Tag archive: Themis

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Virginia Reels: The Ginni Thomas Text Controversy

On March 24, 2022, Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa reported on text messages sent in November 2020 from Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, to Mark Meadows, former President Trump’s then Chief of Staff, exhorting him to do anything necessary to overturn the results of the 2020 election and keep Donald Trump in office.  Sent days to weeks after the loss, Thomas deluged Meadows with false information, conspiracy theories, and strategies for reversing the apparent defeat. 

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Trump Update: Justice Grinds Slowly

If you’re a regular reader of these chronicles, you may recall that from time to time, I’ve referenced the autumn 2021 Pluto station in exact square to Trump’s natal asteroid d’Arrest as a probable timeframe for him being brought to justice.  Well, the autumn came and went, and while investigations have increased apace and in quantity, no charges were filed.  Astrologers can be purists, and nothing delights the heart so much as an appropriate manifestation exactly on the date in question.

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Stationary Stationery

We’ve known for years that, as President, Donald Trump was shredding the Constitution, igniting division, and generally flushing the country down the toilet.  We just didn’t know it was literal.

But on Friday, 4 February 2022, as Mercury came to its direct station conjunct Pluto, news (Mercury) broke that while in office, Trump routinely destroyed (Pluto) papers (Mercury) relating to the presidency.  In doing so, he violated the Presidential Records Act of 1978, which establishes that all such papers, from rough notes and memoranda to correspondence and drafts of Executive Orders, are public property of the United States, to be retained by the National Archives, and not the personal possessions of the president, subject to his whim.  Apparently the most common method of destruction Trump employed was to tear papers and toss them into the waste can, after which staffers would retrieve the pieces and tape them back together for preservation at the Archives, although some were in such a state of confetti as to be irretrievable.

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Breyer Resigns

A huge sigh of audible relief went up from progressive circles on Wednesday, 26 January, 2022, when the story broke that Stephen Breyer, Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court, would resign at the end of this term.  Breyer, 83, had been balking at political pressure to remove himself from office while the Democrats still marginally control the Senate, so his seat would not pass into conservative hands at a later date. 

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Guilty, Guilty, Guilty: The Derek Chauvin Verdict

Ten months after his murder, George Floyd’s family received some closure and a form of justice when the jury convicted his killer, former Officer Derek Chauvin, on all three counts of murder and manslaughter charges, after less than 11 hours of deliberation.  The evidence against him was so egregious, that outcome should have been beyond dispute, but in such racially charged cases of police misconduct, nothing is certain. 

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Aster-Obit: Ruth Bader Ginsburg

“My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed.”

–Ruth Bader Ginsburg

 

On September 18th, 2020, the US political world was shaken to its foundations by the death of the Notorious R.B.G., Ruth Bader Ginsburg, an associate Justice of the US Supreme Court and liberal icon for almost thirty years.  Ginsburg succumbed to complications arising from metastasized pancreatic cancer, after struggling with the disease in one form or another for over twenty years.  Ginsburg’s death, coming so close to a US presidential election, completely upends the calculus, energizing both sides, as conservatives scramble to replace her before they may lose control of the White House and Senate, and progressives cry “Foul!” in the face of clear double standards regarding the rules for filling such vacancies.

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