Justice Kennedy, You Fucked Up

SCOTUS today issued its long-awaited decision on the controversial Mojave Desert Cross.

That cross, as you will recall, was erected on public land back in the 1930s as a putative "war memorial" -- but since other religions were banned from erecting symbols of their belief along with the cross, it was nothing more than government sponsorship of Christianity.

I've commented before on this particular piece of crap. And now, with today's 5-4 split decision, the high court says that it's just fine to have it there.

Predictably the Four Fascists (Scalia, Thomas, Alito and Roberts) were in the majority, joined by sometime swing vote Kennedy:

"Here one Latin cross in the desert evokes far more than religion. It evokes thousands of small crosses in foreign fields marking the graves of Americans who fell in battles, battles whose tragedies are compounded if the fallen are forgotten," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote.
In dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens agreed that soldiers who died in battle deserve a memorial to their service. But the government "cannot lawfully do so by continued endorsement of a starkly sectarian message," Stevens said.
. . .
Kennedy, who usually is in the court's center on church-state issues, suggested there may have been no problem in the first place.
"The goal of avoiding governmental endorsement does not require eradication of all religious symbols in the public realm," Kennedy said.

Note to Kennedy: Nobody ever said it did, asshole. And evocative as it may be of all those crosses in military cemeteries, if you look closely you'll see that those crosses are joined by stars of David and other symbols of religion, and they all denote the religious beliefs of the former inhabitants of the bodies buried beneath them.

I'm glad to see that Sotomayor came down on the right side of this issue.

And this is one more reason why we'll miss John Paul Stevens.

The Mojave Cross

I know, it sounds like a western movie title, but a battle is raging in California's Mojave Desert over a cross that was erected as a "veterans memorial" by the VFW back in 1934.

And there it stood mutely for a number of years, out of sight and out of mind.

There was only one small problem with that: It was erected on public land, in what is now the Mojave National Preserve. And, to make matters worse, no other religious group has been "allowed" to erect their own religious memorial on the site.

Okay, fast forward a few years, and now the whole issue has landed squarely in the robed laps of The Supremes, who agreed to hear Salazar v. Buono this coming term.

As a member of several veterans groups (all of them progressive in nature -- I would never join VFW or the American Legion -- nor would they have me, as I think you all could have guessed), I get on some pretty weird email threads.

And today some joker sent me a breathless missive wailing about the tearing down of this symbol of veterans' sacrifices:

OK Folks. Take about 6 minutes and watch this and see what you think??? Amazing how off-base the courts and government can get!!!!!!
THERE HAVE ONLY BEEN AFEW THOUSAND HITS ON THIS VIDEO. IT NEEDS TO BE SEEN BY MANY, MANY MORE PEOPLE. PLEASE SPREAD IT AROUND TO YOUR ENTIRE ADDRESS BOOK. TO THINK ONE INDIVIDUAL, JUST ONE, CAN TAKE A CASE LIKE THIS TO THE CA SUPREME COURT AND GET A HEARING.
WE SHOULD DO EVERYTHING WE CAN TO PREVENT THIS MEMORIAL FROM BEING TORN DOWN.
ACLU insanity EVERY AMERICAN SHOULD SEE THIS VIDEO.
I cannot believe how this can happen in our country....wait until you hear the reason the complaint was started and what it has turned into....

I guess nobody told this asshole that typing in ALL CAPITALS is shouting...But maybe that's what he meant...

Anyway, here's the video:

Note the presence of those slick fuckers from the so-called Liberty Legal Institute, an extremist Religious Right organization, and the smooth production values of this video. Aside from the lies and mudslinging against the ACLU, though, the worst part of it that Liberty has absolutely no qualms about using those ancient veterans, cynically manipulating them into believing that this is about veterans. "A literal slap in the face," one of the Liberty fuckers calls it.

This case, with its abrupt turns and attempts at legal obfuscation, is confusing enough for legal scholars (go ahead and read the summary), let alone the general public. Which is why it's really easy to confuse people and get them to believe something that Liberty wants them to believe.

And finally, it looks as though this will be the first "establishment clause" case that Sotomayor will hear. Let's hope that she's more liberal than she appeared in those "show trial" hearings last week.