Let It Only Be Four Years

Last week, I rehashed a bunch of my cartoons about the first two years of the Corrupt Trump Administration, so here are some from 2019 and 2020.

February, 2019

The nature of this here blog is to emphasize LGBTQ issues, so I ought to start today's post by acknowledging the one positive move the Corrupt Trump Administration has made in that regard. Log Cabineer Ric Grenell successfully pushed Trump to call for an end to persecution of LGBTQ citizens by other countries. That might seem out of character for Mr. Trump, until you realize that the policy comes at no real cost to him personally.

March, 2019

Former FBI Director Mueller's investigation into Trump campaign collusion with Russian meddling wrapped up early last year with Mueller's report laying out the evidence but refusing to state any conclusions. Lickspittle Attorney General William Barr released a disingenuously bowdlerized summary of the Mueller report that gave the false impression that the investigation had exonerated his boss.

October, 2019

By the time the full Mueller report came to light, American media had bought the Corrupt Trump Administration's spin.

September, 2019

For four years, Trump Inc. has been hard at work grifting off the presidency: finagling business deals with China for daughter Ivanka, charging the Secret Service to protect Mr. Trump at his own properties, and happily leaning back while foreign governments and corporate lobbyists curry favor with the Corrupt Trump Administration by checking into Trump Inc. hotels to do so. Add in the moolah Junior and Eric raked in from their supposed charities, and you get a clear picture of the Trump family's moral compass.
 

I can't even let little Tiffany Trump slide here: her omission of the "T" at an LGBTQ event recently is seen as a sign that she has inherited her father's animus toward transgender persons.

August, 2019

His animus is not limited to the military. Mr. Trump and his lackeys want to drive them out of the military, out of a job, and out of housing, out of sight, out of mind, and out of existence.

December, 2019

The Supreme Court ruled against Mr. Barr in the employment case above, but that is likely to become a short-lived victory. Senate Republicans refused to consider one Supreme Court nomination and 110 lower court nominations during Barack Obama's presidency so that they could pack the courts with doctrinaire, activists right-wingers during Mr. Trump's. Trump has thus been privileged to add three such Justices to the three put on the Supreme Court by the Bushes.

In case you have somehow not made up your mind about how to vote this year, I will point out one more time that Justice Stephen Breyer is 82 years old.

January, 2020

The House of Representatives impeached Trump over his efforts to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to meddle in U.S. presidential politics. Mr. Zelenskyy ignored Trump's request to "do us a favor, though," and Senate Republicans ignored the House.

March, 2020

As coronavirus swept the world this year, Trump began holding daily press briefings, breaking an absence from the press room that had lasted over a year. He boasted of the high viewership ratings these press briefings were getting – better than Monday Night Football!

April, 2020

Not that you could rely on anything coming out of Mr. Trump's mouth in this crisis being any more truthful than anything he had said before. 

Or since.

Unfortunately, by limiting these two Saturday posts to my own cartoons, I've given short shrift to some really important issues: he has put kids in cages, found "very fine people" among racist mobs, treated women and minorities with contempt, attacked the media for fair reporting, and both behaved and governed like an overgrown spoiled brat.

It's time to send him to his room without any supper.

Q Toon: The Trumply Trio

Hard to believe, but it was less than a week ago that Donald Joffrey Trump named Amy Coney Barrett as his third nominee to the Supreme Court.

During Tuesday night's sh!tshow, Trump argued that he gets to fill Ruth Bader Ginsburg's seat, even as votes are being cast in the 2020 presidential election, because he was elected president in 2016 for four full years, not three. It's the same argument that Democrats used four years and eight months ago, because Barack Obama was elected president in 2008 and reelected in 2012 for eight years, not seven.

And yet there is Neil Gorsuch, sitting comfortably in Merrick Garland's seat.

Well, as we've already discussed, it's patently obvious that Republican arguments as to who gets to name whom to the Supreme Court in an election year are nothing but self-serving. Republican presidents get to do it, Democrats don't.

As if Mrs. Coney Barrett's nomination were not enough of an affront to the legacy of Justice Ginsburg, Republicans instantly commandeered the late Justice's nickname and cranked out "Notorious ACB" t-shirts for their faithful throng.

To paraphrase a memorable moment from a gentler era's debate, we knew RBG. RBG was a friend of ours. You're no RBG.

QToon: In Fairness

Today's cartoon quotes from a tweet by Republican Senator Susan Collins over the weekend:

The danger in drawing about something because it didn't happen or wasn't said is that while you're waiting for your syndicate to send the cartoon out and newspapers to print it, that thing that didn't happen or wasn't said might just get itself happened or said.

But Senator Collins has racked up such a long history of raising the hopes of liberals and moderates only to dash them when time comes for her to act, I thought there was every likelihood that she would knuckle under to Republican Party Orthodoxy in the end.

So yesterday, Collins did say that she wouldn't vote for whomever Trump nominates.

The catch to what Collins said yesterday is that she hasn't — yet — said how she'd vote on a Trump nominee after November 3. She's merely against voting before the election. Voters in Maine may wish to know how she intends to vote, especially if Joe Biden were to beat Donald Trump, before they decide whether or not to vote for her.

The handful of Republican moderates in the Senate may recognize their ethical dilemma, but they are vastly outnumbered by doctrinaire Republicans who have been salivating at the prospect of a permanent Republican majority on the Supreme Court for over half a century.

Doctrinaire conservatives still have difficulty coming up with a coherent explanation why refusing to give any consideration to President Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland nearly a year before the next presidential inauguration was a matter of constitutional principle, and so is confirming whomever Trump nominates with just a month and a half until the next election.

As recently as July, Sen. Chuck Grassley, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee back in 2016, told reporters that if he were still the committee chair this year and a Supreme Court vacancy occurred, “I would not have a hearing on it because that’s what I promised the people in 2016.” Now that it's September and that vacancy is reality, he's content to let Mitch McConnell and current committee chair Lindsey Graham have hearings and a confirmation vote if they want.

Sen. Ron Johnson, whose position in 2016 was, "In the politicized atmosphere of an election year, you probably shouldn't even nominate someone. It's not fair to the nominee, it's not fair to the court," now claims that having a Senate majority of the same political party as the president has de-politicized the atmosphere this year. Or something like that.

Sen. Ted Cruz was on CBS This Morning yesterday morning and offered the idea that since the 2020 election might go to the courts, it's imperative that it not be possible for the Supremes to split 4-4. He didn't offer any explanation why that possibility was acceptable in 2016.

Here's what other Republican senators were saying in 2016:

“I don’t think we should be moving forward with a nominee in the last year of this president’s term. I would say that even if it was a Republican president.” — Sen. Marco Rubio.

“I think we’re too close to the election. The president who is elected in November should be the one who makes this decision... Our next election is too soon and the stakes are too high; the American people deserve a role in the process as the next Supreme Court justice will influence the direction of this country for years to come.” — Sen. Cory Gardner, interview on KNUS radio

“I believe the American people deserve to have a voice in the selection of the next Supreme Court Justice, and the best way to ensure that happens is to have the Senate consider a nomination made by the next President.”—Sen. John Cornyn, official statement

“We will see what the people say this fall and our next president, regardless of party, will be making that nomination.”—Sen. Jodi Ernst

But the poster boy for principle whiplash is Sen. Lindsey Graham, who said four years ago:

“I want you to use my words against me. If there’s a Republican president in 2016 and a vacancy occurs in the last year of the first term, you can say Lindsey Graham said let’s let the next president, whoever it might be, make that nomination.”

Turns out there's a simple explanation why you shouldn't use Lindsey's old words against him, though. Those nasty Democrats were mean to Brett Kavanaugh over some silly old sexual harassment allegations, so naturally, Lindsey's panties have been in a wad ever since. 

And after Republicans were so polite to Merrick Garland!

Toon: Speedy McConnell

 

I give 2020 zero stars.

Would not recommend.

Q Toon: Lost in Trans Litigation

The Corrupt Trump Administration has decided to file an amicus curiae brief in the Supreme Court's consideration of R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes Inc. v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The case arises from the funeral homes' firing of Aimee Stephens, a Detroit funeral home director who informed her boss, Thomas Rost, that she planned to transition from male to female and to represent herself on the job as a woman.

In March 2018, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the funeral home had violated Title VII anti-discrimination laws ..., with the court ruling that “discrimination on the basis of transgender and transitioning status is necessarily discrimination on the basis of sex" and therefore protected under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
However, in their court filing submitted Friday, Solicitor General Noel J. Francisco and Department of Justice attorneys argued that the specific Civil Rights Act provision “does not bar discrimination because of transgender status,” meaning the Michigan funeral home was within its right to fire Stephens.

“In 1964, the ordinary public meaning of ‘sex’ was biological sex. It did not encompass transgender status,” the brief reads. “In the particular context of Title VII — legislation originally designed to eliminate employment discrimination against racial and other minorities — it was especially clear that the prohibition on discrimination because of ‘sex’ referred to unequal treatment of men and women in the workplace.”

To me, this seems to be a perfect example of how, all things being absolutely equal, a woman can still be treated differently from a man in total disregard of anti-discrimination employment law. This isn't even a case of two people equally qualified for a job; this time, they're both the exact same person.

It's easy to figure out the Corrupt Trump Administration's interest in the case. Trump has demonstrated such a need to attack transgender persons at every opportunity that I'm pretty sure he must have had a "Lola" moment in his past that didn't go well.

Besides, he's got to keep those Bible-thumpin' Evan Jellicles happy if he is to have any chance at reelection. The Log Cabin Republicans can be bought off with a couple ambassador posts and the transgender community isn't going to vote for him, anyway. Not even Caitlyn Jenner. But the Falwells, Jeffresses, Grahams, Bakkers and the like expect to get some value for the souls they sold to Donald "Two Corinthians" Trump.

And it costs him nothing to serve them transgender rights on a platter.

No Supreme Court For You!

For most of my life, the Supreme Court has been dominated by its right wing. In fact, that's true of most of the history of our country; the Warren Court of the 1950's and 60's was the exception to a general tendency of the Court since the founding of the Republic to favor the rich and powerful. The Constitution was written, after all, by the landed gentry, not the Daniel Shayses, John Frieses, and Crispus Attuckses.

I alluded in this week's cartoon to the lack of requirements laid out in the U.S. Constitution for Supreme Court Justices. We can be fairly sure that the Founding Fathers would have strongly disapproved of a foreign head of state sitting on the Court; but whereas the Constitution sets limits on who may or may not be a president, vice president, congressional representative or senator, the sole defining characteristic set for justices is that they "shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour."

"Nine Old Men," unsigned (William Gropper or Jacob Burck, perhaps?), in New Masses, New York, March 9, 1937

Even the size of the Supreme Court is unspecified. In the history of the United States, the sitting members of the Supreme Court as been as few as six; Franklin Roosevelt was rebuffed in his attempt to expand the Court in a scheme that would have allowed him to add as many as six new justices to the sitting nine. If and when the Republicans lose their grasp on the other two branches of government, I wouldn't be surprised if they were hastily to double the size of the Supreme Court while they could still fill the new seats.

Donald Joffrey Trump's executive order this week to ban affirmative action programs in college admissions recalls the Court's attempt to thread that needle in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke in 1978. In the interest of meeting a set quota for minority enrollment, UC had admitted some minority students whose test scores were lower than white male Alan Bakke's. In a complicated set of four rulings, the Court ruled that UC should admit Bakke, and that the quotas violated the 1964 Equal Rights Act, but that the Equal Protection Clause allows race to be taken into consideration in college admission policies. Sort of.

Ronald Reagan's advanced age was an issue in the 1980 presidential campaign, but five of the justices on the Court were older than he. This cartoon from my sketchbook shows Justices William Brennan, Thurgood Marshall and Harry Blackmun, counted as the Court's liberal wing. (Conservatives Lewis Powell and Chief Justice Warren Burger were also older than Reagan.) Reagan came into office in 1981 determined to stack the court with reliable right-wing jurists hostile to minority rights, reproductive rights, unions, environmental protection, and a whole host of liberal causes.

Nevertheless, his first appointment, of Sandra Day O'Connor to replace Justice Potter Stewart, was received favorably, except by some right-wingers who suspected that a woman would be soft on Roe v. Wade. But when Burger retired, Reagan named Justice William Rehnquist, the most hardline conservative on the Court, to replace him as Chief Justice, and conservative firebrand Antonin Scalia as the Court's newest Justice.

In addition to Reagan's successful nominees in the center of the above cartoon, I imagined them being joined by Reagan administration officials Donald Regan, William Clark, Robert Bork, and Ed Meese, plus Clint Eastwood and Nancy Reagan. Reagan would indeed name Bork to the next vacancy, but the Democrat-led Senate voted Nixon's Saturday Night Massacre henchman down, 42 to 58.

The legacy of the Bork nomination was the creation of a verb ("Borking" has proved so much catchier than "Fortasing" or "Garlanding"), and the end of Republican nominees to the Court willing to admit to their prejudices against Roe v. Wade. It also led to Mr. Kennedy's nomination to the Court, for which, at least, LGBTQ Americans can be thankful. On the other hand, President Obama would likely have been the one to nominate the successor to Justice Bork, who died in December 2012 at age 85.

The last of the Warren Court liberals, William Brennan and Thurgood Marshall, retired during the George H.W. Bush administration, succeeded by David Souter and Clarence Thomas, respectively.

Liberals have had fewer opportunities to change the direction of the court. The most significant may have come with the retirement of Justice Byron White in 1993. Appointed by President Kennedy, he nevertheless tended to vote with conservatives: he and William Rehnquist were the only dissenters in Roe v. Wade, and he wrote the majority opinion in Bowers v. Hardwick giving the Court's blessing to laws criminalizing gay sex even between consenting adults in the privacy of one's home.

President Bill Clinton replaced White with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who has since become the senior and possibly most vocal member of the Court's liberal wing.

More telling of the rightward drift of the Court, however, is the conventional wisdom that cast first Sandra Day O'Connor, then David Souter, then Anthony Kennedy in the role of casting "The Swing Vote." Never were they considered a "swing bloc" on the Court; only as one retired would the next sit in the supposed "swing" seat. (I suppose Kennedy's retirement makes Chief Justice John Roberts the Swing Vote now.)

Since America's bicentennial, Democrats have seated four justices on the Court; Republicans (assuming a swift confirmation of whomever Trump names next week) have seated nine.

That includes the most rigidly conservative examples of Clarence Thomas and the late Antonin Scalia, about whom I've devoted blog posts in the past. Today, I'm trying to widen the focus to the entire Court, but there are a few cartoons here I'm repeating from those earlier posts anyway.

I've always liked this cartoon, largely because I enjoy breaking the boundaries of a cartoon panel this way and I don't have an excuse to do it very often.

The friendship between the ideologically opposed justices Ginsburg and Scalia was legendary, but we're told that this sort of comity across ideological boundaries is a thing of the past.

American right-wingers have been salivating at the chance to overturn Roe v. Wade, and we'll soon see what else: Obergefell v. Hodges? Bob Jones University v. U.S.? Miranda v. Arizona? Loving v. Virginia? Shelley v. Kraemer? West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette? Smith v. Allwright? Near v. Minnesota? U.S. v. Darby Lumber?

Enjoy our return to the Gilded Age of robber barons, white patriarchy and sweatshops, folks.

Remembering Scalia

As promised when I posted this week's cartoon, Supremeback Saturday rummages through the dank and musty files of my early cartoons throughout the admagistracy of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. (Enbiggenification available when beclickened.)

It was 1986 and Ronald Reagan was in his second term. So far, he had named Sandra Day O'Connor to the Supreme Court, filling a 1980 campaign promise to name the first female Justice. The liberal wing of the Court consisted of Justices Harry Blackmun, Lewis Powell, Thurgood Marshall, and William Brennan (not pictured: John Paul Stevens); Reagan clearly itched for some of them to retire.

Next to Reagan in this February, 1986 cartoon are Attorney General Ed Meese, and Appeals Court Judges Robert Bork and Richard Posner (both Reagan appointees). Is that Scalia peering over Meese's suitcase? I don't remember whether I already knew who he was or what he looked like; but that's not how I drew Nixon, and it doesn't quite look like Pat Buchanan or Joe McCarthy, either.

Nevertheless, it was Antonin Scalia's name that came up a few months later when Reagan's next opportunity to shape the Court arose. Liberals were none too enthused by Scalia's nomination, but the higher profile appointment was that of William Rehnquist to succeed fellow Nixon appointee Warren Burger as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. (Scalia was appointed to replace Rehnquist as Associate Justice.) Rehnquist was the most right-wing justice on the court at the time, having been the lone dissenter in Ake v. Oklahoma (1985), Bob Jones University v. U.S. (1983), Richmond Newspapers Inc. v. Virginia (1980) and Taylor v. Louisiana (1975). Rehnquist had also recused himself in the otherwise unanimous U.S. v. Nixon (1974).

Scalia and Rehnquist were easily confirmed anyway, and this cartoon from July, 1986 predicted that they would be joined by Donald Regan, William Clark, Bork, Meese, Clint Eastwood, and Nancy Reagan; and that claims of discrimination would become much harder to prove.

Reagan did in fact name Robert Bork to the court the next year, when Justice Powell retired; but you may remember that the Democratic Senate refused to confirm his nomination and Republicans turned his name into a verb. The Senate eventually confirmed Anthony Kennedy, in an election year, as your liberal Facebook friends have already reminded you several times. (The time between Bork's nomination and Kennedy joining the Court -- even with the aborted nomination of pot-smoker Douglas Ginsburg in the interim: 233 days.)

The first of my cartoons in which Scalia gets the starring role was in June, 2003, after Scalia's caustic dissent in Lawrence v. Texas. The case arose from the arrest of John Lawrence and Tyrone Gardner, whom Houston police found having consensual sex in Lawrence's home when they responded to an unfounded weapons complaint. The Court's decision, written by Justice Kennedy, was that Lawrence's and Gardner's right of due process was violated by Texas's laws outlawing homosexual activity between consenting adults.

Scalia scolded the majority for overturning Bowers v. Hardwick (1986) and predicted a parade of horribles: an end to state laws against obscenity, bigamy, same-sex marriage, adult incest, prostitution, masturbation, adultery, and bestiality.

"Today's opinion is the product of a Court, which is the product of a law-profession culture, that has largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda, by which I mean the agenda promoted by some homosexual activists directed at eliminating the moral opprobrium that has traditionally attached to homosexual conduct.... [T]he Court has taken sides in the culture war, departing from its role of assuring, as neutral observer, that the democratic rules of engagement are observed."

Two years later, this happened:

I'm sure that today, that kid is a well-respected junior partner somewhere.

There have been two Justices on the Supreme Court whom I have particularly enjoyed drawing, and it's amusing to learn that in spite of their diametrically opposed views on so many constitutional issues. and the lively exchanges in the opinions they have authored, they were actually very close friends who shared a love of opera and celebrated New Year's Eve together year after year.

When the Court struck down the "Defense of Marriage Act" (DOMA) in U.S. v. Windsor (2013), Scalia's dissent wailed that the Court had "formally declar[ed] anyone opposed to same-sex marriage an enemy of human decency."

And finally, last year, Scalia's prediction of the end of civilization was fully realized, as the Court voted 5-4 in favor of marriage equality in Obergefell v. Hodges. Each of the minority judges wrote his own dissent; Scalia called the decision "a threat to democracy." Contrast the "mummery" of the majority opinion with the sheer poetry of Scalia's uffish thoughts:

"Really? Who ever thought that intimacy and spirituality were freedoms? And if intimacy is, one would think Freedom of Intimacy is abridged rather than expanded by marriage. Ask the nearest hippie."

Q Toon: Log Cabin Fever

At the risk of piling on Mrs. Clinton, here's this week's cartoon:

Last month, The Log Cabin Republicans emerged from their hole in the ground to issue a political ad criticizing Hillary Clinton for being “wrong on gay rights when it mattered.” Their ad shows clips of Hillary Clinton making statements such as "I do not support gay marriage" in 2002 and 2004, followed by one of Bernie Sanders on Rachel Maddow's show last October in which he says, "It's great that people evolve... but it's important for people to stand up when the going is tough."

Now, whatever one thinks about Bernie Sanders' record on LGBT issues, it's hard to imagine that LGBTs who identify as Republican actually want to see the Vermont Socialist elected President of the United States. (The Log Cabin Boys do post a disclaimer at the end of the ad stating that they aren't endorsing either candidate. Whew! I'm glad they've cleared that up.)

Log Cabin president Gregory Angelo told the Washington Blade, "I personally think and Log Cabin Republicans thinks [sic] that voters should be aware of Hillary Clinton’s past, specifically on marriage equality. We felt that urgency to do so now ... because other LGBT organizations have not done due diligence regarding Hillary Clinton’s past, and we felt we were in a unique position to step up in that regard."

A decade ago, you'd have been very hard pressed to find any Democrat at the national level willing to vouch for marriage equality. Civil unions were as far as most of them were willing to venture.

You'd have had a hard time finding any Socialists at the national level pushing for marriage equality, either. Not included in the LCR ad is Sanders, in the same Rachel Maddow interview, defending having told the Rutland Herald in 2006, when asked whether Vermont should legalize same-sex marriage, “not right now.”

Nor do the Log Cabin Boys include anything from this 16-year-old column by the late Peter Freyne about Sanders' reaction after Vermont's Supreme Court ordered the state legislature to do something to afford same-sex couples equal rights with different-sex couples. I'll quote Freyne at length:

Obtaining Congressman Bernie Sanders’ position on the gay marriage issue was like pulling teeth...from a rhinoceros. Last month, shortly after the decision of the Amestoy Court was issued, Mr. Sanders publicly tried walking the tightrope — applauding the court’s decision and the cause of equal rights without supporting civil marriage for same-sex couples.
This week we were no more successful getting a straight answer. All we did get was a carefully crafted non-statement statement via e-mail from Washington D.C. And Bernie’s statement wins him the Vermont congressional delegation’s Wishy-Washy Award hands down.
Once more he “applauds” the court decision but won’t go anywhere near choosing between same-sex “marriage” and domestic partnership. “By all accounts the legislature is approaching this issue in a considered and appropriate manner and I support the current process.”
Supports the current process, does he? What a courageous radical!
That’s as far as Ol’ Bernardo would go. It’s an election year, yet despite the lack of a serious challenger, The Bern’s gut-level paranoia is acting up. He’s afraid to say something that might alienate his conservative, rebel-loving rural following out in the hills. Something that could be interpreted as “Bernie Loves Queers!”

As Freyne noted earlier in the column, however, the two Democrats running for Sanders' seat in Congress that year were both on the record in support of full marriage equality. Sanders easily won reelection in 2000, so I guess Sanders had the better read on those rebel-loving rural Vermonters.

To be perfectly honest, I tend to think the Democrats would be better off not nominating a guy who wasn't even a member of their party a year ago (and the Republicans would be better off not nominating a Donnie-Come-Lately, too, for that matter). But wherever the candidates stood on marriage equality in 1972, or 2000, or 2004, or 2006, I want to support a candidate who'll stand up for LGBT rights "when it matters."

Like when Ruth Bader Ginsburg retires.

Q Toon: Schaerr Madness

The people who file amici curia briefs for Supreme Court cases don't actually get to appear before the court -- which is kind of a shame, because it would be fun to see what the justices would say to those friends of the court.

Gene Schaerr, a former clerk to Justices Warren Burger and Antonin Scalia, filed an amicus curia brief  in which he seriously claimed on behalf of "100 scholars of marriage" that if same-sex couples are allowed to marry, the result will be at least 900,000 more abortions. 

Now, I admit that Mr. Schaerr did not claim that gays and lesbians are eager to exercise the right to have abortions, as I have him doing in this week's cartoon.

No, his explanation makes even less sense.

"A reduction in the opposite-sex marriage rate means an increase in the percentage of women who are unmarried and who, according to all available data, have much higher abortion rates than married women. And based on past experience, institutionalizing same-sex marriage poses an enormous risk of reduced opposite-sex marriage rates."

By the same logic, having a bus system results in more car accidents, because many people who ride the bus would be people who don't have driver's licenses, and people who don't have their driver's licenses are worse drivers than people who do have licenses.

Most people avoid eating citrus fruit after brushing their teeth because citrus fruit tastes bad after minty toothpaste. People who don't eat citrus fruit run a much greater risk for scurvy than people who do. Therefore brushing one's teeth causes scurvy.

Q Toon: RBG on DOMA

Last week, as a way of declining to answer a question from a Colorado law student on the subject, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg predicted that DOMA (the so-called Defense of Marriage Act) was likely to come before the court in the upcoming term.

Somehow, I think this is Justice Ginsburg's first appearance in my cartoons. I don't recall drawing any cartoons about her when President Clinton nominated her to the bench in 1993, or when the Supreme Court decided the 2000 presidential election, or when she pointedly cited Romneycare in her opinion upholding the Affordable Care Act last year.