The "Supreme" Court

    We need to be worried, y'all. And the reason we need to be worried is twofold:

1. The Supreme Court shouldn't have a split decision on a very basic Constitutional question; and 
2. The Constitution of the United States was never meant to be a static document.

    On the first point, it very simply doesn't matter what Clarence Thomas or Samuel Alito or Neil Gorsuch feels about birthright citizenship. The 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution was very specifically drafted and adopted on July 9, 1868. A 91 page temper tantrum does not negate that two thirds of the Congress ratified this specific amendment. And the job of the Supreme Court is to decide "....Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution..." I guess we have to say the loud part out loud right now, but the 14th Amendment of the Constitution says this:

 Persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. 

     It's pretty straightforward. Persons born in the United States are United States citizens. And this is not an anomaly, despite of what you've heard this week. Here's a map of the countries who have birthright citizenship in some format around the world if you'd like a visual. But, but, there are condition, you might be telling yourself. Yep. Other countries deal with this differently. Here in the U.S.A., we chose a different way in 1868. So really, the thought that our highest court came up with a decision where the decision was made 6-3 is pretty astonishing. If your whole job is to interpret the Constitution, you can't really argue what we decided in 1868. You can propose that we need to change this thing, but then you need to propose an amendment to the Constitution. You don't write a dissent where you cite so, so many cases that were settled prior to 1868. Great research. But your argument doesn't hold water.

    I could say a lot about the current Supreme Court justices. I have so many feelings about them, that, unfortunately, B has to hear about daily. What I will say is this: I do not believe that the Constitution was meant to be a static document. And I don't believe our Founding Fathers believed that, either. I just want you to think about a "constitutionally original" life in the year of our lord, 2026: 

• I'm not writing this, because why would we give some dumb girl an education? Shouldn't she be at home, taking care of her kids and her husband? Shouldn't her dad have made sure that she was well taken care of by someone who was free, white, and 21?
•  Every dude has a muzzle loading musket. It's right there if we need to protect our life or land.
• Well, I guess slavery is...okay?
• Not a land owner? Well, I guess you're not a full person. Hey, sorry. But we have crops that needed tending. 

    Look, I'm not dumb. I know that there's a lot of people who are hurt and mad right now. I know that there's a lot going on, and they want to look back to what they think were "the good times" of the United States, and they want us to get back there. Wild but true. What I'd say is this: it's wild that we've gotten to the point where the second African-American on the Supreme Court is writing a dissent that basically argues that birthright citizenship applied only to the freed slaves. As a man who remembers segregation, I'd love to know more about why Justice Thomas believes that birthright citizenship only applied to the freed slaves. And after slogging through his 91 page dissent, I'm still not clear why he thinks that.

     Before anyone gets it twisted, let me be clear. I am so fortunate to be an American citizen. I received a stellar public education. I am able to make my own way in the world without the permission of my father or brother. I get to make my own money and decide how that money is spent. I was able to get a university degree. Every day, I go out into the world, and I get to decide how I'm going to move through the world. No one tells me how I have to dress, or marry, or what I'm going to do. I am extraordinarily privileged, because women and men in the generations before me fought hard for me to have these privileges.

    I never think of these things as rights, because in my lifetime, I've been reminded that they aren't rights. The Dobbs decision in 2022 reiterated that the highest court in the land doesn't think that I can make healthcare decisions for myself. The SAVE act (yet to be passed) is an easy way to disenfranchise millions of my fellow women who got married and therefore don't have a birth certificate that matches the name that they vote under. I'm under no illusions here. There's a preponderance of people here in the U.S. who don't believe I should be doing anything without the express permission of a man. And I'm still privileged, because I'm a white woman at the end of her childbearing years. 

    Right now, it's very easy to be disillusioned. It's easy to look around and feel hopeless. This 4th of July, 250 years after the founding of the United States, I think it's important to take an honest look at what we've become, and start figuring out how we can make all of this better for We the People. Not just the billionaires. Not just the white people. All of us. Because I don't think that framers of the Constitution meant for us all to keep living like it's 1776. And I think they'd be particularly disappointed if they were able to come back from the dead and see that we, as a nation, are actively moving backward.

     This means that we need to figure this out, and quickly. It took 24 years after September 11 for us to all be able to wear our shoes through the airport security checkpoints again. Rights, once ceded or revoked, are incredibly difficult to regain. The rights we're losing now could take generations to regain. So we need to move with a sense of urgency and focus if we want all this craziness to stop. Here are some things we can all be doing to fix what's happening right now:

• Pay attention. Read the whole damn article, not just the headline. Don't ask AI about anything. We don't need to be acting on information that may or may not be the creative writing of a computer. So many things are happening all the time, it can feel overwhelming, but pretending this will all work out somehow if no one's paying attention is not just silly, it's dangerous.
• Find one thing you can do in your neighborhood to make things better for someone else. This doesn't have to be a monetary donation. This can be as simple as noticing that your elderly neighbor has trouble getting their trashcan to the street, and assisting with that. We're all we've got, y'all. It's time to get out there and figure out who your neighbors are and how you can work together. 
• Figure out who you're going to vote for in November. Not just your Federal representatives (if they're up for election). I'm talking about city council members, sheriffs, anyone that is up for election. These positions I'm mentioning? They have a direct impact on your every day existence, so you should probably know what they're all about and make your voting choices accordingly.
• Get mad, get furious, but don't give up hope. Statistically, there are millions more of us out here, unhappy with what's going on, than there are people making terrible decisions on our behalf. The minute we think there's nothing we can do to change what's going on? That's when they've won. So be mad, be scared, but also be thinking, networking with your neighbors, and figuring out some solutions for how we can make things better.