The United States Marshals Service is now charged with protecting the nine Justices who comprise the Supreme Court of the United States.
Deputy U.S. marshals have had decades of experience in protecting Federal judges, members of Congress and organized crime witnesses
As protectors, they are probably best-known as the operators of the Justice Department’s Witness Security Program. Launched as part of the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970, they have successfully protected and relocated thousands of endangered organized crime witnesses.
But there are significant differences between the security provided for Mafia witnesses and that being provided for Supreme Court Justices.
While a witness is testifying, s/he receives 24-hour protection from five to a score of marshals. Since visits to courthouses are especially dangerous, marshals often use deception as a vital weapon in keeping their charges alive.
A caravan of marshals cars, with sirens blaring, will pull up to the front of a courthouse, with a deputy playing the role of the witness. While all eyes (including those of mob assassins) are focused on this, a postal truck will enter the building through an underground passage. Inside: The witness and one or two guards dressed as mailmen.
A witness security detail
Helicopters and speedboats have also been used to transport witnesses to and from court.
In at least one case, marshals installed Joseph “The Animal” Barboza, the most-feared Mafia hitman in New England, in a fortified room inside the courthouse. When it came time to testify, he would be brought into the courtroom through the judges’ elevator.
But once testifying is completed, the marshals no longer offer 24-hour protection. Instead, they provide witnesses (and their wives and children, if there are any) with new names, Social Security numbers, driver’s licenses and other records supporting their new identities.
Then they are shipped off to a new state where—hopefully—they can start their lives over on the right side of the law and safe from their enemies.
Thus, round-the-clock protection by the marshals isn’t intended to be permanent.
But in the case of at least six Supreme Court Justices this may well prove different. These are the ones who are preparing to strike down Roe v. Wade and re-criminalize abortion for millions of women.
To prevent attacks on the Justices at the Supreme Court, an eight-foot, “non-scalable” fence now surrounds the building.
Once a long-held fundamental right is revoked, anger toward those responsible becomes the natural reaction. And for some people, that anger can easily flare into violence.
Thanks to the Supreme Court’s January 22, 1973 Roe decision, abortion has been legal throughout the United States for 49 years. Those who have been born since can’t recall a time when it was a criminal offense.
On June 8, Nicholas John Roske, 26, of Simi Valley, California, was arrested by deputy U.S. marshals near Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s house in Maryland after threatening to kill the Justice. He was armed with a Glock 17 pistol, ammunition, a knife, zip ties, pepper spray and duct tape.
In this case, the marshals had been alerted by Roske’s threat. But the truly dangerous assassin is one who doesn’t announce his intentions and simply acts on them.
Knowing you are so hated that people want to murder you creates huge psychological pressures on those threatened. Some people become prisoners of their own bodyguard, venturing out only when absolutely necessary.
Others adopt a “Live it up, because tomorrow I may die” attitude. They chafe at the security regimen imposed on them, sometimes even trying to elude their protectors.
Security specialists for the Marshals Service have warned countless witnesses: “You’ve got to realize that your life’s in danger. Keep your eyes open. Use your head. Don’t lie to us. Stay close to us.
“Keep us apprised of everything that’s going on. Suppose you’re sitting out on your balcony and you see something flash. What could it be? A pair of binoculars? A rifle-scope? Be aware of your position, and help us protect you.”
Presidents have been protected by the United States Secret Service since 1901, when Vice President Theodore Roosevelt became the first Chief Executive to be assigned agents.
Before this, three Presidents had been assassinated—Abraham Lincoln (1865); James A. Garfield (1881) and William McKinley, Roosevelt’s predecessor (1901).
In 1963, John F. Kennedy would become the fourth.
Two attempts were made on Gerald Ford (1975) and, in 1981, Ronald Reagan was seriously wounded.
As a result, it’s unthinkable that a President would not be guarded round-the-clock.
But no Supreme Court Justice has ever been assassinated.
Justices have been able to come and go as they please, without even being recognized by the vast majority of citizens they affect with their rulings.
That will soon change—at least for those who intend to strike down Roe. They will become familiar faces—for those who hate them. Already, their home addresses have been splashed across the Internet.
At least 13 states will automatically ban abortion in the first and second trimesters if Roe is overturned. This will create legions of new enemies for the Justices. And there will be no end-date to this hatred.
Which means the Justices will likely live in fear—and under heavy armed guard—for the rest of their lives.
Bureaucracybuster's Blog 
ABC NEWS, ABORTION, ABRAHAM LINCOLN, ADOLF HITLER, AFFORDABLE CARE ACT, ALTERNET, AMERICABLOG, AP, BABY BOOMER RESISTANCE, BARACK OBAMA, BBC, BIRTH CONTROL, BLOOMBERG NEWS, BUZZFEED, CBS NEWS, CIVIL RIGHTS ACT, CIVIL WAR, CLARENCE THOMAS, CNN, CROOKS AND LIARS, DAILY KOZ, DEMOCRATS, DRED SCOTT, FACEBOOK, FASCISM, FIVETHIRTYEIGHT, HARPER’S MAGAZINE, HUFFINGTON POST, INFLATION, JULIUS CAESAR, KENJI YOSHINO, MARK ANTONY, MEDIA MATTERS, MEDICARE, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MSNBC, NAZI GERMANY, NBC NEWS, NEW REPUBLIC, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW, NEWSDAY, NEWSWEEK, NIGHT OF THE LONG KNIVES, NINTH AMENDMENT, NPR, PBS NEWSHOUR, POLITICO, POLITICUSUSA, PRIVACY, RAPE, RAW STORY, RELIGIOUS RIGHT, REPUBLICANS, REUTERS, ROE V. WADE, ROGER B. TANEY, SALON, SEATTLE TIMES, SLATE, SOCIAL SECURITY, TALKING POINTS MEMO, THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE DAILY BLOG, THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE INTERCEPT, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NATION, THE NEW REPUBLIC, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE NEW YORKER, THE VILLAGE VOICE, THE WASHINGTON POST, THINKPROGRESS, TIME, TRUTHDIG, TRUTHOUT, TWITTER, TWO POLITICAL JUNKIES, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION, UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT, UPI, USA TODAY, WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, WONKETTE
THE RIGHT’S NEXT TARGET: THE RIGHT TO PRIVACY
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on June 29, 2022 at 12:12 am“If anyone reproaches me and asks why I did not resort to the regular courts of justice, then all I can say is this: In this hour I was responsible for the fate of the German people, and thereby I became the Supreme Judge of the German people!”
That was how Chancellor—not yet Fuhrer-–Adolf Hitler justified his June 30, 1934 purge of his private army, the brown-shirted S.A. It has gone down in history as “The Night of the Long Knives.”
Adolf Hitler
It took five “Supreme Judges” of the American people to purge the right to abortion for millions of American women—including victims of rape and incest.
Hitler’s “blood purge” carried Germany yet another step closer to Nazi dictatorship. Similarly, the Supreme Court has carried the United States yet another step closer to a Republican dictatorship.
In the past, the Supreme Court has made decisions that have blackened its reputation in the eyes of historians.
One of these occurred in 1857, in what has become known as the “Dred Scott decision.” The Court decided 7–2 that neither Scott nor any other person of African ancestry could claim citizenship in the United States.
The case centered on slaves Dred and Harriet Scott and their children, Eliza and Lizzie. The Scotts claimed that they should be granted their freedom because Dred had lived in Illinois and the Wisconsin Territory for four years. Slavery was illegal in those jurisdictions, and their laws said that slaveholders gave up their rights to slaves if they stayed for an extended period.
Dred Scott
Chief Justice Roger B. Taney ruled that freeing Scott and his family would “improperly deprive Scott’s owner of his legal property.”
As despicable as the Dred Scott decision was, it nevertheless lay grounded in the existing laws of that time. The Court did not reverse an earlier ruling. Millions who were already enslaved were kept enslaved. But it did not extend slavery throughout the country.
The Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade set a huge and dangerous legal precedent.
On January 22, 1973, the Court had struck down virtually every anti-abortion law in the country. On June 24, 2022, it overturned that decision.
It went, in effect, from having expanded freedom of choice to suddenly abolishing it. And the Justices did so in the single most intimate aspect of a woman’s life.
Once people have tasted a benefit, they expect it to continue. When President Barack Obama fought to secure passage of the Affordable Care Amendment (ACA) Republicans repeatedly and savagely tried to prevent its becoming law.
And once it became law, Republicans continued to try to overturn it. They knew that if millions of poor and middle-class Americans finally won the right to obtain medical care, they would support it as wholeheartedly as they did Medicare, Social Security and the Civil Rights Act.
For 49 years, Republicans made ending the right to abortion their key issue for gaining and holding elective office. It won them cheers, votes and monies from the Religious Right and powerful Right-wing forces such as Fox News.
Now, suddenly, they have attained their objective. Millions of women will no longer be able to obtain an abortion in cases of rape or incest—let alone because of a failed condom or birth control pill.
Nor is that the only right the Justices intend to revoke.
In his concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas said that the Roe decision should prompt the Court to reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents. And he named the three landmark decisions that established those rights.
Clarence Thomas
According to Kenji Yoshino, Professor of Constitutional Law at the New York University School of Law:
“The Ninth Amendment says that there are unenumerated [implied] rights in the Constitution. And those include things that we take for granted every day, like the right to vote, the right to marry, the right to travel.
“These are all rights that are nowhere enumerated explicitly in the constitution but that we nonetheless take for granted as Americans.
“One of the most shocking things about [the Court’s] opinion was that these unenumerated rights will only be respected if they are deeply rooted in this nation’s history and traditions. And so it essentially said that if the framers of the 14th Amendment in 1868 didn’t recognize the right and question that the right didn’t have constitutional existence.
“And so that’s what leads Justice Thomas and that concurrence, to see an opening to say, ‘Well, maybe we’ll get rid of not just the right to abortion, but also the right to same-sex marriage, the right to sexual intimacy and the privacy of your home, and even the right to contraception.'”
Thomas, says Yoshino, is inviting lower courts to reach that conclusion. He is also inviting Right-wing litigants to bring cases which can eventually reach the Supreme Court.
Thomas is in effect saying that once this happens, the right to same-sex marriage, contraception and privacy can be struck down by the Court—just as it has struck down the right to abortion.
Mark Antony, speaking in William Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar,” had it right: “The evil that men do lives after them.”
Share this:
Like this: