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US PoliERA 2018 |OT6| An Unmitigated Disaster
- Thread starter Midnight Jon
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Not that Rand Paul's word is worth a shit, but maybe him or Collins or Murkowski say nah. Unlikely I guess.
In the words of Michael, "Jason, I can't predict the future.
But no. They won't."
Republicans don't need to pack the court right now because...they're already packing the court. :lol They're confirming two justices in barely over a year! They're ramming through dozens of right-wing picks for lower courts. There's no reason for them to make a move to pack the courts because they're literally doing it already in the official way.
"Some sort of compromise eventually," yeah, that sounds like how the modern Republican Party likes to behave. There's no "most likely" about whether they'd begin the packing the court in kind if we open that box; they definitely, absolutely would. And why the hell wouldn't they? It's not like they're still abiding by 60-vote thresholds for cabinet nominees. It's not as if McConnell didn't nuke the SCOTUS filibuster the first chance he had because Reid had already gutted it for other executive appointments already. There is zero doubt that if Democrats started packing SCOTUS, Republicans would do so as well the second they had the power.
It's not up to you, though; this isn't a country of one, so they're not just your consequences to accept, they're everybody's. And I personally don't want the next Republican president + Senate combo to add another 10 conservatives to the bench all because we opened the door for them to do it first.
The great lovers having cold feet isn't big news?!
(I have no idea what he's talking about)
If Rand votes no, it's only because Collins or Murkowski are too. Rand will never be the deciding vote.
If they do that, it won't be because we opened the door for them. Don't accept the kidnapper's logic.
National Review getting into a little twitter fight with Vox, Vox brings receipts.
Probably not unrelated, but Yglesias had some of the best takes on Kevin Williamson:
Who even follow crank anymore who isn't a complete piece of shit?
I think he tried to get out in front of any news to be dropped, but in the absence of nothing dropping it just looks even dumber.
I am on Air Force One flying to NATO and hear reports that the FBI lovers, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page are getting cold feet on testifying about the Rigged Witch Hunt headed by 13 Angry Democrats and people that worked for Obama for 8 years. Total disgrace!
If? The Republicans would start packing the courts their next time up if the Dems so much as legitimately appointed two outgoing Justices. Why the hell do the Dems always have to bleed first?
Republicans aren't packing the courts now because they know if they do Dems will do it twice over, and vice versa. It's a lose-lose proposition.
Removing the filibuster isn't quite the same thing.
They're packing it at the federal level though after deliberately creating vacancies for the past 6 years.
They're not doing it now because they don't have to; they have the numbers. No team insists on overtime if they have the lead at the end of regulation.
Strzok is trying to get the House testimony out to the public but no go due to Goodlatte.
Yes, its down to raw lying again as hopespot horseshit.
Mobster.
And it hits home.
PS: Brandon Brown, smart guy, has TRADE as one of the 3 prime targets of his campaign.
Yes, its down to raw lying again as hopespot horseshit.
Mobster.
And it hits home.
PS: Brandon Brown, smart guy, has TRADE as one of the 3 prime targets of his campaign.
Scotusblog's twitter account is apparently standing pretty hard for Kavanaugh today. Its very strange. I'd link, but I'm on mobile.
didn't you know that Peter Strzok and Lisa Page HAD SEX
I mean, we just saw in the last administration Democrats legitimately appoint two outgoing justices and McConnell's response to it was to block any further appointments, not expand the bench to 12 or 20 or 100 justices.
It's not bleeding first, I just don't understand this line of thinking at all. If Dems expand the size of the court with 2-3 new justices, Republicans will do exactly the same when they have a presidency and senate majority again. And then Dems will do the same when the pendulum swings back to them, and then Republicans again, and so on. I don't understand what the end goal of this is supposed to be. Any progressive gains made by a supersized liberal SCOTUS would be immediately undermined as soon as power shifted hands again and the GOP create a supersized conservative SCOTUS. What is the point of that?
I don't understand why this is supposed to strike people who want to add justices to the court as a scary outcome. The reason people want to add justices is that they think a conservative majority is locked in. The scenario you're describing just puts the court back where it started. Just as a matter of strategy, if that's the main downside risk then surely this is a reasonable thing to do. A strategic argument against this pretty much has to be about how voters would punish Democrats for a violation of procedural norms occurring a year and a half before an election.
The point is that you at least get liberal policy through the court under liberal presidents. It's bad half the time rather than all the time.
Didn't Reid kill the judicial filibuster in 2012?
They're going to lose their majority one day, if not in 2018 then 2020. The only way I'd see them pulling this is if they actually think Dems would try it when they retake control.
Like, what's the end game there? Each side packs the courts when they control the White House and congress? How many justices is enough?
Poland's pulling that shit right now, and their far right autocratic government is going all out.
They have no reason to pack it when they have solid 5-4 control of it, and it's likely the liberals remaining will be gone before conservatives so it will just get even more conservative.
If the situation was flipped and there was a 5-4 liberal status quo with no real danger of liberals justices leaving anytime soon, they absolutely would pack it to make it 6-5 conservative.
They already made it an arms race by blocking Obama's pick. Y'all are dumb for thinking they wouldn't do it again if the situation was a bit different. They already politicized the court. If we don't play the same game they are playing we keep losing the game.
It looks like Flynn is probably going to be sentenced in October.
Bombs will be dropping before then.
That's not obvious enough to draw fire in this reality-show presidency, and given how little many Democratic voters seem to care about the Supreme Court, would they give a damn about other judicial appointments as long as no rules are technically being broken? What the GOP has done is unfortunately maliciously clever politics and remains easy to overlook in a way that packing the Supreme Court could never be.
Because Obama controlled the nominations. Why would McConnell want to expand the bench while his arch-nemesis was President While Black? Stonewalling confirmation was literally the dirtiest move he had at his disposal, so that's what he did.
Kept blue slips because he, like Obama, was way too wedded to norms that no longer functioned.
And speaking of things that no longer function, this is good:
This needs to be hammered in. This would be more effective at getting people to give a damn
There will always be a double standard between Democrats and Republicans when it comes to the media and the general public. It's the difference between Franken resigning and Moore almost becoming a senator. It's much more enticing for the media to go after Democrats because they've agreed to play by the same rules; there is a shared consensus over acceptable behavior, facts/truth, accountability, etc. You can actually engage in a back and forth with Democrats in good faith and achieve results.
Republicans reject that entire logical enterprise and just straight up don't care about anything because their voters just want them to attack groups they hate (liberals, minorities, gays, etc). The media basically goes "Hey Republican, you said X, but ~X is actually true" and the Republican can just say "so what?". The media is then left stammering "buh...buh, but I thought we all agreed lying was bad, I caught you lying though..." as if those kinds of ethereal concepts translate into a physical karmic system that automatically punishes wrong-doers somehow.
Republicans reject that entire logical enterprise and just straight up don't care about anything because their voters just want them to attack groups they hate (liberals, minorities, gays, etc). The media basically goes "Hey Republican, you said X, but ~X is actually true" and the Republican can just say "so what?". The media is then left stammering "buh...buh, but I thought we all agreed lying was bad, I caught you lying though..." as if those kinds of ethereal concepts translate into a physical karmic system that automatically punishes wrong-doers somehow.
That's not quite the same thing as creating new positions that didn't exist before. And I'm not saying, if the Senate flips, Senate Dems shouldn't also block all conservative lower-court appointments. They definitely should!
The scenario I'm describing turns the court into the House.
I am all in favor of imposing term limits on SCOTUS judges. But the idea of a never-ending expansion of the bench to benefit whatever party is in power at the time strikes me as dumb and useless.
The goal is to have liberal policies that last for only a couple years?
Trump controls the nominations now, so why isn't McConnell pushing to expand the bench?
If you think Trump's base gives a metric shit about brown Americans then I have an all cash Florida condo to sell you.
Unless that kid looks like young Macaulay Culkin then he's just one of the ones who sneaked in and beat the system.
Not if the kid is brown. We need a blonde, blue eyed toddler for America to care.
Because they have the numbers they want already. They got the 5-4 they wanted with McConnell's stunt. This was pointed out already and not just by me.
Oh, sure, it would be super dumb. But just because something is dumb doesn't mean it might not be correct policy. Changing the whole court to terms would clearly be better. It would also require a larger Congressional majority.
What benefit would he gain from doing so, given that the court is mostly conservative now?
A dumb model of the infinitely expanding SCOTUS universe is that when each party gets control of the Senate and White House they nominate enough justices to have a majority, then stop. There's no particular reason to nominate more, because when the other party gets in they'll just nominate even more justices. Unless you want everybody in America to be a Supreme Court Justice, it's neater just to stop right when you get your majority so that the long-term growth curve is as slow as possible.
You still see embedded tweets even if you have flaccid, prolapsed assholes blocked?
Augh
It's nice to want nice things in America, but no.
Those judges won't be going anywhere.
Republicans already had a 5-4 when it came to economic issues. What they didn't have was a solid 5-4 when it came to social issues.
Maybe Trump is smart enough to commit....collusion?
yes, I can count, thank you. My point is, you said this:
Which is the moment we're in right now -- it's their time at bat, following two Democratic-appointed SCOTUS justices. And Republicans aren't creating new seats on the bench to pack just because they happen to be up now. Maybe they would if it was a Republican president and Republican senate facing a liberal court, I have no idea; we haven't had a liberal court to think about in nearly 50 years as it is. And if they did, well then Democrats would just pack the court afterward.
But in the meantime, I see no reason to introduce that power for them to exploit first. If SCOTUS majorities are constantly being shifted left or right as the White House and Senate change hands, then it wouldn't matter if Dems bleed first or not because that bleeding would only last as long as the White House and Senate remain in the grip of the same party.
Now that's something to think about
Take a look at the United Kingdom's government structures. Or, for an example closer to home, consider the trillion-dollar platinum coin. Clearly very dumb -- but Obama should have minted it.
The interaction of traditional limits and modern requirements often leads to systems that would clearly never be designed the way they are if given a free hand. Ultimately we're constrained by the constitution and have to create systems that work within it, even if those systems might appear dumb to the outside observer.
Kennedy engaging in direct negotiation with the White House is fucking insane. Unless I'm just totally oblivious and this has always been a standard, albeit secret, practice, I don't see how anyone could continue trying to maintain the facade that the SC is a completely non-partisan body. It calls into question all of his recent decisions, was he just trying to butter up the White House to get the replacement he wanted? I would imagine that even Roberts is furious given how much effort he's spent trying to manage public perception.
Here's my super hot take for the day: whether or not Kennedy secretly negotiated with the White House is kind of irrelevant because you can't constrain a person from quitting their job. Kennedy can quit any time he likes, and in general, every time a Justice waits to retire until a president of their party is in power, they are already in effect negotiating with the White House. Kennedy went to greater lengths because Trump is a loose cannon, but ultimately it's a difference of degree, not kind.
This does mean that the Supreme Court is fundamentally a partisan body but also da doy of course it is.
This does mean that the Supreme Court is fundamentally a partisan body but also da doy of course it is.
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