MARCH MADNESS

This is the time of the annual ritual of the college level basketball championship, the NCAA basketball tournament, better known as ‘the big dance’. A big deal it is indeed with large swaths of the American population filling out their brackets in the hope that this time their favorite college basketball team comes out on top, filling the heart with pride and putting some reward money in the pocket of the ones who picked the correct winner. With legalized on-line betting a lot of money will be won or lost before it is all over with the Final Four getting played on April 6 and the Final on April 8. Most Americans hate paying taxes and for politicians lowering taxes is the favorite path to electoral success, but the same people don’t think twice about spending hard earned money on betting, gambling, and the lottery all enabled by the same politicians looking for sources of income to offset their tax reductions. But I digress. Most of the tournament is played during the month of March, which is why the tournament named ‘the big dance’ is also known as March Madness because it gets people riled up and is always full of surprises. After a long season that started in November, the field has finally dwindled down to 64 at the start of the tournament and with two rounds played over four days, there are now only 16 surviving teams, affectionally known as the Sweet Sixteen. This year all eight of the #1 and #2 ranked teams made it into the Sweet Sixteen, which mitigates the madness for this year, but two blue ribbon teams, Kentucky and Kansas, made an early exit and thus spoiled the hopes and the brackets of a lot of betters. It is a time of ups and downs, highs and lows, as 64 teams are elated to make it to the big dance, while in the end all but one are hit by elimination. It is one of the iconic sporting events in America and one that dominates for many days the TV screens and leaves few sports fans untouched. For the weeks between the start of the tournament on March 21 and the final on April 8, it provides a welcome distraction from the other madness that plays itself out in American life.

At the time of this writing both the political campaign and the legal battles the former President is involved in are in full swing. It is clear by now that Trump’s campaign will be fought primarily at the steps in front of the various court houses where his cases are getting heard. The guy has an uncanny capacity to turn a negative into a positive, at least in the eyes of the public. Yes, he is getting litigated in civil and criminal courts, but chances are slim that he will get verdicts against him that can be executed before the November elections and, if he wins, all the charges against him will evaporate, or, if not, he will pardon himself and go after all judges and attorneys general that have dared to challenge him. In the meantime, his campaign doesn’t have to pay for expensive rally venues or the expense of flying around the country, because he gets free national coverage in the media while entering and exiting the several court venues and by playing the card of the unjustly persecuted political adversary, he avails himself of excellent fund-raising opportunities.

In the light of all this, it is becoming increasingly clear that in contemporary America there is no equal justice under the law. If you are rich enough to hire every willing lawyer available and keep paying them (with money you collect from your political sympathizers) and influential enough to drive politics, you’re treated with velvet gloves and given all the breaks. No regular guy in America could afford to keep appealing every ruling issued against him and keep coming up with one motion after another for case dismissal, case delays, and other legal maneuvers, frivolous or not, and get away with that. And no other litigant than the former President could get away with baseless attacks on and ridicule of judges, prosecutors, witnesses, and jurors, without getting slammed for contempt of court, witness tampering, or getting penalized for defamation.

We are now years away from the times that the alleged misdeeds of the former President were perpetrated, and he has not been held accountable for any of it, causing the current scenario where the court appearances coincide with the Presidential election campaign. In no small part is this due to the DOJ being very late getting out of the starting box in its zeal to avoid any appearance of politicizing the judicial process. Whatever one may think of the merits of the cases against the former President, it is hard to see how any of them can be resolved in only weeks or days from the November 5 election, without having an undue and undesirable impact of the outcome of the election.

It is hard to determine if the velvet glove treatment of the former President by the courts to date is the result of the ideological bent of the judges making the decisions, out of deference of one branch of government for another, or out of fear for the public outcry that is sure to follow any ruling for or against the former President.

We are reminded every day of the huge impact that bench appointments pushed by the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation and executed at times of Republican control of the White House and the Senate have on the delivery of justice, not just at the level of the Supreme Court but also at the federal district courts and the appellate courts. No better proof of this than in the Supreme Court reversal of the ruling by the Supreme Court of Colorado that the former President is disqualified from being on the ballot under section 3 of the 14^th Amendment of the US Constitution. A decision that in effect renders section 3 of the 14^th Amendment null and void for (former) Presidents of the United States. With Biden in the White House and Democratic control of the Senate, a more diverse selection has replenished the bench, but it is unnerving that the staffing of the judicial branch has so much become a political matter.

If the former President manages to get re-elected to the White House, in spite of the fact that he was impeached and indicted for fomenting an insurrection against the Constitution, and in spite of all of his character flaws and civil misconduct, it will only be because of imperfections in our democratic system, including the insertion of the Electoral College in the process of electing our top executive. It is scary to think that a Presidency can be decided by only a few thousand votes in a handful of battlefield States, even if the overwhelming popular vote favors the losing candidate. If that happens March Madness will pale in comparison with what follows then.