Sisyphus Archives - Alex's Asteroid Astrology

March 8th, 2024 at 10:05am by Alex Miller

Happy Birthday, SCOTUS!

The Supreme Court of the United States (AKA SCOTUS) just had a birthday! Established by the Judiciary Act of 1789, the Court turned 235 on March 4, 2024 (and she doesn’t look a day over 200!). The Court’s motto is “Equal Justice Under the Law,” but for much of its chequered history it may as well have been, “Often Wrong, But Never in Doubt.” We don’t have to go as far back as the 1857 “Dred Scott” decision (which found that the U.S. Constitution did not extend American citizenship to people of black African descent) to find a real head-scratcher. More recent examples include “Heller” in 2008, which confirmed the Second Amendment gun rights free-for-all; “Citizens United” in 2010, which granted corporations the same free speech rights as individuals regarding political spending; or the 2022 ruling in “Dobbs” which eliminated nationwide reproductive health rights (though to be fair, it was also SCOTUS that confirmed those rights, in 1973’s “Roe v Wade”).

January 9th, 2023 at 08:33am by Alex Miller

The Man Who Would Be Speaker: The Kevin McCarthy Debacle

Well, that was fun! The 118^th Congress kicked off with a bang on January 3^rd, and an impressive showing of just how incapable of governing the House GOP majority truly is. Far from running the country, they couldn’t even pick a Speaker! Pardon me while I indulge in a bit of schadenfreude, a marvelously descriptive turn of phrase which in German means “shameful joy,” taking pleasure in the misfortune of another. I really should be mourning the tragic state of politics in America, and I do, truly. But somehow, I can’t help smiling at Kevin McCarthy’s discomfiture.

September 28th, 2021 at 08:05am by Alex Miller

DC in the Spotlight

Well, the cosmos has done it again! With unerring precision, the celestial sphere has once again placed its astrologic finger on the nub of current events. It’s Hell Week in Washington, with Democrats in disarray, struggling to pass the signature legislation of the Biden administration, keep the government from closing its doors, and facing some of the most momentous votes in recent years. Given all the Capitol Hill drama, how can this fail to register on the cosmic etch-a-sketch? Short answer – it doesn’t!

September 4th, 2021 at 08:59am by Alex Miller

The California Recall Election

For the second time in twenty years, California is holding a recall election for its governor. Like Gray Davis in 2003, the at-risk chief executive is a Democrat, Gavin Newsom, less than two years into his first term, former mayor of San Francisco. Unlike the successful challenge mounted by Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2003, there is no high-profile Republican candidate running to unseat Newsom in 2021. Rather, upwards of 40 little-known candidates have ponied-up to the electoral bar, from across the political spectrum, but Newsom is not among them, as the current governor is not allowed to run to replace himself.

August 12th, 2021 at 10:38am by Alex Miller

A Tale of Two Andrews

Two famous Andrews came to crisis moments in their biographies within a day of each other, in mid-August 2021. On the 9^th, a lawsuit was filed against HRH Prince Andrew, the Duke of York, Queen Elizabeth II’s second son, alleging sexual abuse of a minor; and on the 10^th, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo resigned under a firestorm of condemnation after a probe into allegations of sexual misconduct revealed a pattern of abuse of female staffers.

Two Andrews, in two days, both charged with sex crimes? What’s going on here, celestially speaking?

July 26th, 2021 at 09:10am by Alex Miller

Capitol Fireworks: the 1/6 Select Committee

Independence Day may be over, but the fireworks in DC are just beginning. Hard to imagine this could be a controversial topic, but in the post-Trump age even an investigation into an insurrectionist attack on the US Capitol itself can become a bone of contention between the two Parties. Some of the very lawmakers whose lives were threatened by the fury unleashed by Donald Trump’s supporters, now stand by and opine that the attack was just high spirits or a typical congressional tour group.