Justice Fortas, Justice Thomas, Chief Justice Burger April 14, 2023April 14, 2023 THE COURT 54 Years Ago, a Supreme Court Justice Was Forced to Quit for Behavior [Far] Less Egregious Than Thomas’s Though Abe Fortas was an LBJ appointee the loss of whose seat would tilt the Court from Left to Right (Nixon was by then president), Democrats joined with Republicans to force him to step down. Just as Republicans would years later join with Democrats to force Nixon to step down. Oh, how we need to get back to the days of civility, compromise, reverence for the law, and common sense. Instead we have the Once-Grand Old Party led by a Putin-admiring, FBI-bashing sociopathic tax cheat who mocks the disabled, poses with a baseball bat by the head of a black prosecutor he calls “an animal,” and kept a book of Hitler’s speeches by his bedside. GUNS MAGA Republicans trumpet crime at “record levels.” Especially in Alvin Bragg’s New York. CNN found that there were 438 murders in the City last year (so far this year the rate has fallen somewhat) — compared with 2,262 in 1990. (If 1990 sounds familiar, New York City crime-wise, it’s the year five young black men were convicted of a rape they had nothing to do with, for whose execution Trump advocated in full-page ads.) Even a single murder in a city of 8.8 million is, of course, awful. But only in today’s Republican Party is 438 more than 2,262. Republican elected officials — though not, I think, a majority of Republican voters — believe that more guns on the street, more freely carried, will help the police to make us safer. You’d be hard pressed to find police who believe that. Or who favor the sale of cop-killing bullets. It is madness — not mandated by the Constitution. Here is the famous Warren Burger quote as originally spoken on TV. (This longer quote is accurate, but an amalgam: “The Gun Lobby’s interpretation of the Second Amendment is one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud, on the American People by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime. The real purpose of the Second Amendment was to ensure that state armies – the militia – would be maintained for the defense of the state. If the militia, which was going to be the state army, was going to be well-regulated, why shouldn’t 16- or 17- or 18- or any other age persons be regulated in the use of arms the way an automobile is regulated. The very language of the Second Amendment refutes any argument that it was intended to guarantee every citizen an unfettered right to any kind of weapon he or she desires.”) Think about it: a well-regulated militia was intended to preserve the free state, not to overthrow its government. That, the Founders said, you got to do at the ballot box. Putin loves seeing us do this to ourselves . . . and Trump admires Putin . . . but it’s madness. BONUS → And this was back when Trump, like Koch, was a pro-choice Democrat. Have a great weekend, and don’t forget to file your taxes or an extension (and your first quarterly estimated tax, if applicable) this coming Tuesday.