There are very few members of The Party Formerly Known As Republican who your editor wishes were on our side. Former RNC Chair Michael Steele is one of them. Yes, he’s a conservative, and all that goes with that, but he’s also smart and strategic, with a set of ironclad principles that all Americans used to share. That includes the notion that no branch of government should wield more than the share of power granted it in the Constitution. Steele interviewed Dahlia Lithwick, who covers the Supreme Court as a Senior Editor at Slate magazine, for his July 25 podcast.
“I’ve done this for 25 years,” said Lithwick. “There has never been a term like this. … And a piece of that is, what’s happened in the doctrine? What happened to the Chevron deference, what happened in the immunity case, what happened in the EPA case?
“Then there’s this other strand that is the corruption scandals, the self-dealing, the luxury RV and the fishing trips … And those are not different stories. … a 20-, 30-year effort to purchase members of the Supreme Court totally came to fruition this year. Every piece of what we saw this year was that ethics and corruption story playing out on the docket.”
What follows is a meaty and satisfying discussion about how to get the court back on track. It came within days of President Biden’s proposals for term limits and a binding Code of Conduct for justices, plus a constitutional amendment making it clear that—pace the SCOTUS majority—the POTUS is not above the law.