We, the People vs the Supreme Court

We, the people begins our constitution, indeed we are the first nation founded on the idea of power of the people, with the common ideals of liberty and justice for all. Lincoln again brought back to our roots at the end of civil war in a government of the people, by the people, for the people. The power rests with the people. Indeed we created limited government, listed in the amendments to the constitution, normally called civil rights. This limited government is the basis of our freedom. We allowed government to regulate commerce so the power would continue to be with the people, ensuring that business respect the common good and ensuring that all business compete on a level playing field. So we have limits on government and through government, we have limits on business. And we institutionally set up checks and balances, three separate and equal branches of government. One branch – the Supreme Court - was given the scared duty of protecting the law and protecting our most sacred contract between the people and the government – the constitution. The Supreme Court should be, first and foremost, the defenders of the constitution, no matter what the current politics, no matter what religion is involved and no what the personal beliefs are of each justice.

The power of the people in our government is manifested by the vote. When a presidential election was in question, the court could have ordered a recount of the whole state in the fairest way possible. Instead the court “decided”. Indeed as a later examination of the of vote showed, the Supreme Court decided to the contrary of the will of the people! The Supreme Court has ignored the issues of counting fraud, ignored the inability to have a hard copy of the original vote for recounts, and ignored the wholesale denial or intimidation of people to stop them from voting. Instead of defending the people's right to vote, the Supreme Court has aided in denying the people's right to vote.

The access to courts and the protection of law is what truly limits government and protects the rights of everyday people. In order to protect the innocent, we have always accepted the chance that the guilty might go free. There is a risk in having freedom, and freedom is worth that risk. As we go abroad, we expect those same rights granted to us, backed up with the strength of our country. Other countries expect that their citizens will also be treated with the same rights that we expect in their countries. Yet we have utterly and totally failed to provide access to courts and the protection of the law to both American citizens and other countries’ citizens to the people of Guantanamo Bay. Indeed the Supreme Court has so extremely failed to protect the right of the accused to stay silent, that these people are tortured. I hope that every Supreme Court justice goes to bed with the nightmares of people being drowned and resuscitated at Guantanamo Bay, I know that many people do. I certainly do. And yet this failure of protection of law extends beyond Guantanamo Bay into the violations of privacy of every person in America. The Supreme court has allowed needle in haystack searches of all our electronic communications, our financial records and indeed many records we don’t yet know about. These searches went through private facts far more important than an underwear drawer. The Supreme court protected the underwear drawer and yet did not protect our personal private information. These searches were done without cause, without notification and indeed without care as to how the information could be abused. Instead of defending the people and striking down the Patriot Act, the Supreme court left people naked before the utter violation of our electronic privacy by the Patriot Act.

The Supreme Court has also failed in backing government to regulate commerce so the power would continue to be with the people, ensuring that business respect the common good and ensuring that all business compete on a level playing field. Environmental laws have been ignored. Business is now dominated by big business, so that small business does not have level playing field. Indeed, big business can usually ignore laws with impunity as the fall of Enron demonstrates. A case can be made, that big business now has more influence in government than we, the people do. Almost 90% of the people want the government to negotiate for all drugs that it buys, and yet the big pharmacy influence has ensured a “no negotiate” clause in law. It seems strange that an invented corporate person would have more rights and power than the we, the real people do.

So even in this decaying state of freedom, you would think a few freedoms would still remain, the ability to make our individual religious choices, the right to make own health choices, and the right to be the master of our own bodies. Yet this week these liberties have been violated by the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court inflicted the personal religious beliefs of the individual justices upon the life, the body and the medical choices of every person. If the constitution was careful in protecting personal property against the intrusion of government, then there is nothing more personal, more sacred, more inviolate than one's own body. Many different types of life and potential life all exist in a body, yet it all constitutes one life with one controlling sentience. That is one life, just one life. No other life exists until it exists independently. This principle is clear within the previous Supreme Court tradition. This week Supreme Court justices put forth their own personal religious beliefs into a ruling, violating our right to religious freedom and violating our right to be master of our own bodies, by making our own health choices.

So what should we, the people, do when our government, specifically the Supreme Court has so flagrantly and completely violated our trust and failed to defend the contract under which government is allowed to exist - the constitution. It was the sacred duty of the Supreme Court to both protect the limits on government termed civil rights and responsibilities of government like regulating commerce. Normally when a contract has been violated, we would have a case like We, The People vs. The Supreme Court. We will have to have our hearing in the open people’s forums, where we speak with a strong united voice, and remind the Supreme court what their true duties are and what the constitution really says!