“None Dare Call It Treason”

Vincent Bugliosi is best known as the prosecutor who put Charles Manson behind bars, then wrote a book about it called Helter Skelter, which got turned into a cheesy but cool made-for-TV movie. Years later, Bugliosi wrote Outrage, which body-slammed the O.J. Simpson trial verdict. With those impeccable D.A. creds, you’d figure Bugliosi would be down with Rehnquist, Scalia and that new square-mustache crowd in Washington. Guess again. In this 7,000-word jeremiad, written for The Nation magazine, Bugliosi lays out a pretty good case for putting five Supreme Court justices—including native Sacramentan Anthony Kennedy—in orange jumpsuits, for their high crimes against the Constitution in installing a certain usurper who shall not be named into a certain big white house on Pennsylvania Avenue. Bugliosi ironically appropriates the title of an old John Birch Society screed for his piece, which he fills out with language that cannot be misconstrued as milquetoast: “a coup d’état,” he snarls, “a judicial hijacking”—nailing the Court’s majority to the cross for such rampant partisan hypocrisy. Ouch!