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Utopia Talk / Politics / Funny thing about Kavanaugh
superdude
Member
Mon Oct 08 13:04:17
If dems had just treated him with same respect that Republicans gave Merrick Garland there would be no controversy. Instead they tried to destroy a good honest and well qualified man and his family. Doing this they have exposed themselves as vile self righteous assholes that they are and they will pay for this not only in Nov but for years to come.
Average Ameriacn
Member
Mon Oct 08 13:16:42
Trump should impeach the democrats and kick them out of congress!
Seb
Member
Mon Oct 08 13:33:42
The funny think about Kavanaugh and Merrick Garland is that the next time the Democrats control the Senate, they will see the court as their plaything the way the republicans have shown it to be.
Forwyn
Member
Mon Oct 08 13:44:55
The funny thing about Dems seeing the court as their plaything is that neither Gorsuch nor Kav would have gotten through if not for 2013 nuclear option precedent.
Hot Rod
Revved Up
Mon Oct 08 13:48:08

If anyone retires or dies.

I doubt Ruth Bader Ginsburg will make it another six years. I hope she retires before then and enjoys her last years in a fun retirement.

Seb
Member
Mon Oct 08 13:56:56
Forwyn:

Perhaps, but republicans were being willfully obstructive.

Republicans stopped seeing democratsin any branch as legitimate some time ago, and think that this means anything they do is legitimate.

When the payback comes, it will be immense
swordtail
Anarchist Prime
Mon Oct 08 14:12:02
it's all susan sarandon's fault
Forwyn
Member
Mon Oct 08 14:31:59
lulz @ Seb

The last Associate Justice confirmed without a partisan shitshow was Breyer w/ 87 to 9. RBG got 96-3 the year before.

Roberts had half of Democrats vote against him and Alito started the stark majority trend with 52-48.

Kagan and Sotomayor had several Republicans break ranks to vote for confirmation. Democrats are a much more effective obstructionist bloc when they have the numbers, and they set the precedent.
Sam Adams
Member
Mon Oct 08 14:39:20
Seb lets not pretend for a second that the dems did not contribute to this partisanship. Dems installed their own reliably biased judges, cried that the other party was illegitimate, and ignored lies under oath about sexual misconduct when it suited them as well. Reps and dems have basically switched rolls from the clinton sex scandal, with each group coming off as hypocritical snakes.
Hot Rod
Revved Up
Mon Oct 08 15:05:01

Seb, I would like to know exactly where the Democrats were obstructive,

Hot Rod
Revved Up
Mon Oct 08 15:06:45

Oops, sorry.

I had dosed off and just woke up.


Seb, I would like to know exactly where the Republicans were obstructive,

tumbleweed
the wanderer
Mon Oct 08 15:16:09
Republicans 'respectfully' ignored Garland's nomination?
Forwyn
Member
Mon Oct 08 15:47:20
Comparatively yes, and with precedent.
hood
Member
Mon Oct 08 15:55:58
There was no precedent whatsoever.
kargen
Member
Mon Oct 08 16:01:59
"it's all susan sarandon's fault"

finally someone willing to speak the truth!
Forwyn
Member
Mon Oct 08 16:13:25
"There was no precedent whatsoever."

hurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

http://www...preme-court-picks-in-1992.html
Seb
Member
Mon Oct 08 16:18:44
Forwyn:

A Hitherto unknown definition of precedent - not "this was done previously", but "someone once proposed it". Note In that case four months before the election 290 days.
Seb
Member
Mon Oct 08 16:20:18
HotRod:

They flat out said they would block any appointment to the courts in question.

Basically, republicans don't think democrats should exercise their constitutional responsibilities when in office.
Rugian
Member
Mon Oct 08 16:22:22
Note the date

----

Turmoil Over Court Nominees
By David Von Drehle January 3, 2004

Hatfields and McCoys. Montagues and Capulets. The intractable feudists of lore have nothing on the Republicans and Democrats of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Like all bitter and seemingly endless vendettas, their fight over a relative handful of senior federal judgeships has gone on so long they cannot even agree when it started. Republicans lean toward 1987, when Democrats torpedoed the Supreme Court nomination of Robert H. Bork; Democrats take it back to 1968 and the ousting of chief justice nominee Abe Fortas.

Each side is certain, however, it was the other's fault.

"The level of rancor and acrimony is at an all-time high," said Nan Aron, president of the Alliance for Justice, a leading critic of Bush nominees to the federal courts.

No surprise, then, that the two sides disagree about the significance of a sheaf of internal memos downloaded from the committee's unsecured computer server by snooping staffers and leaked to the media. These memos are now the root of an investigation of the leak by the Senate sergeant-at-arms, ethics complaints, a fair amount of hand-wringing and finger-pointing, and things said off the record that could not be printed in a family newspaper anyway.

The memos, apparently written by aides to Sens. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), sketch the evolution between 2001 and early 2003 of plans to filibuster court nominees perceived as too conservative -- "nazis," in the words of one unidentified Democratic memo writer. At their most pointed, the documents assert that a leading civil rights lawyer urged senators to leave vacancies unfilled on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit while a particular case was pending.

In April 2002, an unnamed Kennedy staffer advised the senator that Elaine Jones, a veteran litigator at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, "would like the Committee to hold off on any 6th Circuit nominees until the University of Michigan case regarding the constitutionality of affirmative action in higher education is decided."


Whoever leaked the memos underlined this sentence and added a note in the margin: "Talk about political!!" But Democrats on the committee are happy to return fire, noting that when Bill Clinton was president, Senate Republicans blocked all nominees to the same court, perhaps with the same explosive affirmative action cases in mind.

The affirmative action cases were ultimately decided this year by the U.S. Supreme Court, but the feuding parties continue to hamstring the 6th Circuit, which is now operating at barely over half-strength after seven years of partisan stalls and stratagems.

"Each party ratchets up the politicization of the process," said Peter Berkowitz, a fellow of the Hoover Institution. "There were Republican abuses that are now taken a step farther by the Democrats -- and I expect when we see the next Democratic president, the Republicans will ratchet it up one more step."


Thus, to a core of Republicans -- including editorial writers and columnists at the Wall Street Journal and Washington Times -- the documents are proof that the opposition has contrived a controversial filibuster of judicial nominees from the raw material of crass politics, driven by the demands of liberal special interest groups.

Democrats, on the other hand, see the memos as evidence of GOP perfidy, no less incriminating than a pillowcase full of silverware in the gloved hands of a burglar.

The story sketched by the leaked memos starts in autumn 2001, not long after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Staff members, whose names have been blacked out, use the memos to update their senators on the views of leading liberal civil rights groups -- including the Alliance for Justice, People for the American Way, the NAACP, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and several abortion rights groups.


Not much new there: All of these groups issue news releases and maintain Web sites to publicize their views. "Some of the memos rather state the obvious," said former White House counsel C. Boyden Gray, who co-founded the Committee for Justice to try to overcome Democratic opposition to Bush nominees.

But the memos do shed light on the tactics and strategies Democrats have chosen to try to block what they say is an effort by Bush to pack the courts with conservative ideologues. And they add weight to charges by Gray and others that key Democrats dug in their heels against Washington lawyer Miguel A. Estrada because they feared that, as a Latino, Estrada would rise quickly and unstoppably to the Supreme Court if he became a judge on the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

The first leaked memo is dated Oct. 15, 2001, not long after Democrats briefly won control of the Senate, thanks to the defection of Vermont Sen. James Jeffords (I) from Republican ranks. An unidentified staff member offers advice to Durbin on the opposition among the civil rights groups to the promotion of U.S. District Judge Charles W. Pickering Sr. to the Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit.

The interest groups were worried that the judge would be swept through on a wave of national unity. "In light of the terrorist attacks," wrote the staffer, "it was their understanding that no controversial judicial nominees would be moved this fall." Three weeks later, apparently the same writer returned to that theme in a memo to Durbin:

"The [civil rights] groups would like to postpone action on [controversial] nominees until next year, when (presumably) the public will be more tolerant of partisan dissent."

At the same time, November 2001, the Durbin aide noted that the liberal groups were particularly worried about Estrada, a Honduran immigrant whose short career had been a rocket ride through the upper reaches of Washington's conservative legal circles. The groups believed that the Bush administration was using Estrada's ethnic identity to bulletproof his judicial ideology -- and they were not sure how to fight back. Estrada was "especially dangerous," the memo writer summed up, "because he has a minimal paper trail, he is Latino, and the White House seems to be grooming him for a Supreme Court appointment."

A string of memos from 2002 shows advice that Kennedy was getting from his staff. Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), then chairman of the Judiciary Committee, had agreed to give hearings to Bush's controversial nominees -- a courtesy, he argued, that Republicans had failed to offer Clinton in his second term. The memo writer urged Kennedy to draw Durbin and Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) into a coalition to press Leahy to stall nominations until after the 2002 election.

After the election, the Democrats were once again in the minority. It was a bitter defeat for the Democrats, who saw Sen. Max Cleland of Georgia unseated in a sharp-edged campaign and lost a Minnesota seat when Sen. Paul D. Wellstone died in a plane crash. The remaining tool available for blocking Bush judicial nominees was the filibuster.

Leaked memos from Kennedy's office sketch the arguments used to persuade reluctant Democrats to test the filibuster on Estrada. "It will be harder to defeat him in a Supreme Court setting if he is confirmed easily now," the staffer summarized. A successful filibuster strategy would require Democrats to approve most Bush nominees to take off the heat for resisting a few, the aide wrote. But it would thwart GOP efforts to set up an "assembly line" of confirmations and -- for good measure -- these fights against conservative judges "particularly energized" the Democratic base.

Another memo indicated that Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) was dragging his feet over the filibuster. The Kennedy aide urged his boss to cajole Bayh and to explain to him just how bitter and politicized the nomination process had become. Later, an aide offered talking points for Kennedy to use in a speech to the entire Democratic caucus. "I've been here for 40 years . . . and this Administration is the worst," the script went. "They dare us to prevent them from packing the courts of appeals with ideologues. . . . We can't repeat the mistake we made with Clarence Thomas."

On that note, the leaked memos return the story to the most divisive episode in the judiciary committee feud: the 1991 confirmation battle over the last Republican nominee to the Supreme Court.

With an election once again looming, the nominations process is virtually certain to remain bogged down for at least a year. Beyond that, it is hard to know how to move the feuding committee from rancor to reason.

"Judicial politics motivates the base of both parties," said Mit Spears, a Washington attorney who vetted judges and pushed confirmations during the Reagan administration. "But it's bad for the rest of us, because we need a system to administer justice. And the number of good potential judges who are willing to put up with the politics is decreasing every day."

Excerpts of memos on court nominees that were leaked to the news media.Some judicial nominees of President Bush, shown with White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales, have been targeted by Democratic strategists. U.S. District Judge Charles W. Pickering Sr. is among judges whose nomination to a circuit court was blocked by Democrats last year.

http://www...rect=on&utm_term=.1321e9e441a9
Hot Rod
Revved Up
Mon Oct 08 16:40:53

Seb, That would be the democrats that said they would block anyone that was nominated.

Kavanaugh in a Republican nominee.

hood
Member
Mon Oct 08 16:54:07
@ forwyn:

Yes, in the few months leading up to the election. Not 10 months before it. There was no precedent for waiting nearly a year to replace a USSC judge because of elections.
Forwyn
Member
Mon Oct 08 17:06:08
@Seb:

"In common law legal systems, a precedent, or authority, is a principle or rule established in a previous legal case that is either binding on or persuasive for a court or other tribunal when deciding subsequent cases with similar issues or facts."

"rule"

"Biden Rule"

@hood:

The speech referenced a summer nomination. The difference between six and ten months is entirely arbitrary; the point is a lame duck President lost his Congressional majority. If the public disliked McConnell antics, they had the option of ejecting them from their seats.

And they didn't. The GOP all but got a vote of approval for their antics, even when it became tied to a Trump presidency.
tumbleweed
the wanderer
Mon Oct 08 17:12:32
not sure why bringing up the 'biden rule' given McConnell says there would be no problem proceeding with a nominee in 2020 thus violating this 'biden rule'


Seb
Member
Mon Oct 08 17:18:40
HotRod:

Pau attention.

Forwyn:

There was no vacancy, no vote, and no vote in the senate. So how is this a rule?

It's a speech by biden, in hypothetical, nothing more.

tumbleweed
the wanderer
Mon Oct 08 17:20:25
weaseldick McConnell is no longer relying on the 'biden rule' to explain Garland in order to protect this hypocrisy... instead claiming:

"You have to go back to 1880 to find the last time a Senate controlled by a party different from the president filled a vacancy on the Supreme Court that was created in the middle of a presidential election year"


as if Supreme Court seats come up so often... and in election years... and when the president & senate are of opposite parties...

not going to research it, but wouldn't be surprised if 1880 was in fact the last time that situation arose prior to Garland
Forwyn
Member
Mon Oct 08 17:35:24
"not sure why bringing up the 'biden rule' given McConnell says there would be no problem proceeding with a nominee in 2020 thus violating this 'biden rule'"

If he maintains his majority.

Not sure why you're acting surprised and butthurt that politicians are hypocrites.

It's a little like Biden acting surprised and butthurt that his words would come back to haunt him.
Seb
Member
Mon Oct 08 17:46:54
Forwyn:

So you won't be surprised when the democrats impeach a conservative justice either.

Biden may have said some loose words. But the republicans actions have been to irretrievably politicise the court.

In the name of partisan positioning, you've undone the principle of separation of powers.

It's the most unconservative action I've seen in an English speaking country. Utter insanity.
Forwyn
Member
Mon Oct 08 17:48:51
"So you won't be surprised when the democrats impeach a conservative justice either."

No, it wouldn't surprise me at all. Despite your whining, Democrats made SC nominations into partisan horse races long before Garland became a household name.

Something tells me you never shed a tear for Bork, cucking about "the most unconservative action I've seen in an English speaking country".
kargen
Member
Mon Oct 08 17:55:45
"So you won't be surprised when the democrats impeach a conservative justice either."

Would be a hell of a feat if they do. Takes a majority in the house (they might get that) and 2/3s of the Senate. I don't think there is a chance in hell of either party getting 66 in the Senate in Kavanaughs lifetime.
tumbleweed
the wanderer
Mon Oct 08 18:08:48
Fox News is the main source of pushing that Dems plan to impeach Kavanaugh, you hear it there way more than anywhere else

the propaganda channel has to keep the base riled up

(it is impossible to succeed given the 67% senate problem, even if there are a few people claiming they will try)
Seb
Member
Mon Oct 08 18:17:07
Forwyn:

"But he started it" nonsence. Republicans have gone far further.

Conservative values normally put a high premium on maintaining institutions and norms.

This is just tribalism. You've fucked your country up quite badly, and calling me a cuck isn't going to help you. Ultimately, you are the one setting fire to your neighborhood in an angry riot. I live in the neighborhood across the river.
kargen
Member
Mon Oct 08 18:28:28
There are more than a few Democrats who are saying if they gain the house they should start impeachment proceedings. They can actually impeach him with majority of the house. Impeachment means that charges are filed. After impeachment it would then go to the Senate so answer if the charges warrant removal. For example President Clinton was impeached but not removed from office because the Senate didn't think the charges were cause for removal from office.
So I am going to change my mind and say the Democrats if they get the house will impeach Kavanaugh to make it an issue in 2020. If they impeach him they think they can use it as a rally point to keep President Trump from nominating another "unworthy" person to the courts.

Cory Booker seems to be the loudest mouth calling for an impeachment but he isn't up for reelection this election and doesn't seem to give a fuck about the Democrats that are. He is already running for 2020.
tumbleweed
the wanderer
Mon Oct 08 18:37:08
i don't know if even Booker has mentioned the impeachment word... they've suggested doing the investigation properly

just like with 'abolish ICE' & 'open borders', Fox News is helping to decide what the Dem message is for its loyal viewers

---

in any case, Kavanaugh just pledged his fealty to Trump & accepted a "TRUMP" brand on his ass
Forwyn
Member
Mon Oct 08 18:45:49
"Republicans have gone far further."

There's really no evidence for this. Virtually every Republican nomination has been contested since the 80s, whereas before nominations were fairly routine and non-partisan. Even past this, Dem nominations of RBG, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan were fairly routine and far less partisan than Republican nom circuses.

Now take a look at this thread. Dems are calling for impeachment and aren't getting outright censured for more retarded schism screeching.

But hurrrrrr Garland got lame ducked. Yeah, that one stonewall is far more unprecedented than three decades of driving the wedge.
Dukhat
Member
Mon Oct 08 19:08:21
Forwyn with the Breitbart arguments after the fact. This fucking board is such a cesspool of retardation.
Forwyn
Member
Mon Oct 08 21:18:03
Again, is there a single person on this board who reads Breitbart?

Probably more that read Salon.
Nimatzo
iChihuaha
Tue Oct 09 03:02:55
”When the payback comes, it will be immense”

This is interesting and frightening because this is what some people were telling liberals before brexit and Trump. With all sides doubeling down, fuckville is next.

Red gang vs blue gang, Bloods and Crips.
kargen
Member
Tue Oct 09 03:04:16
Boker has been saying in campaign speeches that if the Democrats take one of the houses impeachment should be on the table. He also did an interview with Yahoo Sunday where he said much the same thing. He is trying to use the possibility of impeachment to get voters out. Personally I think he might be inspiring the wrong voters.

Attacking President Trump probably plays better and he has been doing that as well. As example, “We’re not defined by a president who mocks a hero in Dr. Blasey Ford. We’re not defined by a president who does not believe women. We’re going to be defined when this state says not only do we believe women, we elect women!” Booker said."

I still think he is running for 2020 already and doesn't give a shit one way or the other about the rest of the party.
Seb
Member
Tue Oct 09 03:30:36
Forwyn:

Have the democrats ever point blank refused to hear a republican nomination?

Have the democrats ever pushed through a judicial appointment who has demonstrably commited perjury.
Seb
Member
Tue Oct 09 03:35:51
Nim:

Yes.

But equally if you compare republican hard ball tactics to Obama's years with repeated attempts to build consensus repeatedly rebuffed, what's the alternative?

Republican behaviour is of a party that doesn't accept the role/concept of loyal opposition.

The way these things work out is inevitably some kind of constitutional crisis or wider conflict that reminds people of the value of restraint.

Seb
Member
Tue Oct 09 03:35:52
Nim:

Yes.

But equally if you compare republican hard ball tactics to Obama's years with repeated attempts to build consensus repeatedly rebuffed, what's the alternative?

Republican behaviour is of a party that doesn't accept the role/concept of loyal opposition.

The way these things work out is inevitably some kind of constitutional crisis or wider conflict that reminds people of the value of restraint.

Nimatzo
iChihuaha
Tue Oct 09 05:53:27
>>But equally if you compare republican hard ball tactics to Obama's years with repeated attempts to build consensus repeatedly rebuffed, what's the alternative?<<

I agree that Republicans were responsible for the last shift in gears, and then they will point to reasons, some of which I think are valid of the shit liberals did and so it goes on and on until you realize this is just like other conflicts. We can do this with Palestine/Israel, the settlements, the terrorism, they did this, they did that, they pulled out, no THEY pulled out etc. and so on until you reach dates before the birth of Jesus...

The alternatives are bleak and the times have permanently and radically shifted the pathways for communication and lowered the bar for incitement with social media. It will not be easy or quick, but the only alternative is for cooler heads to prevail and reconcile.

I see some solutions that I like and think are useful. People and entities starting platforms for dialogue, specifically for the kind of dialogue that breaks down along partisan lines. And the responsibility for this lack of dialogue is squarely with liberals and leftwingers. For all the faults one can point out with conservatives, they are not the people deplatforming or rebuffing debate and dialogue. This is poison.

We must not forget that a large part of important dialogues in a functioning democracy are held outside the formal political arena.

I read someone describe the current times in the USA as a "cold civil war", and I think that fully captures how serious things are. Everyone is drawing lines in the sand, everyone is saying vengeance/payback will come. Those words, perfectly describe my sentiments towards the clergy of the Islamic republic of Iran, there will be a reckoning I say, these are fighting words as one is essentially threatening with future violence (political or otherwise), a casus belli for pre-emptive action. As someone with two perspectives on not getting along in a country, these fighting words, they are not warranted. They will only cement the trajectory.

Just a couple of year ago seb, someone (Pillz I think) was welcoming a civil war. Now you sound like you also think a "wider conflict" could be on the horizon. Here is hoping nothing breaks, that is difficult to fix...
Seb
Member
Tue Oct 09 08:19:41
Nim:

The supreme court stuff means there won't be reconciliation and descalation.

Suppose the democrats go for a round of performative restraint in the hope the Republicans reciprocate.

Let's, for arguments sake, set aside the argument they aready tried this during Obama's first term, and by nominating Garland when Scalia died, who'd previously been hailed by republicans as a centrist acceptable to then.

Firstly there's no acceptance at all by the republicans they've gone too far. Indeed they are couching opposition to Kavanaugh as unprecedented politicisation.
And indeed republican rhetoric and behaviour throughout the Obama era was that the democrats are not legitimate and any means of obstruction was legitimate.

But even if there was a case that the republicans were offering now to return to a more bipartisan line, it would require the democrats to accept a conservative court - unfairly won - with members picked for the explicit purpose of rolling back civil and social liberties.

That's untennable. Especially when the effect of gerrymandering and the electoral college is to stack the executive and legislative branches such that it allows narrow republican wins (which then govern like landslides) with abput as low as only 45% of the popular vote.

If you have a situation where the majority is required to aquiesse to minority rule in all three branches, the system requires an awful lot of restraint principaly from the overrepresented minority.


And this is the key issue: the republicans are generally the beneficiaries of the skew in the American system at the moment, and a correction will see them getting less of what they want (ceding power). But their rhetoric (which their base believes) is the reverse: that they are being oppressed and are the silent majority, the real (rural) Americans not the metropolitan elites.

So fundamentally, I don't think your hands across the divide approach will work. The fundamental legitimacy of the architecture of American democracy looks in question now. I don't think their constitutional framework has the flexibility to accomodate the sensible changes which would be something like a series of reforms on judicial appointments (mandatory retirement, term limits, independent appointment commission).

Any corrective steps will necessarily come from the democrats and thus be illegitimate.

Generally, the flexibility of the uks constitutional framework - which has a similar adversarial bipartisan political culture with strong degrees of political tribalism - has been key to how we've navigated this kind of challenge and avoided revolution since 1689 (few other countries have achieved this). The key ingredients I think are:

1. the role of the crown as an alternative banner to signify executive measures that are "above" partisanship creating clearer lines.
2. Much stronger independent apolitical institutions. Particularly the judiciary. Politicians deciding judges is a terrible idea, as is electing them. And the boundary commission for setting constituencies.
3. Far stronger winner takes all system, but only for a parliament: every party is conscious the shoe will be on the other foot soon, with only mutual restraint preventing insanity.

And even then we've got problems. But I see paths for a more mature culture to quickly recover.

Re conflict, I'm just talking about historical precedents not making predictions. But it's worth remembering the US already fought one war due to breakdown of its constiution, and the UKs history of avoiding major outbreaks of violence is more often the exception not the rule. I just don't see how the US moves beyond this without the democrats winning all branches with enough clout to make structural changes on boundaries and the court. The question is how long that will take and whether rage will explode before then.
Seb
Member
Tue Oct 09 08:22:26
Incremental structural reform in the US has come from the SC. With that route closed off, there's no chance that a bipartisan system will evolve further unless the republicans are willing to give up their inbuilt advantages.
Forwyn
Member
Tue Oct 09 09:57:38
"Have the democrats ever point blank refused to hear a republican nomination?"

Nah, when they have the votes they just Bork them. Again, this has been happening since the eighties.

"Have the democrats ever pushed through a judicial appointment who has demonstrably commited perjury."

Even slimy fucks like McConnell have never pulled Feinstein antics, digging up past accusers and starting a ridiculous train of gangrape stories. So no, Democrats never had to worry about their nominee
a) having to vociferously defend against sexual assault claims
b) having to vociferously defend against claims of youth binge drinking used as an asymmetric avenue to back up sexual assault claims
c) being called unfit for vociferously denying these claims

Yeah, much better to get Garlanded than Kav'd or Borked.

Again, your entire argument hinges on Garland. You're ignoring four decades of Democrats turning nominations into partisan horse races while continuing to largely enjoy easy, uneventful SC nominations.
hood
Member
Tue Oct 09 10:13:11
"You're ignoring four decades of Democrats turning nominations into partisan horse races while continuing to largely enjoy easy, uneventful SC nominations."

Occam's razor would suggest that instead of a sinister conspiracy among Dems to cause discord with Republican nominations, the nominations in question were just bad. We can see this pretty easily, as Republicans are extremely partisan in just about everything, including Justice noms.




Side question:
Has anyone noticed their phone keyboard legit deleting words when you go back to edit something? Does anyone have a suggestion of a keyboard app that doesn't blow chunks the size of Kavrapaugh's victim list?
Forwyn
Member
Tue Oct 09 10:31:20
Are you seriously suggesting that Rehnquist and Roberts were objectively worse or more partisan choices than RBG and Sotomayor?
Rugian
Member
Tue Oct 09 11:42:12
"Occam's razor would suggest that instead of a sinister conspiracy among Dems to cause discord with Republican nominations, the nominations in question were just bad. We can see this pretty easily, as Republicans are extremely partisan in just about everything, including Justice noms."

Interesting how conservative judges are considered "partisan." Perhaps we should return to the days of the non-partisan Warren court instead?
Seb
Member
Tue Oct 09 12:05:26
Forwyn:

6 Republicans sided with the Dems, and Bork's role in the Saturday Night massacre tend to suggest he was a bad pick.
Forwyn
Member
Tue Oct 09 12:38:50
Dems got five New England Republicans along with a Pacific Northwest Republican (i.e. regions that break off to vote with Dems frequently - see Collins for modern example) to vote with them, not because of Nixon antics, but because of drummed up furor about Bork being an originalist.

So again, Dems started the partisan hackery. They even published his video rental history.
hood
Member
Tue Oct 09 14:46:06
"They even published his video rental history."

It should be noted that Republicans support this behavior.
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