Moral of the story: never out your hopes on "Men in Black" as Mark Levin wrote.
The scoundrels who get away scott free on writing or rather passing these abominations need to be as far away from DC as we can send them.
They are about to flush this country down the drain while we sit back at home and hope for 5 good men riding white horses to declare this crap "unconstitutional," when they ha e vested interests elsewhere.
Once I found out Congress exempted itself from "insider trading," I realized the gig was up, we are jailed for stuff they do each and every day.
Now they tell me, employees at the IRS owe millions in unpaid taxes, while they threaten to jail great auntie for owing $15,000 on some stock she didn't even know she owned!
I used to think people who said they were all crooks and there was no difference between the parties, were cynics, I no longer believe that. They ARE all crooks and sadly, I'm paying them!
Roberts was basically an unknown when Bush picked him. He had about two years sitting on an appeals court and nothing else. Earlier in his career he represented a couple of sodomites before the Supreme Court. HE WAS THEIR LAWYER.
Roberts is a liberal. A wasted pick by a republican president. Clinton could have picked this loser for that matter. As long as he sits on the bench he will always side with liberals. Saying DOMA is unconstitutional will be his next decision.
People who really care about their freedom don't end up reduced to praying the USSC stops BarryCare after it passes.
Human nature hasn't changed, so with rare exceptions, yes, they are all crooks or at least turn into crooks by the time they've been there four or five years. Most end up petty thiefs who feather their own nest in return for small favors and a few are major crooks who try to control the petty thieves. That's why the 17th Amendment is so horrible, it destroys an important check on human nature. The 17th wasn't about who got to decide on who would be State Senators as much as it was about making sure ideas and ideals of the majority of the people in the State as reflected in the State Legislature dictated what the State Senators would fight for and against.
Once the 17th was passed, the Federal crooks would always have the upper hand when dealing with a Senator, and would have as much influence over became Senators in a State as the State did. Once someone at the Federal level buys themself a Senator they can pour millions of dollars and thousands of free manhours into keeping them in place. Without the 17th Amendment, State Legislatures could recall and replace a Senator for whatever reason they thought sufficient. When power in a State changed from one party to the other or when something important to the State was at issue and a Senator was suspect the State could replace that Senator to ensure the State's interests were protected and the Senator didn't vote against what the majority in the State want.
There will always be some degree of corruption in politics and politics will always attract crooks. The only thing you can do is fragment power to the extent that the worst thing you'll ever have to face is moving twenty miles down the road to avoid the crooks when a county or city government gets out of hand. That means taking power away from the State government and putting it back in the hands of cities and counties right along with taking the power back from the Federal level.
Fragmenting and returning power to the lowest possible level of government should be the clearly stated goal of the Tea Party and every other group that's really conservative. Turn the fascist propaganda slogan of "power to the people" on it's ear by actually returning power to the people instead of handing their "representatives" more and more power and money "on behalf of the people". Even if that were all accomplished there would still be more than enough corruption around but at least it would be corruption that could be avoided until it can be ended.
When States don't have the 17th Amendment bridle in the mouths of their Senators, of course every level of the Federal government is going to become more and more like a feudal nobility. Even the lowest Federal employees are functionally exempt from the thousands of laws the nobility pass. At the very least the Federal lackeys on the lower rungs know that as long as they keep the machine running the way the nobility wants it run the rules will be ignored for them even if they're not technically exempt.
A nation born in rebellion against monarchy handed it's children over to "professionals" to educate and next thing you know, the Federal government reestablished a monarchy and the people educated by "professionals" are so gullible that they think changing who gets to be the king every four years means everything is still run according to the Constitution.