THE PAST AS PROLOGUE

So now we have ultra-right wing ideologue, hyper-partisan, perjurer, alcoholic and serial sexual abuser Brett Kavanaugh as an Associate Justice if the U. S. Supreme Court. He joins his fellow in many of those adjectives, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito in creating an ultra-right wing of the Supreme Court. He joins Chief Justice John Roberts and Neil Gorsuch, right wing ideologues who pass for moderates in our pell mell descent into fascism, to form a solid majority of five to work the insidious program of overturning every bit of social progress made in the United States since 1901 at the least.

Some readers (I expect I have at least 2 and possibly as many as 3 or 4) may see an irony in my defense of Woody Allan contrasted with my condemnation of Brett Kavanaugh. That would be an extremely shallow assessment but let me deal with that from the start and let's allow that start to be a little parable I've been using for many years.

Two churches sit across the street from one another. One Sunday as the congregation is singing a hymn two different thieves sneak into the foyer of each church. The thieves rip the respective Poor Boxes off the wall and race down the street. The sextons of each church and some members of the congregation hear the thieves and give chase. They apprehend the perpetrators and drag them back to the church where they put them in front of the congregation.

The Republiscum thief, broken Poor Box still clutched in his greedy hands, breaks free of his restrainers, mounts to the pulpit and begins to justify himself by sermonizing. He flatly denies that he did the crime. He claims that he just found the Poor Box lying on the street where someone else must have dropped it. Then he argues that whether he stole it or not had he been allowed to get away with the cash he would have spent it thereby improving the economy of the neighborhood and creating jobs for bartenders, barmaids (he mentions that he drinks and likes beer), fences of stolen goods, hookers and other businesses that he frequents. He demands to know by what right the congregation members have laid hands on him when he is actually a benefactor of their society. As his diatribe ends he falls to his knees on the alter and claims to have accepted Jesus as his savior and that he is washed clean of his sins. He heads down the main aisle of the church still clutching the Poor Box. The congregants are so dumbstruck by the gall and effrontery of this thief that he manages to escape instead of being beaten to a pulp as he deserves.

Meanwhile the sexton and congregants of the church on the opposite side of the street have caught and returned to the church the Democrat thief. This thief acts a bit differently. He acknowledges that he's stolen the Poor Box out of his greed but he hands it back to the congregants. He admits his crime. He probably makes some excuses for being driven to it by forces beyond his control but he acknowledges his guilt. He offers to accept whatever punishment the congregants determine for him. He begs for their mercy and forgiveness then stands silent as the congregants consider what they should do. In the end, they turn him over to the police but several congregants appear at his trial and ask the court for mercy. The thief is convicted but given community service. His obligation to the court as his punishment is to work at the church. He has to repair the loose banister on the stairs to the choir loft. He washes dishes at every church supper for a year, even after his six-month sentence is up, and he becomes a trusted member of the congregation from which he never steals again.

So which would you prefer to have judging the validity of your Constitutional rights? The unrepentant Republiscum thief or the repentant Democrat thief. They are both thieves. There is no doubt about that. I would just prefer to have the thief who has a sense of shame and guilt sit in judgment over me than the self-righteous, unrepentant bastard who is still and always will remain a thief.

One case in point is the Supreme Court's extremely partisan decision that Federal Courts cannot intervene to make more fair and just Congressional Districts created to insure the supremacy of one political party over another. Let's leave aside for the moment that this issue arises because the Republiscum minority in the nation has managed to secure enough power in enough states to skew the membership of Congress toward their party despite it's support by a minority of voters. I'm leaving that aside because I am not so naif to believe that Democrats would be more fair and just given the same degree of power. Further, this is a problem of both party's making, especially the Democrats since they held majorities in Congress for many years during which they could have remedied the problem.

The underlying problem that exacerbates Gerrymandering on all sides and violates the U. S. Constitution is that the U. S. House of Representatives has not increased its membership since 1927. I have written at length about this matter before. Bear with me as I recap the problem. When out Constitution was written and adopted we opted for a bicameral legislative branch. The process at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 was called "The Connecticut Compromise". In that compromise we created a Senate (literally a chamber of elders) in which each state, large or small, had equal representation of two senators. We created a House of Representatives in which members were determined by population. Because the larger house of our Legislative Branch's membership was based on population we created a decennial census to determine the size of the nation's population (note that we counted all persons living in the United States, not just some subset of them) so that the U. S. House could be reapportioned to increase with the increasing population of the nation. Everything went along swimmingly for more than a century.

The Census of 1910 showed for the first time that more citizens lived in urban areas than rural ones. The Republiscum Party of the day refused to acknowledge that change but did reapportion based on the data. The 1920 Census, however, showed an even greater shift from a rural to an urban majority. The Republiscum of the day refused to reapportion based on that census. The U. S. House remained unchanged from 1910 until 1927 when the even more pronounced urban shift and Democratic gains in Congressional elections in 1926 forced a reapportionment for the elections of 1928. In 1927 the population of the nation, according to the Bureau of the Census was 119,035,000 and the U. S. House determined that there should be 435 members for the 1928 election pending the 1930 Census.

Sadly, in 1930 the Republiscum retained control of Congress and the White House so there was no change in the membership of the U. S. House. In 1940 Democrats controlled the Federal government but did not reapportion the House despite a population increase of more than 22,000,000 persons. Democrats controlled the White House in 1950 for that Census but Republiscum were resurgent in Congress and gain the House membership remained at 435. The net result has been that in every decade since we have retained 435 Congressional Districts although the population has now exceeded the 1927 level by 213,604,000 or very nearly 3 times what it was when the membership of the U. S. House was set at 435.

Democrats bear much blame in this mess. They have shied away from diluting the influence of rural state members by expanding the House membership. I would say that 93 years of violating the Constitution by holding U. S. House membership at 435 is a good 90 years too many. We need reform in the House now. I wish I could confidently say that a Democratic majority in both houses and a Democratic president would remedy the situation. Unfortunately, I can't for, as the great Will Rogers said, "I don't belong to any organized political party. I'm a Democrat."

That Chief Justice Roberts, and his four Republiscum ideologues could not see that a nearly 300% increase in the U. S. population with no increase in the number of seats in Congress was a clear violation of the Constitution is a wilful act of blindness and a partisan action. But, in fairness, that is not the question that they were asked to decide. They were asked to weigh in on Gerrymandering for partisan advantage which is rather a different issue. Because it is a different issue the Roberts Court Republiscum were justified in ignoring the issue.

So why do I bring up reapportionment in the discussion of Gerrymandering? Because if we had more Congressional Districts showing greater representation in urban areas we would not only be cleaving close to the letter and intention of the Constitution but smaller districts and more of them make Gerrymandering more difficult. The smaller and more compact districts don't eliminate the Gerrymandering problem, but creating a contiguous district that includes, say, 580,000 people is much easier and less likely to allow for bizarre, snakey districts that thread their way through towns and counties that lean toward one party or another than it is for a district of 770,000 people to do so.

A Supreme Court that is more committed to upholding our Constitution than it is to interpreting it for partisan gain might well have looked deeply into the Gerrymandering question and built on the "One Man; One Vote" decisions of the Warren Court by mandating a reapportionment based on the actual population.

I do not want to see a U. S. House of 1300 members. We have enough imbeciles and loonies like former Representative Michelle Bachmann or current Representative Louis Gohmert as it is. But the Constitution itself offers us a neat and responsible way of equitably reapportioning the U. S. House. According to the Constitution, every state, no matter how small its population, gets at least 1 representative. Currently 7 states have just 1 Congressional District. the smallest of them in population is Wyoming with 578,759 residents. Reapportionment based on Wyoming's population would give some of its neighbors, Montana, North and South Dakota, an additional Congressional District each and would give us a U. S. House of about 663 members.

And as a sidelight for those all distressed about the Electoral College, the change to 763 electors would make it harder for a minority party to cobble together 382 electors to take the White House. The Electoral College is not the problem, the lack of any increase in seats in the U. S. House is the problem skewing the Electoral College to rural states with relatively smaller populations.

Perhaps we can impeach the very impeachable Bret Kavanaugh but we cannot have another 4 years of our current Imbecile-in-Chief or any other Republiscum. Ruth Bader Ginsberg won't last that long, I fear, and a 6 to 3 Supreme Court majority could devastate the nation even more than this current mal-Administration already has.

Or, to stay with Will Rogers, I wish I were a member of an organized political party.