The Supreme Court and the Phantom

The phantom considers it most rude he has been excluded from the process of selecting the next justice for the United States Supreme Court. 

As  readers of this blog will know, the phantom has  opined on the place of the  Court in modern American life on many occasions.  Unfortunately, as of this date there is only one official reader of this blog, outside the phantom himself, so unless that reader is President Obama hisownself, it is unlikely the phantom will hold much sway with respect to the next Supreme Court justice.

Not to be discouraged, the phantom would like to profer a few names:  Gail Collins, whose unerring sense of what's wrong would certainly serve her well in any encounters with Justice Scalia, who almost always is.

Or, if Ms. Collins is unavailable, or more likely, uninterested in the position, Judge Robertson.  Know nothing more about him than what I heard on the Oberman show, which I saw for the first time the other day and became a big fan. Judge Robertson, apparently has ruled for several "detainees" which is what they call prisoners who have never been charged with anything and who have apparently done nothing illegal, but who are, nevertheless in a dungeon run by the United States because we are terrified of men with beards we find wandering around Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and other places where men do not shave or bathe as regularly as we think they ought to. We are fighting a war to make the world safe for the clean shaven and unsafe for the unshaven.

The phantom would offer himself as a candidate but only if he can serve from  the state of New Hampshire and telecommute.  He sees no reason he need be in Washington except for those few days of the year when oral arguements are heard and, in the interest of saving jet fuel, he sees no reason he could not attend those via Sykpe or some form of video conference. 

But, in all modesty, the phantom admits there is a much better candidate: Alan Greenspan. Here is a man upon whose every word, every "um" or "but" markets soared or plummeted as analysts, legislators tried to microtome every word and look at it under microscopes for meaning because everyone knew that Alan Greenspan would tell us what was going to happen, would tell us the truth, if only we were smart enough to understand whatever it was he might be saying. And he did not make it easy.

Better yet, Chauncey Gardner. No, Alan Greenspan, he's the real life Gardner. It wasn't Greenspan's fault, all that deregulation and reversal of those safeguards put in place after the last Depresssion--after all, he was the god we made. He only played the role of the man who would be king. We made him king. Give the guy a break. Give him another chance. Put him on the Supreme Court. 

Let Justice Scalia try to figure out what he's saying. Now there would be poetic justice. 

This would mean the phantom would forgo the pleasure of discussing cases face to face with Justices Scalia, Alito, Roberts and that other guy who seems to just phone in his opinions which are usually, "Whatever Scalia says."

The court has missed a golden opportunity in George Carlin, who would have been a splendid counter weight to the current four horsemen of the apocalypse, but let us not cry over spilled soy.

And one more thing, while we're talking about nominating worthy people to positions of prominent public display: Can you imagine Ronald Reagan on the ten dollar bill?  

Wowser. 

Or, we could get rid of that guy Grant (on the $50) who most Americans can barely recall anyway--all he did was win the Civil War after a half dozen Union generals tried very hard to lose it, and as President he did stuff like being sure the slaves weren't actually returned to slavery in everything but name only.  What's that compared to giving us eternal ringing phrases like, "Government is not the solution--it's the problem" or "The ten most frightening words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government, and I'm here to help you"?

I mean those are words to live by.

President Reagan gave voice to that whole anti New Deal ideal that regulation and government are very bad. His most emblematic act was to fire all the air traffic controllers. I did not realize it at the time, but what a stroke of symbolic genius--I mean there it is all in a single nutshell. The ultimate regulators, telling planes when they can take off and land. You can't even get out and taxi on a runway without playing Mother May I with those government bureaucrats up there lording it over everyone in some ivory tower, looking down on pilots and patriots who are just trying to do their jobs as part of a deregulated free enterprise called the airlines, which are so much better off now than before they were deregulated that they haven't made a profit since.

So there we have it--let's nominate a dead white guy for the ten dollar bill and a living white guy  or white woman for the best court  in the land, a court where the men are beautiful the women smart and all the opinions are averaged.