The power is slowly returning to the grid along the Atlantic Seaboard. Unless you were without that power for the better part of five days, as my home has been, you cannot imagine the emotion in that statement. The thunderstorm of the century struck so suddenly and so unpredictably that even NOAA didn't have Baltimore in the storm's clutches until after the calamity had begun. I was south of Baltimore on Friday afternoon and early Friday night. Other than being very hot - 104 degrees in both Baltimore and Washington - there was nothing unusual about the day or the forecast. As I sat in the Tombs Friday evening, eating one of the best Hamburgers anywhere, there was no talk or chatter about the weather in the immediate future. That is because no one saw it coming. Driving home Friday night (after lingering longer than planned at "Politics and Prose," a wonder to behold and still an independent book store,) I noticed a display of lightning off to the west. I assumed it was heat lightning since storms were not a serious threat in the minds of forecasters. Those displays could not be ignored and seemed to intensify and change as I closed in on Baltimore shortly before 11:00 pm, and even a weather know-nothing like me could see the heat lightning had morphed into storm lightning. Light rain began, off and on, as I neared home in northeast Baltimore and within one-half an hour after I got home, all hell broke loose in a quite literal sense. I stood transfixed at the French Doors, watching the western sky and the torrents of rain and hellacious wind that was screaming at me. At my back property line stood a 200-foot Tulip Poplar, the remaining twin of what once was a stereo presentation of Regal Horticultural majesty. The first of the twins bit the dust in late August, 2011, when the overblown Hurricane Irene managed to take it out. We were in Vermont, dealing with a canceled flight home and driving a Western course around the storm when my neighbor broke the news on my cell. "I hate to tell you," he said, "but the tree hit your house when it fell." Damage estimates ranged up to $30,000 and I know I am supposed to be happy that my homeowners policy paid for all but about $5,000 of the damage done. Now I was watching as the remaining twin blew around like it was a piece of al dente spaghetti. But not for long. Within five minutes the tree was bouncing off the ground of the Maryland School for the Blind. I'm supposed to be happy now because the twin, at least, missed my house. Within another five minutes that little bit of relief changed. The storm had blown most of its anger at Baltimore and was moving off to the east when suddenly a crash - a grand old oak tree two houses away, fell to the ground, taking a wad of electric lines with it. Power gone. Saturday and Sunday came and went without power or even a sign of a BGE lineman. On Monday evening I did chat with a lineman from southern Mississippi, who said you'll be getting your power back. "Tonight?" I asked. "No," he said, "but sometime before the week ends."
After all the junk the left screamed at President Bush when he flew over New Orleans before coming back for a first hand look, I would have thought obama would've been at ground zero from day one, seeing as the disaster was all around him. But obama was on vacation. Again. The left screamed when Bush went home for vacation. Would America be so lucky now.
Tenacious does not apply to obama but it certainly applies to this heat wave. Even when the temperature couldn't hit the century mark, the near total humidity made it seem that way. Tempers were getting thin. My parents, 83 and 85, were in the same boat. I thought they'd be back on the grid far sooner than we were because they live in a more "genteel" neighborhood. I was wrong. As I write, they still have no power and a lineman told my visiting brother-in-law that tomorrow seemed possible. But another came and said the first guy was wrong and power would be back on for them tonight.
Anyway, with the power on I am left to confront one of the most awful and embarassing decisions in the history of the Supreme Court, and I'm not talking per se about the Court's really awful obamamess decision. The decision I speak of is the one made by a man many of us were told was totally reliable: John Roberts, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Until a day or two before that awful decision was revealed, I never doubted that Roberts, Scalia, Thomas and Alito would vote in favor of a decision that struck down most or all of the ridiculous obamamess. I believed that Kennedy was in play and as he went so would go obamamess. Along with most other Americans, I found out that opinion was wrong. I had a clue that it would be wrong about a day or two before it was released. That's when Rush Limbaugh let on that somebody who was in a position to know thought the real worry was "Flip". Limbaugh said that in fact Kennedy's vote to throw the mess out was never in doubt. His decision and reported behind-the-scenes struggle to keep Roberts from shooting his career in the heart confirms this.
Roberts needs to resign. He should do so at once. He is said to have voted to reject the ridiculous expansion of governmental power and ridiculous reduction in liberty because of the pressure he felt from the left. The left was saying that if the Court threw the obamamess embarrassment out it's reputation would be forever sullied. In fact, just the opposite is 100% true. A Court that cannot throw out such an embarrassing and absurd expansion in federal power, at the expense to personal freedom and liberty, has no real reason to exist. If something this bad isn't unconstitutional, what, pray tell is? How about forcing citizens to provide shelter and aide to a federal army? How about the freedom of speech? How about the freedom of religion. This Court will struggle to reject a direct attack on Christianity. Only a quick resignation combined with a clear and certain admission that he made a terrible mistake could begin to put a dent into the damage done to the United States Constitution.
If I take a deep breath and try really hard to figure out how perverted someone's thought process could become to do what flip roberts did. He was selected by President Bush because he was exactly what Bush said he needed on a liberal court: someone smart enough and strong enough to stand up to the liberal hoard. He was approved by a conservative majority in the Senate who were convinced by him that he was what he appeared to be: a dependable conservative who would continue on the path he had started, which was the conservative path. Instead he deceived and embarassed even those who stood behind him while these same liberals he gussied up to in upholding obamamess.
Is roberts so bloody silly that he thinks he will be embraced as a true friend by the uberleft? I hope not because they will forever consider him as the spineless conservative who turned on his friends so he could bootlick his detractors. Did he think he would be considered a great thinker for doing what he did. I hope not because he won't. Even moderate liberals, like me, realize that obamamess is not constitutional. It takes away personal freedom in a power grab of unprecedented proportions. It forces citizens to purchase something even if they do not want to. It serves as a vehicle for this uberleftist president to turn a great hoard of IRS agents loose on the electorate to ensure they are obeying this ridiculous law while at the same time giving these government thugs permission to harass and intimidate everyday middle class citizens.
What thoughts caused a man to make such a ridiculous mistake, and in doing so, to write a garbled and sophmorish decision that even first year law students recognized as silly. What do you get when you take a deceitful power hungry man and force him to write an important legal opinion that "upholds" a law that is not constitutional in any sense to the word. He knows in his heart and mind that the taxes included in this awful mess will drastically change the America most of us love. Tens of thousands of small businesses will give up and close rather than try to pay the fees the law demands. Add to the tens of thousands which close the thousands of other business ventures that will never open. What will Americans do who would've earned a living working for these companies? What will the government do which sucks up the taxes these companies pay if they give up and close or never open to begin with?
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