A Government of Laws

John Adams is often quoted as having said, “We are a government of laws, not of men.” Well, this week John Adams was proven wrong.

First there were the disclosures by the January 6 Committee about the efforts of the Loathsome Liar to undermine the basic election laws of the country. His own Republican appointees testified (yes – TESTIFIED) that he pressured the Justice Department (yes – the JUSTICE Department) to instruct the states to take actions that those officials knew were illegal. Had those Justice officials acceded to the Liar’s demands, legal chaos would have ensued, local politicians could have submitted phony election ballots, the people’s votes would have been disregarded and a whole lot of other unthinkable shit would have hit the fan. In short, the fundamental bases of our democratic system would have been crippled.

What stopped this from happening? Did our “government of laws” stop it? Not hardly. Men stopped it. Honest, decent, law-abiding men stopped it. Not that these men were exactly liberal icons. They were Trumpers. Jeffrey Rosen, the Acting Attorney General who stood up to the Liar was the one who intervened in the Paul Manafort case to make sure that that asshole avoided harsh incarceration. He also refused to release the results of the investigation of Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke, and he prevented federal money from being sent to Puerto Rico to fund an educational campaign about statehood. The man is no Bernie Sanders. But he and his fellow officials had their limits. Ironically, to them we are a “government of laws”. But we only stayed a “government of laws” because of those men.

And if that stuff doesn’t make Johnny Adams rise from the dead to tell us that he was mistaken, the decisions by our Supreme Court this week would make whatever is left of Johnny’s head explode.

When I say, “the decisions of the Supreme Court,” what I really mean is the decisions of five people in robes. The Supreme Court is just a building. The ones in the robes are what make all the difference. And what a difference they made this week.

First, they told us that the Second Amendment stops states from preventing most people from carrying guns in public. Let me quote a very smart friend of mine, Carl Zeitz, who said in his blog called, “Peeling the Onion,” that “Well Regulated Militia: Def. The guy sitting next to you at the ballpark on his fourth beer with a Glock in his waistband.”

None of the language of the Second Amendment has changed since it first passed. Yet, because five people in robes decided that it means something that it was never thought to mean before, now, that is what it means. A government of laws?

And then there was the Miranda ruling. This one got a little less attention because of all the other crap they were saying. Those Robed Rulers told us that the Miranda warnings, the Fifth Amendment protections that have guarded us from police misconduct for over fifty years, are not a constitutional requirement. They said that if the police fail to give you those warnings, well, too bad, you can’t sue the cops for violating your rights. The Fifth Amendment’s language hasn’t changed in those fifty years, but the composition of the Court has. A government of laws?

And then, of course, there is abortion. According to the five despots, no longer does the Constitution say about those rights what it said in 1973 despite the language never having changed.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I am a believer that the law should change with the times. Nothing in the Constitution changed when the Court decided to tell us that suddenly school segregation was wrong, or that same sex marriage was ok, or that inter-racial marriage was ok (but I’d like to see Justice Thomas tell Ginni that the Court was wrong on that one).

My only point is that as much as we would like to think that we are a government of laws; as much as we would like to feel as if the law somehow puts us inside a comfortable bubble that protects us from evil people, well, to quote Bill Barr’s analysis of Trump’s election theories, that’s bullshit.

So, despite what Johnny Adams thought, it has never been clearer than this week that without good people to administer the laws, the laws themselves mean nothing.

Sorry Johnny.