Well, they finally did it last week! And you can’t say it came out of nowhere. It’s only the “culmination of a decades-long effort that’s the logical result of a broken system that needs reform,” says Brian Tyler Cohen. He says that the Supreme Court’s taking a hatchet to the Voting Rights Act was depressingly unsurprising, because of course they would — since this court has pretty much declared their fealty to Trump over the Constitution. In Cohen’s opinion, it was a foregone conclusion. Even with the ideal situation of Democrats ensconced in the three branches of government, being able to enact a new Voting Rights Act, the current 6-3 court will be there, hatchets at the ready. So “we have six unelected judges in robes deciding that Black voices are unconstitutional, segregation by map, Jim Crow with a gavel,” says Louisiana Congressman Cleo Fields.

Cohen proposes that to restore democracy, and to overhaul the judicial system, the Supreme Court needs reforms that are based on principle, not politics, in order to have legitimacy or public support. “If any subsequent reforms are to stand a chance at surviving, we cannot leave in place a rogue branch of government with the power to strike down anything that doesn’t comport with its far-right ideology. The first reform should be to expand the Court, in line with the principles that determined the number of justices in the early years of the republic,” adds Cohen.  He recounts historically, the initial six justices to reflect the six federal courts; the year 1807 saw an additional justice added when a seventh circuit court was added. The court grew to nine with the addition of two circuit courts in 1837, and today there are thirteen federal court circuits with no ensuing changes in the court makeup. Cohen believes the Supreme Court should reflect the size of the country and the scope of its legal challenges, as it did over a century ago.

A second reform proposed by Cohen, also supported by 75 percent of Americans according to a PRRI survey in 2025, are term limits for the court justices. He sees a term of eight years which would allow newly elected presidents to choose their own nominees regularly, reducing the opportunities for procedural delays, which occurred with President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland in 2016, his final year in the White House. In Cohen’s view, the regular flow of new appointments would help remove the national drama from each nomination by diluting the novelty of each new appointment.

A USA Today poll in 2024 shows support by 76 percent of Americans, for the establishment of an enforceable code of conduct, which would empower a panel mandated to investigate allegations of wrongdoing and impropriety. The panel should be given the power to force the recusal of justices in cases where they have personal ties, and even go so far as to remove justices in cases of conduct unworthy of the Supreme Court. A final Supreme Court reform would be to retire any justice over age seventy, regardless of who appointed them. The interpretation of the Constitution that judges “shall hold their Offices during good Behavior,” has given lifetime appointments to court appointees, but there are other considerations — a retired justice could be moved to a lower court and still stay within a constitutional framework.

The Pew Research Center discloses that public support for retiring all public officials over a certain age has widespread consensus, in particular for elected offices, but also for the Supreme Court, with Democrats being in the upper echelons of the poll. The only age specified by the Constitution requires that presidential candidates must be thirty-five years of age. A mandatory retirement of seventy years of age would lead to four immediate vacancies on the current Supreme Court: three conservatives (Alito, Roberts & Thomas) and one liberal (Sotomayor), leaving all three Trump judges. It has been almost a century since President Franklin Roosevelt attempted to expand the high court (termed ‘packing’ back then), a plan which Congress defeated, and since that time no changes have been attempted. Included in FDR’s plan as he struggled to get his New Deal revivals during the Great Depression, was to retire justices at age seventy, and if they refused, he would be able to add an additional justice until the court reached fifteen members. Despite the Congressional defeat, time was on his side, because within five years, seven of the nine justices were appointed by him.

Cohen warns, “Today’s Supreme Court has weakened itself by its political activism, repeatedly disregarding the Constitution and its code of conduct. It is populated by older justices at a time when the American people are yearning to reform the status quo. If we want to revive our democracy, we need to revive our Supreme Court. If that seems extreme, consider an alternative that is already upon us: a Court that undermines the very Constitution it’s supposed to uphold. This week’s ruling on the Voting Rights Act was not a one-off. It’s the logical endpoint of a decades-long effort to disenfranchise minority voters and minority representation to an absolute minimum. The three longest-serving conservative justices on the court right now have a combined 75 years on the bench. This is their pet project. They own it. And the other three conservatives, all Trump appointees, are comparatively young and spry. Without court expansion, we’re stuck with this right wing majority for another couple of decades at least. We need to normalize ourselves to the idea of court expansion, so that when we have power, we don’t waste our time negotiating what we should be doing, but rather spend our time doing it.”

Pema Levy writes in Mother Jones that the high court’s gerrymandering decision, in Louisiana v. Callais, against the Voting Rights Act is hardly a “mere tweak,” or as Justice Alito characterized it, a “humble update.” Levy terms the 6-3 opinion a “counter-revolution” against Section 2 of the 1965 act, which requires that people of color have an equal opportunity to elect representatives of their choice, taking us back to the dark days when Black and brown voters in many states cast meaningless ballots. Since the original enactment, the reversal of previous diluted, powerless and gerrymandered votes, resulted in Southern states sending Black representatives to Congress, state legislatures, and local political bodies, with Congress repeatedly defending and continuing the protections. In last week’s diminution by the court, Justice Kagan chided the majority for downplaying the gravity of its decision, by laying “the groundwork for the largest reduction in minority representation since the era following Reconstruction.”

The Robert’s Court has been slowly dismantling the Voting Rights Act since 2013, and Levy sees this recent action as the final nail in the coffin, improbable that any plaintiff will ever be able to avail themselves of the law’s protections. By elevating permission to conduct partisan gerrymandering above voting rights, Black voters become dispersed, lacking any ability to elect a representative of their choice — wasted votes again! Kagan writes, “For how else, the majority reasons, can we preserve the authority of States to engage in this practice than by stripping minority citizens of their rights to an equal political process? And with that, the majority as much as invites States to embark on a new round of partisan gerrymanders.” The majority does not dispute this — it’s a damning silence that tacitly admits just how sweeping is this decision.

Quickly responding to the Supreme Court decision was Louisiana’s Republican governor Jeff Landry, as he suspended his state’s US House primaries to allow lawmakers to draw up a new congressional map. No matter that early voting was set to begin, with some absentee ballots already cast, the executive order states that the primaries are “suspended for the duration of the May 16, 2026 and June 27, 2026 election cycles and until July 15, 2026 or until such time as determined by the Legislature,” the legislature then to follow instructions to “pass legislation to enact new congressional maps.” Outraged and alarmed, Joel Payne of MoveOn Civic Action charged that, “Republicans are colluding in broad daylight to try to rig the election and silence Black voters. The MAGA court made their decision to gut voting rights just in the nick of time for Louisiana Republicans to postpone the scheduled primaries to slice and dice voting maps to pick and choose voters of their liking.”

Heather Williams, president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee said, “Even in ruby red states, Republicans see the writing on the wall that voters will hold them accountable for soaring costs this November, which is why they’re rigging the system to dodge accountability — the mission to transform the landscape of state legislative power has never mattered more.” The Washington Post reported that Governor Landry notified Republican US House candidates that he planned to suspend the Louisiana primaries, with The Post noting that one or two more GOP seats could result in the midterms from his delay. Democracy Docket’s Marc Elias responded by saying, “What is happening in Louisiana right now is both a redistricting power grab and a dry run for authoritarian election subversion this fall.”

US House Speaker Mike Johnson voiced support for the new congressional maps, but Landry’s order is already facing legal action from state residents. “These harms are not speculative. They are imminent: early in-person voting commences on Saturday, May 2, 2026. They are irreparable: once an election day passes, no monetary remedy can restore the franchise,” warns one lawsuit. Voting rights group Fair Fight Action analyzed that Democrats could redraw anywhere from 10 to 22 additional congressional seats for their party in time for the 2028 elections if they push hard enough with redistricting in seven blue and swing states. “Democrats have a clear path to neutralize this GOP power grab if they want to take it,” says Max Flugrath, senior communications director of Fair Fight Action. “This is the ‘break the glass in case of emergency’ moment for American democracy.”

“Twenty-two House seats across seven states may sound like a heavy lift,” says Flugrath, “but our analysis shows it’s well within reach if blue-state governors and legislatures squeeze every potential seat out of the maps. What’s more, much will be decided by how hard Democrats push.” But they are gearing up with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries telling Politico that Democrats will seek gerrymanders at minimum in New York, Colorado, Maryland and Illinois. None of this should have to happen, though Democrats have gerrymandered themselves, but Republicans went full throttle after capturing many state legislatures in their 2010 midterm rout.

The Democrats position has been that neither side should gerrymander, attempting to model an alternative path with independent redistricting commissions, and with federal legislation ending gerrymandering for both sides, believing that it disrespects the opposition’s voters and allows lawmakers to insulate themselves from accountability. But if Republicans make good on their threats, the choice for Democrats will be stark: push forward, or perish. No matter if Republicans don’t like it — this is the world they wanted, and it is now they who are now inflicting it upon their rivals. “The arc of the moral universe doesn’t bend toward justice unless we bend it,” says Bryan Fair of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Satirical writer, Andy Borowitz, followed up recent news from the English crown with his Borowitz Report: “A visibly shaken Donald J. Trump told reporters on Thursday that the arrest of Andrew Mountbatten of Windsor set a dangerous precedent of pedophiles facing consequences. ‘King Charles released a statement where he said no one is above the law,’ he said. ‘That was a horrible thing to say.’ Calling Andrew’s arrest ‘disgraceful,’ Trump said it had made him ‘rethink the whole idea of becoming king. If you can be a member of the royal family and still get arrested, what’s the point of having a crown?’ he said. ‘You’re better off just having your own Supreme Court.‘”

[Last week’s piece below… ~Webmistress]

The lead up to last Saturday’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner had garnered much commentary by a diverse press corps, many choosing to boycott the event with Donald Trump’s first attendance as president. The decision to abandon the tradition of inviting a comedian to roast the attendees because of the thin-skinned snowflake of a leader, and enlisting mentalist Oz Pearlman for entertainment, prompted Jimmy Kimmel to do his own scathing alternative ceremony on the Thursday preceding the main event. As he explained on his show, his substitute presentation would consist of some jokes and commentary that a comedian might do if “the trembling drama queen who’s scared of comedy” might hear under accepted circumstances. Video footage shows Kimmel standing behind a podium as he delivers quips to an audience full of photoshopped politicians and celebrities, saying, “Look at you, all dressed up in formal wear, dresses, tuxedos. I haven’t seen this much black since every page of the Trump-Epstein Files.” The comedian addresses President Trump with: “I’m happy you decided to stay, Mr. President. And don’t worry if we bruise your ego — it will only make your hands look less disgusting. By the way, in the unfortunate event that our president has a medical emergency tonight, do we have a doctor in the — I mean, I’m sorry. Do we have a Jesus in the house? I always confuse them, too.”

click here to continue (link expands, click again to collapse)

KETCHUP, DEAD IN THE WATER, REPENTANCE

The illegal war against Iran is humming along with President Trump and Pete Hegseth continuing with their threats to destroy the country completely, though the president insists, “Whether we make a deal or not makes no difference to me, because we’ve won,” though Iran appears to be in control of the situation. International shipping is at a virtual standstill through the Strait of Hormuz, “the geopolitical equivalent of stabbing the global economy’s femoral artery,” in the words of Matt Ford in The New Republic. On-again-off-again cease fires, and passage through the strait, continue to plague any resolution, a result of the election of a loser to lead the world’s only superpower, says Ford — “loser” being the president’s favorite insult, followed closely by “failing” and “low IQ.” Ford sees that a loser is not someone who is left behind, nor someone who simply failed at something, since failure is a part of life and a possible step toward subsequent success.

His definition of a loser is one who thinks in terms of winners and losers at all, and believes that they have not received the status and rewards to which they feel entitled, always slighted by the world at large which has cheated and denied them things that they think belong to them by virtue of their supposed innate superiority. It’s curious that JD Vance wrote in ‘Hillbilly Elegy‘ that the message of the right-wingers is increasingly: “It’s not your fault that you’re a loser; it’s the government’s fault,” his implication being “it’s your fault if you’re a loser.” The Vice President probably regrets inclusion of that sentiment in his book. Ford writes, “Losers do not actually care about the reality of winning and losing — instead, they care about the perception of success and failure, a basis for Donald Trump’s insistence that he was the biggest and best in the New York real estate scene.” Trump is quoted as saying, “Show me someone without an ego, and I’ll show you a loser,” which might explain his tacky gold ornamentation in the White House. Also, when your blood type is ketchup…

Ford writes that “losers internalize their own self-perception and seek to reinforce it in the world. They are drawn to hierarchy, and are therefore hostile to America’s fundamentally egalitarian ethos. A stratified society gives them a clearer sense of their inferiors, which is usually bound together with their perceptions of race, sex, genetics, or some other apparently inborn trait. Racism is the most familiar redoubt for the loser, since it provides what they think as highly visible proof of their own supposed superiority.” Trump describes himself as “highly intelligent” based on genetic grounds — his uncle was an MIT professor, therefore becoming a credential for his own cognitive ability. Fascism and loserdom go hand in hand because fascism is predicated on the notion that the fascist has been unjustly cheated and robbed, and that only force can lead to restoration and revitalization. Fascists idolize losers because no fascist society has ever flourished and because they see themselves reflected in other people’s failure. Hence, the praise lavished upon the likes of General Robert E. Lee, the loser of ‘The War of Northern Aggression.’

Ford concludes his piece with, “The goal of Trumpism, is to create losers of us all. The political and economic project’s goal is not to materially improve its adherent’s lives. Instead, it is to create a sense of social order for some people that offers an aesthetic sense of improvement, even as one’s standard of living declines in real terms. These illusory gains can only go so far. Or as one frustrated Trump voter once told reporters, ‘He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.'”

Nobel laureate Paul Krugman wrote on Substack: “President Trump has lost the war with Iran but is refusing to accept it.” Krugman says the president is “flat out unable” to deal with the fallout of the war, and is unable to accept that his intervention has failed — “it’s been clear for awhile that the United States has basically lost this war.” Goals to achieve regime change and take Iran’s uranium will not happen, with the regime being even more hardline. Iran is demonstrably strengthened with its ability to control the Hormuz Strait, and though temporarily permitting some access, Trump’s announced blockade hastened Iran’s decision to shut down all shipping, stating, “Control of the Strait of Hormuz has reverted to its previous state, and this strategic waterway is under strict management and control of the armed forces.” So, until Trump stops his meddling, allowing Iranian ships to navigate freely, the president is dead in the water.

American psychologist and psychotherapist, Dr. John Gartner, believes that Donald Trump is more like an animal at this point in his presidency, and will lash out at anything and everyone. As he told The Daily Beast, “A cornered, wounded animal is the most vicious and dangerous kind of animal there is, and that’s where he is right now.” Gartner worries that if the midterm elections bring about a complete turnover in both houses of Congress, Trump will still be a commander-in-chief who is getting off on the omnipotent destructiveness and power of blowing things up. Any thought Trump might have now is what he believes, even if it is completely false. Gartner says it’s a primitive type of thinking, where if you imagine it, it must be true — magical thinking! “Anything that occurs to him — any stray, crazy thought — is true,” warns Gartner. “His grandiosity is so extreme that not only does he want to be the Pope, and Jesus, and the president of Venezuela, and the Mullah of Iran — he wants to be all of these things at once. He wants the world to worship him, and he wants to erect massive monuments to praise himself.”

The now-infamous A.I.-generated image of Trump’s Truth Social post depicting himself as Jesus healing a patient, or raising someone from the dead, with an entourage of heavenly hosts and a plethora of American iconography, outraged religious and political leaders across the board. The president’s explanation that he saw himself as a Red Cross doctor healing the sick fell on deaf ears, so he was convinced to use his lighted celestial fingers for deleting the post. We can expect a surge in Halloween costumes this year of celebrants wearing white robes and carrying stethoscopes. Trump, of course, couldn’t let sleeping dogs lie, so he quickly followed up his chastisement with a Truth Social A.I. post depicting him being comforted by a Jesus-like figure.

Trump’s second A.I. post prompted a number of snarky comments on social media: “Wait a second. That’s not Jesus, that’s clearly a DOCTOR! Why does he look so forlorn? Is something wrong? Are the test results back? Is he breaking bad news to the president about his failing health? Is Trump trying to tell us something?“; and “Donald Trump is testing out a new portrayal of himself as the chosen one after deleting a post that sparked backlash for depicting himself as Jesus Christ.” As might be expected, Trump then posted, “The Radical Left Lunatics might not like this, but I think it is quite nice!!!! ” Right, warm fuzzies all around!

Since his return to the Oval Office, Trump has enacted changes that have encouraged a resurgence of religion within the federal bureaucracy, which some federal workers view as an alarming breakdown of the boundary between church and state which can be seen in the proselytizing emails, invitations to worship services, and religious undertones in high-profile policy pronouncements. Most government employees see their jobs as working on behalf of all Americans, but what they are observing is very explicitly Christian — in a very narrow representation of the faith, at that! Administration officials scoff at these charges on the pretext that such expressions are not new and shouldn’t be controversial. Last year, Trump established the White House Faith Office, headed by Televangelist Paula White-Cain, who has compared the president to Jesus, inviting a bit of mockery after she claimed that Trump, as a child, attended Saturday and Sunday school up to three times a week. “Church was a big part of his life,” she insists. Perhaps this is only a test of the emergency fascism system — do not adjust your conscience.

The Office of Personnel Management, in July of last year, released a memo permitting federal workers to “encourage” peers “to participate in religious expressions of faith, such as prayer,” and on Easter Sunday, Department of Agriculture Secretary Brook Rollins sent an agency-wide email with the subject line “He has risen!” The email message described the life of Jesus as “the greatest story ever told, the foundations of our faith, and the abiding hope of all mankind.” One department employee called the email “grotesque,” adding that such conduct would be unacceptable even for military chaplains; but, a department spokesperson felt that the secretary was within her rights to send such a message. A government employee says “people are uncomfortable,” with another saying “there’s a lot of carrying on” and while no one’s forcing you to pray, it’s happening in the middle of a government workplace — meaning that we, the taxpayers, are supporting the breakdown of the wall? It seems that Christo-fascism can be defined as a belief that being productive at work equals having the right to tell co-workers they are going to hell.

The Daily Dose of Democracy website reports on “Secretary of War Crimes Pete Hegseth authorizing the deployment of weapons-grade cringe” last week at a Pentagon prayer service, as he quoted a Biblical-sounding verse that film buffs immediately recognized as the Samuel L. Jackson monologue from Quentin Tarantino’s black comedy ‘Pulp Fiction.’ The movie verse was delivered just before Jackson’s hitman character murders an unarmed man in cold blood, with Hegseth being too myopic to recognize that the speech is satirizing men who hide behind religion in order to justify unholy acts of violence — which is exactly what the Secretary himself is doing in Iran. “Nothing sums up the Trump regimes relationship with religion better than using fake Bible quotes to justify an illegal war of imperial aggression,” the writer charges. The verse is similar to Ezekiel 25:17 in the Old Testament, which uses only part of the scripture, the remainder being scripted by Tarantino. The comments section on DDoD prompted this post by Cy Clops: “And the Lord sayeth: ‘Spread out, numbskulls. Why I oughtta…’ Customized from The Book of Stooges: Nyuk 1, Nyuks 2 and 3.”

But wait! There’s more! Not satisfied with angering Christians all week, President Trump will be reading from the Bible as a publicity stunt in an effort to spread the lie that we live in a Christian Nation. MAGAs in the administration will be participating in a week-long Bible recitation as part of an initiative called ‘America Reads the Bible‘ at the Museum of the Bible to commemorate ‘250 Years of the Bible in America.’ As Hemant Mehta writes on The Friendly Atheist blog, Trump being fresh off posting the image of himself as Jesus while healing a Jeffrey Epstein-lookalike, and offending Pope Leo and Catholics world-wide, will be attempting to do damage control. To start, a recording of Trump reading a verse from the Old Testament — hopefully not Ezekiel 25:17 which should be given to Hegseth — to be released next week, to be followed by his reading of 2 Chronicles 7:14, a section about repentance. That’s sensible to Mehta, who says, “If the man lies during every speech and press conference, he might as well read a Bible verse he doesn’t believe in either. It’s not like they were going to ask him to read the Sermon on the Mount. Or anything from the Gospels.”

Mehta goes on to say that Trump was never going to be asked to follow the message of Jesus because he’s never been interested in that, so this is the next best thing for the right-wing Christians who have latched onto a man now being dubbed the Antichrist by many on the right. It’s good that they are recording it, which will be the only proof we ever get of Trump actually opening up The Book. In a more prudent world, those who cause as much harm in the world as that group would never be asked to hold a Bible, much less read from it, but conservatives have gone all in on hypocrisy. While no one is perfect, most of us put in a bit of effort, unlike Trump, who goes out of his way to be cruel and chaotic. That the people organizing the event won’t denounce his actions tells you a lot more about their values than a reading of the Bible that no one will ever listen to in full.

Mehta concludes that the event isn’t really about honoring the Bible, “It’s about projecting power over non-Christians. The fact that so many so many self-described Christian leaders are participating in the performance — when they would be appalled by a Democrat even citing one verse from the Qur’an in a speech — tells you everything you need to know about their intentions. If they cared about Christianity, they wouldn’t be reading a section of a book they’ve never bothered to read in full for an audience that’s never going to listen to them. They would talk from the heart about things like humility, repentance, compassion, and the vulnerable. But the same dishonest, cruel authoritarians who only care about Christianity to the extent that it keeps them in power don’t actually care about following any of the lessons from the faith. They don’t care if they have a leader shaped by the Bible; they just want one who knows how to use the Bible to control everyone else. That’s what Christian Nationalism is all about.”

The introduction of an exhilarated religious fervor by Trump and Hegseth into the Iran war is a gift to the mullahs of that country according to two former diplomats, who say that they are only going to make things worse. ‘Morning Joe‘ contributor Sam Stein approached former National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan with his question, “When you frame war in matters of theology, when you have the president mocking Islam in his tweets or Truth Social posts, how does that play with the leadership of Iran? How will they view this war when you have the defense secretary talking like that?” Sullivan answered, “Well, it does two things. First, in a way, it plays into their hands because these guys are theocrats themselves. And so the idea of having a holy war against the Great Satan, the United States, and the Little Satan, Israel, is core to their identity and core to their argument, to their own people who they were just mowing down. ‘You’ve got to back us in this holy war.’ So it really plays on the turf of the Iranian mullahs and clerics.”

MS NOW host Joe Scarborough added, “The continued deification, to follow up on what Jake said, and having people coming in — scam preachers, phony preachers saying Donald Trump is Jesus Christ is grotesque…every single day. Jake’s exactly right — they are turning this into a crusade. They are literally playing right into Iran’s hands, right into the Revolutionary Guards’ hands.” Former president of the Council on Foreign Relations Richard Haas replied, “Absolutely. And again, it works against the idea of compromise. For the Iranians this has become an existential conflict. For us, this is a limited conflict. It’s very hard to prevail in a limited conflict when you’re up against someone who basically feels if they lose, they’re gone.” As Lawrence Wright wrote in his novel, ‘The End of October,’ “Reverence for Life affords me my fundamental principle of morality, namely, that good consists in maintaining, assisting, and enhancing life, and that to destroy, to harm or to hinder life is evil. When good people do good, and evil people do evil, it is not surprising. But when good people do evil, it takes religion to do that.”

Instead of shrinking from the idea that there is a religious aspect to the Iran “excursion,” US administration leaders are leaning into it, invoking God and promising fire and brimstone, once again, for Iran’s civil society if its leaders do not buckle to US demands. A reporter asked Trump if he thinks God supports the US in the war. “I do, because God is good, and God wants to see people taken care of,” Trump said, adding that neither he nor God “like what’s happening.” In Trump’s mind, he may think God is on his side, but international law is not if he carries out the threat to bomb bridges and power plants, which is a war crime by targeting a civilian population. Trump apologist and Representative Russell Fry of South Carolina explained to Fox Business why the GOP-controlled Congress refuses to do its job and rein in the Iran war. “Congress, right now, certainly has an obligation in some ways to assist in matters of international importance, but to micromanage the president with 535 CEOs of the country doesn’t make sense to me — doesn’t make sense to the American people.” What a low IQ, failing, loser of an answer, eh?!!

And this just in from satirist Andy Borowitz, dateline Tehran: “In a major setback for Donald J. Trump, Iran announced that the Strait of Hormuz will be closed the next two years for renovations. The Strait of Hormuz board also approved a plan to put Mojtaba Khamenei’s name on the renovated waterway. ‘The Khamenei Strait of Hormuz will be the biggest and most beautiful trade chokepoint EVER!,’ the ayatollah announced in a social media post. In the same post, he indicated that the renovated strait would have a ‘world-class tollbooth’ fitted with marble armrests ‘unlike anything ever done or seen before.‘”