Gideon's Trumpet is a wonderful flick with Henry Fonda, Based upon a true story.

From his prison cell at Florida State Prison, making use of the prison library and writing in pencil on prison stationery, Gideon appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court in a suit against the Secretary to the Florida Department of Corrections, Louie L. Wainwright. He argued that he had been denied counsel and, therefore, his Sixth Amendment rights, as applied to the states by the Fourteenth Amendment, had been violated.

Hugo Black was nominated by FDR to fill a vacancy upon the Supreme Court of the United States. There were murmurs you know. This man was one of those goddamnable Southern Confederate bastards; an ex member of the Ku Klux Klan that could not even take the time to spell 'clan' right; although he certainly was a populist.

And he gets appointed to the highest court and he goes nuts. His entire universe is shattered. He sees the world differently.  He has a rebirth.

I mean there is another bastard on the Court by the name of William O. Douglas; a weird commie who vacations in Russia from time to time. Ahhahhahahaa.

Anyway, one day, a Florida jail cell inmate writes to Black in what was nothing but  crayon, and says:

Hey, I did not get a chance to counsel. They made me represent myself and this sucks.

Well, you can imagine. DDE probably received a thousand letters informing him that he was the proud father of a baby girl or baby boy every damn year he sat as President of the United States of America.

Well Hugo and the other Justices would receive 'fan mail' all the time too. But Hugo did not decide to treat this letter from a piece of crap sitting in some jail cell in Florida as irrelevant to his life.

He accepted the correspondence as a Writ of Certiorari.

In Roman law, an action of certiorari was suggested in terms of reviewing a case--much as the term is applied today--although the term was also used in writing to indicate the need or duty to inform other parties of a court's ruling. It was a highly technical term appearing only in jurisprudential Latin, most frequently in the works of Ulpian.

The term "certiorari" is often found in Roman literature on law but applied in a philosophical rather than tangible manner when concerning the action of review of a case or aspects of a case.

See the concept of certiorari goes back before the time of our Constitution. That is, this procedure for appealing to the Highest Court  of our land in order to dispute some error in the proceedings that occurred in the lowest court of the realm. Thousands of years before our Constitution was ever written, or even thought about there were Writs of Certiorari.  Oh but that goddamnable Italian Mafiosa Scalia on our present day court would never acknowledge that we have any history before 1789. hahahaha. Bastard.

You need four justices of the Supreme Court to recognize a piece of paper as a proper Writ for appeal purposes. But along with Hugo, William O. Douglas was nuts and they just corralled two other justices and my god, there was a proper writ. Written with crayon by a nobody.

Never happened before and never will again.

Well Gideon's Trumpet is a wonderful movie by the way. I always hated Jimmy Stewart as an actor and always loved one of his best friends Henry Fonda. Life is amazing at times.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gideon%27s_Trumpet

At any rate Gideon v. Wainwright as it came to be known is one of the greatest pieces of literature that ever came down from our Supreme Court. Not too many years after this decision Hugo is crazy and finally dies. But GOD LOVE HIM, WHEREEVER HE FINDS HIMSELF NOW.

Magic those times were. I would read those decisions in law school and saw a different future for our nation than we have today.Those were the days my friends.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siLcSl2nmqA

Once upon a time there was a tavern where we would raise a glass or two.

Smarter attorneys and more evil judges at this point in time, believe me.

By the by, every single time you hear this shit about what a terrible man William O. Douglas was...let me tell you a thing or two. I met him in my law school, before and after his stroke and heard him speak. Read his decisions. People think again about how he stood up for the citizen and against the corporate bastards that run this country and attempted to raise the discussion about what democracy actually is.

Those that dismiss William O. Douglas or Hugo Black as evil men are merely fascista. Fuck em. YOU AND I WOULD HAVE NO RIGHTS AT ALL IN THIS FASCIST OLIGARCHY without people like William O. Douglas and Hugo Black. Believe me. And if you not believe me read their decisions.

Douglas and Black voted for the rights of the powerless over the rights of the powerful.

ALWAYS. EVERY SINGLE TIME.

They made a lot of enemies doing that for decades. Believe me.

Earl Warren was a Republican Governor of California. Ike says, hey, let us put a more conservative person on the United States Supreme Court.  So Warren is put on the court.

Earl is riding in DC and tells his driver of a decade or so that they will all stay at the same hotel. Oh no Boss, we cannot do that. Well why not Earl asks?

Well because us Negroes have to find other accommodations.

Earl is not happy about this and becomes the most left wing Chief Justice that the Supreme Court has ever seen. A few years later every nazi fascist prick in this country wants Earl impeached. Ha

Justice Blackman is a life long repub and is nominated to the High Court by Nixon.  A life-time repub; he is originally from Minnesota like the Chief Justice Warren Burger.  The Minnesota Twins they were called. Blackman had been lead counsel for the single most significant voice of the medical community in this country, the Mayo Clinic.

Justice Blackman ends up writing the majority opinion in Roe v. Wade, with Powell and Burger  and four others joining in the majority opinion.

Makes no sense; none at all. There was a rebirth by Blackman and his long time friend Warren Burger decides to side with him on this case and manages a 7-2 majority; 7-2 on the side of Truth, Justice and the American Way. Do you realize how important that number was and why, to this day, it compelled future courts to not ignore the rights of women in this country?

Those days appear to be gone.

Where is Hugo Black and his rejuvenation? Where is Blackman and his rebirth?

Nowadays we appoint pricks to the Supreme Court and they remain nazi fascist corporate pricks. No rebirths there. Not anymore.

Alito, Roberts, Scalia, Thomas.........these men would not vote for the rights of the powerless if Jesus himself appeared to them demanding a change in perspective. Ha!! Never. Fascista to the end.

Makes me angry just speaking of  those four bastards.

Ah but this essay concerns those who changed. Those who chose the light over darkness. Maybe that is why I consider them exceptions to the rule.

This blog is dedicated to the spirit of Bobby Darin. He was one of those 'no business like show business' kind of guys.

Dream Lover.   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnLIXNWK8CY

Mack the Knife.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dDs_N3kGQk

Splish Splash.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMCsc4Iqvqc

And he marries a screen cutie and lives happily ever after?

Something happens. He becomes enthralled with Bobby Kennedy and is at the Ambassador Hotel when the Democratic leader is shot dead.

Darin sells everything he has and goes and lives in a trailer. Thinking things out as it were.  Comes back to movies and music production a year later. But he gets rid of the rug, and grows a mustache. Dies in less than three years after his 'come-back' of  a weak heart, of all things.

He wrote Simple Song of Freedom in 1969.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvY99BJzN-M&feature=related

There is a chance for all of us I suppose,

Only fundamental Christians give 'rebirth' a bad name.