Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.
The tag 'Supreme Court' is associated with 2 posts.

The Eyes Over Mike Johnson: the CNP’s Texas Template for God’s Power Grope

Posted by Pterrafractyl ⋅ November 10, 2023 ⋅ 26 comments

Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism isn’t sim­ply on the rise in the Unit­ed States. It’s already at the top, thanks in no small part to the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy (CNP) and the myr­i­ad of groups oper­at­ing under its theo­crat­ic umbrel­la. The Supreme Court is dom­i­nat­ed by a hard right major­i­ty and there’s even the CNP’s planned mass purges — start­ing with the gov­ern­ment but not end­ing there — under the ‘Sched­ule F’/Project 2025 label. That’s all part of the grim con­text sur­round­ing a series of reports around the new Speak­er of the House, Mike John­son that should raise seri­ous ques­tions about just how much influ­ence the lead­ing Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist hold over new Speak­er of the House. But thanks the House and Supreme Court aren’t the only gov­ern­ment insti­tu­tion under Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism sway. States Repub­li­cans are increas­ing­ly adopt­ing Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist laws, with Texas lead­ing the way under the way under the vision of CNP pseu­do-his­to­ri­an David Bar­ton. It turns out John­son and Bar­ton are long-time allies who share the same vision for the future. A vision in line with the ‘dis­ci­ple­ship’ form of author­i­tar­i­an Chris­tian­i­ty now main­streamed in the CNP-dom­i­nat­ed net­work of 47,000 church­es in the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion (SBC). Which also hap­pens to be a denom­i­na­tion grap­pling with a sex abuse mega-scan­dal haunt­ing­ly rem­i­nis­cent of the Catholic Church’s mega-abuse scan­dal. A mega-scan­dal with a num­ber of major CNP fig­ures oper­at­ing as abusers or enablers. It’s that broad­er inter­sec­tion of Mike John­son’s ties to Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism with this grow­ing SBC abuse mega-scan­dal that we’re going to look at in this post.


John Roberts Gives Bad Faith Blessing to Hyper-Partisan Gerrymandering, Paving Way for the Kochstitution.

Posted by Pterrafractyl ⋅ July 1, 2019 ⋅ 45 comments

There was an omi­nous warn­ing about the direc­tion Amer­i­can Democ­ra­cy was head­ing When David Frum warned, “If con­ser­v­a­tives become con­vinced that they can­not win demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly, they will not aban­don con­ser­vatism. They will reject democ­ra­cy.” It was a warn­ing about what might hap­pen, but as we’re going to see, the corporate/billionaire wing com­po­nent of the Repub­li­can par­ty has already con­clud­ed that it can’t get the pub­lic behind its agen­da and has already turned against democ­ra­cy. And John Roberts just hand­ed this bil­lion­aire fac­tion a mas­sive legal vic­to­ry in Rucho vs Com­mon Cause: fed­er­al courts can’t rule on whether or not dis­trict lines are drawn in an over­ly-par­ti­san man­ner. It’s up to each state on its own. And as we’re going to see, Repub­li­cans already dom­i­nate the con­trol of state gov­ern­ments and now state leg­is­la­tures can ger­ry­man­der their own dis­tricts with­out fear of fed­er­al med­dling. Beyond that, the Kochs and ALEC are work­ing on remov­ing state courts from over­see­ing redis­trict­ing maps too. And to top it off, the Kochs are aggres­sive­ly push­ing for a con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion that could eas­i­ly turn into a ‘run­away’ con­ven­tion. And if there’s a con­sti­tu­tion­al con­ven­tion, whichev­er par­ty con­trols the most states is going to con­trol the out­come of the con­ven­tion. So the Supreme Court just tur­bocharged the Kochs’ cap­ture of state assem­blies, the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, and even­tu­al­ly the Con­sti­tu­tion.


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