Preznit Safety Net went off to eulogize the moldering corpse of William Rehnquist today. Rehnquist, who never met a quasi-fascist argument he couldn't support will be buried in Arlington, a place for Heroes, not Zeroes like him. Here's Preznit Fumble Fuck:
"We remember the integrity and the sense of duty that he brought to every task before him,"
Lito Pena is sure of his memory. Thirty-six years ago he, then a Democratic Party poll watcher, got into a shoving match with a Republican who had spent the opening hours of the 1964 election doing his damnedest to keep people from voting in south Phoenix.
"He was holding up minority voters because he knew they were going to vote Democratic," said Pena.
The guy called himself Bill. He knew the law and applied it with the precision of a swordsman. He sat at the table at the Bethune School, a polling place brimming with black citizens, and quizzed voters ad nauseam about where they were from, how long they'd lived there -- every question in the book. A passage of the Constitution was read and people who spoke broken English were ordered to interpret it to prove they had the language skills to vote.
By the time Pena arrived at Bethune, he said, the line to vote was four abreast and a block long. People were giving up and going home.
Pena told the guy to leave. They got into an argument. Shoving followed. Arizona politics can be raw.
...
The guy Pena remembers tossing out of Bethune School prospered, too. Bill Rehnquist, now better known as William H. Rehnquist, chief justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, presided yesterday over a case that centers on whether every vote for president was properly recorded in the state of Florida.
In his confirmation hearings for the court in 1971, Rehnquist denied personally intimidating voters and gave the explanation that he might have been called to polling places on Election Day to arbitrate disputes over voter qualifications. Fifteen years later, three more witnesses, including a deputy U.S. attorney, told of being called to polling places and having angry voters point to Rehnquist as their tormentor. His defenders suggested it was a case of mistaken identity.
If it walks like a duck, and quack likes a duck and lives in a pond, it sure as hell isn't a giraffe. Rehnquist was a useful and obscure soldier for Nixon, who appointed him to the court, where he stayed to help tilt politics in America back towards the 12th Century dominionist worldview of a business-centric "I've got mine" America so beloved by the 1600 Crew. He might have been a nice guy, but he doesn't belong in Arlington nor should he be remembered as a man who stood up for Americans who aren't like Beloved Leader in thought or deed.
