Supreme Court of the United States

[Birdjaguar]

Isn't that the bridge too far that finally brought FDR to heel? Once the number of seats is mutable, the Court's power is gone. The politics of the hour are kid's story time compared to that one.

I mean, you are joking, right? The Republicans are reliably terrible, but rendering defunct the 3rd branch seems too Tammany to all but the <censored>.

Partisanship has broken the system already. The goal now is to elect a president who will pad the court with extremists and not allow an "enemy" justice to get on to the court. My solution is mandatory retirement for Senators and justices at age 70.

 

[Lexicus]

They won't do it for the same reason that they have seldom if ever violated such norms...they know that if they do the Republicans in turn will also, probably bigger (37 justices anyone?). What they have not considered in the past is that as the noose tightens on the Republicans they are going to violate norms anyway. That's what I was referring to as the lack in the Democrats.

I was actually thinking about that last night, if court-packing becomes a Thing how long will it take for the Supreme Court to be a total farce, with more justices than sitting members of Congress?

 

[Lexicus]

Isn't that the bridge too far that finally brought FDR to heel? Once the number of seats is mutable, the Court's power is gone. The politics of the hour are kid's story time compared to that one.

In a manner of speaking, yes. But the Court also started following FDR's lead after that, so.

 

[Synobun]

Partisanship has broken the system already. The goal now is to elect a president who will pad the court with extremists and not allow an "enemy" justice to get on to the court. My solution is mandatory retirement for Senators and justices at age 70.

Is Garland an extremist?

 

[Birdjaguar]

Is Garland an extremist?

No, but the measures to keep him out were extreme.

 

[Farm Boy]

Partisanship has broken the system already. The goal now is to elect a president who will pad the court with extremists and not allow an "enemy" justice to get on to the court. My solution is mandatory retirement for Senators and justices at age 70.

Mandatory pre-set retirement could work. Increasing turnover works, so long as it's predictable. Mark Twain had a good saying about long duration terms that does seems to have at least some good truth in it.

D-baggy partisanship makes everything work worse, but it's cooked into things. It's why non-tinkerable terms works with the Court. And it does. Eisenhower's appointments happened*. You start packing it and you don't simply have a partisan system, you have one that no longer functions at all at anything but. The degree of independent that does exist, and some indeed does, doesn't exist any more. Might as well elect them through the EC at that point, or hell, give every state two. Which honestly, seems like it'd play really well with the sort of political persuasion that doesn't much care for independent judiciaries in the first place.

*Waaaaah, but that wasn't last year and I have the attention span of a caffeinated gnat! No, but it's what got us here in the first damn place, and our pacing could have been a hella lot worse.

 

[Berzerker]

has nothing to do with the SCOTUS... which as a reminder, it a thread that you started to discuss the SCOTUS and are now trying to derail with whataboutism.

Precedents paved the path we're on... I dont see the analogy between Kavanaugh and Garland but both sides have been playing 'gotchya' a long time and both sides try to ignore their side's sins while vociferously condemning the other side. Jesus addressed this "Us & Them" mentality when he argued forgiveness and loving others. Even the tax collector loves his family and friends, so you must do more. You must love the tax collector, you must love your enemies.

I watched Christopher Hitchens rip into Jesus for that... I think he called Jesus' pacifism monstrous. The idea evil doers would be free to wreak havoc on the world was itself evil. Maybe Jesus was thinking of the long term. If love conquers hate, then the two cannot battle if both sides hate. Okay, now thats off topic

Whataboutism (also known as whataboutery) is a variant of the tu quoque logical fallacy that attempts to discredit an opponent's position by charging them with hypocrisy without directly refuting or disproving their argument - wiki

Is it possible to charge someone with hypocrisy without opposing their argument? If a murderer condemns another murderer and you point out the murderer's hypocrisy, are you discrediting the murderer's condemnation? No, the condemnation may be perfectly valid. If somebody responds to criticism of Democrats by pointing to Republican sins, would you accuse them of whataboutism? I dont think thats whataboutism, they're not challenging the criticism of Democrats. They're just admiring the GOP's glass house.

Whataboutism tries to argue corruption is acceptable because the other side is guilty too. That makes the accusation of whataboutism a partisan distraction because not everyone is on those 2 sides.

Meh... Franken got ridden out of town on a rail. There was little (or no) wagon circling. So it seems like the whataboutism... such as it is... fails.

Yeah, it seems kind of silly to use that example. Franken paid for his actions.

If the Kav had spent half the time crying about what he did instead of how unjust this is, he'd already have been confirmed.

Thats right, thanks to a handful of Democrats in the Senate (especially Gillibrand) the wagons weren't circled. Franken wasn't an example, but he would have been if the Dems covered for him like they did for Clinton. Now this was all going on as Dems were shredding Roy Moore so they couldn't very well circle the wagons at the same time, but even Gillibrand admitted the Dems (including herself) gave Clinton a pass.

If you're going to insist on continuing this farce and keep pretending like it matters to you what happened to Juanita Broadderick, even though we already know that it doesn't really, could you maybe show the absolute smallest amount of respect to a rape victim and spell her ******* name properly?

Juanita Broaddrick I got it wrong too somewhere, its an unusual name and natural for people to think of Broderick...Broderick...?

More 'both sides are bad' garbage.

Your side is good?

As previously mentioned, only those who are just as committed to derailing threads with whataboutisms have not pretty much immediately arrived at despising him and acknowledging him for what he is.

So everyone must despise him or they're equally guilty of his 'sins'?

 

[sophie]

Who was it who proposed fixed-term limits on Justices (10 years iirc), with the terms staggered so that every presidential term gets the same number of judicial nominations (@Bootstoots, I think?). I think that would work far better than fixing a retirement age. Remember that there are no pre-requirements for a supreme court nomination in the constitution as it currently exists. It's only existing parliamentary convention that necessitates nominating high-ranking, respected, elderly judges and legal scholars. We're seeing now how well parliamentary norms work when one party is desperate enough for power to start transgressing them. Enforce a mandatory retirement age, and we'll probably start seeing 21-year old Heritage Foundation interns nominated to the Supreme Court inside of 10 years.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

So everyone must despise him or they're equally guilty of his 'sins'?

No "must" about it, but the only person who rose to his defense is exactly the same sort of whataboutism spouting thread derailing poster that everyone else would rather do without as he is. No one said that I am required to despise him for his behavior. It's my choice. Same as everyone else but you, apparently.

 

[Zelig]

Enforce a mandatory retirement age, and we'll probably start seeing 21-year old Heritage Foundation interns nominated to the Supreme Court inside of 10 years.

Well you could get that anyway. It's not like there's a huge difference between "mandatory retirement at 70" and "mandatory retirement at death".

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Who was it who proposed fixed-term limits on Justices (10 years iirc), with the terms staggered so that every presidential term gets the same number of judicial nominations (@Bootstoots, I think?). I think that would work far better than fixing a retirement age. Remember that there are no pre-requirements for a supreme court nomination in the constitution as it currently exists. It's only existing parliamentary convention that necessitates nominating high-ranking, respected, elderly judges and legal scholars. We're seeing now how well parliamentary norms work when one party is desperate enough for power to start transgressing them. Enforce a mandatory retirement age, and we'll probably start seeing 21-year old Heritage Foundation interns nominated to the Supreme Court inside of 10 years.

The Heritage foundation interns is one clear problem. The other is death and retirement. Can't make the numbers work out to one per term, or you get an expectation that justices will last 36 years consistently. Can't make it work with two unless you seat an even number of justices. If you go with three on our current nine member court then the term is down to twelve years, which defeats the intent that the court take a longer view.

Maybe if you went with a fifteen member court, three appointments per presidential term, and a twenty year seat...

 

[sophie]

Well you could get that anyway. It's not like there's a huge difference between "mandatory retirement at 70" and "mandatory retirement at death".

I mean, we're already moving in that direction as it is, my point is that replacing "lifetime appointment" with "effectively lifetime appointment" doesn't solve the underlying problem.

 

[innonimatu]

And the reason you're saying that is quite clear to everyone else here. You made it clear when you referred to "sexual abuse" as a "moral panic."

It is, in short, obvious that you don't actually care about the fortunes of the Democrats and this "it is a miscalculation" thing is badly-executed concern trolling. The only real skin you have in this game appears to be that you cannot stand to see a powerful man be held accountable for sexual violence against multiple women.

You are absolutely right that I care nothing for the democrats, or the republicans for that matter, your two sides of the same coin. I do care about how politics is done, and it is noteworthy the size of the blunder being committed here. It will have far-reaching consequences.

It says a lot about that party that they thought the best way to pick a political fight for the elections was to play on the old moral panic strategy, rather than take a political stand against what the guy stood for.

Do a better job.

You do a better job than quoting a piece of commentary from a partisan hack. He says he does not remember her, obviously he cannot vouch for memories going back 30 years and had to defend himself from the possibility that somehow he had once met her in passing, whereupon he'd be called a liar. The very same hack piece makes a big deal about how small (geographically) that community was, odds are people will have crossed paths.

She says she did not knew him, why don't you call her a liar? Oh right, because it wouldn't look nice in your little fairy story where women always say the truth.

 

[Synobun]

Bro what

Are you okay?

 

[hobbsyoyo]

The very same hack piece makes a big deal about how small (geographically) that community was, odds are people will have crossed paths.

She says she did not knew him, why don't you call her a liar? Oh right, because it wouldn't look nice in your little fairy story where women always say the truth.

Translation:

Here is this made up scenario that's got nothing to do with the evidence presented thus far, defend it.

Classic strawman.

Do you also not realize it was Kavanaugh that made a big stink about the geography of the community? They just refuted what he tossed out there.

 

[innonimatu]

The whole thing stinks but the point is: there are no proofs of lying. Contradictory allegations but no actual proofs. And it was so by design: an accusation about an alleged event from over 30 years back (it wasn't even constructed as rape, so as to avoid necessary criminal inquiries) was chosen to create publicity and allow open-ended political chicanery.

We will see how the "third woman" with her accusations of gang rape fares. That might be possible to investigate. I suspect that lawyer got overexcited and went with his own script on that...

 

[Timsup2nothin]

The whole thing stinks but the point is: there are no proofs of lying. Contradictory allegations but no actual proofs. And it was so by design: an accusation about an alleged event from over 30 years back (it wasn't even constructed as rape, so as to avoid necessary criminal inquiries) was chosen to create publicity and allow open-ended political chicanery.

We will see how the "third woman" with her accusations of gang rape fares. That might be possible to investigate. I suspect that lawyer got overexcited and went with his own script on that...

When a five year old with crumbs on their lips throws a tantrum and screams that someone else ate the cookies, there may not be proof that he's lying, but when he adds that, in fact, he has never eaten anything in his life, ever, his denials have reached the point where even if they are accurate as denials they are still obviously lies.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

The whole thing stinks but the point is: there are no proofs of lying.

Spoiler :

The article is very clear on the points that Kavanaugh perjured himself. Are you going to actually refute any of them or just declare the whole thing a shame and continue strawmanning us?

I mean it's fine if you don't want to debate the article but if your stance is to ignore what it actually says then stop making up crap about it.

 

[Synobun]

I think inno is parodying the GOP senators who sat on the committee during the hearings.

 

[Arakhor]

Moderator Action: I've deleted a bunch of posts and issued an infraction. I don't think you need a Briton to point out exactly when a Clinton was last in the White House or last running for office, but apparently we do need one to tell you all not to openly discuss posters, not to derail threads and not to spam irrelevancies about people two decades out of office. I will mete out further intervention as necessary.
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