AOC Wants Tangible Action-- Not Wishful Thinking

AOC was excellent on Meet the Press yesterday. Too bad it wasn’t that Joe Biden guy who said the stuff the junior congresswoman from the Bronx said. She told Chuck Todd that Democrats need to show the American people that when they give the Democrats power, the Democrats will use that power and she suggested that there’s plenty Biden should do now to protect women’s access to abortion. She noted that Elizabeth Warren, and 25 other Democratic senators sent Biden a letter asking him to “explore opening healthcare clinics on federal lands in red states in order to help people access the healthcare and abortion services that they need.” Certainly Indian reservations could open abortion clinics in backward states that ban it— just the way they have casinos in states that ban gambling… but imagine a twist on Huxley’s Brave New World. There are over 300 Indian reservations in the U.S., including in states in the process of banning abortion, like the Dakotas, Oklahoma, Idaho, Utah, Louisiana, Texas, Wisconsin, Michigan, Florida, Montana, South Carolina, Virginia, Arizona, and two that span the Kansas-Nebraska border, one that spans the Nebraska-South Dakota border, one that spans the Alabama-Florida border and three that span the Iowa-Nebraska border.

AOC said she believes that the Biden nd her party need to come to terms with what she sees as “not just a crisis of Roe; this is a crisis of our democracy. The Supreme Court has dramatically overreached its authority. We had two conservative senators in the United States Senate, Senator Manchin and Senator Collins, come out with a very explosive allegation that these— that several Supreme Court justices misled them during their confirmation hearings and in the lead-up to their confirmation. This is a crisis of legitimacy. We have a Supreme Court justice whose wife participated in January 6th and who used his seat to vote against providing documents that potentially led to evidence of such to investigators in Congress. This is a crisis of legitimacy and President Biden must address that.”

Pressed by Chuck Todd, she said that “If we allow Supreme Court nominees to lie under oath and secure lifetime appointments to the highest court of the land and then issue without basis, rulings that deeply undermine the human and civil rights of the majority of Americans, we must see that through. There must be consequences for such a deeply destabilizing action and a hostile takeover of our democratic institutions. To allow that to stand is to allow it to happen [again]. And what makes it particularly dangerous is that it sends a blaring signal to all future nominees that they can now lie to duly elected members of the United States Senate in order to secure Supreme Court confirmations and seats on the Supreme Court. This is what we're saying.”

When he asked her if she thinks lying (under oath) in a confirmation hearing is impeachable, she answered affirmatively. “I believe lying under oath is an impeachable offense. I believe that violating federal law in not disclosing income from political organizations, as Clarence Thomas did years ago, is also potentially an impeachable offense. I believe that not recusing from cases that one clearly has family members involved in with very deep violations of conflict of interest are also impeachable offenses.” Instead of whining about it to the media, she thinks Manchin and Susan Collins should get serious about doing something about it.

Can Supreme Court justices be impeached? Absolutely… and one even has been. In 1804 the House impeached Samuel Chase, although he was acquitted by the Senate. More recently— 1969— Abe Fortas, who had been a sitting justice for 3 years when LBJ nominated him to replace Earl Warren as Chief Justice, was told by an anti-Semitic Senate that he would be impeached if he didn’t resign… which he did. Judiciary Committee chair James Eastland, a pretend Democrat from Mississippi said "After [Thurgood] Marshall, I could not go back to Mississippi if a Jewish chief justice swore in the next president.” Strom Thurmond carried on because Fortas had voted with the majority of justices to overturn obscenity laws dealing with pornographic films. Thurmond, well know as the biggest hypocrite to ever serve in the U.S. Senate, played Jack Smith’s Flaming Creatures to discredit Fortas. Richard Nixon's p.r. director, Pat Buchanan, credited the screening with defeating Fortas.