#constitutions

— Otto W. Johnston, The Emergence of the Napoleonic Cult in German Literature

Marbled Monday

For this week’s Marbled Monday post, we’ve got the Constitution of the State of Wisconsin published in 1846 in Madison in what was then the Wisconsin Territory by B. Brown. It features the constitution of Wisconsin as “adopted in convention at Madison on the sixteenth day of December, in the year of our Lord, one thousand eight hundred and forty-six, together with the Act of Congress and the Act of the Legislature in relation to the formation of a State government in Wisconsin.” However, Wisconsin would not officially gain statehood until 1848, and it’s noted in the record for the book that the “Constitution was rejected by the People, April 6, 1847.” 

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When the Pennsylvania Supreme Court unanimously rejected a Republican attempt to overturn the state’s election results in November, Justice David N. Wecht issued his own pointed rebuke, condemning the G.O.P. effort as “futile” and “a dangerous game.”

“It is not our role to lend legitimacy to such transparent and untimely efforts to subvert the will of Pennsylvania voters,” wrote Justice Wecht, a Democrat who was elected to a 10-year term on the bench in 2016. “Courts should not decide elections when the will of the voters is clear.”

Now Pennsylvania Republicans have a plan to make it less likely that judges like Justice Wecht get in their way.

G.O.P. legislators, dozens of whom supported overturning the state’s election results to aid former President Donald J. Trump, are moving to change the entire way that judges are selected in Pennsylvania, in a gambit that could tip the scales of the judiciary to favor their party, or at least elect judges more inclined to embrace Republican election challenges.

The proposal would replace the current system of statewide elections for judges with judicial districts drawn by the Republican-controlled legislature. Those districts could empower rural, predominantly conservative areas and particularly rewire the State Supreme Court, which has a 5-to-2 Democratic lean.

Democrats are now mobilizing to fight the effort, calling it a thinly veiled attempt at creating a new level of gerrymandering — an escalation of the decades-old practice of drawing congressional and state legislative districts to ensure that political power remains in one party’s hands. Democrats are marshaling grass-roots opposition, holding regular town hall events conducted over Zoom, and planning social media campaigns and call-in days to legislators, as well as an enormous voter education campaign. One group, Why Courts Matter Pennsylvania, has cut a two-minute infomercial.

In fucking FIFTY years (from 1799 to 1848) we had SIX fucking different political regimes. It's a nightmare to learn.

1. The Iraqi constitution is a joke. Much like Iraqi democracy.

2. Iraqi federalism doesn't exist in Iraqi Kurdistan. It's mostly independent already.

3. Iraqi federalism is what created the latest incarnation of ISIS. Trying to uphold a united Iraq to fight ISIS is the same dumb, bankrupt foreign policy that made this mess under Bush and Obama.

A "united Iraq" means letting Iran's Shiite puppets in Baghdad run the country. The Sunnis, unsurprisingly opt out, Al Qaeda, in some form or another, comes calling. And that's how we ended up with ISIS. And then we have to choose between Iran and ISIS. Unfortunately, as the Hezbollah-ISIS convoy and the 9/11 report shows, they also have a secret relationship.

So it's Catch 22. Either way the terrorists win and we lose.

The only "solution" is to support de facto partition of Iraq along demographic lines. It won't be easy or smooth, but it's going to keep happening in the form of outbreaks of violence anyway until it's finally realized. Iraq, like Syria, is an imaginary country created by Western powers.