For a couple of years, my wife and I escaped Obama’s America by owning a Pacific Ocean hotel in San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua. The irony was that in supposedly socialist Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega's government left us alone far more than government did in the supposedly free country of the United States of Obama.
Still, while Ortega 2.0 might have shed most of his socialism, he had not shed his lust for power, and the job of making sure he never lost again was that of the Chief Justice Roberto Rivas Reyes of what is in effect the Nicaraguan Supreme Court. I’m not sure who was actually more powerful or corrupt -- President Ortega or Justice Rivas -- but Rivas’s was bigger. His motorcade, that is, and he owned the two biggest homes on the two most elevated lots in San Juan del Sur, the nation’s top coastal town, a few hundred yards from our hotel.
Today I’m not sure whose court is more corrupt vis-a-vis election law: Nicaragua’s court or our Supreme Court. It appears that Donald Trump has remade the U.S. Supreme Court -- in Mitt Romney’s image! (I am not blaming Trump, just stating the obvious.)
While I think the United States Supreme Court stumbled badly in its 7-2 rejection of the Texas case on standing last year, the refusal to “grant cert” (i.e., to take the case) yesterday in a Pennsylvania case is horrifying beyond words. I could say that our election laws are now full-on banana republic, but I’d hate to insult bananas that badly.
What the Supreme Court codified yesterday, and what it started with the Texas rejection, is that election laws and procedures cannot be challenged beyond a state court, at any time, regardless of how badly those states shred the United States Constitution, and regardless of the major consequences to the other 49 states as a result. They don’t ever say that per se, but the results of what those two rulings have done are just that. Period.
Those trying to challenge Pennsylvania’s obviously corrupt and rigged election system have been told that they cannot challenge the laws ahead of the election, because there is not yet a victim. They’ve been told that fellow Americans impacted by Pennsylvania’s corrupt system cannot challenge, because of standing. Now they’ve been told that they cannot challenge after the election, because it’s after the election - and therefore moot.
Ortega on line one, asking the Democrats just how do they get away with this?
This kind of infantile and absurd logic just defies belief and takes one's breath away. And not just mine. I think it’s clear that Justice Clarence Thomas is even more mystified than am I, and he was livid. He was also, as he always is, right on the money in his analysis.
"One wonders what this Court waits for,” understates Thomas in his dissent, adding “we failed to settle this dispute before the election, and thus provide clear rules. Now we again fail to provide clear rules for future elections. The decision to leave election law hidden beneath a shroud of doubt is baffling. By doing nothing, we invite further confusion and erosion of voter confidence. Our fellow citizens deserve better and expect more of us.”
In other words, we are punting the ball again. But let’s make no mistake -- this is “not doing nothing” with all respect to Justice Thomas. This is proactive, and it absolutely legalizes institutional voter fraud and neuters state legislatures in lieu of state courts. Lawyers gonna lawyer, I reckon.
The only other quibble I have regarding Justice Thomas’s statement is that actually no, we don’t expect more of our courts any more. This is exactly what we have come to expect. We saw Brett Kavanaugh emasculated in his hearing process, and clearly he hasn’t had enough testosterone replacement shots yet, and Amy Coney Barrett, the mom, seems worried about her kiddies at school. Cancel Culture 1, Constitution 0. Voters be damned.
For the record, the broad strokes of the Pennsylvania case revolve around the fact that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court changed election laws at the last minute to expand unchecked mail in voting. The Constitution, that once relevant but now apparently irrelevant document, makes it clear that the state legislatures are in charge of state elections. In Pennsylvania, as in many states, the legislature is controlled by Republicans - while Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court is controlled by radical leftists. One lesson the late, great Rush Limbaugh helped teach us is that the left always uses the courts to get stuff done that they could never accomplish through the ballot box.
Never has that been truer than in the 2020 Election, in Pennsylvania and other places as well. As Thomas adds:
"The Constitution gives to each state legislature authority to determine the 'Manner' of federal elections...Yet both before and after the 2020 election, non-legislative officials in various States took it upon themselves to set the rules instead.... [T]he Pennsylvania Legislature established an unambiguous deadline for receiving mail-in ballots... the Pennsylvania Supreme Court extended that deadline… (and) ordered officials to count ballots received by the new deadline even if there was no evidence—such as a postmark—that the ballots were mailed by election day. … these cases provide us with an ideal opportunity to address (this) before the next election cycle. The refusal to do so is inexplicable.”
Tragically, it’s not inexplicable. It’s very explicable. It’s that the explanations are chilling and uncomfortable. Our Supreme Court is now part of the Washington Swamp, and the Washington Swamp is now totally divorced from any understanding of or caring about the rest of the nation. Roberts surrendered to the Swamp shortly after being seated. Kavanaugh and Coney-Barrett have done so even quicker.
Our Supreme Court is now no more an agent of a free people than similar courts are in places like Venezuela and Nicaragua. Our nation is becoming ungovernable, because there is no reason for a thinking person to have any respect for our institutions like the FBI, The Justice Department, or our courts on any level. We are facing dark days indeed.
Edmund Wright is a long time contributor to American Thinker, Breitbart, Newsmax TV, The Rush Limbaugh Show and author of several political books.