Court rulings getting worse

Mark Twain once quipped, “No man’s life, liberty or property is safe while the legislature is in session.” If the renowned writer and humorist were still around today he would surely affix the Supreme Court to that observation.

Americans have stood by watching decades of hard-fought civil rights gains dismantled one after another by this courts’ spurious rulings. It is actively and openly partisan, and out of touch with established judicial standards. It has weakened voting rights, denied long-standing rights to personal health choices, and limited the EPA’s means to fight climate change and its ability to ensure that we have clean air and water.

In a ruling that flies in the face of common sense, the Supreme Court ruled that bump stocks are once again legal.

But the most egregious and far-reaching ruling of all is the lawless zone the court created by concluding that a president, like a king, is above the law and immune from prosecution.

Most constitutional scholars consider the 1857 Dred Scott ruling to be the worst decision ever rendered by the court, but this seems to be striving with great resolve to gain that distinction.

The deck is stacked. These highly partisan right-wing justices can impose their views on us at will, and nothing can stop them. They have lifetime appointments and a lucrative reward system — billionaire benefactors providing them with yacht trips, private jet flights and other gifts and favors. The notion of integrity and accountability is foreign to many of them.