Not grasping the courts

I have noticed where a really old post here, the one about Sandra Sotomayor being interviewed by Oprah, has suddenly become one of the most popular posts on this blog.  I was surprised when that occurred, but by that I take it that people are searching her out as a topic.  Sotomayor that is.   You can't escape Oprah.  I'm confident that when the first human beings land on Mars that they'll be confronted by a television set running part 237,472 of the Oprah retirement special.

Anyhow, I'm sure that happened as Justice Sotomayor signed the order certifying the Constitutionality of the contraceptive provisions of the Affordable Health Care Act to the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Little Sisters of the Poor v. Seblius.  Sotomayor gets mentioned in that context as the news has reported that she issued a temporary order prohibiting the application of the AHCA to the Sisters.  The order, in its entirety, reads as follows:

IT IS ORDERED that respondents are temporarily enjoined from enforcing against applicants the contraceptive coverage requirements imposed by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, 42 U. S. C. § 300gg-13(a)(4), and related regulations pending the receipt of a response and further order of the undersigned or of the Court. The response to the application is due Friday, January 3, 2014, by 10 a.m.

That's it.

So from this, we have people commenting, if they are political liberals, about how this must mean that Sotomayor is a secret conservative, and they've been betrayed, and at the same time we have those who are conservative expressing hope that maybe she's not as bad as they feared.

Well, whatever may be the case, you can't read anything into an order like this other than that this matter is going to the U.S. Supreme Court. That's it.  An interlocutory order of this type merely sees to preserve the status quo ante.

But, just like the occasional protestors outside of the U.S. Supreme Court, all the commentary shows how little of a grasp people have on what the Court does.  The Court is not a legislative body.

This isn't to say that it gets everything right.  That would be absurd.  It makes some titanic flops in errors of judgment on occasion.  And it does that most frequently when ideology creeps into its decisions. But, by and large, that happens less often than people like to imagine.

And it is true that the individual world outlooks of judges influence them, and it would be absurd to argue otherwise.  Who sits on the  Supreme Court really matters.  But when people get happy or angry over anyone Justice's acts, we should take pause. What a judge does often isn't what lay people believe them to be doing.  And quite often, whether they get things right or wrong, they're just trying to apply the law.  Here, Sotomayor, who has drawn this duty for a time, was applying the longstanding judicial rule of trying to preserve the status quo until the Court has a chance to rule. That's the only thing anyone can read into this, one way or another.

Which is exactly what she also did in Herbert v. Kitchen, the Utah polygamy case in which a Federal District Court (incorrectly I believe) struck down Utah's prohibition on polygamy.  This matter is going up to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals. Sotomayor issued an order stating:

The application for stay presented to Justice Sotomayor and by her referred to the Court is granted. The permanent injunction issued by the United States District Court for the District of Utah, case No. 2:13-cv-217, on December 20, 2013, is stayed pending final disposition of the appeal by the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.

Here, I would note, I think the Administration acted shamefully by having Eric Holder, the Attorney General, rapidly announce that the Federal government is going to recognize the rushed 1,300 unions created in the interim between the Federal trial court's action and the Supreme Court's injunction on the topic of the homosexual marriages, thereby effectively indicating that the Administration is prepared to ignore any negative ruling that may ultimately arise months from now when the  Tench Circuit, and potentially the United States Supreme Court may rule.  Those on the political left may cheer that action, but by the same token it opens the door to future administration taking the old line of Jackson about the Cherokees, "the court made the law, now let them enforce it" come back, and that cuts both ways.  Respect for the law would have required that the Administration wait for the result like anyone else. And the Attorney  General, and a President who was a law professor, should know that.  Now the same groups will have no complaint if a future politically right Administration choose to ignore dist

Sunday, January 11, 1914. Sakurajima erupts

The Japanese stratovolcano had been dormant for a century.  It awakened with the most powerful volcanic eruption to occur in Japan in the 20th Century.

The volcano is the most active in Japan, and the 1914 eruptions connected what had been an island to the mainland.

The George Washington Bridge Scandal. . . . Yawn.

The press has been full of news about the scandal surrounding lane closures by the New Jersey Christie administration on the George Washington Bridge.  The story is that some Christie staffers, without his knowledge, arranged for closures to get at the mayor of Ft. Lee New Jersey, I think.

But that's not what I'm writing about.

One of the features of modern broadcasting is that local stories are now portrayed as national ones, particularly if those local stories come from large urban centers.  This is all the more true if the stories come from the New York City area, which is the headquarters of the major network's news branches.

Truth be known, most of the country has next to no concern whatsoever about stories in the NYC area, unless they are truly national in nature. This bridge story isn't.  While the press is busy talking about it, I suspect that once you hit the Midwest, people are yawning and going on to something else.  That is almost certainly the case here.

We get it that administration staffers shouldn't be doing stuff like this, but we don't know anything about the George Washington Bridge, and frankly we aren't really interested in it.  Is there nothing else going on?

And if this story deserves national attention, does the Cindy Hill hearings in Cheyenne deserve them?  I doubt New Yorkers are getting daily updates on that.

Separation-of-Church-and-State.mp3

Separation-of-Church-and-State.mp3

Fascinating broad discussion of separation of church and state on the always erudite and entertaining Catholic Stuff you Should Know.

Saturday, January 10, 1914. Villa takes Ojinaga.

After delaying his assault, as we reported on a couple of days ago, Villa led his troops into Ojinaga and captured it.  Half of the 4,000 men defending Federal force retreated into the United States.

The victory secured northern Mexico on the hands of the Villistas.

A military court in Strasbourg acquitted Colonel Adolf von Reuter and Second Lieutenant Schadt for illegally appropriating the civilian police to counter a demonstration.

Friday, January 9, 1914. Public Defenders.

Los Angeles County, California, opened the first Public Defenders Office.  An institution now, they really haven't been around that long.

Mid Week at Work: U.S. Infantry in Texas.

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Wednesday, January 7, 1914. Puck.

 

Wednesday, January 6, 1914. Using the camera.

Villa in Ojinaga, a publicity still taken by Mutual Film Corporation photographer John Davidson Wheelan, January 1914.

Pancho Villa delayed an attack on Federal troops at Ojinaga until an American film crew was able to reach his lines.

The film footage would end up in The Life of General Villa, a lost film (sadly) produced by D. W. Griffith and directed by Raoul Walsh.

1914-2014: The Centennial of a huge disaster; World War One.

U.S. Cavalrymen, probably detailed as a transportation company, in World War One.  Contrary to the popular myth, every combatant fielded, and used, cavalry in World War One, although of the major combatants, the American Army fielded the least, in part due to international logistics concerns. Of the Allies, the Imperial Russians, and then the British, fielded the most cavalry.

2014 has arrived, and with it the passing of 100 years, starting in August, of the commencement of World War One.

I doubt that this will be noticed much in the United States.  For us World War One started in 1917, not 1914 and we're generally too self absorbed to note historical anniversaries unless they are simply unavoidable.  We did commemorate the Bicentennial of the American Revolution all around the country, as folks around in 1976 undoubtedly recall, but we let the bicentennial of the "Second American Revolution", the War of 1812, pass without a whimper for the most part, marked only by the dedication of a few historically minded, and by those who have a particular interest in that war.  Of course, as mentioned in our historical myth post, we started forgetting the War of 1812 by the Mexican War anyway, and have a semi-intentional historical amnesia about it even occurring (which is also true of the Mexican War, which we won but which we've been glad to forget).

My predication is that World War One won't be as forgotten as the War of 1812, but it's not going to get much attention here.  For us, World War Two is the big war of the 20th Century, and its the one we really remember.  Indeed, it's dominates our recollection of 20th Century wars.  The Great War was the Big One at first, but after September 1939 that quit being true for us, and it definitely ceased to be the big war on December 7, 1941.  And that's not surprising, really, given that for us World War Two was by far the bigger war, and it changed our relationship with the globe.  It's the war we look back on justifiably, and its the war we even believe had impacts that it really didn't completely have.  Indeed, its dominance is so much the case that it continues to be "the War" to the extent that it even now continues to crowd out, a bit, our memory of other 20th Century wars.  The Korean War was only really prominent in our minds during the war. Vietnam certainly became a major concern, and remains something we are in some ways haunted with, and by, but even during the Vietnam War, World War Two loomed large in our collective memories.  During the Vietnam War, while we were actively at war, we watched Combat! (1962-67), The Rat Patrol (1966-68), McHale's Navy (1962-1966), and Hogan's Heroes (1965-1971) on television.  At the movies, we went to see Patton (1970) and Kelly's Heroes (1970).  We never watched a series about World War One, and while there are a few movies about World War One, after 1945 they were very few indeed.

If I'm correct, and that the century anniversary of World War One is pretty much a near non event in the United States, that will be a shame.  The war shaped the entire century in ways as significant as World War Two, and while the second war is not a sequel to the first, as sometimes claimed, they do form a history together that we still are seeing play out, and which we still do not know even now what the result will be.  The First World War had the impact of destroying forever, the ancient regime in Europe, and indeed in some ways the world.  Numerous combatants went into the war with a strong traditional imperial, monarchical, aristocratic retaining power.  None of them would come out of it with that class intact.  Where democracy had not strongly taken root prior to the war, a vacuum was left that was filled by political extremes.  Had the war not occurred just when it did the fall of that class would have played out much differently, and the great political murderous political philosophies that made a blood bath of the middle of the century likely would have never have taken hold anywhere.

And the history of the era is simply interesting in its own right.  A fully modern era, much more recognizable to us looking back after a century than the War of 1812 or the Napoleonic Wars would have been looking back the same distance for the combatants of the Great War, the war still had one foot in the late 19th Century and, while we can hardly appreciate it now, one foot looking forward to the 21st.  We should recall it, particularly, perhaps, because the world of 1914 is more recognizable now than at any time since 1918, and therefore its lessons more applicable.

Stuart Acres, Marshall Michigan.

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