• a lil bee 🐝@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    Of course there’s a reason? Legislation was passed (the real problem here) and the entire point of the court is to evaluate legislation against our constitution. I agree with every single statement in your last paragraph, but you have to point the blame at the correct place. SCOTUS taking this up is completely legitimate and falls entirely within their role in our government.

    The state legislators are infringing on private citizens and their medical care. That’s the crime here. Even then, it’s important to understand that nothing is off limits to legislators. Even our core rights can be changed by a supermajority in the national congress. Power decides what rights get protected in a society. That’s been the recurrent tale of history for all time. We are beyond fortunate to have a sliver of that power and we are failing to use it to stomp these legislators into the dust. That’s the crime here, not SCOTUS taking up a case that falls entirely under its jurisdiction and mandate.

    • eksb@programming.dev
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      4 days ago

      the entire point of the court is to evaluate legislation against our constitution

      That is not the entire point of SCOTUS. That is not even in the constitution; it is a power the court gave itself in Marbury v. Madison.

      Most SCOTUS decisions are judging appeals against federal law (including the constitution). Occasionally they rule a federal law unconstitutional, but not usually.

      • a lil bee 🐝@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        Right, which was in the early 1800s. For better or worse, it’s been a major component of their role for 90% of the nation’s history. You’re right though, I erred in using “entire point”.

    • TheFriar@lemm.ee
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      4 days ago

      The problem comes in when this is exactly what the Republican Party has planned to exploit. They withheld the vote on obama’s nominee in order to get a Republican to install them. They also enacted project redmap before then, during obama’s first term, where they successfully took control of state houses and smaller offices throughout the country. And they fucked the maps to keep power. And all of that led to a right-stacked court that will lie to get the seat, take bribes when sitting in that seat, and then continually tow the party line with all of their insane fearmongering. They opened the door for abortion to be made illegal by the states they stacked in their favor and then changed the local laws to harm people.

      You’re right, this is technically the way it’s supposed to work, but it doesn’t work anymore. Because there are no means of truly dealing with people exploiting the system and breaking it for their own gain except for toothless censures and other symbolic votes. And when those same broken systems made companies all the more powerful, they birthed FOX and MSNBC and made voting, not only really hard for specifically targeted communities that would act as a check on this type of shit, but also made it useless for the other people. Because they’re only doing exactly what the right wing mediasphere wants them to do.

      • a lil bee 🐝@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        They withheld the vote on obama’s nominee in order to get a Republican to install them.

        Yup, because they had control of the Senate. They were voted in. I’m not denying that Republicans are immoral, unethical scumbags with the intent to power game the system, but we have no tools to fix that in our current system other than overwhelming it. It only gets worse the longer we wait.

        There really aren’t a lot of other options for the citizenry. You can LARP at revolution or whatever, but I’m not volunteering first and I don’t see a lot of others doing so either. I, and a lot of other vulnerable people, are not going to come out on top, so I’ll pass on that solution.

        Fact of the matter is, we could have elected Hillary in 2016. Sure, there was Republican meddling and Comey and yada yada, but it was fully within our abilities and we failed. The Supreme Court would look entirely different right now and we would still have medical rights. We did flip the senate, so it was fully in play before and then Mitch would not have been able to block the Garland appointment. Those are concrete outcomes from something that was fully possible for us to prevent. So I’m just not comfortable writing off voting as worthless at this stage, even with the acknowledged difficulties, gerrymandering, etc.

        • TheFriar@lemm.ee
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          4 days ago

          I wasn’t arguing for not voting. I was just making a point. Should’ve made that clearer, my b

          • a lil bee 🐝@lemmy.world
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            4 days ago

            All good, friend. I just think this is possible for us to defeat, even at the ballot box. The American people are powerful when they decide to wield their votes for the actual, true betterment of the country and our democracy. I really think we can do this, together.

      • UltraGiGaGigantic@lemm.ee
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        4 days ago

        Perhaps republicans would choose a more moderate candidate if they didn’t have both hands shackled to the two party system via First Past The Post voting.

      • a lil bee 🐝@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        No worries! I’m full of rage on all this nonsense lately too and I’ve been in that same mode. I’m happy to join with you in November and in the meantime to start to fix this nonsense!