A REBIRTH
Gideon's Trumpet is a wonderful flick with Henry Fonda, Based upon a true story.
From his prison cell at Florida State Prison, making use of the prison library and writing in pencil on prison stationery, Gideon appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court in a suit against the Secretary to the Florida Department of Corrections, Louie L. Wainwright. He argued that he had been denied counsel and, therefore, his Sixth Amendment rights, as applied to the states by the Fourteenth Amendment, had been violated.
Hugo Black was nominated by FDR to fill a vacancy upon the Supreme Court of the United States. There were murmurs you know. This man was one of those goddamnable Southern Confederate bastards; an ex member of the Ku Klux Klan that could not even take the time to spell 'clan' right; although he certainly was a populist.
And he gets appointed to the highest court and he goes nuts. His entire universe is shattered. He sees the world differently. He has a rebirth.
I mean there is another bastard on the Court by the name of William O. Douglas; a weird commie who vacations in Russia from time to time. Ahhahhahahaa.
Anyway, one day, a Florida jail cell inmate writes to Black in what was nothing but crayon, and says:
Hey, I did not get a chance to counsel. They made me represent myself and this sucks.
Well, you can imagine. DDE probably received a thousand letters informing him that he was the proud father of a baby girl or baby boy every damn year he sat as President of the United States of America.
Well Hugo and the other Justices would receive 'fan mail' all the
time too. But Hugo did not decide to treat this letter from a piece
of crap sitting in some jail cell in Florida
as irrelevant to his life.
He accepted the correspondence as a Writ of Certiorari.
In Roman law, an action of certiorari was suggested in terms of reviewing a case--much as the term is applied today--although the term was also used in writing to indicate the need or duty to inform other parties of a court's ruling. It was a highly technical term appearing only in jurisprudential Latin, most frequently in the works of Ulpian.
The term "certiorari" is often found in Roman literature on law but applied in a philosophical rather than tangible manner when concerning the action of review of a case or aspects of a case.
See the concept of certiorari goes back before the time of our Constitution. That is, this procedure for appealing to the Highest Court of our land in order to dispute some error in the proceedings that occurred in the lowest court of the realm. Thousands of years before our Constitution was ever written, or even thought about there were Writs of Certiorari. Oh but that goddamnable Italian Mafiosa Scalia on our present day court would never acknowledge that we have any history before 1789. hahahaha. Bastard.
You need four justices of the Supreme Court to recognize a piece of paper as a proper Writ for appeal purposes. But along with Hugo, William O. Douglas was nuts and they just corralled two other justices and my god, there was a proper writ. Written with crayon by a nobody.
Never happened before and never will again.
Well Gideon's Trumpet is a wonderful movie by the way. I always hated Jimmy Stewart as an actor and always loved one of his best friends Henry Fonda. Life is amazing at times. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gideon%27s_Trumpet
At any rate Gideon v. Wainwright as it came to be known is one of the greatest pieces of literature that ever came down from our Supreme Court. Not too many years after this decision Hugo is crazy and finally dies. But GOD LOVE HIM, WHEREEVER HE FINDS HIMSELF NOW.
Magic those times were. I would read those decisions in law
school and saw a different future for our nation than we have today.Those were the days my friends.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siLcSl2nmqA
Once upon a time there was a tavern where we would raise a glass or two.
Smarter attorneys and more evil judges at this point in time, believe me.
By the by, every single time you hear this shit about what a terrible man William O. Douglas was...let me tell you a thing or two. I met him in my law school, before and after his stroke and heard him speak. Read his decisions. People think again about how he stood up for the citizen and against the corporate bastards that run this country and attempted to raise the discussion about what democracy actually is.
Those that dismiss William O. Douglas or Hugo Black as evil men are merely fascista. Fuck em. YOU AND I WOULD HAVE NO RIGHTS AT ALL IN THIS FASCIST OLIGARCHY without people like William O. Douglas and Hugo Black. Believe me. And if you not believe me read their decisions.
Douglas and Black voted for the rights of the powerless over the rights of the powerful.
ALWAYS. EVERY SINGLE TIME.
They made a lot of enemies doing that for decades. Believe me.
Earl Warren was a Republican Governor of California. Ike says, hey, let us put a more conservative person on the United States Supreme Court. So Warren is put on the court.
Earl is riding in DC and tells his driver of a decade or so that they will all stay at the same hotel. Oh no Boss, we cannot do that. Well why not Earl asks?
Well because us Negroes have to find other accommodations.
Earl is not happy about this and becomes the most left wing Chief Justice that the Supreme Court has ever seen. A few years later every nazi fascist prick in this country wants Earl impeached. Ha
Justice Blackman is a life long repub and is nominated to the High Court by Nixon. A life-time repub; he is originally from Minnesota like the Chief Justice Warren Burger. The Minnesota Twins they were called. Blackman had been lead counsel for the single most significant voice of the medical community in this country, the Mayo Clinic.
Justice Blackman ends up writing the majority opinion in Roe v. Wade, with Powell and Burger and four others joining in the majority opinion.
Makes no sense; none at all. There was a rebirth by Blackman and his long time friend Warren Burger decides to side with him on this case and manages a 7-2 majority; 7-2 on the side of Truth, Justice and the American Way. Do you realize how important that number was and why, to this day, it compelled future courts to not ignore the rights of women in this country?
Those days appear to be gone.
Where is Hugo Black and his rejuvenation? Where is Blackman and his rebirth?
Nowadays we appoint pricks to the Supreme Court and they remain nazi fascist corporate pricks. No rebirths there. Not anymore.
Alito, Roberts, Scalia, Thomas.........these men would not vote for the rights of the powerless if Jesus himself appeared to them demanding a change in perspective. Ha!! Never. Fascista to the end.
Makes me angry just speaking of those four bastards.
Ah but this essay concerns those who changed. Those who chose the light over darkness. Maybe that is why I consider them exceptions to the rule.
This blog is dedicated to the spirit of Bobby Darin. He was one of those 'no business like show business' kind of guys.
Dream Lover. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnLIXNWK8CY
Mack the Knife. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dDs_N3kGQk
Splish Splash. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMCsc4Iqvqc
And he marries a screen cutie and lives happily ever after?
Something happens. He becomes enthralled with Bobby Kennedy and is at the Ambassador Hotel when the Democratic leader is shot dead.
Darin sells everything he has and goes and lives in a trailer. Thinking things out as it were. Comes back to movies and music production a year later. But he gets rid of the rug, and grows a mustache. Dies in less than three years after his 'come-back' of a weak heart, of all things.
He wrote Simple Song of Freedom in 1969.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvY99BJzN-M&feature=related
There is a chance for all of us I suppose,
Only fundamental Christians give 'rebirth' a bad name.
Someone observed the other day that Sotomayor talked more on one case than Thomas has talked in his whole career on the court. I'm actually glad Thomas seldom opens his mouth.
October 12, 2009 3:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
The same thought crossed my mind Neo. But he just signs on to the opinion, on the side of evil and injustice and hides from the rest of the world.
I think that Thomas, in college or even high school got severely hurt, kicked in the balls by fellow students or girl friends and he is just proceeding to hand out pay back. Dedicated his life to that aim and purpose.
October 12, 2009 5:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
I though all republicans are evil. Now, most are evil but some are OK, as long as they are reborn which continues to be impossible for most thus making the republicans evil. Except for the ones who aren't. I am confused.
As to the current conservative justices, I really haven't seen that many decisions that could be considered outside the mainstream of American jurisprudence, but perhaps I missed one that has you all riled up. I thought they would be demagogues as well but have been mostly surprised by their decisions and have found the court to be fairly moderate in most respects.
Thanks for the attempt at objectivity, but I still find the partisan polemics a less than reassuring from my liberal brethren.
October 12, 2009 6:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
Actually, you make a good point. Jason, I shall do a more specific analysis in the next week or so. These four are very bad people.
Even Renquist who started out like Scalia, 'softened' a bit. Surprised me.
I will never forget when some state supreme court out west--I think it was Idaho or Utah--came down with some criminal decision and happened to mention that the rights contained in the Bill of Rights never really applied to state action.
Renquist grabbed that decision within 24 or 48 hours and overturned it. JUST LIKE THAT. An amazing feat. I forgot about that. And he also noted that Roe was established law that should not be overturned... something Scalia certainly would not agree with and neither would the other three fascists.
Renquist then became quite mad. Outwardly it was the stripes on his robe at impeachment time...kind of blended in with our folk tales (or tv dramas if you must)
But I think a list of cites along with decisions and some actual language would more than buttress my contentions.
The gang of four is a danger...a real threat to any chance we have at democracy in this country. Of course we are not a democracy or even a republic at all in my estimation. Everything is bought and paid for and reagan and both bushes kind of insured that.
Damn straight I am mad at republicans, at the RNC, at Sleele, at mcconnell, at boner, at grassley...as a matter of fact it is difficult to think of a repub in office right now that I respect at all. There were seven or eight repub votes in the House that surprised me.
McCain will surprise me ten percent of the time. I think he has a lot of misdirected honor frankly. Or a sense of it anyway.
Colin Powell is a good man. He has done much for his country. But as Secretary of State he sucked...he was weak...he had info about what was going on and could have procured more info against the real enemies of this country like cheney and rummy.
That is enough for now.The repub party is beck and sean and oreilly and rush and savage et al.
October 12, 2009 11:07 AM | Reply | Permalink
The people you mention are merely the mouthpieces of discredited and diminishing political philosophy. The rest are clowns only out to stuff their own pockets.
The real republican party represents a much more diverse and centrist audience, one the newly resurgent democratic party ignores at the peril of all those very important progressive principles they espouse.
This country has only been moved in revolutionary or evolutionary ways via governing majorities that comprised the reasonable and rational of all political parties, even those with no party at all.
October 12, 2009 11:11 AM | Reply | Permalink
PS: This comment seems to dovetail with the discussion, so I figured I would offer it up as well. Cheers!
October 12, 2009 11:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
The real republican party...
Are those real Republicans anything like the real Americans?
October 12, 2009 1:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
the use of the word "real" in political rhetoric deserves a dissertation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-QSz4R7mR0&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0uyIWOU024
October 12, 2009 5:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
Real republicans, as in everyone who isn't politically involved enough to vote on a regular basis, but they are still registered and still drive poll numbers. Just like the "real democrats" who are not represented by the democratic caucus but drive most of the liberal opinion polls.
I thought the comment I linked to was pretty clear with regards to how many people in this country identify with specific political philosophies versus those who actually vote in primary elections and drive the direction of both parties, leading to the cognitive dissonance we all seem to be experiencing.
I will leave the provocative snark alone for now, but will offer that the democratic faithful are now using the same terminology and tactics the far right used to such a detrimental effect on our politics as a whole. Is that the company ya'll really want to be keeping?
October 12, 2009 6:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
The problem I see with the Right wing justices is that they combine the worst of the money Republicans with the anti-abortion attitudes of the Roman Catholic Church.
Religious doctrine has no place is ordering what actions the government will take, and when religious fanatics go after control of the government they go first for the police and justice systems. Someone should have said that five Catholics on the Supreme Court give the Pope a vote in American legal decisions.
October 12, 2009 7:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
I guess I would simply ask for actual rulings that would make the assumption of their activism more concrete.
As far as I can tell, none of the judges that are held up as right wing and radical have really been all that radical. Most of the decisions from the Roberts' court have been pretty moderate by most estimations, though I will admit that I am not a Supreme Court aficionado, so I certainly could have missed one.
About the only I can think of recently that would fit the bill is the eminent domain decision, but that was an opinion that brought fire from liberal and conservative groups alike, so I am not sure how one would classify it.
October 12, 2009 8:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
Fundies claim to be "born again" because they didn't get it right the first time, like the rest of us.
Some of them need to be remanufactured...
October 12, 2009 9:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
Remanufactured. hahaha
October 12, 2009 10:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
Why no rebirths like the good old days? It is a good question. I tend to think that we get these "change of heart" because something is different when one becomes the final decider, rather than one decider in a long line of deciders.
There was a Law and Order episode in which Jack the ADA had to argue for a person who wanted to be put to death for his crime. He never had a moral problem pushing the death penalty before. It was pointed out to him at the end by the DA that in all the other cases, he knew it would be appealed to other courts, and thus he a luxury of not having to take the full responsibility of the consequences of what he argued for.
I don't much at all about the bio of Douglas and Black, and the others rebirthers, but I wonder if there was more connection from a lived experience to those who were not in the upper classes, in the way that Sotomayor knows what it really means when we talk of the powerless in this country. And sometimes people can join in support of the powerful, wanting to be the powerful, but when push comes to shove, when it comes time when one has real power to either help the boot stomp on the neck or try to remove the boot, one's conscience (soul?) steps up to the plate (gotta throw in the baseball metaphor to mix it all up).
October 12, 2009 10:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
Of course, the four horsemen had enough of the commonman's experience growing up that one must turn to other explanations as to why they side with the powerful over the powerless. The problem may be that they had their rebirth, except it was when they emerged a member of the upper elite. For what is a rebirth except as fundamental change in one's identity, and a fundamental facet of one's identity is "who are my people," in other words, "to whom am I loyal" and "to whom do I throw my support."
The pyscho-emotional forces at work that leads to a rebirth can lead to the light or towards the darkness. Which makes me think of that Roy Cohn.
And once one has a rebirth, how difficult is it to have another one? To admit, deep down, that one has fooled oneself?
October 12, 2009 11:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
I have thought a little on this. I met some people who were reborn spiritually twenty five years ago and it was before I realized the political connection. One idiot became a judge. One of the most incompetent and most unread people I have ever met in the practice of law.
Once 'they' took the leap of faith, they really did not see that they could be proven wrong. reagan would not admit that maybe regulation would be a good idea. He couldn't. His constituency would not let him. His silly facade became his pride.
Bush jr. of course never held any beliefs about anything. When I heard the crap about him being reborn and that he listened to his higher father and watched him in the golf cart that first year...well.
I know cheney is involved in this media blitz (that has slowed down of late pending the publication of his own book) because he has always been in it for himself and because his pride is sooooooooo monumental he could never ever ever admit a mistake. For he and rummy admitting a mistake is the same as falling on ones sword and neither one of them ever did believe in any higher power.
At any rate, you got me thinking on this.
October 12, 2009 11:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think Bush jr. and those like him, while not really having a core belief, there was a part of them that really want to have it. So they are attracted to people who either have strongly held beliefs or at least appear so.
I have been in a few churches a few times, and there have been moments, watching the more deeply enthralled participants, that the thought / feeling just pops up and rolls around that it would be "nice" to have what they have. There is always a certain weariness associated with living with perpetual skepticism and doubt. There is an appeal in certitude and clarity.
And there is I think something fundamental in human nature (whatever that is) that leads to the impulse to make the leap. It is just that some of us see the edge of the cliff coming up and we throw on the breaks. We just can't let ourselves leap, swan dive into Truth. Instead we remain with the truths.
Par Lagerkvist (who wrote Barabbas, an excellent novel about faith and the desire for faith) refered to himself as an athesist forever in search of god. I guess that about sums it up.
October 12, 2009 12:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
Methinks that is the appeal, the certitude. Life is so much easier when one just knows without having any intention of ever actualy exploring whether something is accurate. No need to be accurate when one is Right!
October 12, 2009 1:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes. It seems that those who are most concerned with being accurate are the same ones who are the most willing to believe there is a possibility that they are not accurate. Derived from a mixture of science with its loyalty to evidence and the modern arts with its (dis)loyalty to personal internal experience? Which is why the far right is so hostile to both?Probably.
And it is my willingness to entertain the idea that I might possibly be wrong that is my only defense against my own fanaticism.
October 12, 2009 1:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
The more I think I know, the more I know I do not know, and it's just hell!!!
October 12, 2009 1:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, i think you are correct...maybe. :)
October 12, 2009 2:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
Politically I think we have two groups of people, and the difference is cultural.
One group is more traditional and is made up of individuals will go where the group approves. The personal discomfort of being different from the group causes them to follow the lead lemming.
The other group is more modern in culture and the members have been socialized to make their own decisions. They feel less discomfort in questioning the lead lemming when the cliff appears up ahead than the traditional lemmings do. They feel more discomfort in making the wrong decision than they do disagreeing with the group they belong to.
The first group is driven more by the fear of losing face. The second is driven more by personal conscience.
If I'm right, then this would tend to show why conservative Republicans tend to be authoritarian in nature and liberal Democrats tend to be more like wild untamed and disorganized cats who do not operate in packs. The effort by the Republicans to drive out the Republican moderates is the reason why the cultures can be associated to any extent at all with the two parties, and why the Democrats have so many blue dogs.
October 12, 2009 8:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah. All these years, if they tell me to stand, i immediately wish to sit.
Good take.
October 12, 2009 9:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
I have a confession: I love Bobby Darin. He's not my generation, and I don't remember how he even got on my radar in the first place. Heard Mack the Knife somewhere, and I was hooked.
Like Peggy Lee, he could swing cynical too: Artifical Flowers.
October 12, 2009 11:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
Oh yeah Ready...this was the kind of forties/fifties there's no biz like show biz, ethel merman.....
That is how he started out in the fifties, just when TV was really getting going. Which is why there is so many black and white youtubes with Bobby. Terrible, absolutely terrible technicolor movies. ha
All of a sudden, like 1966 he takes Tim Hardin's song: If I Were a Carpenter and is back in the top ten.
But if there is one song he will always be remembered for its Mack the Knife. Probably ten songs in the top ten at one time or another when top ten meant top ten. Not some top ten in some strange category. I think those 45's were like fifty cents which would be five bucks now.
October 12, 2009 12:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
Years after I fell in love with BD's style I learned about his politics and all-too-short life.
Same with Rosemary Clooney: I loved her music, then learned about her life, particularly her breakdown after Bobby Kennedy's assassination.
October 12, 2009 12:45 PM | Reply | Permalink