Skinny Puppy wrote:

felltoearth wrote:

Skinny Puppy wrote:50 for to 48 against... Justice has been served!

What do you like about the guy?

... but most important, not rule by emotions.

Do you feel your five successive emotes convey that point well?

OlivierK wrote:Idiots. Strap in for a couple more decades of this...

And while you're all strapping in, get ready for 6 more years of President Trump.

Thommo wrote:

Skinny Puppy wrote:

felltoearth wrote:

Skinny Puppy wrote:50 for to 48 against... Justice has been served!

What do you like about the guy?

... but most important, not rule by emotions.

Do you feel your five successive emotes convey that point well?

Come on Thommo, you're far too intelligent to post such nonsense.

Skinny Puppy wrote:

felltoearth wrote:

Skinny Puppy wrote:50 for to 48 against... Justice has been served!

What do you like about the guy?

Where did I say that I liked him?

I neither like him nor do I dislike him. What I do like is justice, not mob rule, not protester rule and not trial by media, but most important, not rule by emotions.

That’s what justice looks like in your world? The whole thing was a sham from top to bottom. If I were interviewing him for a job, he’d get a hard pass.

Skinny Puppy wrote:

Thommo wrote:

Skinny Puppy wrote:

felltoearth wrote:
What do you like about the guy?

... but most important, not rule by emotions.

Do you feel your five successive emotes convey that point well?

Come on Thommo, you're far too intelligent to post such nonsense.

How is it nonsense? You're posting symbols that are literally named after their ability to convey emotions (variously known as emotes, emojis and smileys), in a way that is clearly rubbing people's noses in the fact your side of this dispute has won. We all know this. You, me, everyone.

You can do that (I didn't comment about it, I don't object), clearly you feel provoked, and I wouldn't even say you haven't been. But the flip side of that is that you don't get to simultaneously pretend that emotion and emotiveness are something to condemn or criticise. The standard can be one or the other, but not both.

We could be addressing Kavanaugh in terms of what qualities make for a good supreme court nomination, at what point the testimony of someone in his position could or could not, should or should not disqualify that person from membership of the supreme court, but we aren't.

The elephant in the room is that this thread has long sailed on that front, and in reality the USA has as well. If "this is the last year of Barrack Obama's presidency" is a good enough reason to disqualify a qualified candidate who has done nothing wrong from being on the supreme court, then the bar for disqualification of "a good man" from the job is being set extraordinarily low, and there's simply no standard by which Merrick Garland would fail, but Brett Kavanaugh would pass.

Skinny Puppy wrote:50 for to 48 against... Justice has been served!

Skinny, you're on good terms with several LGBT people on this forum. With a conservative SCOTUS, their rights and freedoms are at risk in the US. Do you not believe this or do you not care? If you watched Kavanaugh before the judiciary committee, then you've seen that he refused to answer in the affirmative that any number of cases related to our rights were resolved correctly. Trump/Pence have already tried to remove trans people from the military. And this is the period in which a number of cases of supposed religious freedom/anti-LGBT discrimination will come before SCOTUS.

Abortion is now at risk, too. Collins gave her vote on the basis that Kavanaugh set out in private that he sees Roe v Wade as established law, but as Prof Melissa Murray outlined in her testimony before the committee, abortion rights and access aren't secured by that precedent alone. The conservative strategy can proceed along different lines by limiting access and overturning later rulings (Murray's arguments trace Kavanaugh's history with subverting such precedents quite well) so that Roe v Wade is dead in everything but name.

If some of us are emotive about these issues, understand that we're not without cause.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/201 ... 547361002/



The court has already lost its "legitimacy." The moment they stood aside and let McConnell hold Merrick Garland in perpetual limbo despite the Constitution and precedent being clear I refused to take the SCOTUS seriously. You think Trump cares what the SCOTUS rules in the future?

For that matter why should any liberal president? As far as I am concerned two of the justices should not even be on the bench. Two of those justices should be seen as hostile and illegitimate.

Not rule by emotions, that's what happened during Kavanaugh's hearing, there was plenty of emotion from him there.

willhud9 wrote:As far as I am concerned two of the justices should not even be on the bench.

If we elected the president by popular vote instead of electoral college, the SCOTUS would be 7 liberal/2 conservative. Trump is also infesting lower courts with Federalist Society judges. If you don't know about the Federalist Society, you can read about it here:
https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2018/09/06/the-man-behind-trump-conservative-judicial-nominees/bJOU7yNNHSGKkcSEXbb4KM/story.html
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2018/jul/06/leonard-leo-supreme-court-replacement-trump-justice-nomination-abortion
https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-secrets-of-leonard-leo-the-man-behind-trumps-supreme-court-pick

It is impossible to overstate the damage that Trump is doing to the judiciary. Still like the electoral college?

willhud9 wrote:https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/10/06/kagan-sotomayor-court-could-lose-legitimacy-if-not-seen-impartial/1547361002/



The court has already lost its "legitimacy." The moment they stood aside and let McConnell hold Merrick Garland in perpetual limbo despite the Constitution and precedent being clear I refused to take the SCOTUS seriously. You think Trump cares what the SCOTUS rules in the future?

For that matter why should any liberal president? As far as I am concerned two of the justices should not even be on the bench. Two of those justices should be seen as hostile and illegitimate.

Agreed and I think the inevitable end will be court packing. There's no reason for a hypothetical Dem Potus/Senate to not simply force through 2 liberal judges the second they have the opportunity. And it also probably means no opposition Senate will confirm an opposing party's nominee in the foreseeable future.

Like our unelected Senate packing the right wing did under Harper .....so Trudeau just cut the Senate out of the Liberal party entirely.

Quite simple when the dems next have power replace the sup court with a new one.

CarlPierce wrote:Quite simple when the dems next have power replace the sup court with a new one.

How would you go about simply doing that?

Seabass wrote:

willhud9 wrote:As far as I am concerned two of the justices should not even be on the bench.

If we elected the president by popular vote instead of electoral college, the SCOTUS would be 7 liberal/2 conservative. Trump is also infesting lower courts with Federalist Society judges. If you don't know about the Federalist Society, you can read about it here:
https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2018/09/06/the-man-behind-trump-conservative-judicial-nominees/bJOU7yNNHSGKkcSEXbb4KM/story.html
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2018/jul/06/leonard-leo-supreme-court-replacement-trump-justice-nomination-abortion
https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-secrets-of-leonard-leo-the-man-behind-trumps-supreme-court-pick

It is impossible to overstate the damage that Trump is doing to the judiciary. Still like the electoral college?

There is no guarantee the popular vote would have elected Clinton over Trump. If our election system was different it would have different parameters for how many people would be motivated to get out and vote.

I stand by my view that the only democratically elected position our country should have should be the House. Everything else should follow the original design of the Constitution instead of being influenced by populist whims.

And as I’ve explained before our electoral college system of today is broken. But only because it’s not following the design set out in the Constitution .

willhud9 wrote:

Seabass wrote:

willhud9 wrote:As far as I am concerned two of the justices should not even be on the bench.

If we elected the president by popular vote instead of electoral college, the SCOTUS would be 7 liberal/2 conservative. Trump is also infesting lower courts with Federalist Society judges. If you don't know about the Federalist Society, you can read about it here:
https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2018/09/06/the-man-behind-trump-conservative-judicial-nominees/bJOU7yNNHSGKkcSEXbb4KM/story.html
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2018/jul/06/leonard-leo-supreme-court-replacement-trump-justice-nomination-abortion
https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-secrets-of-leonard-leo-the-man-behind-trumps-supreme-court-pick

It is impossible to overstate the damage that Trump is doing to the judiciary. Still like the electoral college?

There is no guarantee the popular vote would have elected Clinton over Trump.

You mean like the fact that it did?

Thomas Eshuis wrote:

willhud9 wrote:There is no guarantee the popular vote would have elected Clinton over Trump.

You mean like the fact that it did?

She got the most popular votes, but she did not win the election.

Will is right that you can't categorically say that all the same people would have voted and they all would have voted the same way had the contest rules been different. It might seem likely, but we can never know for sure since it's counterfactual.

The pundits occasionally bring up a case that's to come before the SC during this next term: Gamble v. United States.

From what I understand, if settled law dating back to the 1840's is overturned as a result of this case, Trump's pardons would protect his cronies at both the federal and state levels. Maybe this is why the GOP was in such a foam-at-the-mouth rush to get Kavanaugh confirmed.

Could a Case Currently Before the Supreme Court Result in a Stronger Presidential Pardon?

Thommo wrote:

Thomas Eshuis wrote:

willhud9 wrote:There is no guarantee the popular vote would have elected Clinton over Trump.

You mean like the fact that it did?

She got the most popular votes, but she did not win the election.

Will is right that you can't categorically say that all the same people would have voted and they all would have voted the same way had the contest rules been different. It might seem likely, but we can never know for sure since it's counterfactual.

Not sure, true, but it's evidence in favor of the possibility.

They all pack the court at every available opportunity, been doing that since the founding of the Republic. They've even changed the number of justices on several occasions. This is business as usual in D.C. Why is it suddenly such a major issue, other than disagreeing with the politics of the party in power?