John Roberts Abandons His Umpire Approach

While the rest of us are occupied with health care reform and anniversaries, scary, threatening, and yes, activist, if you must, things are happening in the Supreme Court.

The case had to do with whether some right-wing nut jobs could show a movie they made to keep Hillary Clinton from becoming president. But Chief Justice John Roberts, he who said a justice's job isn't to make law but to make calls on what's lawful - like an umpire, somehow decided that instead of just deciding that case, the Court should address whether or not corporations should have the same rights to free speech as citizens, which would then unleash billions of corporate dollars into our campaign finance system. Not only has Roberts made this case about way more than it should be about, he called them in to discuss it earlier than their real session starts. Creepy.

This piece from Mother Jones covers it well. He is a scary man, and the Court does not yet have a safe majority to reign him in. I don't like the phrase "activist judge" because I respect activists way too much. It's not a word I'm willing to re-define as a bad thing or use to label pompous right-wing rich people. But we definitely need a word for this sort of skull-duggery. Because he's clearly trying to change laws, or at least long-time interpretations of laws which would in essence changes the laws, rather than make calls. Which might mean he's a liar. Hmmm, there's a word. It's not quite specific enough, but it's still useful.