5 interesting facts about the US Supreme Court

In celebration of Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court, all this week, I’m going to write a post about the Supreme Court and the US constitution. Hopefully at the end of this week we’ll all be a little bit more knowledgeable about the highest court in the land and the American constitution. 

1.The president of the United States has the right to argue a case in front of the Supreme Court!  Yup!   And the last president to argue a case before the court was Richard Nixon..he lost! 

2. The US justices used to wear white wigs, similar to the ones worn by British justices, but during the first session of the court in 1790 William Cushing was the only justice to show up wearing the wig (I guess he thought it was cool..)  But his fashion faux pas didn’t go unnoticed.  And Thomas Jefferson eventually convinced Cushing to get rid of it declaring that the wigs made the judges ” look like rats peeping through bunches of oakum.”  

3. The US Supreme Court has no specific size and the number of Justices on the Supreme Court has increased as the US has grown geographically and as  judicial circuits have increased.  

4. If  the 10 000 bill was still in circulation it would be called a Chasey (at least that’s what I would call it..lol) because Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase appeared on it.

5. The 27th President of the United States William Howard Taft also served as the 10th Chief Justice of the United States. He was nominated by President Warren Harding after the death of Chief Justice Edward Douglass White.  Wouldn’t you just love to have those two jobs on your resume?

Taxing AIG bonuses is illegal and idiotic

When you or I make a mistake what do we do?

First we take responsiblity and then we try correct it. If we are successful we never repeat that mistake. Sometimes we fail and we end up repeating that mistake regardless of how hard we’ve tried. But most of us usually try really, really hard not to do that.

Politicians, however, are a different species of human.  They never take responsibility for anything bad and they are always blaming others for their shortcomings.

First, Senator Dodd points the finger at the treasury. Treasury officials point the finger at Obama officials and then congressmen and congresswomen (who obviously don’t read the bills they pass) point the fingers at greedy AIG execs!

Everybody agrees that a mistake has been made yet nobody is willing to take responsiblity for it and for the first time President Obama’s words are ringing hollow with me. I don’t believe a word he says when it comes to AIG.

And I’m pretty sure that if we weren’t mad as hell none of these politicians would be speaking out against these bonuses. Why would they? AIG has given them millions of dollars over the years. Tell me, are you really going to bite the hand that feeds you? I doubt it.

However, we want our money back and we intend to get it with our without them and if  the men and women in Congress want to get reelected they will find a way to quell our anger.

Of course, we’re entitled to  ‘a refund’ but we shouldn’t get it by taxing the corporate executives to death or by unconstitutional methods and the bill passed today just screams unfair taxation. And didn’t Americans fight a war against that?