Idiot of the Month: Joseph Swank Jr - Again

There seems to be this little gaggle of right wing webpages that all feature the same set of idiot columnists - gopusa.com, bushcountry.org, intellectualconservative.com. Add to that richardmullenax.com, named for one of the aforementioned columnists. You see the same people showing up on all of these sites - Joseph Swank, Mullenax, Jen Shroder and others - and all saying the same stupid things. It's as if they think repetition is the key to a good argument. Swank has won our Idiot of the Month award before, so this is our first return winner, and he gets it for this moronic column calling the Supreme Court "chicken" for not hearing the Massachusetts gay marriage case. Cuz you know, the "you're such a wussy" argument is so devestating in a court of law. He begins:

The last to go are the Supremes. Obviously. The rest of the nation voted in a conservative President by loud sounding applause. The states went one-by-one against same-gender "marriage." But the Supremes have to stick their snobbish noses in the air to show who’s boss. Go figure.

It filters down to the "activist" judges who are determined to bury the executive and legislative branches of government. It can be quite frightening if one dwells on the ultimate.

Now this is just funny. While complaining that the Supreme Court is chicken for not being activist enough, he's complaining about activist judges. Can you imagine a more activist Supreme Court than one that takes a case and overturns a State Supreme Court decision based solely on provisions in that state's Constitution on an issue that the Federal Constitution leaves expressly to the states to determine? That would be judicial activism - real judicial activism, not the mythical kind that mouth-breathing halfwits like Swank claim whenever a judge does something they don't like.

So the Associated Press reports that the "Supreme Court on Monday sidestepped a dispute over same-sex marriages, rejecting a challenge to the nation’s only law sanctioning such unions."

Now who would have ever thought that? Nothing is predictable, of course, in this flux-and-flow existence. And the Supremes stand right at the very top of the uncertainties of life in the grand ol’ USA.

Actually, Joe, anyone with even a miniscule knowledge of the law would have predicted that the Supreme Court would not take that case. It would have been monumentally shocking if they had opted to hear it, both because it doesn't involve Federal law at all and because the argument made by the plaintiffs is simply one of the dumbest legal arguments I've ever seen in my life.

No qualms about that. No answering at the Judgment Seat of Christ about that. No ethics about that. No biblical morals about that. Of course not, even with the Roman Catholic Church sitting in main power religion-wise for past generations. Thumb the nose at the past. Thumb the nose at the divine revelation.

Thumb the nose at common sense.

And with that the Supremes had more important issues to tend to this Monday than caring for the morals of this nation. Therefore, they "sidestepped."

You see, Joe, the Supreme Court can't just decide to jump in and stop anything they don't like, and they especially can't just jump in and stop anything you don't like; they actually have to have a legal basis for a decision. And I don't know how to break this to you, but the "judgment seat of Christ" is not a valid legal argument. Violating the bible is not a valid reason to overturn a law or a judicial decision. Perhaps you should read the Constitution; you might notice that nowhere in it is the bible even mentioned. In fact, nowhere in it will you find even a single provision that has an analogous idea in the bible. You might notice that nowhere in the Bill of Rights does it say, "All men are free to do as they please as long as it doesn't violate divine revelation". And the Supreme Court justices, being thinking people who actually use that thing called a brain, knew that in this case there wasn't even a legal basis for hearing the case, much less ruling the way you want them to. Because, unlike you, they're not stupid.