Only you can stop this Constitutional fire

 - by Dustin Woods
  Visionary Columnist

Lately, there have been many newsworthy events impacting our community, and I don’t really know where to start. But I want to give an appropriate perspective to the alarm that I feel.

I have a master’s degree in political science. I spent a lot of time and money learning how the government derives its power from the citizenry. I know how our government came to exist and how it has grown in power over time, and the most recent actions the Supreme Court of The United States has taken are truly fear-inspiring.

The U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) gave itself the power to review laws for constitutionality in the decision of Marbury vs. Madison in 1803. Out of whole cloth, they created this new ability that is still not enshrined in law or the constitution.

Now, using this power, six justices appointed by Republican Presidents have ruled that a president has complete immunity from criminal prosecution for “official” acts and “presumed” immunity for every other act they take. This decision includes ordering Americans to be murdered without a trial, a clear affront to the constitutional principle of due process of law. The conservatives on the court have cleared extra-judicial killings because they feel a president needs to be free to act “boldly.”

These deplorable decision-makers in their unelected lifetime positions have taken it upon themselves to take on more power than just creating an American King in a president. They’ve also decided they get to decide what legislature intended when they passed laws.

Instead of Congress giving the president the power to enact the laws using the expertise of the highly educated and experienced people in the civil service, SCOTUS has decided that judges get to make calls on how many parts per million of carcinogens are allowed to spew into the environment instead of the Environmental Protection Agency, a department created by laws passed by two branches of government and yet invalidated by a third branch.

Now that we have a conservative SCOTUS, it has given air cover for the conservative state governments to take on their ever more extreme agendas. They are outlawing abortion-causing medication and birth control, requiring women to carry inviable fetuses to term, and now requiring the teaching of Christianity in schools.

Step by step, we are carried ever closer to the conservative Christian theocracy in which we are no longer free to practice religion or not, but rather where we are forced to practice their self-serving view of religion. This theocracy includes all the smiting, murder, war, and hate but none of the charity, compassion and love.

It’s time to act. The normal functioning of government has been supremely perverted by a power-hungry minority that has ensured that even if they lose elections, their will shall be done.

So I say make your will felt in every way you can. I beg every reader to volunteer for a campaign, preferably the U.S. Senate campaign, for someone who rejects this view of an activist judiciary that legislates from the bench, takes away longstanding rights for half the population, but creates a new and unlimited get-out of jail free card for the most elite Americans.

The Gayly. 08/07/2024 11:48 am, CST.