Hanging By a Handmaid: SCOTUS To Rule Whether Due Process Still Exists
This is a test. It’s probably Coney-Barrett’s call.
When Donald Trump started flying brown people to a slave prison camp in El Salvador based solely on the fact that they had tattoos, Judge James Boasberg immediately, correctly and decisively shut it down as being wildly unconstitutional. Several appeals have failed, so Trump has done the expected, appealed directly to the Supreme Court.
Trump’s excuse for kidnapping people and sending them to a black site in another country is that they were all part of a newly designated “terrorist group” called “Tren de Aragua.” Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a wartime power which was last used to create concentration camps for Japanese-Americans in WWII.
Numerous people who were here legally and/or had clean records were deported, including Neri Alvarado who only committed the crime of having an Autism Awareness tattoo honoring his 15-year old brother. Neri may or may not be one of the people being paraded behind Kristi Noem, who was wearing a $60,000 Rolex on her visit there yesterday.
This scenario is a Schoolhouse Rock example of an unconstitutional action by the federal government. Even if these were members of a “terrorist group” there is no scenario in the Constitution that allows for people to be arrested for no crime. Even in wartime, we didn’t disappear people out of the country.
As an example, Fritz Kuhn, seen here leading 20,000 Americans in Nazi salutes and slogans in 1939, while he oversaw the beating of a Jewish protester, was arrested for crimes, given a trial, denaturalized, and then deported back home. He wasn’t kidnapped to another fascist country’s slave camp.
As I’ve written, the Supreme Court has been captured by a long project of Leonard Leo and the Federalist Society to create a supermajority that would destroy the separation of Church and State, and institute a fascist theocracy consistent with his own membership in Opus Dei and Knights of Malta.
Six of nine members of SCOTUS are Catholic integralists, meaning they believe the government should be the Church. That’s why they seem to do acrobatics to defeat the obvious meaning of the Constitution all the time. That’s why they were selected.
In a case as egregious as this one, however, even Chief Justice John Roberts might decide that this is a bit over-the-top for his sensibilities. It’s not a gimme that he will vote to affirm due process, but for our purposes let’s assume he would. With the three liberal Justices and Roberts, we’re looking for a fifth vote to keep away the possibility that any of us could be disappeared without trial, from becoming permitted by law.
Amy Coney-Barrett’s reaction to Donald Trump when he greeted SCOTUS at the Not a State of the Union a few weeks ago went viral. Coney-Barrett has sided with Roberts a few times, which has angered the MAGA faithful. She is, unfathomably, the most likely thing between a tiny glimmer of hope on the horizon and permanent American fascism.
As a reminder, Coney-Barrett is in a charismatic Catholic cult called “People of Praise” that has a designated group of women literally called “handmaids.”
According to her religion, she does not answer to the Constitution, she answers only to the “high coordinators”—five men devoted to the project of oppressing women in the name of God.
So, we seem to be in a scenario where the safety and security of every American, and the right to be free of a government that can snatch anyone off the street, is in the hands of a handmaid programmed to listen to the orders of old white men.
I certainly hope she does the right thing and upholds the basic American right to not be disappeared by an oppressive government. If not, democracy is done here. Full-scale revolution will be the only option, and that will not happen before many more atrocities are committed. Trump, Patel, Bondi, Noem and Homan will take it as a sign that anyone is fair game.
Amy, if you’re listening. Be the hero we never expected.
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Perfectly stated. This article should be printed on the front page of every newspaper in America. Failing that, it is up to each of us to share it with everyone we know. Great thanks, Jim.
Jesus tap-dancing Christ on a flaming hoverboard, how did we get to the point where due process, the bare-minimum safety net against authoritarian dickery, hangs by the rosary beads of a Handmaid?
Let me say it plain: if you’re deporting legal residents to foreign black sites because they have a tattoo your moist-fingered fascist whisperer labeled “gang-ish,” then congratulations, you’ve fully weaponized the Alien Enemies Act, a 1798 relic so dusty it was last used to cage Japanese-American families in the desert during WWII. And even then, they got hearings. FDR didn't outsource the camps to El Salvador.
This is not justice. It’s banana republic cosplay; instead of cheap uniforms, Kristi Noem’s sporting a Rolex that costs more than a nurse makes in a year while parading broken lives like zoo exhibits.
And now it’s up to Amy Coney-Barrett, the Handmaid of Habeas Corpus, to maybe, possibly, remember that she swore an oath to the Constitution, not to her cult’s “high coordinators.” If she folds, the rest of us aren’t citizens anymore; we’re suspects waiting for rendition.