Video of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s eloquent "I Have A Dream" speech in Washington, D.C., on August 28, 1963, almost ten years after Brown v. Board of Education was decided, given at a time when segregation still took place all across the South, and folks were still fighting for equality and decency all over America -- as we still ought to be today.

I took my daughter to preschool this morning, and discovered that a new little boy has started at her school. He marched up and introduced himself to me and The Peanut, and she grabbed his hand and introduced herself, they hugged and then ran off to play. Nothing unusual, he's black, she's white, and I'm just glad she's found a new friend who seems like a charming little man. But in light of yesterday's Supreme Court decisions...

Scarecrow and I were chatting last night about what recent Supreme Court rulings have meant in terms of what is to come as the Roberts Court cuts its swath through the precedents that it clearly disrespects. I had been reading the ACS review of the term, and we were discussing the fact that so many legal scholars -- not just progressive ones, but conservatives as well -- are clearly disgusted with the inconsistencies in reasoning that are littered across these decisions, and how stunning it was to see this level of disgust from so many disparate sources.

I keep thinking about the Warren Court and the development over so many years of the thought process that protected the weak or the downtrodden or the powerless. The notion that the law could be used to lift people up who had previously been under someone else's heel -- because that was the just thing to do. And how that has gotten shot to hell this term. And I'm just so damned angry. I've wanted to curse out loud all week -- but I have in-laws visiting.

This notion of the law being used for the good of the whole nation, not just for the powerful or the connected, is one of the reasons that I became a lawyer. To help lift people up, to see that they have potential and ensure the right to it if they are willing to do the work to make it happen. To open a window for hope. And how the Roberts Court seems to delight in slamming that window shut.

They lied. There is no other way to look at their testimony. Roberts and Alito are sitting on the Supreme Court, one of them as the Chief Justice -- and they sat there during their confirmation testimony and lied about a commitment to stare decisis. They fucking lied. And we knew they were lying at the time, threading the Roe needle.

And the Democrats in the Senate could not muster the nerve to do what needed to be done to block their acsension to the Bench. And so here we are. I am just so angry at so many elected officials who could not be bothered to do their jobs -- because they were simply too worried about keeping their jobs. For shame.

Last night, PBS hosted a forum for Democratic candidates at Howard University. Pam Spaulding has fantastic coverage of the event (with pictures -- thanks, Pam!). I watched what I could of the debate online last night -- with relatives visiting, it's tough to stay as in the loop as I'd like. It was so striking, the difference between the Roberts Court and how the Democratic candidates were talking about pro-active ways to lift up America's poor and marginalized and to breach that ever-increasing divide between the have-a-lots and the have-not-muchs. We have to do better.

And then to go back to reading the opinions from the Supreme Court from yesterday and to think of what American conservatives have been doing with issues of immigration and race, and how right Mark Graber is here (H/T to Scott at LGM for this quote):

"Today’s opinions in the Seattle school case feature the too usual lectures from conservative justices on the meaning of the “good” civil rights movement, the one which asserted that “the constitution is color-blind.” Of course, neither Chief Justice Roberts nor any other member of the majority were actually members of that “good” civil rights movement. To paraphrase Dick Cheney, they had other priorities at a time when police dogs were being set upon African-American children who dared insist on the right to drink at the same water-fountains as white children. Indeed, Roberts, Alito, and Scalia were proud to be in the vanguard of the movement that pried from the Democratic Party those who set the dogs upon the children (and those who applauded that behavior). They could do so in good conscience because somewhere in the late 1960s, the “good” civil rights movement was replaced by the “bad” civil rights movement, a movement which insists that persons of color be actual as well as pro forma, legal equals. Curiously, this transition took place even though the vast majority of participants in the “good” civil rights movement remained in the “bad” civil rights movement, included almost the entire leadership. By comparison, on this history, George Wallace became the person who best understood that the central principle of BROWN v. BOARD OF EDUCATION was that no “innocent” white person could ever be harmed in the effort to secure racial equality and any person of color who claimed covert race discrimination would have to produce a smoking gun the equivalent of the smoking guns which convinced the Burger Court that the Alabama Constitutional Convention of 1900ish was committed to race supremacy. Recognizing that George Wallace and Strom Thurmond are the true heirs to Martin Luther King, Justice Roberts and his allies feel the need to direct lectures on BROWN to the “bad” civil rights movement in the hope that we may be converted."

We are better than this. And we should all be willing to stand up and say so -- including the officials we elect to protect this nation's Constitution and the rule of law. Be not afraid -- instead, stand up and fight. For your nation, your Constitution, and all of the generations to come. Let's start with habeas restoration, and move forward every step of the way together from there. They do not win unless we stop fighting...and I'll be damned if I will stop fighting.

More from E. J. Dionne at the WaPo and from the LATimes. And a fantastic piece from Charles Ogletree in the Boston Globe. (H/T to reader WB for the links.)

(H/T to Aaron Sorkin's great line from The American President.)

UPDATE: SCOTUS has just announced that it has granted certiorari to hear cases from Guantanimo inmates. SCOTUSblog has the little bit of information publicly available at this point.