Today E.J. Dionne takes to the pages of The Washington Post to display his utter ignorance of, or contempt for, our form of government. More particularly, our judiciary.

Unlike in past installments of ‘Puter’s continuing series of “Mr. Dionne is either stupid or a liar,” ‘Puter will not attempt to respond to all of the errors in today’s column. ‘Puter will respond only to the two biggest howlers.

1. “The United States Supreme Court now sees its central task as comforting the already comfortable and afflicting those already afflicted.”*

Mr. Dionne levels his baseless accusation in the context of the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Dukes v. Walmart, regarding class action availability for over one million female employees spread across the United States. He then riffs on over to the Court’s jurisprudence on public campaign financing.

Context aside, Mr. Dionne’s vision of the Supreme Court should chill all non-brain damaged Americans to the bone. What Mr. Dionne describes as his perfect Court is a Star Chamber, unfettered by such legal niceties as precedent, witnesses and evidence. Mr. Dionne wants a court that can ignore the Constitution, the intent of the founders and hundreds of years of precedent to get to the “right” decision. And by “right,” Mr. Dionne means a decision with which he agrees, dusty old foundational documents be damned.

Some may think ‘Puter is ascribing to Mr. Dionne a position he has not taken. Wrong. One can ascertain Mr. Dionne’s true position in the phrasing of his own words above. He states clearly that his belief that the Court is wrong in “comforting the already comfortable and afflicting the already afflicted.” Therefore, he must believe that the correct role of the court is to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.

And he would be 180 degrees wrong. The job of the Supreme Court is to determine, within the bounds of the Constitution, whether a given set of facts runs afoul of that document. No more, no less. It is certainly not to pick winners and losers based on Mr. Dionne’s fanciful worldview of the moment.

Mr. Dionne’s position advocates for disregarding the Constitution, and substituting a subjective “good of the people”* test. ‘Puter doesn’t know about the rest of you, but the idea that 9 unelected folks are going to make decisions about his life untethered from any limiting factors, other than their own moral compass and good will, scares the living bejesus out of him.

And it should scare the living bejesus out of Mr. Dionne as well. For as discomfitted as he seems to be regarding recent “conservative” (scare quotes because ‘Puter finds the decisions “Constitutional”) decisions, those decisions would be about a bazillion times “worse” for his chosen world view if conservative justices were just making things up as they went along. *cough*liberaljusticesand emanationsfrom thepenumbras*cough*.

The reality that there exist a large number of otherwise intelligent people who firmly believe the job of the Supreme Court is to institute their policy preferences, and nothing more, terrifies ‘Puter. This is a profoundly (and provably) unAmerican idea.

If ‘Puter were a wry observer of human nature, ‘Puter would say Mr. Dionne’s obvious dislike of the Court’s decisions relates directly to how Mr. Dionne perceives the decisions’ impact on the electability of Democrat candidates. But ‘Puter’s not a wry observer of human nature. Heck, ‘Puter barely even has a human nature.

2. “Roberts was especially exercised over any notion of ‘leveling the playing field’ between private-money candidates and their challengers. He even included a footnote calling attention to the Citizens Clean Elections Commission’s Web site, which once said the law was passed ‘to level the playing field when it comes to running for office.’ Horrors!”

Yes, Mr. Dionne. Horrors. Field-leveling is not the job of the government. Continuing down the sports metaphor, the job of the government is to ensure everyone gets a position at the starting line, not to terraform the race course to meet the needs of any given individual. Or, more likely in Mr. Dionne’s world view, race or class of individuals.

We have been embarked on affirmative action for 40 or so years now, and it has been a spectacular failure. We’ve thrown money at education in the name of leveling the playing field for decades, and poor kids still can’t read. The Great Society, aimed at lifing everyone up to the same level, has only served to reinforce poverty and government dependence. Or, as CCR aptly put it “five year plans and New Deals, wrapped in golden chains.” (See also, Rush, Trees).

In Mr. Dionne’s worldview, the government is the Great Handicapper. It exists solely to pick winners and losers, all in the name of some undefined concept of “fairness.” “It’s not fair!” is what ‘Puter’s kids cry when he punishes them for drinking all the vodka again. It’s not an adult solution to the problem of governance. Grown ups know that we are all better served by letting those with drive, or preferably drive and ability, succeed. That is not to say we should not take care of the less fortunate, merely that in doing so, we shouldn’t hobble those who make and do.

Let’s be honest, Mr. Dionne. The government is horrible and picking winners and losers. It’s picked ethanol, and succeeded only in raising gas and food prices. It’s picked solar and wind, and succeeded only in raising our utility costs. It’s picked high speed rail, and succeeded only in, well, nothing. Get out of the way of the runners once the race has started. You might find you like the results.

Remember, Mr. Dionne. All men may be created equal, but that’s no guarantee of outcome. And no Great Handicapper, no matter how great or how handi-capable, can guarantee a successful outcome for any person, race or class, no matter how hard they try.

'Puter

Always right, unless he isn’t, the infallible Ghettoputer F. X. Gormogons claims to be an in-law of the Volgi, although no one really believes this.

’Puter carefully follows economic and financial trends, legal affairs, and serves as the Gormogons’ financial and legal advisor. He successfully defended us against a lawsuit from a liquor distributor worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid deliveries of bootleg shandies.

The Geep has an IQ so high it is untestable and attempts to measure it have resulted in dangerously unstable results as well as injuries to researchers. Coincidentally, he publishes intelligence tests as a side gig.

His sarcasm is so highly developed it borders on the psychic, and he is often able to insult a person even before meeting them. ’Puter enjoys hunting small game with 000 slugs and punt guns, correcting homilies in real time at Mass, and undermining unions. ’Puter likes to wear a hockey mask and carry an axe into public campgrounds, where he bursts into people’s tents and screams. As you might expect, he has been shot several times but remains completely undeterred.

He assures us that his obsessive fawning over news stories involving women teachers sleeping with young students is not Freudian in any way, although he admits something similar once happened to him. Uniquely, ’Puter is unable to speak, read, or write Russian, but he is able to sing it fluently.

Geep joined the order in the mid-1980s. He arrived at the Castle door with dozens of steamer trunks and an inarticulate hissing creature of astonishingly low intelligence he calls “Sleestak.” Ghettoputer appears to make his wishes known to Sleestak, although no one is sure whether this is the result of complex sign language, expert body posture reading, or simply beating Sleestak with a rubber mallet.

‘Puter suggests the Czar suck it.