of six charges (one count of conspiring to defraud investors and three for wire fraud). She faces up to 20 years in prison. Which is really not enough.

  • Ghislaine Maxwell was found guilty of five out of six of the charges levied against her and she faces decades in prison—which would effectively be a life sentence for her. Which is really not enough.

  • Former police officer Kimberly Potter was found guilty of manslaughter in the killing of Daunte Wright who committed the crime of driving a car with an expired registration and hanging an air freshener from his rearview mirror. The maximum sentence is 15 years but given that Potter has no criminal history she may serve as little as six- to eight-and-a-half years.

  • To all of this I say, “Good riddance.” They are all guilty and they all deserve the maximum sentence that can be handed down.

    BUT: How many men have committed similar crimes of defrauding investors without consequence? How is it possible that one lone woman is being held responsible for the criminal enterprise Jeffrey Epstein put in place, at least in part, to service other men? How is it possible that white male police officers kill unarmed black men, women, and children (in often even more horrific circumstances) without consequence, while this woman is convicted?

  • It is right and just that Holmes, Maxwell, and Potter face the maximum sentences. But what about the equally or more guilty men?

• Pres. Biden has nominated 73 federal judges: more than any president since Ronald Reagan. As important, his nominees are the most diverse ever. Seventy-eight percent of his confirmed judges are women and 53% are people of color. Forty of his nominees have been confirmed.

  This is wonderful but if Biden really wants to reshape the Federal judiciary he needs to double its size and add at least four seats to the currently illegitimate Supreme Court.

• And we learned that Donald lost his bid for the presidency in Arizona for the seven millionth time.

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It’s going to be another busy week with Schumer (hopefully) holding a vote on whether or not to carve out the filibuster for voting rights and forcing Manchin and Sinema to reveal themselves.

Manchin and Sinema aside, let’s be clear, with the exception of Rep. Liz Cheney and Rep. Adam Kinzinger, in the matter of January 6th and only in the matter of January 6th, every single Republican in Congress is against any legislation that would help the American people.

This cartoon perfectly exemplifies how I feel about the parties right now: