COONEY EATS CROW — YUCK, OH YUCK

By Edwin Cooney

If you're a dog chasing a car, you're definitely in trouble if you catch it, but how would you know otherwise if you're a dog! I chased a Supreme Court opinion and rather than catching and commanding it, I got fed crow and  drenched by skunk-spray!

Since 1937, conservatives have lectured Americans  about “court packing” or partisan court manipulation. Hence, the decision announced on Monday, July 1st, as we prepared to celebrate our 248th birthday, that our highest court would grant a freely elected president the powers of King George the Third, thus placing all presidential acts above the law, is in defiance of the sacred idea and belief that we are a government of laws and not of men.

FDR was denounced as "the root of all evil" despite the fact that his New Deal saved capitalism. According to the June 30th ruling, if a president shoots his wife, that would be a private act and therefore subject to prosecution. However if, as Commander-in-Chief, he orders a member of the SEALS to shoot his wife, he would be immune from prosecution because that would be an official act of the President of the United States.

In addition, as Justice Sonia Sotomayor points out, a sitting president may accept a bribe for a pardon or even order the assassination of a challenger since all sitting presidents are immune from judicial prosecutions.

Last Monday, the Supreme Court sought to protect the Presidential office against attacks by successor presidents as a matter of legal partisan “payback."

For my part, I've really and truly bought into the idea and the belief that our government is "one of laws, and not of men."

If the person of the presidency and not the office itself is answerable to the law, then the law is not relevant either to the Constitution or to the acts of citizens!. After all, a president is America's first citizen!

Additionally, if a president is immune from the judgment of history, so is a whole people.

When I was first informed about this by a friend of mine from Pittsburgh, he and not I saw the danger in the ruling.

The Supreme Court sent the problem back to the judge handling the potential Washington, D. C. trial and invited the judge to set up an inquiry dividing the responsibilities of the person in the presidency and the acts of an officiating president. Hence, I was pleased that the issue had been sent to a lower judge and court. However, my friend in Pittsburgh is more farseeing than I.

Of course, I'm far from being the only inconsistent observer with an interest in the outcome of what occurred back on January 6th, 2021.

The GOP majority during Congress’ second impeachment of President Trump partially acquitted the outgoing president on the grounds that an impeachment ought to wait until former President Trump's innocence or guilt was decided by the courts. These days, those same Republicans seem to regard any guilty verdict as constituting a political rather than a legal act. Thus, Donald Trump, Stokely Carmichael, Bobby Seal, Malcom X, Huey Newton and the convicted murderer George Jackson are all merely political rather than legal criminals. Men are generally regarded by the company they insist on keeping.

Perhaps I'm wrong, but I never heard Martin Luther King claim that he was merely a political prisoner because he never denied that he deliberately broke laws in all parts of the country.

What I failed to consider possible was that conservative Americans would ever grant to the President of the United States absolute executive power when they were once bitter toward Franklin Roosevelt for asserting power in the 1930s.

Perhaps they'll alter their perspective when Presidents Pete Buttigieg, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Ayanna Pressley start exercising former President Trump's newly granted prerogatives. I'm astounded that social and ideological conservatives would ever grant to one of their leaders Theodore or even Franklin Rooseveltian authority. (Back in 1911, TR stated in an address at Osawatomie, Kansas that human rights are superior to property rights. In 1937, FDR was bitterly accused of trying to pack the Supreme Court to achieve a purely socialist agenda.)

When my younger lad was a little guy, he'd protest the medicine his mother and I would insist he take with the words "yuck, oh yuck!"

As I swallow my crow or inhale my skunk spray, I'm certain that one day very soon, Justices Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Coney Barrett will experience their crow and skunk fragrance that will be worse than mine!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY