Legal lunacy

This is a scary story I just saw being shared on social media this afternoon.  The Supreme Court has apparently ruled yet again in favor of Monsanto, the corporation which sued a farmer for planting second generation seeds, some of which were descendants of their patented crop.  To hear the farmer's attorneys tell his side of the story, it went a little something like this:

"...he bought some ordinary soybeans from a small grain elevator where local farmers drop off their harvest. ... He knew that these beans probably had Monsanto's Roundup Ready gene in them, because that's mainly what farmers plant these days. But Bowman didn't think Monsanto controlled these soybeans anymore..."

Aside from rendering me hopelessly angry, this article also reminded me of a sobering conversation I had a year ago with a good friend of mine.  We talked about how, especially after the dreadful Citizen's United decision, the center really began to bottom out in this country's political culture, and that for the first time in either one of our lifetimes, the left and right in this country began to sing the same tune - not about the economy, immigration, or issues of race - but about their feelings toward the increasingly callous and distant federal government in Washington.  We both saw that people from opposite ends of the political spectrum agreed that it is now often difficult to defend the legitimacy of the federal government's institutions when they will rationalize anything to suit an agenda, especially when that agenda always puts the public good in second place.  Perhaps no institution is more guilty of this right now than the Supreme Court. Looking to examples such as the State of Montana enforcing their own election laws despite Supreme Court rulings (taking a you-and-what-army? approach) we agreed that the ramifications of the federal government undercutting its own democratic legitimacy could take years to come to fruition, but could be quite frightening in their intensity and scope.

To be clear, we discussed things we observed and our fears regarding their logical outcomes.  We did not discuss things we desired to see occur.

This particular story is just one of many in recent history in which a corporate entity could take what it wanted with the government's blessing, and it is still unclear how much farther these absurd decisions will go.  For that matter, it is unclear how much farther I could go in writing this, but I will stop now so that you may read the actual news story in question.  I just hope that in the meantime Mick Jagger doesn't drag me to the Supreme Court because I bought Goats Head Soup used from the record store when I was in high school.