Packing Supreme Court wouldn’t be the ‘reform’ that Missouri Rep. Cleaver sees it as

I plunged into the deepest catacombs of the thesaurus. I can tell you there are no words to describe how cataclysmically awful the idea is of packing the U.S. Supreme Court with more justices.

I’m in good company thinking that. Like, say, the late liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who said it was a bad idea when President Franklin Roosevelt tried it. Oh, and the 1983 incarnation of then-Sen. Joe Biden, who called it a “bonehead idea.”

It is. And it’s more transparent than plastic wrap. Far-left members of Congress, who unveiled their bill Thursday, want to add four more to the current nine Supreme Court justices under this Democratic president to orchestrate all case law going forward in favor of liberalism.

They want to instantly erase the court’s legacy of duly elected Republican presidents by drowning out the voices of the justices they appointed. They want to bulldoze the process to get there.

Can you imagine adding judges to any other courtroom for the express purpose of achieving a particular legal outcome?

And what if they succeed?

“Where does it end?” asks Kansas state Sen. Beverly Gossage, Republican of Eudora. “Do we need 15? Do we need 21? Do we need 27? I agree with Joe Biden when he said it was a terrible idea.”

To follow her logic, what if Democrats added four to make 13 justices? What’s to stop a Republican president and Senate from adding to that number? And then the next Democratic president after that?

Supreme Court justices, though appointed by presidents, are supposed to be accountable to the law and the Constitution — not to political or public whim, which these folks seem to want.

I wondered if I was the only one who thinks this is the singular proposal that, if ever enacted, would finally rend America to shreds. I’m not. “If they do it, there will be a revolution,” one friend said. “1776,” said another, alluding of course to our first revolution.

In fact, I was astounded by my friends’ responses when I asked on social media how concerned they were about the court-packing proposal, on a scale of 1 to 10. The average answer was 12.6.

They clearly cheated and went beyond the 1-10 scale, which is to say their concern for the country went through the roof. And I didn’t even count the “1,000” response. It would have skewed the results even more. But point made. And it’s an alarming point.

I hope my liberal friends understand just how much of a deal-breaker this idea is. Nothing else I could think of has the potential to literally tear the country apart.

“It’s just not necessary,” says former Kansas state Sen. Chris Steineger, who was a Democrat before becoming a Republican. “The existing Supreme Court works just fine, and it has worked just fine for more than two centuries. Adding more voices doesn’t make for better decisions.”

Look at the 535-member Congress, he says.

Consider, too, the socialist paradise of Venezuela: In 2004, no less than Human Rights Watch condemned allies of dictator Hugo Chávez for dealing “a severe blow to judicial independence by packing the country’s Supreme Court with 12 new justices.” Hmm. So that’s how it’s done. How’s that working out for Venezuela?

I’d caution about hanging your hat on the unlikelihood of it happening here. Although House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she has no plans to bring the court-packing bill to the floor, she nonetheless encouraged the idea’s consideration. And President Biden, Mr. Unify America, has even launched a commission that will do just that.

Disturbingly, U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver isn’t shooting it down either.

“I believe we need to give the commission a chance to do its job,” the Democratic congressman from Kansas City told me in a written statement. “Once the commission comes back with more information and recommendations, then I believe we can take a closer look at whether or not the Supreme Court needs reform and what is the best path forward.”

With all due respect — because I respect the Rev. Cleaver immensely — expanding the number of justices to engineer legal outcomes favored by one ideological bent is not “reform.” It is, as George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley says, “a hostile takeover of the Supreme Court.”

To paraphrase a children’s book title, it’s a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Idea that would divide the country, perhaps irreconcilably.

Please. We don’t need a commission. Don’t even think about it.