While the United States Armed Forces (private mercenaries) are stationed at 737 bases, in 130 nations around the world, defending “all freedom-loving people everywhere in the world,” the full (en banc) circuit court of appeals for the District of Columbia hands down Murphy v. Internal Revenue Service, reversing the decision of a three-member panel from the same court: civil damage awards for psychological suffering due to injury against one’s character are now taxable as income.

       NOTES:

• The three judges who had rendered the original decision, chief judge Douglas H. Ginsburg (a one-time nominee of Republican (fascist/socialist) President Reagan for the supreme court, of the corporate United states), Janice Rogers Brown (a favorite of the dominionist religious right for elevation to the supreme court, of the corporate U.s.), and Judith Ann Wilson Rogers had offered to reconsider that their previous decision was a mistake; that what they had thought unconstitutional a year before was now constitutional.
• This decision gives CONgress carte blanch to declare anything income and tax it.  Property on which income taxes were paid on its acquisition is now taxable as income again if it is involuntarily damaged in a tort.

       Question: Is this an example of the “living constitution?”

       [ added 4/22/2024] Thanks to Bill Holmes for this entry.