I Smell A Rat, A Judicial Rat

And at the Supreme Court, too.

Its decision last week NOT to make a decision in 2 cases (more later) of obvious partisan gerrymandering (drawing election district lines to favor your party alone, screwing the other party and all voters) smells to high heaven of the worse kind of decision making by the high court (as bad as the decision on Florida voting ---more later--that may have cost Al Gore the presidency.)

The Chief Justice asked a legitimate question; how much partisan gerrymandering is OK? Where can the lines be drawn? And then totally surrendered his job of deciding such questions and gave up but, of course, by a 5-4 vote including the 2 new conservative judges. The court is there to make such decisions, tough or not. It has done so many times before. In the famous Florida vote case it was ultimately ruling on those famous "hanging chads," remember? Was this a Gore vote or a Bush vote? Hold the chad up to the light and try to ascertain the voter's intention. It did just that in its decision. Only the most important and powerful job in the world was at stake, yet somehow, it was able to make a decision.

But not in the current gerrymandering cases. I smell a rat.  The court had before it cases from 2 states, one where the GOP dominated state legislature had redrawn previous election district lines to favor them, and a second case where a Democrat controlled state legislature had done the same thing. What a great opportunity to reaffirm an old American tradition of one person, one vote, and say: a pox on both your houses! This is wrong no matter who does it, and when.

But this Golden Opportunity was too much for the Republican dominated Supreme Court to pass up. Indeed, I strongly suspect it waited for two cases from two states, each controlled by one party, to opt out and say  "it's too tough for us to decide." Judges  have been deciding tough cases ever since King Solomon and the 2 mothers who each wanted the same baby. But this time, with 2 cases where the gerrymandering was so apparent (and so partisan) the court gave up.

Could it be because the court knows the GOP controls many more state legislatures right now than Democrats? And with a new census but a few years away, NOT deciding gives the GOP even more of a chance to draw lines to favor it, on the state level and on the federal level (read, more gridlock in Washington.)

But the court can say, well, we had 2 cases, one from each party, that were blatantly corrupt, but we just couldn't decide where to draw the line without jepordizing FUTURE  cases that MIGHT come before us.  Meadow Muffins!

Is there any way we can garnish their salaries for failure to do the job to which they were NOT elected?


I'm just sayin'...