I am not getting the argument that Obama’s choice of a moderate justice is a massive concession even if he can be confirmed before the lame duck session. Over a multi-iteration appointment game, I can see that, but in the single iteration the marginal variations of a typical Democratic appointment to the Court won’t swing that many cases from other scenarios with similar “typical” Democratic appointees. There are two cases we need to think about.
The most critical number on the Supreme Court is five. Five is a majority, and a Justice Garland or a Justice anyone else appointed by Obama or future President Clinton is extremely likely to side with the other four Democratic appointed Justices on the tough 5-4 cases that are not technical disputes over water rights. The key question is not where does Justice Garland stand, but where does the median justice stand.
The New York Times is arguing that scholars believe that the 5th justice in a hypothetical future configuration would either be Justice Breyer or Justice Garland. The current marginal majority justice is usually Justice Kennedy. Moving the marginal Justice to Breyer is a massive improvement. And here ideology matters as it is preferable to move the marginal justice as far to the left as possible so hopefully nominee Garland would be at least slightly to the left of Justice Breyer so that the close decisions are slightly more to the left than they otherwise would have been.
Over a longer term, moving the marginal justice further to the left means having multiple appointments that are to the left of Justice Breyer. And here I see a decent argument that there is a possibility of an opportunity lost if the GOP controlled Senate confirms Justice Garland in the lame duck. But the Democratic appointed/liberal leaning bench is far more tightly clustered than the reactionary side of the bench. So there is less gain possible there.
Ideology matters, but the biggest test is not marginal leftness but if Garland is within the general universe of typical Democratic nominees. And he is.
Baud
I just read an analysis of why Garland is supposed to be worse than Scalia on criminal justice. As I suspected, it was speculative conjecture based on almost no real evidence.
Just One More Canuck
Richard, there you go with your so-called “facts” and “analysis” again. This is the internet, where every event must be met with hair-on-fire delirium.
In all seriousness, thank you for this. And I’m looking forward to more soccer posts. My daughter is in U11 this year, with a potential trip to the US in July
Roger Moore
@Baud:
IOW, it’s bullshit. There should be no need for speculation for a judge who’s been on the bench for the best part of two decades.
Baud
Unlike Scala, Garland will never author my favorite Supreme Court passage:
Baud
@Roger Moore: It seems to be based on that fact that Garland is more likely than other liberals on the DC Circuit to side with prosecutors. That’s not a comparison of Garland and Scalia.
Roger Moore
@Baud:
You missed this one:
I have a hard time believing that Garland would be worse than that.
FlipYrWhig
@Baud: It’s also based on the fact that Scalia was sometimes heterodox on law enforcement matters. So you can say WORSE THAN SCALIA SKREE because the people who hear it will say “Scalia? That guy totally sucks!” instead of “Scalia? That guy totally sucks, except on a handful of law enforcement cases where he was libertarian-ish.” I’m running out of patience with the online left’s attempt to build its own Bullshit Mountain. Stop me before I go Full Bob Somerby, though, please.
SFAW
So CNN.com tells me that The Turtle is whining that “The Dems started it with trying to filibuster Alito.” I’m wondering: what ever happened to that guy Alito? I mean, after getting denied a Judiciary Committee hearing and a confirmation vote, did he just fade into obscurity as a paralegal for the 48th Circuit Court of Appeals? I mean you never hear about him any more. Makes you wonder why lie-beral bloggers used to talk about “Scalito.”
Do YOU know what happened to Alito, Mitch? You dishonest, evil motherfucker.
Downpuppy
I think you’re right on excluding routing cases, but I’d go a little farther. The object is to avoid atrocities, the call in your chips cases like Shelby County, Citizens United, or Bush vs Gore, where they drop all pretense of impartiality & make a direct attack on democracy.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone :)
Loviatar
wow, two FPer in a row and its not even 9:00am EST.
The Obots must of got their message early this morning.
msdc
I was going to link to that (excellent) NYT graphic today and you beat me to it, Richard.
My biggest takeaway from the piece: if Garland is confirmed, we would have the most liberal median justice – in other words, the most liberal Supreme Court – since the Warren court of the late 1960s. And Obama has picked a judge who is almost ideally suited for confirmation.
Please proceed, senators.
hueyplong
When Mitch McConnell begins anything with “the Democrats started it…” he is admitting (1) that his position is bullsh1t and (2) that he is just defensively attempting to explain why his bullsh!t is really something else if you squint really hard and tilt your head to the right.
The kind of people who are inclined to buy such bullsh!t are the target audience for our long-desired statement by Michelle Obama that, “Under no circumstances, and I’m looking at you, white boy, are you ever to drink bleach with your Bud Light.”
rikyrah
just dust in my eyes..lots of dust
…………………..
FEEL GOOD
GIRL SURPRISES STEPDAD WHO RAISED HER WITH ADOPTION PAPERS
Friday, March 11, 2016 09:39AM
JOLIET, Ill. — The heartwarming story of a young Illinois woman giving the man who raised her the gift of a lifetime is going viral with more than 36 million views online.
The woman, who goes by the name Misty Nicole Knight on Facebook, surprised her father-figure with a letter officially asking him to adopt her and recorded his reaction in a video she later shared on the social media site.
Take a look at the moment that has left the Internet in tears:
Paul in KY
@Roger Moore: Scalia is so FOS on that one. The Constitutional Amendment that bans ‘cruel & unusual’ punishment would ban the execution of a prior convicted/condemned person who is then adjudicated to be actually innocent.
Paul in KY
@rikyrah: Hey, hey!
rikyrah
Frances Robles @FrancesRobles 3h3 hours ago
Sasha and Malia will join President Obama on his trip to #Cuba. Michelle will meet with high school age girls.
msdc
@FlipYrWhig:
Quoted for truth.
Cermet
The elephant in the room issue is whether this “man” (as in male) will reverse the criminal strategy used by thugs to shut down woman’s reproductive health services. Whether he sides with the State more relative to criminal cases/police, while important, pales compared to how critical to lives/well being the issue of woman’s health maters. Here, I assume he was thoroughly vetted but I’ve seen zero on this critically important issue.
GregB
Yes the freak out over Merrick’s relative moderation seems unwarranted. If you replace an ultra conservative with a moderate to liberal that is a big win.
However looking at that chart it almost seems that Scalia was becoming a bit more liberal in his old age.
rikyrah
Posted without comment:
Carson on Trump comparing him to a child molester: “It did work”
March 16, 2016
On March 16, 2016, Dr. Ben Carson spoke to Yahoo News and Finance Anchor Bianna Golodryga on “Yahoo News Live” about his endorsement of GOP frontrunner Donald Trump and Trump’s big wins in the March 15 primaries.
Golodryga pressed Carson on his support for Donald Trump even though Trump had compared him to a child molester. Carson said he accepted Trump’s explanation for the remark, and that it was, in fact, effective. “He said that it was political. He was concerned about the fact that he couldn’t shake me. I understand politics and, in particular, the politics of personal destruction, and you have to admit, to some degree, that it did work.” He continued, “A lot of people believed him.”
Loviatar
You fuckwads just don’t get it.
Just like Obama you think its still a game, you think its 11th dimensionally chess or something. As soon as there is a Republican President with a Republican Senate they will ram through judges that will make Scalia seem like Justice Ginsburg.
The republicans aren’t playing to win a game they’re out to win a war.
Paul in KY
@rikyrah: What can one say to that?!
Roger Moore
@hueyplong:
The real problem with McConnell’s statement is that he’s pretending to be involved in tit-for-tat, but he’s really escalating massively. This isn’t “an eye for an eye” it’s “he sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue”.
rikyrah
NFL Rams owner Stan Kroenke wanted the players of his now Los Angeles-based team to remain classified as Missouri workers because…
Of Missouri’s weaker workers compensation laws.
Ben
Can we stop with the “lame duck” bullshit? That phrase only applies to the period of time when a new POTUS has been elected and when they are inaugurated. The media and the GOTP are trying to sell the “lame duck” bs as the last year of a Presidency and it isn’t… at least according to Miriam Webster.
japa21
@Loviatar: Hmm, now that is an example of an unenlightened comment.
What does your statement about Republicans have to do with anything?
And I highly doubt that Obama in any way shape or form views this as a game.
rikyrah
I don’t even understand how we’re supposed to take this seriously. I mean, the entire idea is ridiculous to me. Am I the only one?
The voters are choosing one person. Sure, he might fall a little short,in terms of delegates, but in state, after state, that clown is winning. The GOP voters are choosing him.
And, they are like, discussing this as a possibility?
………………….
Kasich camp names advisers with contested convention experience
John Kasich’s campaign announced a quartet of high-profile additions to its national strategy council on Tuesday night, fresh off the Ohio governor’s victory in his home-state primary, as he tries to force a contested convention in Cleveland this July.
“Governor Kasich showed tonight how you defeat Donald Trump and bring our party together,” chief strategist John Weaver said in a statement. “This is going to be a long road to the nomination in Cleveland, and we’re thrilled to grow our team of advisers with some of the best minds in the Republican Party.”
Those joining the effort include Stu Spencer, who served as Ronald Reagan’s chief strategist for his two gubernatorial campaigns in California in 1966 and 1970 and his two presidential campaigns in 1980 and 1984; Charlie Black, who advised Reagan and both Bushes in the White House, as well as Sen. John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign; former Rep. Vin Weber (R-Minn.), who advised Newt Gingrich leading up to the 1994 midterm elections as well as serving as a top adviser to presidential candidates Bob Dole, George W. Bush and Mitt Romney in past campaigns; and longtime Tennessee operative Tom Ingram, who served in a similar capacity for erstwhile candidate Jeb Bush.
Kasich’s campaign, in its announcement, made sure to note that Spencer “played a central role” in helping President Gerald Ford secure the GOP nomination at the 1976 convention, the last such time there was a contested convention, which is the governor’s sole path to the Republican nomination at this juncture. Black also worked on Reagan’s 1976 presidential campaign, which lost out to Ford at the convention in Kansas City, Missouri.
japa21
@Ben: Well, we can stop with it. I don’t think that will have any impact on the media or the GOP.
hueyplong
@Roger Moore: That works really well in the off year elections. This year, McConnell’s statements are taking place in the context of a Trump candidacy. It’s harder now to hide the escalation ball.
rikyrah
Really? Seriously?
GOP official: The party chooses the nominee, not the voters
March 16, 2016
A member of the Republican National Committee’s Rules Committee said Wednesday that the party will decide who the GOP nominee will be, not the voters.
“The media has created the perception that the voters will decide the nomination,” Curly Haugland said in an interview with CNBC. “That’s the conflict here.”
“The political parties choose their nominees, not the general public, contrary to popular belief,” he added.
Haugland was then asked what the point of holding primaries is if the party can disregard the will of the voters.
“That’s a very good question,” he responded.
rea
@Baud: Scalia was surprisingly decent on a handful of criminal procedure issues, although often for eccentric reasons. Ranking the justices on a simple left-right axis isn’t always going to tell you how they are going to vote on a particular case. Unless I can get a president to nominate me, no justice is going to vote the way I want every single time. Garland is probably going to be as good as Kagan, and better than Breyer, on these issues.
rikyrah
GOP rolls out baffling double standard for Obama’s Court nominee
03/17/16 08:40 AM
By Steve Benen
Just about every senator in both parties issued written statements yesterday responding to President Obama nominating Judge Merrick Garland for the Supreme Court, but Sen. Pat Toomey’s (R-Pa.) stood out as unique.
Facing a credible re-election challenge this year, Toomey has already joined his party’s blockade against any high court nominee this year, but in his press release, the Pennsylvania Republican managed to blaze his own trail: “Should Merrick Garland be nominated again by the next president, I would be happy to carefully consider his nomination.”
Hmm. If some other president nominates Garland, Toomey might support the jurist’s confirmation, but not this president. Garland may deserve careful consideration in January 2017, but in March 2016, according to Toomey, it’s out of the question.
On the campaign trail in Pennsylvania yesterday, Republican presidential hopeful John Kasich adopted a related line. The Ohio governor made the case that other presidents can put forward Supreme Court nominees in the early months of their final year in office, but this president should not. The Washington Post reported:
“I think a president can pick a nominee in the last year, but the fact is, you have somebody who’s created this terrible polarization,” said Kasich. “You cannot stiff the legislative body that you have to work with. You just can’t do that. And he’s had no relationship with them. He got Obamacare – not one [Republican] vote. Then he did executive orders, which he shouldn’t have done. It’s a total breakdown down there.”
According to a video of the comments, Kasich added that a Supreme Court nomination means “more fighting, more fighting,” which is something the White House should avoid.
None of this makes any sense at all.
Marc
@Ben: The right has been portraying Obama as 3/5 a President anyway, so by that math he’s been out of office for a while (2.4 Obama years = 4.0 non-Obama years).
O. Felix Culpa
@rikyrah: Good morning!
OzarkHillbilly
@Loviatar: You lost me at “fukwads”.
japa21
On the previous thread it was pointed out that the mere fact that Hatch recommended Garland in the past and gave him glowing reviews is reason enough in itself to be against Garland.
Know who else Hatch has recommended. He is the one who recommended Ginsberg to Clinton. Obviously she should never have been nominated.
And I second rea’s comment:
The same thing applies to electing a president. As far as I know, the only person who meets the Constitutional requirements for President and I can agree with on all issues is me. Well, maybe Baud.
hueyplong
@OzarkHillbilly:
It seems odd to say that the type of people who read and comment here would be excessively oblivious to whether Republicans might pose a problem.
japa21
@OzarkHillbilly: Better response than mine. Thank you.
Loviatar
@OzarkHillbilly:
don’t care
@hueyplong:
as long as i keep reading Obama’s playing 11 dimension chess on the FP and in the comments then I know the people here are oblivious to the Republican problem.
SFAW
@Marc:
Finally! Someone who gets it!
My only concern is that they’ve been paying him a full salary, instead of 60 percent.
One point to consider: if we use your math, he was actually no longer President around November, 2013. (Assuming two consecutive terms of 2.4 years, although that gets into him serving his second 60-percent term before getting re-elected, which in turn means …. ah, ferget it)
Anyway, that means there’s been a shadow government running things for the last two-and-a-half years! Does Alex Jones know this? Somebody should drop him a line!
Sorry for getting carried away on this.
Weaselone
@Marc:
By that math, if they start treating Obama as if he were the President now, we would need a Constitutional amendment to extend his last term by about 4 years to get him to 3/5 of two terms.
hueyplong
@Loviatar: Looks like maybe we’ll have to agree to disagree about what you know.
Iowa Old Lady
I’ve been trying to imagine what the reaction would be to a president who refused to nominate someone when a Supreme Court seat fell empty. I presume the politics of that are why the Constitution says the president “shall” nominate someone. The Rs refusal to advise and consent is just as unconstitutional.
OzarkHillbilly
@japa21: No way on Baud. That guy’s just another DINO.
SFAW
@Loviatar:
Perhaps you can propose a Final Solution to the
JewishRepublican problem?SFAW
@Weaselone:
Outstanding!
japa21
@Loviatar: Don’t care that you don’t care.
JMG
Here’s a good one. According to Ed Kilgore, Erick Erickson is trying to get other rightist anti-Trumpers to select a candidate for one of the fringe parties who would run as the “real” Republican. The plan isn’t to win, but to throw the election to the House where the “real” Republican would be elected despite finishing third. These people really hate democracy. Power is legitimate when I hold it, no matter how I got it.
WarMunchkin
@Iowa Old Lady: I honestly don’t think the founders anticipated anything so juvenile. They were flawed people, too.
Barbara
@Loviatar: Okay, so this is a given. I don’t disagree with you. But what does that have to do with the nomination of Garland? By your logic, the most important thing is to get a palatable judge who is most likely to be confirmed. By all accounts, Garland seems to fit that bill. A couple of other picks probably would have as well, but unlike them, Garland actually has a pretty well-known record of opinions, thus removing the “great unknown” as a factor that might give either side pause. It also sets Obama up to nominate yet another person to the D.C. Court of Appeals. Even Garland’s age is not really an issue. I mean, for people of his socio-economic class, 60 is like the new 40. He could be around for 25 years.
SFAW
@japa21:
I don’t know what the Constitution says about a person simultaneously holding the offices of President and Supreme Court Justice. Maybe one of our Constitutional experts can weigh in?
OzarkHillbilly
@Loviatar:
japa21
@JMG: I love this concept of throwing the election to the House. That happens when nobody has a majority of the electoral votes. How would having a third party do anything but put Clinton well over 300 electoral votes and possibly over 400?
LAO
@JMG: way, way back, when I was an undergrad polysci major, I was taught that the core definition of a democracy was not free elections, but the peaceful transition of power after a vote. This election (as well as 2000) reminds me of that concept.
SFAW
@japa21:
Well, it’s not as if Ewick of Ewick has ever been known as a deep thinker. Or even a thinker, deep or not, for that matter.
pseudonymous in nc
Does he believe women have agency? If so, he’s an improvement on Kennedy.
japa21
@LAO: All things considered, 2000 was peaceful, except for the GOP operatives bullying the chad counters.
This year will really out that concept to a test. We have Trump threatening riots (and implicitly approving them) if he doesn’t get the nomination. And if he loses the general (I even hate having to use the word if) he may do the same.
Loviatar
@Barbara:
the most important thing is to get a palatable judge who is most likely to be confirmed.
Nope.
The most important thing is to get a liberal/progressive judge confirmed. If the current Senate refuses to confirm, you inform them post election you will burn it down and nominate the most liberal/progressive judge you can find.
—–
You know what the difference between an opponent and an enemy is?
You can compromise with an opponent, an enemy just wishes you dead. The Republicans see Democrats as enemies, Democrats still see Republicans as opponents.
Paul in KY
@Barbara: I think Loviator thinks Pres. Obama should have nominated a left wing version of Scalia & tried to get them confirmed.
Edit:; Tadaaaa!!
Paul in KY
@japa21: Right! Your super groovy 3rd party has to actually capture states & get actual electoral votes to get election sent to House.
dedc79
Neil F’ing Cavuto just gave Orin Hatch a way harder time than NPR:
LAO
@japa21: totally agree about 2000. Included it as an example of the Democrats respect for this fundamental rule. A respect, we are not and will not see from the Republicans.
OzarkHillbilly
@japa21: The real constitution is trumped by the made up one they have in their heads.
mdblanche
Garland’s appointment should shift the court further left than Alito’s appointment shifted it right. That’s good enough for me.
But better labeling on that chart would be nice too. It’s very hard to tell which dot represents which justice over time.
NonyNony
@Loviatar:
True and not completely irrelevant. We have a Democratic President and a Republican Congress with about a 25% chance of losing the presidency in November to Donald Trump. Who will then have a Republican Congress and can shove through whatever justices he wants.
So there you go – getting a moderate who moves the center of the court to the left now is better than the hypothetical situation you outline where we have a Republican President and Congress putting someone worse than Scalia on the court and keeping the status quo as far as the median court vote goes.
I think you’ve just made Obama’s case for him, despite somehow thinking that you weren’t.
japa21
@Loviatar: So you are saying Obama should have shirked his constitutional responsibility and not nominated anybody. Either that or you are saying he should have basically ruined a liberal judge’s career.
OzarkHillbilly
@Paul in KY: I think he thinks Obama, Biden, Pelosi, Reid, and every other Dem in govt should have committed mass seppuku the day after his nomination so a True Liberal Dawn ™ would come to America.
Punchy
Wow, there’s so many ways this headline could go. It could imply that adoption papers are made of some strong shit, enough to lift ~150lbs. It could mean that StepDad used papers to feed and clothe his daughter, perhaps not so great an image. It could merely mean that Girl screamed “Boo!” at StepDad the minute he finished the paperwork. It could infer that a random female jumped a random Dad who happened to be on his second marriage to a woman with kids, at which point Dad provoked the confrontation by slapping her with legal documents in his briefcase….
Paul in KY
@OzarkHillbilly: Oh, OzarkHillbilly, when that wonderful day arrives, twill be like a Jubilee times eleventy!!
scav
I’m also thinking that Obama would have paid utterly solid attention to a judge that would pay attention to the constitution and the law and not go free-ranging into personal agends under color of legalisms. And I’d personally take that over even a judge that mirrored all my personal preferences. Similar to ACLU — I find it somehow comforting they protect the rights of people I’d be tempted to hit with sticks if we ended up at a dinner party together.
Laertes
The senate doesn’t get to confirm Garland in the lame duck. That’s not a decision they get to unilaterally make–Obama can withdraw the nomination at that point, arguing that with virtually no time left in his presidency, and with the USSC term already well underway, the decision ought properly be left to the incoming President Clinton.
This fantasy of the Republicans–that they can wait to see how the election turns out before deciding to pocket the generous offer Obama has made–is a poker player who wants to see the river card before he makes his turn bet.
No way in hell Obama lets them do it.
Just Some Fuckhead
Nine more months until we get to quit speculating about 11 dimensional chess and just how immersed is Obama in my own personal blog politics?
He does what The Illuminati tells him to do, Sheeple. Duh.
scav
@Punchy: Maybe said stepdad just placed the adoption papers in the crib next to said girl? Drove them to school together and danced with both at the father-daughter-adoptionpapers dance.. They were raised together.
DrZZ
@Loviatar:
One thing I haven’t seen related to the worth of holding out for a solidly liberal Supreme Court appointment is the effect on the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The notion seems to be that if Clinton is elected and the Senate flips, it would be possible to get a much more liberal appointment, which is almost certainly true, but it also leaves Garland as chief justice of the appeals court. It isn’t at all clear to me why having Breyer as the swing vote on the Supreme Court and Garland as chief justice of the appeals court is much better than having Garland/Breyer as the swing vote and a solidly liberal Clinton appointee as chief justice of the appeals court. Would a solidly liberal chief justice of the appeals court have negligible effect?
Loviatar
I see its still a game to some, mocking and entertaining themselves.
Yup this is going to end well.
Paul in KY
@Punchy: Those pesky commas. Probably already heard this from me: When Edward II was being detained after his removal, a cleric in the government sent a Latin message to his captors. Depending upon the insertion of commas, the message could either be read as “Don’t kill Edward as it would be a bad thing” or ‘Killing Edward would be a good thing”.
The cleric declined to put any commas in the message. Edward II was then dispatched.
Laertes
The senate doesn’t get to confirm Garland in the lame duck. That’s not a decision they get to unilaterally make–Obama can withdraw the nomination at that point, arguing that with virtually no time left in his presidency, and with the USSC term already well underway, the decision ought properly be left to the incoming President Clinton.
This fantasy of the Republicans–that they can wait to see how the election turns out before deciding to pocket the generous offer Obama has made–is a poker player who wants to see the river card before he makes his turn bet.
No way Obama lets them do it.
Matt McIrvin
@rikyrah: They’re just trying to undo the rise of the modern primary system and take things back to how they worked before the 1970s. It’s kind of amazing now to think it, but in 1968, Hubert Humphrey got the Democratic nomination without having won a single primary. And it wasn’t even a brokered convention.
Laertes
The senate doesn’t get to confirm Garland in the lame duck. That’s not a decision they get to unilaterally make–Obama can withdraw the nomination at that point, arguing that with virtually no time left in his presidency, and with the USSC term already well underway, the decision ought properly be left to the incoming President Clinton.
This fantasy of the Republicans–that they can wait to see how the election turns out before deciding to pocket the generous offer Obama has made–is a gambler who wants to see the river card before he makes his turn bet.
No way Obama lets them do it.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@NonyNony: also, too, while I think Dems have a better than even chance of flipping the Senate, it’s not much better than even. And Heidi Headlamp and Joe Minchin will still be there.
Word Press, why are you correcting proper names? you’re not supposed to do that
ETA: Also, for those who weren’t here during her (I think) last spasm of posting, Loviator is one dumb fucking asshole, a former PUMA who went Naderite to piss on Obama. Just for context.
liberal
My question: why do Democrats vote for Republican nominees? E.g. Roberts (who, yes, isn’t as bad as e.g. Alito, but still very bad):
The Senate voted on the nomination beginning at 11:30 a.m. EDT on September 29, with Roberts winning confirmation by a 78–22 vote. All 55 Republicans voted to confirm Roberts; 22 Democrats, including Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Patrick Leahy of Vermont, also voted to confirm Roberts, as did the one independent (Jim Jeffords). 22 Democrats, including Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, voted in opposition.
In any sane world, Roberts would be viewed as a far-right justice.
Paul in KY
@Loviatar: If all us commenters take this with the appropriate level of seriousness, how would that influence Pres. Obama’s already made nomination?
RoonieRoo
I’m sure someone else has discussed this in depth but it’s the thing that keeps popping up for me whenever I think of the SCOTUS nominee crap the GOP is pulling. Aren’t they going to be really screwed come June if what I think is going to happen happens? By June it will be beyond deniability that Trump will be the GOP nominee. This means that waiting for the next President to do the SCOTUS appt will be either Trump or Hillary.
At that point, they really are in between a rock and a rock on fire. If they realize their best bet is to go with Obama’s choice they have to walk back all the nonsense about tradition and the people’s choice crap and several of them will get primaried on the right.
To me, they seriously screwed themselves with this one.
benw
@Paul in KY: those kind of mistakes are all too comma.
OzarkHillbilly
@Paul in KY: When that day arrives I will have been dead a long long time.
NonyNony
@Loviatar: Well I for one would like you to explain exactly what Obama is supposed to do differently with a Republican Congress.
I don’t get exactly how he’s supposed to get a far-left progressive on the court with the Congress we have. Even if he wanted to (which I doubt he would because, as he said when he was campaigning in 2008 and has continued to show time and time again when given the opportunity, he’s a left-leaning centrist technocrat, not a far-left progressive.)
dedc79
Good article about Garland written by one of his former clerks:
Kylroy
Somebody on Dkos was bitching about Garland being a wasted opportunity, since a compromise nominee could only win over a few fence-sitters who’d vote D for president but R on the rest of the ticket, whereas a liberal nominee would fire up more Dem voters who would vote straight D in every race.
Meanwhile, obstructing R senators are already getting hit with attack ads and losing approval over how they won’t approve an eminently qualified centrist nominee. I swear, the Democratic party’s Green Lantern Corps really *is* determined to construct their own private BS mountain.
Loviatar
@DrZZ:
Of course a liberal chief justice of the appeals court will have a significant affect. However remember, lawyers can jurisdiction shop.
Peale
@RoonieRoo: Why would they think Trump’s choice would be bad for them? I’m pretty sure you could count on a Trump pick to be a law and order pro-business arch conservative.
mdblanche
@Paul in KY: Something something strippers JFK Stalin.
liberal
@Loviatar:
Yeah, I don’t get it either. Some other kid on the playground keeps kicking you in the nuts, and you argue with him about why he shouldn’t be doing that.
Though there really is a very simple explanation. It’s much easier to “do politics” with money than elbow grease. Money means elite donors. The Republican elite donors are horrifyingly awful radicals. The Democrat elite donors are, by and large, socially liberal centrists. IMHO the latter don’t have what it takes (in terms of inclination) to really excise the cancer on the body politic that the American right has become.
Elbow grease can work, but that involves essentially solving a massive collective action problem. Usually real work on that problem doesn’t get started until things get very, very bad.
FlipYrWhig
@Loviatar: THIS IS NOT A GAME POSTING ON BLOGS IS NOT SERIOUS POLITICAL ACTIVIS oh wait
rikyrah
UH HUH
UH HUH
…………………….
America’s Whites-Only Weed Boom
Black Americans were disproportionately targeted in the “war on drugs.” Now state laws and steep regulatory costs have left them far more likely to be shut out of America’s profitable marijuana boom
Mar. 16, 2016, at 10:01 p.m.
When Colorado’s first medical marijuana dispensaries opened in 2009, Unique Henderson was psyched. He’d been smoking weed since he was 15, and he’d even learned how to grow, from his ex-girlfriend’s father. He spent $750 on classes about how to run a cannabis business, and then he and a friend both applied to work at a Denver pot shop.
Then only his friend was hired. Henderson was more than qualified, so why didn’t he get the gig? His friend asked the managers and came back with infuriating news: Henderson was not allowed to work in the legal cannabis industry because he had been caught twice with a joint’s worth of pot as a teenager back in Oklahoma, and as a result he has two drug possession felonies on his record.
For most jobs, experience will help you get ahead. In the marijuana industry, it’s not that simple. Yes, investors and state governments are eager to hire and license people with expertise in how to cultivate, cure, trim, and process cannabis. But it can’t be someone who got caught. Which for the most part means it can’t be someone who is black.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
If Dem voters aren’t fired up at this point, I have a hard time imagining that Jane Kelly or Sri Srinivasan would become a rallying cry.
liberal
@WarMunchkin:
The real problem here is that the presidential system (as opposed to parliamentary system) is fatally flawed. Billmon has been talking about this on his twitter feed.
FlipYrWhig
@liberal:
Half the Democratic Party’s voters are “moderates,” a/k/a socially liberal centrists.
FlipYrWhig
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: This. I’m getting kind of exhausted with the analysis that evaluates every political decision on the basis of whether it “fires up” some segment of people anyway.
Bobby Thomson
Anyone who gets confirmed will be to the right of Breyer. Garland is. Garland is also to the right of Srinivasan. I’m not convinced he’s that far to the left of Kennedy. As a feint I suppose he works, except that no one is going to base their vote for president or senate on the senate’s failure to confirm. Voters are too stupid to understand less complicated concepts.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@FlipYrWhig: and there are still a few fiscal-liberal-social-conservatives out there, the not-quite-Reagan-Democrats. The polar opposite of the tote bagger/Villager ideal voter. Such an inconceivable beast that on 30 Rock, Tina Fey made Liz Lemon’s meathead bridge-and-tunnel ex-boyfriend a FLSC.
OzarkHillbilly
@Laertes:
So you think Obama will cut off Garland’s nose to spite the Republican’s faces?
NonyNony
@liberal:
Because at the time of the Roberts appointment:
a) Democrats did not believing in filibustering SCOTUS nominees. Voting against them, yes, not filibustering. So the nominee was going to get a vote.
b) Democrats were not united. The Democrats in 2005 were a mish-mash of various ideologies. Look at the names of the Dems voting to confirm:
Chris Dodd
Russ Feingold
Byron Dorgan
Patrick Leahy
Joe Lieberman
Ben Nelson
Jay Rockefeller
Ken Salazar
Ron Wyden
Just a sprinkling of names that voted to confirm from the (D) side. Note there’s a mix in there – some of these guys are conservative Dems who likely thought that with a Republican president Roberts was about what they could expect. Others might be of the “elections have consequences” school of thought, believing that if the voters had just returned W to power (which they had) then they should defer to his choice so long as he wasn’t putting someone up who was unqualified. (This was actually a pretty common argument for a long time – one of the reasons that reporters beat up on Dems for voting against Bork was because he was technically qualified, they just didn’t like his politics, and that since “elections have consequences” the president should receive deference so long as he isn’t trying to appoint Harriet Myers or something.)
In general, Democratic voters and Democratic politicians tend to believe that a) elections have consequences and democratic results should be respected and b) keeping the government running is more important than burning it all down to stop Republicans from getting their way. Republicans believe the opposite most of the time (which is why they use the tactics they use against Democrats – because they work with Democratic voters).
Cermet
@rikyrah: Again, being part of the elite group has privileges well beyond not getting chosen last for the team
Amir Khalid
@Punchy:
Tsk, tsk. “It could imply that …”
The person saying/writing a statement is implying something. The person hearing/reading the statement infers what they think is being implied.
LAO
@liberal:
Democrats voted for Roberts and Alito — even though they are demonstratively far right — because they were both qualified. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t agree with their politics and I practice in the federal courts. (Not sure where all this progressive/liberal Judges are hiding, I don’t seem to come across them often).
IMO, the major revolution of the tea party and the collapse of the moderate wing of the Republic party, is their total lack of respect for “process.” I bemoan the Democrats and what I perceive to be their fundamental cowardliness on an almost daily basis — but the fact is, because Democrats are concerned with actual governance. And that concern, includes a respect for process and procedural norms. I may not love it — but that is reality.
LAO
@NonyNony:
Agree 100%
NonyNony
@Kylroy:
This shows that someone has not been paying attention to how politics works in 21st century America. Almost nobody who votes votes split-ticket anymore. You go in and vote party line, except for the occasional protest vote or because you personally know the individual running and want to vote for them even though they’re in the other party (something else that I suspect is more rare now than it was before).
The trick is getting people to show up to vote, but once you have them in the voting booth they don’t vote for some Republicans and some Democrats anymore – the differences between the two parties are too stark for anyone to seriously do that. You got that a lot when the two parties both contained a lot more moderates and were less ideologically polarized. Now it’s all about GOTV. And honestly, Yet Another Example Of Republican Obstructionism probably gets more moderate and lukewarm Dems to show up and vote than Republicans Are Blocking A Fierce Progressive Voice would. And those are the folks whose lack of voting tends to cost the Dems in midterm election losses.
Mary
This is correct, but in the long run the legal rationale behind a majority decision may be just as important – and in many cases, even more so – than the decision in the case itself. It’s possible to make a major decision on fairly minor grounds that won’t disrupt precedent, and it’s possible to insert a major substantive change in the law into a very minor decision. In such cases, the relative liberalness of individual justices may actually be important.
That being said, my only issue with Garland, assuming he is actually confirmed, is his age.
Laertes
@OzarkHillbilly:
I don’t think Obama does anything out of spite. I think that if Garland isn’t confirmed by election day, then the president will withdraw the nomination and explain that now, at this late date, the decision ought properly be made by the next president. And at that point he’d be right. Now, a year out? It’s silly. In November, with the clock nearly expired and the name of the next president already known? Makes a lot of sense at that point.
Loviatar
8 years ago on this site I used an incorrect word to describe why I was choosing Hilliary over Obama. I said she was more experienced than him, it turned into a whole hullabaloo and went to a direction that didn’t fit what I was trying to convey. I think the word I wanted to use was naive or I should say the phrase less naive.
I still see some of that naivety with this nomination. It’s a we’ll nominate a moderately liberal judge and trap them with our 11th dimension chess mentality. NOOOO, you’re dealing with people who are quite comfortable seeing you and your family come to grave harm in the furtherance of their political beliefs.
Why are you playing games with them?
Roger Moore
@RoonieRoo:
Well, they don’t get primaried on the right this election because the primaries will be over by that point. And by the next election, they can either justify their position by pointing to Hillary’s victory as a good reason for having given Garland a hearing, or there will be such a huge shitstorm surrounding Trump that everything else will be lost in the noise.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@FlipYrWhig:
Oh, believe me, we will. That guy lost the plot a long time ago.
RoonieRoo
@Peale: Because I think they know very well that Trump is playing a character in this election. He’s a wild card and I don’t think we can assume anything about what he will do if elected.
john b
@Paul in KY: Having studied Latin long, long ago, I don’t really see how this is possible and really doubt the veracity of the story. I’ve been looking for it, because I’m curious, but I can’t find anything about it. Do you have a link?
Face
I dont get it. Been a while since 6th grade civics class….can you explain how this happens?
Thoroughly Pizzled
@liberal: If the Democrats behave as cynically as the Republicans, it just destroys people’s faith in government even more. Obama made this point more than 10(!) years ago.
m.dailykos.com/story/2005/9/30/153069/-
Roger Moore
@NonyNony:
He’s supposed to keep nominating far left candidates even if they can’t get through the Senate because that will make lefties happy. It’s the same logic that says we should have killed Obamacare because it wasn’t perfect. It’s easy to be in favor of purity ponies when you don’t have much personally at stake in the decision.
msdc
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I look forward to watching her go Stein just to piss on Clinton.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Agreed. Nothing that happens this far out from election day will be remembered next month, never mind in November. All of our assumptions about anything at this point about what will motivate someone to get up and vote could be blown up by one event just prior to the election – and it literally could be anything from another ebola panic to another San Bernardino. I believe that most voters are just a bunch of nervous sheep. Can you say “Reichstag fire”?
scav
@john b: It’s in Wiki, although that counts neither for nor against its mythic nature. Queen Isabella but you’ll need to search down.
eta: Latin: Eduardum occidere nolite timere bonum est
Kathleen
@JMG: But his NPR interviewer was treated him as worthy of gravitas
Jim, Foolish Literalist
and that’s why I think Trump is possible if still extremely unlikely.
NR
@Laertes: Actually, it looks like that’s exactly what Obama is doing.
So, to recap: The Republicans say, you pick the justice we want, but we’ll only confirm him if and when the Democrats win the presidential election. So for the Republicans, it’s “heads I win, tails you lose.” If they win the election, they block Garland and appoint Scalia MK II. If we win, they confirm Garland even though at that point, we’d be able to appoint a more liberal justice.
And apparently Obama went along with this because eleven-dimensional chess or something.
Roger Moore
@Loviatar:
If that’s true, then what good does it do to nominate somebody extremely liberal. If they aren’t going to confirm Judge Garland, they aren’t going to confirm somebody much more liberal than Garland. So it comes down to a choice of which is more politically valuable, seeing the Republicans block a moderate centrist like Garland or seeing them block a liberal stalwart. Having them block a liberal stalwart might fire up the left, but the Republicans will be able to spin it as Obama nominating somebody so far outside the mainstream it’s they duty to block them. Having them block a moderate centrist won’t fire up the base as effectively, but it will make it easier to paint the Republicans as a bunch of extremist obstructionists.
lurker dean
even the liberal washington post says liberals are playing politics! grrrr…
washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/03/16/does-the-senate-have-a-constitutional-responsibil…
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Frank Conniff often makes me laugh
OzarkHillbilly
@Laertes:
I can hear it now: “Merrick? Yesterday you were a perfectly acceptable nominee for the SC. But today, you are totally unacceptable because the GOP lost, so I have to withdraw your nomination. Sorry.” (end of snark)
Seriously, in order to get Garland to put his name forward, Obama had to promise to do everything he could to get him confirmed, and what is more, ensure that he had a plan for doing so. There is no way Garland would put himself thru all this if it was only to be used as a political pawn, and even less of a way for Obama to do so. I don’t see anyway shape or form he would be so cynically political about it. He takes governing way too serious.
I just don’t see it, that is not Obama’s style.
Cacti
@NR:
If only the two term POTUS had your political instincts, he might really go places.
As it stands, he’s only in the Oval Office while you sit in the rarefied airs of anonymous political blog commentary.
Wait, never mind.
Cermet
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Bad examples since neither really are major events in the 9-11 class. The later would shift the election the former ones, very little.
Roger Moore
@Face:
If their third party candidate manages to win enough electoral votes that nobody gets a majority*, then the choice passes to the House of Representatives as prescribed in the 12th Amendment. In that case, the House chooses the next president from among the top three candidates, but the voting rules are strage: they vote by states rather than as individuals, and nobody really knows how that would work in practice.
*OK, that’s a yuuuge if; they’re clutching at straws, here.
Face
You do know, presumably, that a Republican-controlled Senate would have to do the confirming, no? That a wildly liberal justice would have to get at least a few Republican votes, in a social media environment where every RW group would be “tracking” and “scoring” and “noting” the vote and otherwise threatening primaries and recalls and molotov cocktails at any GOPer considering a “yes” vote?
Are you that ignorant of the requirement that the GOP signs off on this nominee?
mdblanche
@Face: If no candidate wins a 270+ majority in the electoral college, the House chooses from among the top three candidates. This hasn’t happened since 1824 (?). And it wouldn’t happen this year unless Trump and ibn Eric’s True Conservative flip a bunch of states Obama won despite competing for the same voters. More likely this would allow Hillary to win easily even if she confessed to killing Vince Foster with the email server in the Benghazi room.
Chyron HR
@NR:
Well, gee, you guys have spent the past 3 months complaining that “those people” aren’t smart enough to be allowed to vote in the Democratic primary. I’m not sure why you’re acting so surprised that one of them isn’t smart enough make Supreme Court appointments.
Cermet
@OzarkHillbilly: 100% agree
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Cermet: for a presidential election, I guess you’re right, but I think (as in I have no data or even anec-data) that ebola and ISIS decapitation porn put Cory Gardner and the NC guy in the Senate, and damn near took down Jeanne Shaheen. And I don’t think it would take a full-on 9/11 to help Trump. Reading Goldberg’s long piece on Obama and foreign policy, I was reminded of how weird and widespread the freakout over the Paris attacks was. I was in Paris just after, and I think a good chunk of the US was more panicked than the Parisians.
Roger Moore
@NR:
Obama can always withdraw the nomination if the election goes well enough for the Democrats.
NR
@Cacti: Yes, because as we all know, Obama, simply by virtue of being the President, is completely incapable of making bad decisions. He shares not the limitations of us lowly mortal plebs.
Hear me now, ye unbelievers, lest your sinful doubts condemn thee to the eternal fire: question not the powerful, for in having power they have proven to be greater in word, deed, thought, and virtue than we could ever be.
Yea, though we vote for a mortal candidate in the election, we do in fact elect a god-king of unimaginable wisdom and clarity. On the day they take the holy oath of office, they do cast from them the very shackles of human fallibility and ascend to the lofty heights of the 11th dimension, a realm of reason and foresight to which our lowly selves may but aspire, forever denied its gifts of omniscience.
All hail President Obama, He Who Shall Not Be Doubted, for whom I myself am proud to have voted.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Cacti: I sometimes have a hard time even discerning what or whom that little nitwit is shrieking at, except I sense that everyone from Obama down to we mere pathetic blog commenters (except when the snark and frivolity and naivete and general meanness of these threads are the only obstacle to the triumph of Troo Progressivism) are morally and intellectually corrupt
Laertes
@OzarkHillbilly:
You make a pretty good point. That doesn’t really seem like Obama’s style.
NR
@Chyron HR: Ah, I love the smell of race-baiting in the morning. It smells like… stupidity.
Peale
@NR: What the Republicans want is a replacement for Scalia. An anti-abortion, pro-business, anti-union, anti-gay rights, please pollute, the founders would never have gone in for this social change business type. And those types aren’t that difficult to find on the bench. They still have to vote to confirm and what Obama gave them is someone palatable but probably barely edible. Just because they can swallow him and he won’t make them barf doesn’t mean he’s what they want. For them, as a former Clinton appointee, he’s probably a stew of cabbage and tripe.
LAO
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I think you are right. That afternoon, coincidentally, I had a French carpenter in my apartment to give me an estimate on a pantry I wanted to have built and installed. He was quite vocal about his disdain for American panic.
Amir Khalid
If the Republican party can refuse to consider Merrick Garland now, what is to stop it from refusing Garland (or whoever else) when President Hillary nominates him? I can very easily imagine McConnell making the equally bullshit claim that a newly seated president has not earned the “credibility” (or whatever) to be making Supreme Court appointments.
NR
@Roger Moore: If Obama does this, great. But I tend to agree with comment 125. I don’t think he will.
Cacti
@NR:
I wonder why he hasn’t called you for your expert insights yet.
A real mystery.
Paul in KY
@OzarkHillbilly Me too, methinks.
Paul in KY
@mdblanche: Saw that one the other day. Man, didn’t know Stalin was that hot!
LAO
@Amir Khalid: My great, but probably unrealistic hope, is that the ass-kicking they take in the elections marginalizes the tea party/burn it down faction of the Republican party. It’s a dream…
NR
@Peale:
Sure. Which is why they’re going to wait until after the election to confirm Garland. If they win, they can appoint that guy. If they lose, they can confirm Garland, who is more conservative, and older, than the justice we could appoint in 2017.
It’s a win-win for them. We should not go along with that calculation.
Peale
@Face: And they act like they’re the only group that would be energized by an ultra-liberal pick. Like that dream liberal pick wouldn’t energize the republicans even more as an electoral issue. The conservatives will do their best to paint Merrick as a wild-eyed hippy judge but that’s not going to work all that effectively.
Cacti
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
The world, for no longer giving him trophies just for showing up once he reached adulthood.
So mean and unfair.
Stupid President just won’t listen to him.
Mnemosyne
@pseudonymous in nc:
This. It’s kind of amazing to watch all of the libertarian dudebros wring their hands about Garland being slightly less libertarian than Scalia about defendant rights while never letting the word “abortion” cross their lips. Because apparently being a True Progressive means you have to think that women don’t count.
elm
@Face: It would happen if no candidate wins a majority in the Electoral College. That’s very unlikely.
Mnemosyne
@Amir Khalid:
Absolutely nothing. But these are the same people who thought that, since the PPACA was not single payer, we should continue to let several thousand Americans die unnecessarily every year just because they lacked insurance, so they aren’t very good at thinking these things through. They would rather dream about the perfect than accept the reality of the good.
LAO
@Mnemosyne: Good morning!
Had an interesting conversation with a white guy in his fifties yesterday, he took the position that in his opinion, there were only 2 issues re the a supreme court nominee: (1) protection of Roe v. Wade and (2) overturn Citizens United. Was pleasantly surprised by how adamant he was on protecting women’s right to autonomy.
gwangung
@Loviatar: Reall? That’s the impression I get from you.
You’re the one playing games; the rest of us want to get shit done.
john b
@scav: Thanks! It looks like something a grammarian made up to teach his/her pupils to properly use commas
OzarkHillbilly
@NR: No, it’s a win- don’t lose as badly as we will if we don’t take what is offered now.
Chyron HR
Well, now that the true progressives have conclusively proven that Garland is far to the right of Scalia, I think we need to determine how bad he is relative to the Latina and the lesbian that Obama previously appointed–both of whom, we were assured, would be the most right-wing corporate-friendly justices EVER.
ruemara
I’m getting incredibly tired of online, breathless, über-liberal “analysis”.
Roger Moore
@Laertes:
Then the result reverts to whatever the lower court- most likely the state Supreme Court- ruled. In the case of a state that couldn’t confirm its election results in time, the state legislature could also potentially pass emergency legislation allowing them to appoint the electors directly in that case. Finally, if there were some additional problem so that there were no clear winner, the election would probably devolve on the House and Senate according to 12th Amendment rules.
Steve in the ATL
@Loviatar:
No, the DC Court of Appeals has very specific jurisdiction. There are lots of regulatory issues that no other court can hear. So CJ of this court is a BFD.
NR
@Cacti: Yawn. Better trolls, please.
Mnemosyne
@LAO:
Morning! I really should hop in the shower before I’m late to work, but you have to admit that the people railing about how “conservative” Judge Garland is seem to have a huge blind spot about the many areas where he is not “conservative,” like abortion and anti-trust laws.
LAO
@Mnemosyne: Agreed. Have a nice day at work. My court appearance was cancelled, so I’m playing hooky and making chocolates for a family get together on saturday.
ETA: Nothing says I love you more than homemade dark chocolate peanut butter cups. At least in my family.
Mnemosyne
@ruemara:
Remember, if a potential justice to the Supreme Court doesn’t make middle-class white dudebros happy on defendant rights, he can’t possibly be good for any other demographic group.
NR
@OzarkHillbilly: If the Republicans confirm Garland before the election, I will agree with this calculation.
If Obama lets him go through in a lame-duck session with an incoming Democratic president, it’s most definitely a loss, not a win.
NR
@Mnemosyne: Yeah, fuck civil liberties, amirite?
Kylroy
@Roger Moore: Or he could withdraw the nomination shortly before the election. He can say that Rs have decided not to do their job, so he’s punting to the next President. An R victor won’t nominate Garland, and a D victor won’t be bound to him. Meantime, the Rs are refusing to do their job while the President is once again the adult in the room.
japa21
@Mnemosyne: It’s all about priorities. Disagreeing with a judge’s opinion on a certain matter does not mean that I think he/she should not be a judge. I have read not a single thing that gives me reason to reject Garland as a qualified jurist.
And NR is of course just being a jerk with the Obama is God type of comments. I have not seen anybody here ever say anything like Obama can never make a mistake. I think everybody here has called Obama out at one time or another for doing something they disagree with.
Anybody who thinks Obama is playing some sort of game here is being a fool. He nominated Garland because he thinks he would be a good Supreme Court Justice, pure and simple.
BTW, I have seen people here also disagree with opinions done by Sotomayer, Ginsberg, Kagan and Breyer. There is no thing as a perfectly liberal justice, at least not a good perfectly liberal justice. Not all liberal concepts, when written into law, are necessarily going to stand constitutional scrutiny.
Things to like about Garland that I have heard,
He is skeptical about some of the reduction of restrictions on guns.
He is pro government having the power to regulate, which is crucial in terms of environmental issues.
He has been supportive of women’s rights.
He, so far, has shown support for voting rights and been against many restrictions on them.
That doesn’t mean that even in those areas he would meet everybody’s criteria, but again no one would.
scav
@john b: Actually, when exactly did Latin aquire punctuation marks? I seem to remember older texts didn’t even split up words, but that factoid has been dissociated with exact language, although suddenly there’s a vague glimmer of upper dots and lower dots being the first punctuation but was the Greek or later?
Roger Moore
@LAO:
While I agree those two are very important, there are some other important things the Supreme Court has been messing up recently. I’m very angry about all the ways they’ve been preventing the little guy from getting his day in court in civil trials: enforcing unfair mandatory arbitration clauses, making it nearly impossible to file class action suits, etc. And, of course, Shelby County was at least as odious as Citizens United.
LAO
@NR: As a practicing criminal defense attorney, I agree that civil liberties are vital. But, it can’t be the only standard by which a Judge is “judged.” Scalia, on occasion, was great for defendants’ rights but on a whole, his legal philosophy was, IMHO, disastrous.
LAO
@Roger Moore: Did not mean to suggest I agreed with him, I actually argued that more was at stake. I was just surprised because he fits a demographic that is getting pounded on sites like this.
japa21
@NR: Gosh, you really are getting to be obnoxious. No body said that.
NonyNony
@OzarkHillbilly:
^This.
Guys, Obama is not playing games here. That isn’t how he operates. He has nominated someone that he thinks is qualified and that he thinks that should be a decent compromise candidate for Republicans to vote to confirm. Despite the Republicans refusing to do their own job – so he had to do both parts of their job this time around. As the party in power in the Senate, the Republicans should be recommending people who they think would be good compromise candidates from their own point of view – that is how we got Ruth Bader Ginsberg on the court because she was suggested to Clinton as an appropriate compromise that the GOP could live with before he nominated her. And as a reminder, the person making that suggestion was Orrin Hatch.
This is how its supposed to work with a divided government. Obama is doing what he can to do his job, so I guarantee you that he would consider confirmation of Garland in the lame duck session to be a win, not a loss. To him this is a win-win proposition – the Republicans either do their job and give Garland a vote or they turn it into a political mess for themselves (because no Dems running for office will be harmed by this at all).
The assumptions that this is some kind of kabuki theater designed just to make Republicans look bad fly in the face of watching Obama govern for 8 years. That isn’t how the man thinks. He wouldn’t nominate Garland to the office if he didn’t think he’d be a good justice, and there’s no way that he retracts the nomination (Garland might do it himself if he decides he’s sick of being a pinata, but I suspect that at this point he’s in it to win it and will keep his name in the process until he gets a vote or until the next Congress is seated and the process starts over with a new President.)
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@japa21: Like goblue, if this one has ever posted a comment that wasn’t obnoxious, I missed it.
Peale
@Roger Moore: The one way he is deficient is obviously the most important one and is a deal breaker. Now obviously if he was better on criminal matters but also believed that sodomy should be illegal, then somehow gay rights would be the most important criteria.
The issue is that Obama has been very reluctant to ever die on Progressive hills. Because there are so many of them. And one can only die once.
john b
@scav: Well, this would have been Middle Ages Latin, which is hardly Latin at all. Certainly in classical Latin there wasn’t grammar. It was largely added by editors/publishers later to texts like the Aeneid etc.
This article indicates that they used signalling words in lieu of punctuation in the Classical period:
Mnemosyne
@NR:
Since you’re perfectly happy to fuck civil rights, then sure. Who gives a shit about the health and lives of millions of women when you can shitcan a justice over a Guantanamo decision, amirite?
OzarkHillbilly
@NR:
By what calculation do you arrive at that conclusion? There is no way to tell what type of justice a future President might nominate, or who might be able to get thru a Senate we have no idea of how it is made up.
Other than that, I can only say you and I have very different ideas of what constitutes winning and losing.
ruemara
@NR: since it’s fuck abortion rights, fuck voting rights on the libertarian side, yeah.
NR
@japa21: Did you not read the comment I replied to?
PST
@Loviatar:
Not really. The special function of the DC Circuit is to hear appeals from federal administrative agencies, so in many important cases there is no way to avoid it.
NR
@Mnemosyne: I could just as easily turn that around on you. Who gives a fuck about the people’s civil rights as long as a justice supports abortion rights, right?
Bill
@Loviatar:
Please explain how the current nominee isn’t liberal/progressive. (Show your work. Citation to published decisions supporting the argument please.) Also, please explain how Obama can get a more liberal/progressive nominee approved.
What on earth does “burn it down” mean?
Matt McIrvin
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
This, by the way, is actually where Hillary Clinton was the strongest candidate the Democrats could put forward. Not by being more of a hawk, but just by being perceived as a competent person who would function well in a crisis, the “3 AM call” she was going on about in 2008. She does way better than Trump on this category in head-to-head polls.
Something like a big terrorist attack would drive a bunch of people to go into conniptions and support Trump to get the evil Muslims out. But most of them may already be Trump supporters. It’d also drive another bunch of people to be reminded that you can’t have an irresponsible clown in the White House when this stuff happens. The marginal effect may actually be larger on that side.
OzarkHillbilly
I have come to the firm conclusion that Obama is a traitor to the cause because he didn’t nominate MEEEEE.
japa21
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: And if I recall correctly, NR is a Bernie supporter, who has already called Garland extremely qualified, so I guess Bernie doesn’t care about civil rights. So why support Bernie?
japa21
@OzarkHillbilly: Actually, it is because he didn’t endorse Baud.
Chyron HR
@Bill:
He’s pro-Gitmo, just like Bernie Sanders.
NR
@japa21: I have consistently said that I view Garland as a reasonable compromise pick – so long as he is confirmed before the election. His record on civil liberties is troubling, but he is good on many other issues and is likely the best we could get through a Republican Senate in an election year.
However, after the election (if we win), the political landscape changes. Garland is no longer the best we can do at that point, and so we should not let the Republicans wait to see what happens with the election before voting on him. That is a terrible idea. It’s the worst of both world’s for us.
japa21
@Chyron HR: He had one decision on Gitmo, which he cited prior SC rulings as precedence. The SC later went in a different direction, but a lower court must follow SC precedence/
japa21
@NR: Why would Garland no longer be the best we could do. You not only are assuming that the Dems win the Presidency but also the Senate by a large margin.
And you appear to be looking for a perfect judge. Who is out there that would meet your qualifications? That has never written one decision you have any qualms about?
sinnedbackwards
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: RE Loviator: I rarely find that folks who cannot tell the difference between a verb and a preposition have anything thoughtful to say.
The Gray Adder
The way I see it, the big SCOTUS battles of recent years have been against the forces of right-wing ideology (and when the Republicans held the White House, of right wing expedience – what is convenient for the President) and the forces of common sense. Even a moderate justice who is even a notch or two to the right of the middle of the road is more likely than not to side with the forces of common sense.
Brachiator
@LAO: RE: I think a good chunk of the US was more panicked than the Parisians.
The French are practiced in the art of expressing disdain.
I am pretty certain that French school kids have to attend classes in “attitude” and “disdain.” There are upper level courses in superciliousness for those for whom expression of disdain is not sufficient.
Kilgore Trout
@NR:
I can’t believe people don’t get this. If Garland is not confirmed by October he will be withdrawn. The Senate will not have an option to confirm him in a lame duck session. This isn’t rocket science.
MomSense
@Brachiator:
I think it’s the wine. I know I express my disdain more readily after a glass.
scav
@Brachiator: Well, if the French have to take lessons, I find that many Americans come by their international cultural arrogance pretty naturally.
NR
@japa21:
Because at that point we will have four years to appoint a justice. The Republicans are already taking heat for blocking a justice for ten months. Imagine how much worse it would be for them for four years. Assuming they even keep the Senate.
Strawman argument. “Better than Garland” does not mean “perfect.”
NR
@Kilgore Trout: I hope you’re right, but a couple of people in these comments have made a pretty good case that Obama would still be happy with Garland being confirmed in the lame duck.
O. Felix Culpa
@LAO: Would you please join my family? I’m happy to adopt – or at least treat really nicely – in return for dark chocolate peanut butter cups.
jl
@Matt McIrvin: I’m not so sure about that from polls I’ve seen, if HRC is the nominee, her largest advantages over Trump are in foreign policy and national security.
In debates with Sanders, I have found her name checking and anecdote dropping irritating, and often used as a substitute for reasoned argument, not illustration or supporting evidence. But I will find it reassuring when she does that against Trump rambles on about ‘great deals’, ‘putting top, the best, people on the problem; and assuring us that he is a genius and will figure it all out staring on Day One. I think others will have the same reaction. So, I am not sure a national security crisis, or GOP-manufactured scare will work well for Trump against HRC in a general election.
Roger Moore
@Matt McIrvin:
I would also expect her to do a lot better than Bernie, which is one of the things I assume is helping her in the primaries. I may like Bernie’s policies a bit more than Hillary’s, but I have a lot more confidence in her leadership.
SoupCatcher
According to BallotPedia, the candidate filing deadline for Iowa is on March 18. I wonder if Grassley gets more fiber in his diet after there’s no possibility of a primary challenge. The only other Republican on Judiciary who is up for re-election and could still get primaried is Mike Lee, but he’s as Kool-Aidey as they get.
Looking to the entire Senate, the last relevant filling deadline is in New Hampshire in mid June.
Paul in KY
@john b: Read this in a book I have. Will try to find the actual phrase. I was paraphrasing g how it would parsed. Not much online about that. Might be an apocryphal story.
jl
I read this thread to get info and links on Garland’s positions. I agree with commenters who think Obama is playing it very straight and that he nominated the person who he thought had the best chance of both being confirmed and who would at least marginally improve the court. All I can see is that Obama may have gone with someone older and somewhat more moderate than otherwise because, due solely to partisan obstruction by GOP, chances of confirmation are lower than other openings in recent history.
I don’t see the point in looking for a lefty progressive Obama. Everything about his pitch as a candidate was about being a center-left moderate who wanted to rebuild consensus governance, I think that is his temperament and mindset, I haven’t seen anything to change my opinion during his administration.
Another objection to trying to find eleventy D chess in everything he does is that it assumes the opponent, or enemy, or whoever, can play, or is interested in, playing chess too. At this point, the GOP is making shit up as they go along, and they have a history of changing their tactics and strategy on a dime, even if it flatly contradicts what they said or did a minute ago. Whatever gets them through to the next day. A lot of it is opportunistic, savagely cynical exploitation of what kind of PR BS will work with public opinion of the moment. When one’s opponent has devolved into a ruthlessly opportunistic sociopath, eleventy D chess does not work well as a fundamental principle for tactics or strategy. The GOP can and will do anything tomorrow, depending on what looks like it will work tomorrow. That is all they got left.
Edit: as an example, what is the point of over thinking eleventy D chess moves if your opponent is as likely to stand up and throw the chess board across the room as move a chess piece to another square?
Paul in KY
@scav: Your wiki-fu is greater than mine :-)
FlipYrWhig
@Peale:
QFT. This happens. Every. Motherfucking. Time. EVER SINCE I HEARD A THING I HAVE BEEN SURE THE THING IS DISQUALIFYING TO TRUE PROGRESSIVES LIKE ME
FlipYrWhig
@Matt McIrvin:
And this, BTW, is precisely what nominating Bernie Sanders would squander. All the reasons why True Progressives dislike Hillary Clinton for being hawkish are precisely why John Q. Public would be fine with her in a crisis (incidentally this is why they bang on about Benghazi: to undermine her reputation for dealing with a crisis). All the reasons why True Progressives like Bernie Sanders for being dovish are precisely why he’d get smooshed by a guy like Donald Trump who wants to drop pork-filled bombs on any Mohammedans who look at an American flag funny.
Brachiator
@scav:
The worst Americans are often just stupidly arrogant.
Kinda like a co-worker (true story) who went to Italy on vacation and thought their restaurants were obviously inferior because he could not order meat loaf and mashed potatoes.
French disdain is part of a proud intellectual tradition.
LAO
@O. Felix Culpa: Sure! The semi-sweet crunch bars are done, they look great!
ETA: my version of nestle crunch bars. I’m starting on he pb cups in a bit. Tomorrow making the dark chocolate, maple candy bacon and salt bark.
LAO
@Brachiator: excellent. The stereotypical ugly American.
Fair Economist
@NR: Garland confirmed in the lame duck is a win-win-win for US. The Republicans will take all the heat for obstructing in the election, and then will rather ostentatiously be forced to cave and submit to the Kenyan Muslim *while he’s a real lame duck” and we’ll still get the most liberal court in 50 years. Sign me up!
Roger Moore
@NR:
That’s true, but we’re also stuck with a dysfunctional Supreme Court as long as the position is unfilled.
jl
@FlipYrWhig: i’ve read news stories that say the general public has more confidence in Sanders on foreign policy and national security than any of the GOPers too. But I think public trusts HRC most of anyone. That is an upside to HRC’s reputation on foreign policy, whether deserved or not.
From what I have heard in the debates, I like how Sanders thinks and explains himself on foreign policy more than HRC, though not on every specific issue. Maybe in some hypothetical election with a GOP candidate and party from some ,many decades ago HRC’s relative hawkishness would be a big problem, but not this election.
My own personal opinion is that I am not convinced that HRC is as hawkish as most people think. I think foreign policy and national security are areas where what HRC says and what she really thinks is be quite different. (Edit; I think HRC is as likely to say what she think sells with the public as what she really thinks, or includes very subtle hedges, as in, her hedges on how she would handle a ‘no fly’ zone for Syria) I don’t think that is a good thing particularly, but against any of the current GOP presidential possibilities (either the horrific Cruz or the ghastly Trump), HRC is clearly better.
Miss Bianca
@NR:
Abortion rights ARE civil rights, NimRod. They happen to be a pretty damned critical civil right to a majority of female Civilians. So yeah, is it a fair litmus test for a SCJ? Perhaps the most important if you happen to be sexed female and give a damn about your bodily autonomy and the efforts of These United States to scr*w with it? A case can be made for “yes”. But only if you happen to believe that women have the right to be, you know, fully human beings.
NR
@Fair Economist: Well I have to hand it to you, that’s some impressive mental gymnastics if nothing else.
Miss Bianca
@LAO:
Do you make chocolate?? I started on a serious truffle-making kick last year…
Mouth is starting to water…
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Kilgore Trout: I guess one reason to withdraw him on October 1 is that that is when the new SCOTUS session starts. Maybe. But I don’t know if Obama’s hand should be forced by something like that.
Presumably if he’s not seated by October 1, then it’s going to throw a monkey wrench in the schedule since they’ll likely have to re-hear at least some cases once he is seated.
I like to think that the GOP will hold this up for 2-3 months, but they probably don’t want it to be a punching bag when the Dem Convention starts on July 25 (the GOP starts on July 18), so my guess is that a solution will be found before mid-July. I certainly expect him to be seated before October 1.
We’ll see.
Cheers,
Scott.
NR
@Miss Bianca: I am not saying abortion rights are not important. I am saying that other civil rights are also important.
Before the election, it may be necessary to compromise on the latter to secure the former. After the election, if we get a democratic president, we don’t have to compromise. We can get both.
FlipYrWhig
@jl: My sense is that HRC believes in the Samantha Power “responsibility to protect” ethos and is willing to use military force to accomplish that, and that she gravitated that way after Bill’s presidency had to deal with Bosnia, Kosova, Rwanda, and so forth. I got in a lot of arguments in the 1990s with people who thought that humanitarian intervention was a smokescreen for Western imperialism. That’s not a wacky view; it’s a tricky balance. But I think that anyone who’s been concerned with women’s rights and children’s rights is probably going to come down on the side of helping innocents in failed states and despotic regimes. And I’m really OK with that as a rationale for why the US has a fearsome military machine. I think that getting locked into “vital interests” is materialistic and cruel. I want to be part of a country that stands for something else. I like that the British Royal Navy was interdicting slave ships in the early 19th century too.
LAO
@Miss Bianca: I do! I would like to start with truffles soon. Feel free to share your favorite recipes and tips. ?
Paul in KY
@john b: Note from an Edward II scholar who just responded to my question:
The Latin note is a fiction invented by one fourteenth-century chronicler called Geoffrey le Baker, about 25 years later. He says that the note said Edwardum occidere nolite timere bounum est, which could mean either ‘kill Edward, it is not good to fear’ or don’t kill Edward, it is good to fear’. But yes, it’s a complete invention!
Miss Bianca
@NR:
And have you noticed that if a judge is solid on abortion rights, s/he is weak on other civil rights? Genuinely curious, because I haven’t, but maybe I just haven’t been looking hard enough.
NR
@Miss Bianca: Well we’re talking specifically about Garland here. He was one of the judges who declared Gitmo a Constitution-free zone.
He is good on many other issues, which is why I view him as an acceptable compromise pick. But only if he is confirmed before the election.
Miss Bianca
@LAO:
Ha ha, I’ll have to start making them again! I kind of dropped off over the course of the fall.
Pro Tip, tho’: *stay away* from the Mast Brothers chocolate book. Food-porn-to-die-for photos, unworkable recipes. And their own chocolate sadly disappointing and not worth what they are charging per bar. Have heard some skeevy things about them, too, that suggest they are better at marketing themselves than their actual craft…
Why no, I am not obsessed with chocolate at all, at all…
Miss Bianca
@NR:
I will have to look into that Gitmo decision. It would be interesting to see his reasoning.
Loviatar
@NonyNony:
Unfortunately too many supposedly informed Democrats still think that today’s Republicans are their opponents and politics is some 11th dimensional chess game. So to them nominating a moderate liberal and withdrawing him right later on down the line is just the playing the game man.
Once again, Obama started his negotiations at his compromise point.
Mnemosyne
@NR:
You keep conflating civil *liberties* and civil *rights*. They are not the same thing.
You are prioritizing the civil liberties of Guantanamo prisoners over the civil rights of American women. It’s certainly your privilege to do that, but don’t try to pretend that you’re not making that choice when you complain that Garland is too far to the right on your pet issue and that your pet issue should override everything else.
pseudonymous in nc
The basic point about Judge Garland is that chief judge of the DC Circuit is the unofficial number 1 candidate for any SCOTUS vacancy. And if he has to stay chief judge of the DC circuit, then that’s still a pretty lofty judicial position and a lifetime appointment (with senior status whenever he chooses). We’re not talking Harriet Miers here.
On the strategic side, Dems have often struggled to run against GOP intransigence in congressional elections, while the GOP has more easily turned its own obstruction into “nothing gets done, so vote the bums out”. The Dem candidate against Richard Burr in NC has already started on “do-your-job” two days after winning her primary. Obama’s showing Yertle McTurtle that he has the power to set the terms of the Senate races in purple states.
NR
@Mnemosyne.
The right to habeas corpus most certainly is a civil right. In fact I’d argue it’s a basic human right. It’s tied directly into the constutional right to liberty.
For the eleventy billionth time, I have said I am okay with Garland as a compromise pick if he’s confirmed before the election. I am not okay with him being confirmed in a lame-duck session with an incoming Democratic president. That’s not prioritizing other civil rights over women’s rights, that’s not wanting to give certain civil rights away for nothing.
Roger Moore
@jl:
I think you’re selling him a bit short. He was never going to be the left wing dream candidate who went in and laid waste to four decades of Nixonism and Reaganism, but he’s gotten a hell of a lot of progressive work done. The big thing is that he’s been more of an incrementalist rather than a radical. Obamacare isn’t on the scale of the New Deal or Great Society, but there have been a whole host of small improvements and policy adjustments that have added up to do a lot of good.
Larv
@FlipYrWhig:
My parents are life-long Eisenhower Republicans who’ve never voted for a Dem. They’re aghast by Trump, and have told me they’ll vote for Hillary (but not Sanders) because she is, to quote my dad, a “tough lady.” That’s going to be a very big plus for her in a race against Trump.
pseudonymous in nc
@FlipYrWhig:
Jeffrey Goldberg’s long piece in The Atlantic makes that pretty clear — and also suggests that Kerry is in that RtP mould — so the question will be whether HRC would be willing to appoint a SoS who was more cautious about intervention to provide balance. I want the idea of “don’t do stupid shit” to remain a key part of US foreign policy after January 2017.
FlipYrWhig
@Larv: Yup, that’s her ace in the hole — and the effect of being called an Ice Queen for 25 years.
@pseudonymous in nc: Depends on what you mean by “stupid” of course. I skew a bit liberal-interventionist myself (in theory; also glad I’ll never be anywhere near the controls in a crisis!) and I’m not sure it’s _inherently_ stupid to get involved in these things. There are stupider and less stupid ways to intervene. But it’s sticky.
O. Felix Culpa
@Miss Bianca: Pace Ben Franklin, chocolate (not beer) is God’s sign that she loves us and wants us to be happy.
mclaren
@Roger Moore:
Let’s turn that logic around and see how it works:
Obama is supposed to nominate Republican lite justices even though they can’t get through the Senate either, because the Senate hates Obama not because he’s a Democrat but because he’s blackity black black black black black black black.
This kind of pointless exercise is the same logic that says we should nominate Hillary even though the Republican party is self-destructing because “America is a center-right country.”
What a load of self-defeating horseshit based of delusion and fantasy.
The reality is that 60% of Americans polled agree with progressive policies, and voters flock to the polls when Democrats stand up for genuinely progressive values.
mclaren
@Roger Moore:
Obama is an incrementalist, but let’s not blame him for that. Any Democratic president elected in the current environment will end up being an incrementalist merely because of the sheer amount of fanatical Republican obstructionist opposition.
mclaren
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
Correctamundo.
This issue will not go away.
Obama has trapped the Republicans. The longer they hold off on trying to embargo his nomination, the bigger the ruckus will get, and the mainstream press will pound the drum on it and the Democratic convention will highlight it as an issue. It will just get bigger and bigger and bigger until it becomes a tidal wave and the pressure of mass opinion forces the Republicans to hold hearings.
People underestimate the cumulative force of overwhelming public opinion. There is just no precedent whatever for refusing to considering a president’s nominee, none at all in the 200-plus years of the U.S. constitution. The amount of heat the Republicans will take for refusing to hold hearings will turn them into briquettes. South African apartheid couldn’t stand up to that kind of public fury…do the Repubs really think they’ll be able to?
Good luck with that one, buckaroos.