The Court steps up? Oregon shenanigens! And the meaning of July 4.

For starters: Peter Denning interviews me about “resilience” of our critical infrastructure, from the power grid and cell-phones to transportation, food supplies and solar roofs, in the new issue of Communications of the ACM (CACM). I offer a dozen measures - some of them incredibly easy/cheap - that could improve robustness against shocks, by orders of magnitude, preventing us from ever facing a “Postman” situation. 

For those of you who aren’t ACM member-nerds, I’ll post a version some time. And yes, I’m qualified as a physicist, electrical engineer and longtime consultant on these matters with corporations and agencies. But frankly, it’s the science fiction. Of course it is.

== Three Court decisions that will change America and the World ==

Cardinal Richelieu - recalled as the "Three Musketeers" villain - is quoted as saying, “If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.” 

Now the conservative U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in Richelieu’s favor. Well, in favor of police who arrest you over any minor thing, even if it is clearly in retaliation for something you said. This eats away at what was the leap in citizen rights we experienced — (without press notice) - in 2013 when the courts and Obama administration ruled that citizens may record the police in public. We must add this to our list of reasons to be active!

Still, there is a court that is higher than the Supremes! Jury nullification. Talk your neighbors into saying “no way is that right.” Then talk all of them into voting.

== A birthday gift to the nation? ==

Of course the most-important American, right now is Chief Justice John Roberts. He has already used a technicality to reverse Republican cheat-gerrymandering in Virginia, allowing that state's rising majority of smart people to finally get a fair vote. But it's the looming Court decisions re Wisconsin and Maryland that could truly end that blatant travesty, returning democracy to America.

These matters combine with a third constitutional crisis before us... whether Congress truly is an equal (indeed Constitutionally foremost) branch of government, able to compel testimony under its inherent powers of investigation and oversight. Powers the GOP used for 25 years to harry Obama and the Clintons, uncovering zilch. Now that light is pouring the other way, and money-laundering revelations are about to burst the dam, Trumpist-Foxites hypocritically aim to castrate that power, forever. 

There is ample precedent that Congress has this power: Under the 1934 Jurney vs. McCracken decision, the Supreme Court says Congress can detain people who refuse to provide information. Adam Schiff is talking about fines. This article lays it out. 

These separate issues revolve around one principle: legislature sovereignty. John Roberts earlier admitted that blatant political gerrymandering was wrong, but refused to intervene in the “proper domain” of state legislatures, a stance so clearly bogus.... But indeed, my 'Minimal Overlap' solution to gerrymandering would nullify the 'legislative sovereignty' excuse perfectly! Plaintiffs in gerrymandering cases should refer to it.

Okay, let's suppose Roberts favors acceptance of 'legislature prerogative' as an excuse not to rule on gerrymandering, then how can he rule against the U.S. Congressional prerogative of oversight? Someone needs to make that explicit.

Note: In fact, I know a way Congress might bypass the Supreme Court, by appealing to the fourth branch of government. I spoke to a few Congressional aides about the idea. It would work... once... and then likely always. If only Democratic politicians had as much brains as heart. (There is also a way to make every House member (including Republicans) fiercely protective of subpoena power - by granting every member - majority or minority - one-per-year. I explain elsewhere.)

Amid one of the most crucial Supreme Court seasons ever, look up Roger Taney, who goes down as one of the most despised names in American history - a posterity Taney wouldn't have imagined, when named Chief Justice. But before he died – knowing Lincoln would be re-elected by a landslide - he saw ignominy and infamy would be his fate. You should spread word so modern Americans know about that horrid man, who ensured there would be no way out except violent convulsion. Will what happened in phase 4 of the U.S. civil war occur again, if our current phase 8 goes hot? It will, if blatant cheats empowering the New Confederate Treason are left in place.  America’s destiny is largely in the hands of the man currently sitting in the same chair.

== Oregonian goings-on ==

You've seen reports out of Oregon, how Democrats have super-majorities and the governor and plan to enact climate change legislation for the sake of their grandchildren... but need two Republicans to show up to make a quorum. And so, GOP state senators are fleeing to Idaho, chased by state police ordered (legally) to collar them back to their jobs.

What theater! The NPR and other reports are interesting... yet I've heard none that pull back to recall a similar case back when Tom DeLay's GOP took over Texas, vowing to rip redistricting out of the hands of bipartisan commissions and gerrymander like hell. In 2002, Democratic state legislators fled to Oklahoma, rather than give DeLay a quorum. Rick Perry used a series of tricks to bypass them and the era of GOP super-cheating -- emulated everywhere the party got power -- began.

Does that sound like a tit-for-tat similarity. Both sides do it?  Well except that:

1) The dems in 2002 Texas were protesting spectacular cheating aimed at a raw power rape, ending fair elections. The 2019 Republicans pulling this quorum trick in Oregon are trying to prevent a cap-and-trade system that's proved to work well in California, helping save the world... because some oligarch-owned coal plants in Idaho and Utah might have to close. Both times, the stink of evil-brimstone points in the same direction.

2) In both cases, right wing armed militias threatened violence against Democratic legislators.

Well. Except for that... and everything else... similar cases. It's history that deserves to be remembered.

And finally... worth the wait. You'll gasp!

== July 4 musings... take inspiration form the Declaration ==

In light of the looming American anniversary... and efforts by a pompous pretend-king to hijack it... I was just re-reading the U.S. Declaration of Independence (USDI) - a worthy step in humanity’s climb out of darkness, though with many painful steps left to go.

Elsewhere I discuss how the USDI is about the colonies’ “patient sufferance” and fruitless efforts at negotiation with British oligarchs - which the 1860s secessionist oath-breakers never did. This time, I want to point at just one of the indictments against King George III. It leaped out at me!

"He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.'

Whaaa? Re-read that. Especially in today's context. Oh sure, many aspects of the USDI read as brutishly imperfect from our later perspective… as we will seem brutes to our better descendants, I hope!

Still, as we approach July 4 -- and insipid attempts by confederates to hijack it -- let’s recall that it is the direction of progress that matters - keeping the arc of history bent toward justice. 

Moreover when confederates and their foreign allies and would-be kings are driven out of Washington, and our temples cleansed of treason, we will lift our eyes to a shared future of amiable-adult argument -- actual fair politics -- over how to keep improving, with charity for all and malice towards none.