The New York Times reveals why the Supreme Court has become so distrusted of late:
The actual cause of its historic unpopularity is no secret. Over the past several years, the court has been transformed into a judicial arm of the Republican Party.
Yep. The modern Republican Party consists of three branches: the Supreme Court, Fox News, and Donald Trump. Congratulations to SCOTUS for its official entry into this triumvirate.
The question is not just did Ginni influence her husband's ruling, but did Justice Thomas support the insurrection?
I'm just asking the question. 😉
Eastman was a clerk to Thomas. A mentor/mentee relationship between them is not hard to imagine. Did Eastman consult with Thomas through Ginni? Not impossible despite her protestations.
Dear Virginia has been bringing all of Clarence's former clerks into a kind of Insurrectionist Club for many years now; many of them are now on the federal bench and even the Supreme Court. Could this have been without Justice Husband's knowledge? Without his approval? Given how he voted against releasing information to the JanSix Committee, he most likely knew her name would be prominent in the various communications.
It's just lucky for him that insurrection and breaking his oath of office is okay if you're a Republican.
Even if Ginni Thomas didn't exist, this would still have played out the same. The real problem is that none of them are trustworthy.
But I tend to blame Harry Reid for this. He was the first one to nuke the filibuster, not for SCOTUS nominations but still close enough that Republicans took that precedent and ran with it. It's why I find Democrats' urges to nuke the filibuster to be borderline insane; do people really expect Republicans not to make matters even worse when they take over again? Really?
History has proven that Republicans are afraid of establishing precedent but are perfectly fine abusing precedent that Democrats establish. History has also proven that Democrats won't have power in DC forever. We would do well to remember these facts.
Oh please. Republicans were blocking Obama's judicial nominations -- against Senate rules. Reid did what he had to do.
Yup.
The abuse of judicial appointee hearing process by Addison "Bitch" Mc Connell just turned Jesse Helms's queersmearing of James Hormel up to 11.
Well then, if you get your way, I guess we're doomed to repeat this tragedy then.
Never give "your guy" the power you wouldn't want in the hands of your worst enemy.
Worked out for Harry Truman.
How would ignoring the complete moral bankruptcy and fundamental evilness of today;s republican party improve the situation. 'History has proven that Republicans are afraid of establishing precedent" And this is obviously a flat out lie that would embarrass your average 5 year old.
How was it against Senate rules?
If they were breaking the rules Reid could have enforced the rules, not changed them.
There are no Senate rules, only norms. As in normative expectations of behavioral. & Bitch Mac so exceeded them that even the wimpy Democrat Party could not find merit in it.
Um. There are definitely Senate rules.
Against caning other senators, sure.
Well, Reid could be blamed for not also nuking the filibuster for SC nominees. Everybody knew the republicans were going to nuke the filibuster for SC nominees when they got the chance. Hell, that was what the gang of 14 was all about.
Getting rid of the filibuster would place Congress in the same situation as virtually every other constitutional democracy that has two legislative chambers. It would force both parties to avoid proposing extreme measures safe in the knowledge the minority opposition would block them. The outcome in practice is a lot of continuity in government even as parties go in and out of the majority. It's absurd the way so many Americans argue about hypothetical possibilities while ignoring the mass of empirical evidence available.
At the time Reid nuked the filibuster the republicans were refusing to allow any of Obama's executive appointees to take office. You can't have a government in which the president isn't allowed to have any appointees.
Damn every damned one of us if we don't work much harder at GOTV efforts and contribute much more to help finance campaigns to save as much as is left of America from all three branches of the Republican Party.
Comeeeeeeeey!
Didn't Comey say that he spends sleepless nights thinking about the impact of his actions on the course of history? Fate chose Comey to play his clueless role and pay for it almost immediately at the hands of the man that he unwittingly helped in usurping the presidency. Ironic.
& unlike his fellow Whitewater Inquisitors Kenny Starr & Barf O'Kavanaugh, Jimbo doesn't even have a university president's pension or Supremes appointment to justify his soft coup in 2016.
Comey can go fck himself. He did enough and now he has to live with that. He's living quite comfortably for his role in destroying American democracy, so he can afford some sleeping pills to get rest at night.
RBGeeeee! …
What's the point of shouting out he name of a life long loyal republian?
He trying to do his best James T. Kirk impression…
https://www.amazon.ca/Captain-Wrath-Funny-Merchandise-Poster/dp/B07YVN8VVY et al
Sadly, you are correct Kevin. And the old Republican party not only let it happen, they cheered it on. The Prime Directive of the current Republican party is the maintenance of White Christian superiority. That's it.
fyi: their version of "Christianity" would make Christ turn in his grave...if he was in it.
Seems a bit hyperbolic
Maybe the average MAGA guy off the street will agree but most the actual power players are just in it for money. Roe raised a literal shitload of money the last 50 years, and Trump used the presidency primarily to enrich himself
Aside from Bannon and Pillow Guy, those two are the real deal
Steve Miller thinks your exclusion of him is antisemitic. Which makes him confused as to whether he should be offended.
🙂
Power. Not superiority. Not supremacy. Power.
It's White Power Patriotism. Because, looking at the January 6, 2021, March on Washington crowd, or a typical Trumpberger Rally, there is nothing supreme nor superior about them.
👍👍
And the old Republican party not only let it happen, they cheered it on
Of course they cheered it on. They've got a parallel veto-ing six person legislature in their pocket that answers to no one and is immune to any checks and balances for the foreseeable future. What's not to love?
I disagree that they became an arm of the Republican Party long before this year and it isn’t just about theocratic tendencies, it is also about letting corporate America buy our democracy. They are turning us into either a plutocratic theocracy (overturning Roe or a theocratic plutocracy (Citizens United).
Stipulated. Now what are we going to do about it? The future hangs on the answer to that question.
"Reactionary juristocracy" is one of the best descriptive phrases I've seen in a long time.
Alito and some of the others complain about how nobody respects them-- they're the Rodney Dangerfield court. Yet they drip with contempt for previous justices and current colleagues, and the loudest complainer is the one who shouted at a president giving his state of the union address.
Well, how about this-- they get as much respect from me as they accord to their predecessors and colleagues in the enterprise of government and law. And as much as they show citizens who have relied on rulings of past courts.
Do that, then we can talk about how you don't get no respect.
Feudalism spread by the Feudalist Society.
+10!
So what to do about it? In any case, you (like so many others) have it backward: the Republican Party is the political wing of Fox News. Murdoch is the one calling the shots, insofar as anyone riding the back of a mob is calling any shots at all.
And he laughs all the way to the bank....fool many of the people all the time???
Fox news is a symptom, not a cause. Long before there was foxnews there was talk radio and Rush Limbaugh.
Murdoch is the new Soros?
Always has been.
The right wing justice's theme song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzFWiQQrBIA&t=69s
Speaking of the constitution, this is book of the year:
Elie Mystal's great Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy's Guide to the Constitution
Fantastic!!!!
https://www.mattball.org/2022/09/allow-me-to-retort.html
Oh, Eddie Glaude's brother by another mother wrote a book?
I will be sure to mention it at the next Green Party chapter meeting.
What is it you want from the federal government? Well, you can’t have it. The courts will not protect your rights. I don’t need them to anyway. (I’m an old guy.)
The stock market is down quite a bit so my retirement savings is diminished. The government can’t help me there.
Some things I want are more expensive or not available. I might have bought a new car by now, but it would be foolish to do so now.
So it doesn’t really matter that the court is full of right wing nut jobs. It’s time to stop asking the government for policy. It’s the enemy now. I’d say shut it down but there is this matter of Russia to deal with. We need the military to do this before the republicans win the next elections.
“I mean, just to give you a hypothetical, we would respond by leading a NATO, a collective effort, that would take out every Russian conventional force that we can see and identify on the battlefield in Ukraine and also in Crimea and every ship in the Black Sea,” Petraeus replied.”
Bring it on!
"The Supreme Court is now the third branch of the Republican Party" Agreed
However, imagine, by some miracle, Alito, Thomas, Kavanaugh were all to resign tomorrow: assuming a Democratic majority in the Senate, would not the new Biden appointees agree with basically all the Democratic policy positions?
The days of say Gerald Ford appointing liberal John Paul Stevens are gone...
We always forget COMINTERN agent Eisenhower appointed Earl Woken as Chief Supreme, while Kennedy installed Whizzer White & Bush-41 gave us Souter.
Current Chief Supreme Shakes Roberts is right in that, ideally, members of the Supreme Gangster Disciples are neither Republiqan nor Democrat jurists, but in practice, that is no longer the case. & Woken, White, & Souter are proof positive as to why: Presidents don't like being humiliated by their underlings.
If not Biden’s then those of groups to which he was beholden.
As for Stevens, was he actually (considered) a “liberal” at the time of his nomination?
The republicans had problems with their appointed justices becoming human on the bench--hence they became more rigorous in their vetting, out sourcing to the Federalist Society, to avoid appointing more apostates.
This is simply not true. Souter was very much indistinguishable from the stereotype new england republican of the mid century. The idea that the republicans were the conservative party and the democrts the liberals is idea that first reared it's head under Reagan. Social conservatives were traditionally democrats (hence the klan wing of the democrat party, now know as the base of the republican party). The core of the mid century republican party, new englanders were liberals. What came to be called Rockefeller republcians were originally the base of the republican party.
The shift began before Reagan. I remember staying awake late into the night in 1964, waiting to hear if moderate Republicans could block the nomination of Barry Goldwater. True, that conservatives accepted Richard Nixon in 1968, but they were bitterly disappointed by his Presidency - not because he covered up a felony, but for such measures as imposing price controls, establishing the EPA and OSHA, and endorsing an expanded role for government in health care.
Nominees always decline to state their positions on matters that might come before the Court, when questioned in open Senate hearings. Somehow, out of the limelight, the Federalist Society manages to very accurately discern the leanings of potential nominees. Democrats don't have an equivalent organization to do their vetting for them, so even if they tried, they wouldn't get Justices as reliably ideological. Look up the records of Kagan and Sotomayor; I'm pretty sure there are some opinions from them that Democrats would not have been happy with.
KenSchulz - do you actually believe that Ketanji Brown Jackson or say Sonia Sotomayor are likely to overturn any significant Biden policy (IF they had that power)? If so, what major Democratic position do you think is at risk?
My broader point, its is true today, unlike in the past, that Supreme Court Justices are ideologically well aligned with the President that nominates the Justice.
Yes, I actually believe this, because, unlike you, I bothered to do a little research. Justice Kagan’s votes with conservatives (e.g. Lucia v. SEC, Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission) prompted an article in Slate questioning whether she was ”drifting to the right”. Justice Sotomayor, in <Navarette v. California was the only other Justice in concurrence with Justice Scalia(!).
Navarette v. California
Messed up my tags …
Even if i were to accept that “liberal” judges push only “liberal” policies in rulings that have nothing to do with the law, there is no comparison between the two types of rulings. “Liberal” rulings, in general: Accepting women, minorities, gays, etc etc as human beings. “Conservative” rulings, in almost all cases: Refusing to accept women, minorities, gays, etc etc as human beings. Or thereabouts.
Well, cons did recognize Corporations as human beings.
However, imagine, by some miracle, Alito, Thomas, Kavanaugh were all to resign tomorrow: assuming a Democratic majority in the Senate, would not the new Biden appointees agree with basically all the Democratic policy positions?
I'm not sure that's true. I do think they'd generally have little problem with duly enacted legislation, and that's mostly because Democrats are unlikely to pass bills that violate any reasonable interpretation of the constitution. I think it's also because liberal justices take seriously the traditional preference for the presumption of constitutionality (of acts of the legislative branch). Right wing jurists, on the other hand...
I think the big change would be when the GOP has a trifecta: I believe there'd be far more deference from liberal justices to conservative Republican outcomes than we've seen in recent years from GOP justices with respect to legislation. These power-drunk ideologues simply don't have patience for the political process, and cannot resist the urge to meddle to get policy outcomes they deem desirable.
When Gerald Ford was president liberal republicans were an important wing of the republican party. The Klan had barely started to switch parties.
Look at the electoral map for the 1964 Presidential election. Other than his home state, Sen. Goldwater won only in the Deep South.
Don't call Biden a tyrant because that's provocative. Also, Trump is Hitler, the Supreme Court is carrying water for Republicans, questioning Trump and Bush's wins is fine, but questioning when a democrat wins jeopardizes democracy, Antifa isn't a group, Proud Boys are highly organized, masks stop coronavirus (except during BLM riots - which were mostly peaceful despite the burned out buildings and deaths)... Cuz we're "right" and you're wrong (and fascists).
- Democrats
Hey, the truth's the truth. =) Next time, try not courting the support and giving support to literal Nazis and also maybe not overthrowing the government.
I'm an independent conservative and don't support the Republican Party. Obviously, I don't support the Democrat Party either...
The same could be said about courting the support of literal Communists for Democrats though. And, let's be honest, there are definitely literal Nazis and Communists (at least they think they are) in play, but not nearly as many as either side claims. It's just a weak argument to throw out against your political opponent.
So, you're a Caucasian Glibertarian who likes to smoke dope but don't like the idea of competing with Black people for that sticky icky icky.
I've never smoked once, so I'm not sure how competitive the drug market is. I live in a rural town, so there aren't many black people out here though. I'm guessing if there is competition, it's with Mexican immigrants...
You should learn what communists are, There are literally none associated with the democrat party.
Please explain then. I think this gets to the point I'm trying to make of "We're awesome and misunderstood. You suck and are nazis. Also, you can't argue with us because you're trying to give equal weight to our facts vs. your opinions...", but I'm curious to hear why I'm wrong.
I think it's on you to prove there are communists associated with the Democratic (see how it's spelled?) party.
"Members of the party are called "Democrats" or "Dems". The term "Democrat Party" has also been in local use but has usually been used by opponents since 1952 as a disparaging term. The most common mascot symbol for the party has been the donkey, or jackass."
Here you go, jackass. And, I don't have to prove anything if it's a moving target, which is my original point. You people believe that there are NO communist democrats? Really? We both know that you don't believe that.
"questioning Trump and Bush's wins is fine". No leader of the democrat party questioned Trump's win. Most of the people who did weren't even democrats. Note how Biden and the democrats allowed Trump to have any recount he wanted. Both Bush and Trump fought tooth and nails to prevent any recounts.When a final recount of Florida was eventually done it turned out Gore received more legal votes in Florida. Not one democrat thought we should thrown out the constitution and installed Gore in power. Why do you believe nothing but lies?
You have a very revisionist history. I certainly don't remember Democrats sitting idly by and saying "Welp, what're ya gonna do? This is fair and we'll respect the decision".
The Democrat Party has become schoolyard bullies. Pushing a kid when their back is turned and running to the teacher when confronted. Say what you want. I was alive and witnessed it. I know for a fact that Democrats were going crazy and saying very inciteful things.
Republicans and Democrats are have lost all civility. The irony is that Democrats don't see it in themselves because no matter how disgusting their rhetoric or actions, they feel completely justified.
Did any Democrats participate in riots? Are any Democrats in Antifa? Or do you just wash your hands of anything done for "your side"?
What is Antifa and where do you sign up? Or are you just implying any who protested police brutality is a member?
The irony (which you'll never see) is that the people that protested police brutality did so in such a manner that they made life more dangerous for people on the margins that need protection from rampant criminals the most. My neighborhood doesn't really need police because there's almost no crime.
Cut your own throats, I guess? Murder is way up, but who cares about that when you've got talking points to stick to?
Also, I'm not on social media, but I'm guessing that's how you join Antifa, no? "Hey, comrade, sneak out of your parents house with the frozen water bottles and masks. Don't let your mom catch you or else she'll tell my mom. Anyway, we're meeting at..." Or do you think that dozens of basement dwelling crybabies spontaneously spawn at the same place at the same time? Are you so intellectually dishonest that you believe that?
You're lying to someone here. Just trying to sort if it's me or you.
In reality, the supreme court has been a republican government institution since the Nixon administration and FDR's apointees were gone.