Supreme Court Upholds DACA, Sticks It in 45’s Face

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By Marc “Kid Huevos” Livitz

“Crom,” said actor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Conan in 1982’s “Conan the Barbarian”. “I have never prayed to you before. I have no tongue for it.” Same goes for myself. I don’t believe in Crom, nor in any other deity, but that is neither here nor there. Likewise, I never written a politically based article for publication of any kind. Although so much of the country remains in shutdown mode due to matters such as a potentially deadly virus as well as louder and louder cries for justice, the highest court in the land managed to put in a few days of honest work this week. There’s part of me who wants to take back the opinion that the nine employees of the group are extremely overpaid for the amount of hours they actually log in a given year.

However maybe, just maybe the black-robed members of the Supreme Court earned a pure gold star on Thursday afternoon when they voted (5-4, of course) to block the plans of president (lower cased letters purely intentional) Donald Trump to eliminate a program initiated in 2012 which protected those who entered the United States illegally as children from deportation. Deferred Action for childhood arrivals (DACA), which was one of the items Trump promised to throw into the waste bin once elected, was put into action by former President Barack Obama eight years ago.

In a nutshell, upwards of 600,000 young adults, mostly of Latin American origin can now apply for another 2-year work permit to remain in the United States. ‘Dreamers’ is what they’re called, but I’d prefer to call them Americans. Why? Because my grandparents were dreamers, although they didn’t arrive in New York as children and to be fair, getting here illegally would have been considerably more difficult. Regardless, they were probably willing to swim across the Atlantic to get away from Lenin and the other dastardly demons in the region.

The Supreme Court ruling turned a few heads for other reasons than the most obvious ones. Chief Justice John Roberts, a traditionally conservative member of SCOTUS, joined the four liberal members of the panel to perfectly illustrate our system of checks and balances. Not surprisingly, two of the dissenters were appointees by the current president. As if any further example is needed to effectively point out Donnie’s intent to turn the institution which is supposed to be the choice model for democracy into a rear naked choke, take a quick peek at how he reacted on Twitter.

“These horrible & politically charged decisions coming out of the Supreme Court are shotgun blasts into the face of people that are proud to call themselves Republicans or Conservatives. We need more Justices or we will lose our 2nd. Amendment & everything else. Vote Trump 2020!”

This can be verified by simply entering “@realdonaldtrump” on Twitter. Are we to think that his anger at being rejected is an open admission of his desire to stack the Supreme Court in his favor? There’s a phrase etched in stone on the Supreme Court building which reads, “Equal Justice Under Law,” which at times is so very hard to fathom. Our current commander-in-chief has been accused of harboring racist ideals as well as being innately corrupt.

It’s quite interesting if we look at the state of our country one hundred years ago. As the original ‘Roaring Twenties’ arrived, a man first elected in 1912, Woodrow Wilson held the distinction of being part of the first motion picture ever screened at the White House. Great, right? Progress, right? One problem, though. Wilson was a roaring racist and heralded director D.W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation” in 1915 as a masterpiece. Of course, the film is an homage to the Klu Klux Klan and further ignited racial hatred and bigotry in the country. Do we want to go so far as to put Trump in this category?

Although he suffered a severe stroke which robbed him of his ability to speak in 1919, Woodrow Wilson served two terms before he was succeeded by Warren G. Harding in 1920. History teaches us that Harding was implicated in the Teapot Dome scandal. Look that one up. One bright spot is that the 19th Amendment was ratified during Harding’s administration, which granted women the right to vote. Either history is eerily repeating itself, or all new ground has now been broken.