Supreme Court Moves Time Back 50 Years:

Yesterday, in a 5 to 4 vote, the Supreme Court moved the U. S. backwards in time by fifty years. In an effort to return to the days of Jim Crow. In a classic conservative move, the right wing used the language of anti-racism to justify the hateful practice of segregation in the nation's public school system. School districts, it has ruled, can no longer use "race" as a means to justify ending racism. In other words, all school districts must find means of integrating their schools racially, but they cannot use race as a measure to do so. Evidently the only solution to this problem will be to tear down all existing schools and build one giant school in each district, to which all children must be bused. That should please building contractors. (Read NYTimes' writer Linda Greenhouse's account here.)


Supreme Court Stops Texas Execution of Mad Man:

In another 5 to 4 vote, the Supreme Court overturned the death sentence meted out by the Texas court system that seems bent on following a path of extermination. The majority in the Supreme Court held that it was unconstitutional to execute a man who could not understand why he was being killed by the state. (Texas has executed 397 people since 1976, far more than any other state. Advocating death sentences against those too weak to defend themselves is a popular way to gain political power in the state.) (Read the NYTimes story here.)