Themis Archives - Page 8 of 11 - Alex's Asteroid Astrology

February 12th, 2022 at 08:26am by Alex Miller

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.

January 28th, 2022 at 09:25am by Alex Miller

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.

April 24th, 2021 at 08:54am by Alex Miller

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.

September 20th, 2020 at 01:55pm by Alex Miller

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 18^th, 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.

July 14th, 2020 at 10:13am by Alex Miller

A Rolling Stone Serves No Time

We last checked in with Trump crony and political adviser Roger Stone eighteen months ago, in January 2019, just after his home was raided by FBI agents, and Stone arrested on seven federal counts of obstruction, making false statements and witness tampering. It’s been a long road for Stone, who was convicted on all counts in November 2019, then sentenced to forty months in prison on February 20, 2020, after William Barr’s Justice Department attempted to intervene and lighten his prison term, prompted by tweets from the President characterizing his friend’s treatment as “horrible and very unfair” and a “miscarriage of justice”.

Stone’s incarceration was due to start July 14, but was superseded when Donald Trump commuted his sentence on Friday, 10 July 2020. Short of a pardon, the commutation means that Roger Stone, for now, remains a convicted felon, but will never serve a day in prison for his crimes.

June 21st, 2020 at 01:20pm by Alex Miller

SCOTUS Cockblocks Conservatives

In a surprise 6-3 decision June 15^th, the United States Supreme Court ruled that gays and transgendered individuals are in fact protected by Title VII of the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act, which already prohibits discrimination in the workplace on sexual grounds. Conservatives Chief Justice John Roberts and Trump appointee Justice Neil Gorsuch joined the bloc of four liberals in essentially grandfathering in sexual orientation and gender identification to the nearly sixty-year-old law. Well, duh.

The senior Justice in the majority determines who will write the decision, and John Roberts wasted no time in passing this hot potato along to junior Justice Gorsuch, perhaps the unkindest cut of all for conservatives, who have put up with all manner of crudity, ignorance, and anti-Christian-values shenanigans from Donald Trump, all in the name of the justices he would appoint to the Supreme Court, whom they assumed would rule in support of their views. As historian Jon Meacham recently opined, “they sold their souls to Trump for the Supreme Court, and now find that his check has bounced.”