Daniels, Roberts. John, Charlie. Shoot, they all sound like first names to me. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the pre-1865 mindset:

If I were a high school teacher and young Johnny Roberts wrote this on an exam on civil rights history, I would give him an “F.” The idea that the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court could cough up such a ludicrous hairball is evidence of a nation gone mad with amnesia. Or, if you prefer, a conservative intellectual class that knows the history full well, and has simply let itself lie.

Do educated people really need this explained to them? It wasn’t merely “before Brown” that “schoolchildren were told where they could and could not go to school based on their color of their skin.” It was long, long after the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka – for the next seventeen years at least.

Be proud you a rebel, white boy. And when ya know ya gotta, jes’ make shit up or ignore reality:

Two years after that, fourteen years after Brown, the vast, vast majority of Southern school districts still told schoolchildren where they could and could not go to school based on the color of their skin. How did we know? The federal government counted.

[snip]

How did the South respond? In the same manner as a criminal, told to halt by police, but simply ran as fast as he could in the other direction. How did we know they weren’t following the law? The federal government counted.

Numbers, eh? Sounds like that newfangled math (emphasis added, below).

And thus – pay attention, Justice Roberts – seventeen years after the Supreme Court made it the law of the land , for the first time it became difficult, as a practical matter, to tell schoolchildren where they could and could not go to school based on the color of their skin. Civil rights attorneys, and the federal government, devised mechanisms to try to assure it couldn’t happen again These required – obviously – counting how many blacks and how many whites attended various schools.

Which is what Justice Roberts just outlawed. We can’t count any more. “The school districts in these cases have not carried the heavy burden of demonstrating that we should allow this once again–even for very different reasons.”

Because counting is racist. Note the assumption, as false as the claim that the sun rises in the west, that Americans only counted how many children of each race attended certain schools before the 1954 decision, and only then to make sure no blacks attended white schools. And that, after that, the counting stopped.

Alrighty, then. SCOTUS says counting isn’t allowed anymore. I’m sure that’s comforting to these folks. Strange fruit, eh? But I know some numbers we should be counting. Let’s start with. . . some names:

This is not unexpected and it is important to keep in mind which Democrats voted to confirm the very predictable fascist John Roberts to be the 17th Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Every single Republican voted to confirm, of course, including rubber stamp fake “moderates” and self-proclaimed “independent voices” Lincoln Chafee (RIP), Chuck Hagel (NE), Susan Collins (ME), Olympia Snowe (ME), Norm Coleman (MN), Arlen Specter (PA), John Sununu (NH), McCain (AZ), and Gordon Smith (OR).

Joining the Republicans to saddle us with this multi-generational catastrophe were:
Max Baucus (MT)
Jeff Bingaman (NM)
Robert Byrd (WV)
Tom Carper (DE)
Kent Conrad (ND)
Chris Dodd (CT)
Byron Dorgan (ND)
Russ Feingold (WI), proving that no one is perfect
Tim Johnson (SD)
Herb Kohl (WI)
Mary Landrieu (LA)
Patrick Leahy (VT)
Carl Levin (MI)
Joe Lieberman (CT, who was still posing as a Democrat at the time)
Blanche Lincoln (AR)
Patty Murray (WA)
Bill Nelson (FL)
Ben Nelson (NE)
Mark Pryor (AR)
Jay Rockefeller (WV)
Ken Salazar (CO)
Ron Wyden (OR)

22 Democrats voted with the Republicans and 22 Democrats voted with the American people. Of the Democrats running for president, Hillary, Obama, and, surprisingly, Biden voted with the people. Dodd voted with his corporate allies and the GOP.

Every senator who voted to confirm Roberts voted, in effect, for these decisions today. If they say these decisions surprised them, then they are, on top of idiots, liars. Even worse, are the Democrats who voted with the GOP to also confirm Sam Alito, who, if anything, is even further to the extreme right than Roberts. This vote was for cloture and again, every Republican voted to to confirm by shutting off debate, and only 25 Democrats voted with the people of this country in mind. The Democrats who joined the GOP that day were:
Daniel Akaka (HI)
Max Baucus (MT)
Jeff Bingaman (NM)
Robert Byrd (WV)
Maria Cantwell (WA)
Tom Carper (DE)
Kent Conrad (ND)
Byron Dorgan (ND)
Daniel Inouye (HI)
Tim Johnson (SD)
Herb Kohl (WI)
Mary Landrieu (LA)
Joe Lieberman (CT)
Blanche Lincoln (AR)
Bill Nelson (FL)
Ben Nelson (NE)
Mark Pryor (AR)
Jay Rockefeller (WV)
Ken Salazar (CO)

Names that are bold indicate that these senators will face the voters next year. Try to remember.

The modern Republican Party is a criminal, lying enterprise, full stop, and a fair chunk of “Democrats” like to pretend they don’t notice. Thing is, though, the rest of us do.

Soon as I hear any future Democratic president talking about forgetting what all happened between 2000-2008 for the sake of “national healing,” I ‘spect I’ll be on him (or her) like a queer duck on a june bug. There won’t be no healing, folks, without first getting to the truth and rounding up all the zombie criminal networks that previously brought us Watergate and Iran Contra. The Constitution won’t protect itself. It never has.

[Before everybody tries to jack me up, there’s a lot of real good people in the South who don’t support this stuff. In fact, we have one writing every day on this site. But the Old South is the heart of the political movement to destroy civil rights and reconstitute legally supported white racial supremacy. That’s the base of the modern Republican Party, not the base of today’s Democratic Party, though of course I support the 50 state strategy and all efforts to promote real change in the Old South. Having said all that, Mudcat, you can kiss my gay ass on a June Pride float.]