Living

You don’t have to be a lawyer to come to the conclusion that there is enough evidence to convict Donald Trump on a number of charges. If he were a less prominent citizen he would have been found guilty by now and would be sitting in a jail cell.

But our criminal justice system does not provide a great deal of equality when it comes to prosecuting and punishing people who break the law. The more money and influence you have the less likely you are to be punished.

The hearings being conducted by the January 6 committee are providing the findings of fact that are needed to prosecute Trump. The committee is doing much of the work that the justice department needs to be done to move forward with a case. They are doing a good job of showing how Trump and his allies planned an insurrection to seize control of the government in an attempt to subvert the constitution and the rule of law.

The current U.S. Supreme Court majority has created an institution that has little regard for the world we live in. Recent decisions by the court make it clear that they want to reconstruct a world that existed in 1788 rather than provide guidance for a world in the year 2022.

When supreme court justices hide behind the original wording and intent of the constitution they deny all of us the possibility of living in a world that has evolved since the founding of this country.

In a recent article in The Nation Louis Michael Seideman provides a perspective on the supreme court that makes it clear just how flawed the court is as well as pointing out that the U.S. Constitution has become irrelevant to the way we live today.

July 1, 2042- Twenty years after Roe v. Wade was overturned the Unites States is in the midst of a boom in the construction of women’s prisons as well as a revival of the warehousing of young children in orphanages.

Although the Supreme Court, as well as a majority of states, outlawed abortion women have continued to have the procedure done despite the legal consequences. When the law first changed there was a surge in abortions throughout the U.S. because the mechanisms for punishing those who defied the law were not well established.

As states changed their abortion laws and developed procedures for punishing women who had abortions, as well as those who provided the service, law enforcement agencies began to arrest women, nurses and doctors in numbers that were unanticipated. Thirty five states also passed laws that made it illegal for women to go to a state where abortion is legal if they live in a state banning abortion. The Supreme Court upheld states’ rights to punish women crossing state lines for abortions.

I have been writing weekly commentaries for 28 years and I am beginning to realize that the time has come to think outside of the box. All those words may have had some impact on the world. People have learned a few things, but I remain impatient for the kind of change I would like to see.

So I have decided to try something new. I will write what might be called wishful thinking news stories, not fake news. These will be stories written in a news format that describe how the world might be if we made some of the changes that many Americans would like to see.