But their base gets riled up and shows up. So I guess it works.As usual, they know it won't pass the Senate, so it's just something to show their base.
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.
I think there is absolutely a difference in kind between simply waiting to retire until the next president is elected and actively negotiating with the White House for the exact person you want to replace you. A negotiation requires multiple parties bargaining for something. Someone waiting to retire is not a negotiation, it's just an independent decision (not something they're 'selling'). I think this crosses a very real and substantive line.
This will come in handy
They're not packing the court now, no. Unless you have a different definition of packing than what I'm talking about. It's not completely conservative just yet. If Trump replaces RBG or Breyer then we are fucked.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.
You're giving lots of great examples of them breaking norms left and right but somehow you think they'd only add Justices if we did it first. Why do you think Republicans are neccesarily going to play nice and not just add more Justices on their own before they lose power? There's nothing stopping them. They're a party of fascists, not good faith members of a democracy."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.
This is silly. Of course it's not literally up to me. I'm telling you what I think. It's called an opinion. Each of us does this every day in this thread, just like you did.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.
Organizations like the Federalist Society exist explicitly to do that negotiation on behalf of the justices. Conservative justices know that a Republican President will nominate a justice that's already been vetted by a conservative movement organization and certified as willing to advance conservative policies.
How does adding the third party make the situation less corrupt?
Damn it is seeming more and more like Cohen is fucking pissed at Trump.
Though more likely he's terrified and sending smoke signals to Mueller.
Please don't lock me away for life I will sell out Trump.
Because in one scenario the actual Supreme Court Justice is directly involved in corrupt deal-making with the White House that could implicate their recent legal decisions as having been part of a quid-pro-quo and in the other scenario you're just talking about a standard political lobbying group working completely independently? Saying that lobbying is a corrupt practice in of itself is completely different from saying that a Supreme Court Justice has directly engaged in corrupt practices. If that difference was truly meaningless then Kennedy wouldn't have needed to directly negotiate in the first place.
I mean Cohen knows how fucked he is or isn't since they took like millions of his document. I feel like if he knew they had nothing, he'd keep quiet and just keep being the shit he always was and the people like Flynn, Carter, Manafort, etc continue to be.I think a lot of this is Lanny Davis being Cohen's new lawyer.
Cohen hiring Davis in the first place made it much more likely that he was going to flip. Lanny Davis is basically Hillary's Jorah Mormont.
I don't think Cohen has anything relevant to Russia at all. If he did they would've made him shut up.
They're not packing the court now, no. Unless you have a different definition of packing than what I'm talking about. It's not completely conservative just yet. If Trump replaces RBG or Breyer then we are fucked.
You're giving lots of great examples of them breaking norms left and right but somehow you think they'd only add Justices if we did it first. Why do you think Republicans are neccesarily going to play nice and not just add more Justices on their own before they lose power? There's nothing stopping them. They're a party of fascists, not good faith members of a democracy.
Forget the past rules you think we're all playing along with, Republicans certainly have.
You're afraid of the consequences of this? I'm afraid of the the consequences of a SC that's made deep red for generations due to a criminal President and a complicit political party that's already stolen a seat. I'm sure the people the Court fucks over will appreciate your concern over retaliation as they're being oppressed.
I'm basically with pigeon on this. There are two big obstacles to this being a corrupt quid pro quo. For one, it can't be enforced -- I'm actually a little surprised that Kennedy would trust Trump on this, and then surprised again that Trump followed through. You can't even do the usual lobbyist thing where you reward former congressmen so that current congressmen trust that you'll reward them too, since a president is unlikely to get many shots at this. The other is that there's just not much room to bargain. The only thing the justice is looking for is the ability to choose their replacement, and this is purely ideological rather than self-interested. Likewise the main thing the president wants is to influence the future direction of the court. I guess you're right that in theory a president could also try to control the justice's votes before retirement in exchange for letting the justice pick their replacement, but this seems really finicky. You don't have that much time where the president and the justice can conspire like this, and it's also got to be something urgent since the president can have a much more reliable vote as soon as the justice does retire -- nobody objects to presidents speaking to potential nominees.Because in one scenario the actual Supreme Court Justice is directly involved in corrupt deal-making with the White House that could implicate their recent legal decisions as having been part of a quid-pro-quo and in the other scenario you're just talking about a standard political lobbying group working completely independently? Saying that lobbying is a corrupt practice in of itself is completely different from saying that a Supreme Court Justice has directly engaged in corrupt practices. If that difference was truly meaningless then Kennedy wouldn't have needed to directly negotiate in the first place.
Like I said, under a normal Republican president Kennedy wouldn't have negotiated, because he would've felt confident that they would've nominated a Federalist-approved justice anyway. He just wasn't confident about Trump's decision making specifically.
I do think his rulings this term should be scrutinized — if he changed them to please Trump, that WOULD be a difference in kind. But that also strikes me as pretty hard to prove. Who can speak to Kennedy's intent in joining a ruling?
Yeah it's brutal. I can't recall the last time a wait for something was this brutal. Probably my wait for Fallout 4 a few years ago. This is waaaay worse though.Wish I could just go to sleep and wake up for mid-term elections at this point.
I mean Cohen knows how fucked he is or isn't since they took like millions of his document. I feel like if he knew they had nothing, he'd keep quiet and just keep being the shit he always was and the people like Flynn, Carter, Manafort, etc continue to be.
Or he does have various stuff, but he doesn't get to walk on his own charges so he is still gunning for that pardon as the only possible get out of jail card.I don't think Cohen has anything relevant to Russia at all. If he did they would've made him shut up.
I'm basically with pigeon on this. There are two big obstacles to this being a corrupt quid pro quo. For one, it can't be enforced -- I'm actually a little surprised that Kennedy would trust Trump on this, and then surprised again that Trump followed through. You can't even do the usual lobbyist thing where you reward former congressmen so that current congressmen trust that you'll reward them too, since a president is unlikely to get many shots at this. The other is that there's just not much room to bargain. The only thing the justice is looking for is the ability to choose their replacement, and this is purely ideological rather than self-interested. Likewise the main thing the president wants is to influence the future direction of the court. I guess you're right that in theory a president could also try to control the justice's votes before retirement in exchange for letting the justice pick their replacement, but this seems really finicky. You don't have that much time where the president and the justice can conspire like this, and it's also got to be something urgent since the president can have a much more reliable vote as soon as the justice does retire -- nobody objects to presidents speaking to potential nominees.
I'm open to the argument that Kennedy was delivering some suspicious rulings such that that should be probed, but I'd want that argument to actually be made before I get upset about this ("this" being the negotiation between Trump and Kennedy; obviously I'm upset that Kennedy is retiring under Trump at all). The surface story is just very believable -- Kennedy wants to retire but is concerned that some combination of Trump being crazy and modern Republicans being crazy will mean that his replacement is terrible, so he seeks some assurance that Trump will nominate someone he's okay with.
Nah he also needs a pardon if Trump doesn't want him to cooperate in whatever they could possibly implicate him in. Which doesn't necessarily have to be Russia related but could easily still be impeachable. Cohen's media pleas indicate that there is something Trump should be worried about while Guliani seems to think they have nothing on Trump.I think the math is backwards on this. Cohen only needs a pardon if he can't flip because he has nothing Mueller wants. His yelling is designed to attract pardons. Ergo...
Same partyIf the best way to understand the court is through a fundamentally political and partisan lens, why did Kennedy condition his retirement on the appointment of someone substantially to his right?
DOJ says one child under 5 can't be reunited because "the parent's location has been unknown for more than a year." Also, both the parent and the child who's been in the government's custody "might be U.S. citizens."
Because the guy clerked for him and the massive amount of nepotism and backscratching is the basis of conservatism, trusting "family" above all else while fearing the rest of society.If the best way to understand the court is through a fundamentally political and partisan lens, why did Kennedy condition his retirement on the appointment of someone substantially to his right?
The judicial system in this country is an "old boys club" of people who have known each other since college or earlier. There's only really a tiny pool of people who could ever dream of being Supreme Court Justices because they went to the right school and knew the right people 20 years ago.If the best way to understand the court is through a fundamentally political and partisan lens, why did Kennedy condition his retirement on the appointment of someone substantially to his right?
Wish I could just go to sleep and wake up for mid-term elections at this point.
If the best way to understand the court is through a fundamentally political and partisan lens, why did Kennedy condition his retirement on the appointment of someone substantially to his right?
For probably the same reason Breyer would be ok with someone who was far to his left replacing him as long as they were a qualified judge and not an antifa communist commited to using their power to destroy the capitalist stateIf the best way to understand the court is through a fundamentally political and partisan lens, why did Kennedy condition his retirement on the appointment of someone substantially to his right?
I mean yeah it really fucking is. Somebody that's supposed to value the rule of law, just takes a shit all over it by retiring, apparently purposely, under a possible and very likely criminal president. He must have bought the Fox News koolaid like so many others have and believes Trump is truly innocent and it's all Dem conspiracies.I mean he could have waited a year until more came out from Mueller. But that would risk the Dems having a say in his replacement. The HORROR! Piece of shit.Justice Kennedy will never be able to undo intentionally retiring during Trump's time in power. That is a powerful fucking message about the kind of person he is, given the ultimate responsibility to democracy in the republic. He deserves every last bit of dragging and diminished legacy that he'll get.
I mean yeah it really fucking is. Somebody that's supposed to value the rule of law, just takes a shit all over it by retiring, apparently purposely, under a possible and very likely criminal president. He must have bought the Fox News koolaid like so many others have and believes Trump is truly innocent and it's all Dem conspiracies.I mean he could have waiting a year until more came out from Mueller. But that would risk the Dems having a say in his replacement. The HORROR! Piece of shit.
I hope he gets remembered as a fool. Let that be his legacy
I wonder, would it be like agaisnt the law for an SC justice to call up Mueller just to get a sense of where things are at? I'm sure Mueller wouldn't say anything directly, but tone of voice, what isn't said etc.