To the Editor:

The end of the constitutional right of women to choose abortion was Trump’s orchestrated plan and he revels in it despite reports of tragic consequences. The three Trump SCOTUS appointees swore in confirmation hearings that they would respect “stare decisis” (recognition and respect for established law) if confirmed. But In Dodds v. Jackson, they reneged and overturned Roe v. Wade, because “abortion” was not mentioned in the Constitution. One can only assume they lied to Congress, a federal crime. The Constitution also does not mention “woman.”

This LTTE is not about Inquisition Catholic Justice Sam Alito, the freak flags, and all his lies about them, indicating at the very least an appearance of conflict of interest, for which even the scant ethics rules of the Court call for recusal, and which Alito refuses to honor.

This is not even about Justice Thomas’ acceptance, over the years, of $4.2 million from billionaire Harlan Crow. Or his word-game majority opinion that a “bump stock” is not a machine gun, though it leaves the trigger finger in place so that gun’s recoil continues to hammer the trigger and the rapid-fire deadly results are the same.

It’s about Republican SCOTUS adherence to a concept of “originalism” or “strict constructionism,” which holds that only specifically mentioned rights in the Constitution can be applied to cases before SCOTUS, and that the words of the framers must be read as they would have understood them at the time, with one glaring exception. An honest “originalist” could not now read the Second Amendment to allow civilian use of an AK-15 with bump stock when all the framers knew as “guns” were blunderbusses and flintlocks.

The framers also wrote the Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments to that Constitution identifying individual rights the government cannot annul. They expected coming generations of SCOTUS to be intelligent enough to relate the framework established by the Constitution to their future reality and rule consistent with its basic objectives. The Republican SCOTUS, and certainly Thomas, is adjudicating back to the 1700’s. The framers would have been embarrassed that 2024 “originalists” still apply their era-conventional cultural ignorance.

Justice Barrett, herself an “originalist,” nevertheless criticized Thomas for his increasing reliance on “law office history books,” and his “highly selective frolic through the archives” in last term’s Samia v. U.S. She also chastised Thomas for his argument for “originalism” as if it were a dispositive mandate in the Constitution when, in fact, it is not mentioned.
In U.S. v. Rahimi, Thomas was the sole dissenting vote to allow a violent domestic abuser to have a gun. For Thomas, the strictest, albeit incorrect “originalist” application of the Second Amendment prevails over common sense. Besides, in the framers’ era, it was legal to beat your wife.

Kelly Scoles,
Fillmore, Ca.