Impeach Chief Justice John Roberts? Absolutely

Original Link: http://host.madison.com/ct/news/opinion/column/bill_berry/article_63ad0467-81f6-5ba2-9eb0-3ad8b8357669.html

By Bill Berry

If you’ve been around long enough, you can remember the highway billboards of the 1960s demanding “Impeach Earl Warren.”

Appointed chief justice of the United States by Republican President Dwight Eisenhower in 1953, Warren went on to anger conservatives for high court rulings, especially in the areas of police arrest procedures, separation of church and state, and civil rights.

The John Birch Society paid for those billboard messages, and while Warren was never impeached, he served as a convenient whipping boy for those who claimed to want a constructionist, not an activist, Supreme Court. My, how times have changed. Current Chief Justice John “Screw the Little Guy” Roberts and his four black-robed sycophants have proven every bit as activist as the Warren court.

The Roberts court’s frightening 5-4 ruling that corporations and unions may spend freely from their treasuries to influence elections is a monumental decision, as in monumentally wrong. Those scrambling to defend it note that the decision might lead to full disclosure of who or, in this case, what is spending money to buy political office. Sure, as if we didn’t know the names of the robber barons that Robert La Follette and Wisconsin’s early 20th century progressives fought.

Corporations aren’t inherently good or bad. But along the way in American history, we’ve given them the same rights that individuals enjoy, or maybe we should say used to enjoy. Corporations aren’t immoral, they’re just amoral. They exist to make money. Period. As it stands now, the little people lost. Big corporations won. Period.

People who see eye-to-eye on almost nothing can find plenty of reason to agree about this. Interestingly, Tea Party Nation will holds its first-ever convention this week in Nashville. Here is a group that proclaims: “The Tea Party Nation is a user-driven group of like-minded people who desire our God-given Individual Freedoms which were written out by the Founding Fathers.” One would think they would be hoisting “Impeach John Roberts” signs for the way his court just eviscerated their individual rights. Don’t bet on it, but you never know.

The Supreme Court ruling gave unlimited spending rights to labor unions too, note its defenders. Sure, and the Milwaukee Brewers have just as much right to win the World Series as the Yankees. They just don’t have the money to do it. Neither do the unions. In baseball, as in most other matters, including politics, money rules.

It’s a done deal now. Corporations are in charge, just as they were in a certain European country prior to World War II.

If all this wasn’t bad enough, almost on cue, on the same day the Roberts court was robbing individuals of their rights, the Wisconsin Supreme Court adopted new recusal rules, including a clause added by Justice David “Little Napoleon” Prosser that allows judicial campaign committees to solicit contributions from individuals who may be involved in a court proceeding in which the candidate is likely to preside. Let’s see, which individuals involved in court proceedings have the money to contribute to judicial elections? As the old saying goes, now that we know you’re a whore, all we have to do is establish a price.

The champagne must have flowed freely among the tassel-shoed occupants of the fancy digs that Wisconsin Manufacturing & Commerce calls home on Jan. 21, the day when money was officially ruled to be more powerful than people in both America and one of its states.

Up here in Mudville, there is no joy. The Brewers aren’t about to win the World Series, and the little people have been called out on strikes. Impeach John Roberts? You’re damned right.