Do you remember “the rule of law?” It had something to do with “checks and balances” or something like that. I remember hearing about it in high school. It was one of the reasons I was supposed to feel proud each morning as I held my hand over my heart and pledged eternal allegiance to a sheet with stripes on it.
I guess they took it away. I’m not really sure what happened. I was too busy eagerly anticipating the release of the Nunes memo or worrying about the fate of Dreamers.
In case you were obtaining your news from a major network and heard as little about it as I, here is what I understand.
"The Republican Scam Revealed"
Just after President Donald Trump announced he would not enforce sanctions against Russia – passed by Congress with veto-proof majorities and signed into law by Donald Trump – Pennsylvania Senate Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati announced he would not obey a State Supreme Court order declaring the Congressional Districts he’d helped gerrymander unconstitutional and ordering they be redrawn.
It’s easy to see the conniving logic behind the Trump decision. If he’d vetoed the bill as the system provided him the right to do – and as any other President before him who believed it was “unnecessary” would have – Congress would have easily overridden his veto and the sanctions would have gone into effect whether he liked it or not. Vlad the Impaler probably wouldn’t have been overly pleased with that. But refusing to enforce the law? That would only upset lawyers. I heard Chuck Schumer complained about it. But I haven’t heard much from any Republican Members of Congress. They must not have learned about checks and balances at their schools.
https://flic.kr/p/D2okUX
The Scarnati announcement is a little more difficult to justify. Maybe he imagines himself as the modern equivalent of Lester Maddox or George Wallace, blocking the school doorway so the black kids couldn’t get in. But those Southern racists were taking their stand against the destruction of hundreds of years of Southern racist traditions. However disgusting and pathetic those traditions might have been (and still remain), they were about more than some power-hungry asshole protecting his own job.
Even in this regressive Commonwealth, it’s difficult to imagine anyone taking to the streets to support gerrymandering.
But as the nation is distracted by issues specifically created by the Republicans to distract them (see above), it is easy to see how some conniving opportunist might sense an opportunity like this one with the belief (well-founded or not) that the big conniving opportunist at the top has his back. He might also believe, in this environment, a conservative US Supreme Court will surely reject the rule of law in favor of the rule of Republicans.
In this environment, I cannot say with certainty he is wrong.
We are discussing DACA and the Dreamers because Donald Trump compelled us to argue about it with his irrational edict. We are discussing an already discredited intelligence memo because he is threatening to use its disinformation to further confuse the investigation into his misdeeds. What we are not yet discussing is the fundamental destruction of American Democracy by the Republican Party in a desperate effort to cling to power.
This is the moment when the truly noble Republicans in both the Pennsylvania Legislature and the United States Congress (we must still have a couple) need to take the opportunity to prove their nobility by objecting to the despotic actions of their party leaders and aggressively advocating for the rule of law. Otherwise, they will be setting dangerous precedents that might come back to haunt them in ways more horrible than they can imagine.
I’m not even talking about the guillotine. Americans are too lazy for revolutions. How does Queen Hillary sound to you?
[Featured image by ExploreClarion.com/YouTube]