The Supreme Court has gone feral and watch out!—they bite 

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My case will soon come before the Supreme Court of the United States.

It’s a small matter—I was sued by a neighbor for defamation. It didn’t matter that I had seen the act with my own eyes. When she thought no one was looking, she did, in fact, pick her nose and eat it. Had I kept it a secret, there would have been no problem, but I made the mistake of mentioning it to another neighbor.

Shortly after, I was served with a summons to appear in a defamation case, Smitherbilly v. Robinson. That’s not her real name; I’ve changed it to avoid any additional causes of action.

Nothing I said had been untrue, and yet the case has cost me thousands of dollars in legal expenses—money that I could have spent on a nice vacation in a great place like downtown Barstow, CA, one of the legitimate “sunshine capitals of the world.”

To add injury to insult, my neighbor prevailed and was awarded $2.6 million. Naturally, I appealed the court’s verdict—I didn’t have quite enough in my bank account—but the plaintiff also won at the appellate level.

Now, the Supreme Court—yes, the big one in Washington, D.C.—has decided to hear my case. That delights me, but I realize that I need to make the appropriate preparations. And you know what that means!

I’ve sent a letter to Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Samuel Alito and John Roberts to join me for a burger and an ice cream cone at the Arctic Circle—my treat!—all in the hope that I can tweak their opinions and get a favorable ruling from the court.

Damn! The little warts didn’t even have the courtesy to call me personally to decline my invitation, but, instead, had one of the clerks call me to say that they couldn’t come because Harlan Crow was picking them up with his private 737 and they’d all be in the Bahamas for the next three weeks.

The clerk also assured me, “Don’t worry, the justices are totally impartial, and their ruling will reflect their infinite wisdom and their firm reverence for the rights of every citizen.” So, the question, I guess, is whether the court will see things my way, or whether Ms. Lillian Smitherbilly will get a final, unappealable win.

Whatever might the Founding Fathers have been thinking when they drew up the fundamentals of a new country and created the U.S. Constitution? Let’s face it, they were only human, and no one—absolutely no one—should assume that what they left to future generations was perfect.

Today, we’re seeing the imperfections of their creation, much like the shipyard that launched the RMS Titanic. That ship was thought to be more-or-less unsinkable, but a silly little iceberg sent it to Davy Jones’s locker along with 1,517 innocent souls. That was 111 years ago, and ship designers have learned from the Titanic’s fate. The U.S. “Ship of State” is really no different—it has flaws that need to be addressed.

Loudly absent from our “Ship of State” is mandatory regulation of the nation’s highest court—specifically the oversight necessary to keep it from going rogue. Without any actual rules to keep SCOTUS justices in compliance with the most basic laws and propriety, and since the justices have made a written declaration that no one can investigate them, they’re very much like cats that have strayed, lived on their own and become independent feral creatures that would snarl if you approached. Clarence Thomas, with his vast array of payoffs, may even bite you, sending you off to the nearest ER.

SCOTUS has become a wild pack, rather than America’s highest, most respected and trusted court. Pretty scary when one considers that SCOTUS is actually more powerful than both the executive and legislative branches of our democracy. It always gets the last word.

If you have money and can afford to take Clarence on an all-expense-paid Alaskan salmon fishing trip in your 140-foot super-yacht, you definitely have an advantage when your case hits the docket. The catch for him is that these perks, free trips, luxury resorts, thousands-per-day full-service yachts and gains from unreported, non-arms-length real estate transactions are all considered to be “income” by the IRS. And, without saying, there’s not any merely-human Justice that isn’t susceptible to such lavish spending by the billionaires who own our world. After that, impartiality—though loudly advertised—is virtually impossible.

We hear it time and time again, how no one is above the law. And, voila! We’re seeing that premise tested, right now, on the orange mother-of-all-liars. His indictments are no joke; his actions were criminal and, this time, his feet will be held to the fire.

If we’re going to show that all people are accountable to the law, it’s time for a thorough investigation into the ethical breaches by justices of our Supreme Court. At least four of them have crossed ethical and legal boundaries. If you and I had done exactly what Justice Thomas has been doing, believe me, they’d be coming after us.

But the worst? These justices have ruled on cases involving friends or associates of their favorite billionaires without having the decency to even recuse themselves. Shame on them.

There’s a lingering question here. Will curious sightseers be viewing our sunken “Ship of State” a century from now? Or will our president and bipartisan lawmakers realize that without significant changes—including Constitutional amendments and enforced ethical standards for SCOTUS justices—there’s going to be an iceberg that will take us to the bottom.

The author is a retired novelist, columnist, and former Vietnam-era Army assistant public information officer. He resides in Riverton with his wife, Carol and the beloved ashes of their mongrel dog. comments@cityweekly.net