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But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

Those who are easily outraged are easily manipulated.

Rupert, come get your orange boy, you petrified old dinosaur turd.

I desperately hope that, yet again, i am wrong.

You are either for trump or for democracy. Pick one.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

Dear media: perhaps we ought to let Donald Trump speak for himself!

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Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

When they say they are pro-life, they do not mean yours.

In after Baud. Damn.

The press swings at every pitch, we don’t have to.

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Museums are not America’s attic for its racist shit.

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Fucking consultants! (of the political variety)

You are here: Home / Politics / Activist Judges! / Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Good News for Judge Garland

Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Good News for Judge Garland

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Not snark, for once — there seems to be a grinding shift in the Conventional Wisdom (note source of above tweet). Senator Collins’ bold centrism might be connected to a report in The Hill:

Reid plots strategy to force vote on Obama nominee
Senate Democrats say they may try to force a vote on President Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court with an unusual procedural tactic.

“There are many procedural things we can do,” Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid (Nev.) said Tuesday when asked about the possibility of using a discharge resolution to bypass Republicans…

He and his Democratic colleagues want to keep the pressure on Republicans to hold hearings on the nominee, Judge Merrick Garland, believing they have the upper hand in the public relations battle.

“The obligation is for them to hold hearings and to have a vote. That’s in the Constitution,” Reid said. “Right now, we think we’re in a good place. The pressure’s on them, not on us.”…

Reid added that Grassley now has a more competitive reelection race. Democrats have recruited former Iowa Lt. Gov. Patty Judge, the toughest opponent he has faced in years.

“No one thought he would have a race,” he added. “This is a real drag on the Republicans.”

Reid noted that more than a dozen Senate Republicans have agreed to meet with Garland, although most have made clear they will do so only as a courtesy.

In addition to Kirk and Collins, at least 15 other Republicans have voiced willingness to meet. They are Sens. Kelly Ayotte (N.H.), John Boozman (Ark.), Bill Cassidy (La.), Jeff Flake (Ariz.), Grassley, Orrin Hatch (Utah), James Inhofe (Okla.), Ron Johnson (Wis.), James Lankford (Okla.), Moran, Murkowski, Rob Portman (Ohio), Mike Rounds (S.D.), Marco Rubio (Fla.) and Pat Toomey (Pa.)…

Senator Grassley has responded to this pressure with his usual gracious elan, per Politico:

The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee criticized John Roberts on the Senate floor Tuesday, accusing the chief justice of contributing to the growing politicization of the Supreme Court.

In a speech about 10 days before Justice Antonin Scalia died, Roberts warned that the trend of approving qualified Supreme Court nominees along party-line Senate votes undermines the legitimacy of the court. “The process is not functioning very well,” Roberts said.

“In fact, many of my constituents believe, with all due respect, that the chief justice is part of the problem,” Grassley said of Roberts, who has at times incensed conservatives with his votes to uphold Obamacare and other rulings. “They believe that [a] number of his votes have reflected political considerations, not legal ones.”…

The Iowa Republican went on to warn Roberts not to inject himself into the Senate showdown over whether Garland should be confirmed this year, which Republicans have vowed will not happen. Grassley said Roberts has been encouraged by some academics to urge the Senate to take up Garland’s nomination…

Responding to the speech, a spokesman for Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) called Grassley “unglued” and said his remarks represent “an epic display of buck-passing.”

Double dog dare ya, Chuck! Also, there’s this note from the Washington Post…

… Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who endorsed Trump after abandoning his own presidential bid, said that he spoke with Trump by phone on Tuesday about a list of 10 to 12 judges from whom the billionaire might fill vacancies on the Supreme Court.

Trump plans to release the names in the coming weeks as a sign of his seriousness and a validation of his claims to being a conservative, Carson said….

Serious as a heart attack, and validating our Democratic claim that the GOP is being held hostage by a vulgar short-fingered carnival barker…
***********

Apart from our healthful daily helping of schadenfreude, what’s on the agenda for the day?

Reader Interactions

89Comments

  1. 1.

    Betty Cracker

    I hope the Dems get as much mileage out of this as they can, but I doubt very much Garland will get an up-or-down vote. ETA: Prior to November, anyway…

  2. 2.

    JPL

    @Betty Cracker: It’s difficult to get much mileage out when the news media is busy covering Trump.
    Isn’t it time for the DC Madam’s phone list to be released. Please let it be Cruz.

  4. 4.

    Baud

    Not a bad idea from Trump. Juicers, please use this thread to let me know if you’d like to be on the SCOTUS short list. If possible, please link to pictures of you in a robe. It’s important to look the part.

  10. 10.

    qwerty42

    @Baud: Am in a bathrobe right now! Does that count as a “robe” or do I need something more formal?

  12. 12.

    bystander

    One of the wags on Wait Wait said Obama should have nominated Grassley. That’s funny until you realize that not even a wink would be given to the hypocrisy of changing his opinion before you’d be saying, “Hello, Justice Grassley.”

  13. 13.

    Baud

    Topical (NYT)

    “The name initially announced — the Antonin Scalia School of Law — has caused some acronym controversy on social media,” Mr. Butler wrote, without repeating any of the offending acronyms. “The Antonin Scalia Law School is a logical substitute.”

  15. 15.

    OzarkHillbilly

    The STL County Board of Elections were like a bunch of monkeys fvcking a football yesterday:

    Tom Jennings showed up outside a precinct at Our Lady of Lourdes parish elementary school shortly before the polls opened to canvas for University City Council candidate Terry Crow.

    “They had ballots for the first five people that came in,” Jennings said. “That was it after that.”

    63 precincts, 24 polling places. These guys are gonna get tarred and feathered for denying the vote to some of the wealthier denizens of this fair metropolis. Meanwhile, in STL city where all the poor folk live:

    Earnings tax, bond issue overwhelmingly pass in St. Louis

    City residents on Tuesday overwhelmingly chose to keep taxing their incomes by 1 percent.
    St. Louis voters, **as they must do every five years**, reauthorized the so-called “earnings tax” by more than a 2-to-1 ratio.
    The tax, levied on earned income of residents and anyone who works in the city, was the target of Rex Sinquefield, a stock market pioneer who has sought to end it. Sinquefield pumped more than $2 million into the “Vote No on the E-Tax” campaign, but it only put a minor dent in voter support.

    Fvck you Koch Brother wannabe Rex Sinquefield.

    ** another example of Republican love of meddling in local governance when the state lege passed this law a few years ago

  20. 20.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym

    @Baud: Unmentioned is a place where I’d really like to see a liberal court make a difference: anti-trust law. Let’s roll back the Borkian revolution of basically declaring that any merger is fine.

  21. 21.

    bystander

    Sorry if this has already been posted but I just saw this on JoeMyGod.

    Seems the newly named Antonin Scalia School of Law has an acronym problem.

    Laughing at Dead Tony is so much more fun than laughing at Animated Tony.

  24. 24.

    bystander

    @Baud: Sorry. Just saw.

    Hey, I’ve got a great Japanese-style robe from 10,000 Waves. It has a big Japanese character on the back that means, I think, “L-XL”

  26. 26.

    satby

    @satby: and if you zoom it the comments drop off at both ends, so you’re only able to read the middle. But at least it’s back to the mobile site (1 column) instead of the mini desktop site that showed up last night.

  28. 28.

    Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)

    @Baud:
    I had a business law class in university, taught by a former DA. I am ready willing and able to make the jump to the USSC!

    Seriously, I have a lot of concern about a Justice Garland and have no problem with him being shut out by the wingnuts. The current situation highlights the real problem in DC.

  35. 35.

    OzarkHillbilly

    I am now a subscriber of the Orange Street News. Some of this girl’s biggest fans wrote in and said:

    In the video she read some of the negative comments aloud, including: “I am disgusted that this cute little girl thinks she is a real journalist. What happened to tea parties?” and “Nine-year-old girls should be playing with dolls, not trying to be reporters.”

    Wearing a badge reading “I love free speech”, she giggled as she read out the comment: “You are nine fucking years old. Seriously, what the fuck is going on?”

    She replied:

    “It kind of gets me angry because, just because I’m nine doesn’t mean I can’t do a great story,” she said. “It doesn’t mean I can’t be a reporter.”

    In a video posted on her website she said: “I know this makes some of you uncomfortable, and I know some of you just want me to sit down and be quiet because I’m nine.

    “But if you want me to stop covering news, then you get off your computer and do something about the news. There, is that cute enough for you?”

  38. 38.

    Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)

    @Baud:
    No doubt, he is a very reasonable guy with a good legal mind. I think he would fall mostly on the correct side of most issues but have concerns about his rulings on the rights of accused and the rights of businesses. Given 30 years of awful rulings I’d like to think we could find an equal legal mind with a better chance of fixing some of the worst damage done.

  39. 39.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @satby: I’ve got you all beat. The amount of time I have spent in court over the years adds up to at least 2 years of law school.

  42. 42.

    debbie

    I’m pretty psyched to read about this. And judging by the reactions of financial executives, it’ll do some good.

    They complain about onerous regulations, a law of too many pages, that people won’t bother reading the contracts they have to sign with their brokers, etc.

    These guys haven’t changed a bit; still looking to screw over as many people as possible.

  45. 45.

    Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)

    @OzarkHillbilly:
    LOL!

    When I was a kid my dad did a lot of business with the pols in city hall, in the summer time I would occasionally go with him & sit in court rooms to watch what was going on. I’m convinced I could do better than many of the actual lawyers I saw perform there. Not sure It would add up to 2 years though! My favorite thing as a kid was seeing a judge smack a lawyer around for screwing up or not being prepared. It happened 3-4 times and as a kid I was amazed that adults did that to each other (I thought it was just teachers over kids). A couple of the reprimands were particularly brutal.

  46. 46.

    Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)

    @Baud: @satby:
    I’m not convinced Obama didn’t select Garland for the political reasons, they are just too perfect to be accidental.

    I’m OK with him on the court just not enthused. I am loving watching the goppers twist in the wind though.

  48. 48.

    debbie

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    NPR just did a segment on this and played a few of her comments. I love the end of her response to the complaints: “There! Is that cute enough for you?” in her little, bitty voice.

  52. 52.

    JPL

    @Patricia Kayden: boo… Cruz is so smarmy and the time frame fits. If Trump won the presidency, there’d be impeachment talks the first month he’s in office. If Cruz won, students would be forced to study the bible and there would be a nineteen percent federal sales tax on all incomes.

  59. 59.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @satby:

    With Big Chief tablet readied, thick black pencil in hand, and a devil-may-care laugh in the face of death, life on the razor’s edge sense of exhilaration, the Court begins. . . .

    I love it.

  64. 64.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @satby: My own personal favorite is a divorce proceeding Moore v Moore in SW Missouri, from which we get:

    An Ozark hillbilly is an individual who has learned the real luxury of doing without the entangling complications of things which the dependent and over-pressured city dweller is required to consider as necessities. The hillbilly foregoes the hard grandeur of high buildings and canyon streets in exchange for wooded hills and verdant valleys. In place of creeping traffic he accepts the rippling flow of the wandering stream. He does not hear the snarl of exhaust, the raucous braying of horns, and
    the sharp, strident babble of many tense voices. For him instead is the measured beat of the katydid, the lonesome, far-off complaining of the whippoorwill, perhaps even the sound of a falling acorn in the infinite peace of the quiet woods. The hillbilly is often not familiar with new models, soirees, and office politics. But he does have the time and
    surroundings conducive to sober reflection and honest thought, the opportunity to get closer to his God. No, in Southern Missouri the appellation ‘hillbilly’ is not generally an insult or an indignity; it is an expression of envy.

  65. 65.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Baud: I thank all that is holy to any of us that no, there are no threaded comments on the desktop version. Now crawl back in your hole and never speak of this again.

  66. 66.

    JGabriel

    Politico via Anne Laurie @ Top:

    Grassley said Roberts has been encouraged by some academics to urge the Senate to take up Garland’s nomination…

    OMG! The Chief Justice is listening to people educated in law and the history of our country? He must be stopped. That’s downright un-American!

  67. 67.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym

    @EconWatcher:

    Overturning Citizens United is the big kahuna. Everything else pales.

    Bullshit. Citizens United is the great white whale that obsesses everyone, but it’s not like the problems in our campaign finance system just materialized when it was decided. Like it or not, there is very real tension between the First Amendment and campaign finance laws, and getting rid of the influence of money cannot happen without a constitutional amendment, and even then it will be fiendishly complex.

  71. 71.

    AxelFoley

    @Baud:

    Not a bad idea from Trump. Juicers, please use this thread to let me know if you’d like to be on the SCOTUS short list. If possible, please link to pictures of you in a robe. It’s important to look the part.

    Guaranteed job for life, have interns do most of your work, don’t speak for years if you don’t want to…

    Hell, yeah! Sign me up!

  73. 73.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @satby: There was also this pearl of legal reasoning:

    We will agree with respondent in his definition of Stone County freedoms** that a husband has a right to go fishing. And we will go further and say that this right extends to fishing without the constant and ever-present impediment of female presence and participation, if such be against the will of the husband. It is a wise wife who accords her husband that freedom–in moderation–and a foolish wife who interferes.

    ** there are four Stone County Freedoms:

    But respondent in his brief, in all sincerity, asserts that among the Four Freedoms recognized in Stone County (sometimes referred to as ‘The Kingdom of the James’ because of the James River) are the right of a man to be master in his own house, the right of a man to fish and hunt with his friends at reasonable times without interference from the wife, and the right to deal and trade in livestock without the wife’s intervention.

    (in reading the pleadings, it becomes obvious that a man has a right to deal in livestock without wifely interference, and a separate right to trade in livestock)

    The whole thing is hilarious.

  75. 75.

    cmorenc

    @JPL:

    Isn’t it time for the DC Madam’s phone list to be released. Please let it be Cruz.

    Careful what you wish for – Cruz turning up on that list *before* he becomes the nominee at the GOP convention would create a much better political footing for the GOP establishment to give the nomination instead to either Kasich or some other tougher opponent in the general election. That still wouldn’t get around their problem how to keep the hard-core Trumpsters from wreaking havoc at the convention and possibly staying home or going 3P in November – but the GOP’s position would be doubly impossible if they had to deal with both angry Cruz supporters and angry Trump supporters if they tried to give the nomination to someone who didn’t run in the primaries.

  76. 76.

    Bobby Thomson

    Faux centrism. Collins would not have said that if Garland had a prayer at getting a hearing.

  78. 78.

    Aleta

    Maybe upgrade-related: When I copy a phrase from someone else’s quote (text from elsewhere put in by a FP post or in another comment), it gets pasted in as the words “flat white” when using an iPad.

  82. 82.

    Hunter

    “Trump plans to release the names in the coming weeks as a sign of his seriousness. . . .”

    As a sign of his cluelessness, maybe. Releasing the names of possible Supreme Court nominees before you’re even elected? That’s not the sort of thing you do. Just, No.

  83. 83.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Here is what is totally adorable about the grauniad’s article on the nine-year-old journalist: their own byline:

    Staff (aged 36) and agencies

  84. 84.

    boatboy_srq

    Speaking as a once-and-sometime Downeastah, the idea of Collins as a moderate and a centrist is appalling and nauseating.

  85. 85.

    Keith G

    @Betty Cracker:

    I doubt very much Garland will get an up-or-down vote. ETA: Prior to November, anyway…

    2 months ago, I sided with he saying and the conventional wisdom that Obama should not withdraw his nomination after the presidential election. I have since changed my mind because allowing the Republicans to gain the system and then giving them the option of approving this very moderate Canada after the results of November are known gives them a win without any blowback

  86. 86.

    boatboy_srq

    FYWP. Two attempts to edit my comment – first one comment window disappeared, second coughed up “you do not have permission…”

  87. 87.

    Keith G

    Wow, please forgive the above comment. While speaking into a phone and letting word recognition do the heavy lifting I accidentally hit publish. Which would normally not be a huge deal except for the fact that as of now on the mobile version I’m using there is no edit option.

    What the fuck is happening to this mobile site?

  88. 88.

    Jay C

    Two points occurred to me while reading this post:

    1. I am amazed that Sen. Grassley can still breath under that pile of bullshit he’s excreted regarding the SCOTUS vacancy. In the same couple of paragraphs, he accuses CJ Roberts of “politicizing” the Court’s nomination process, then defends his obstructionism on absolutely nothing other than purely political grounds: for which, of course, he blames Roberts. What a putz.

    2. Long shot though it may be*, if anyone can finagle a way around Republican obstruction and get Judge Garland’s nomination up in front of the Senate, it’s Harry Reid. I think he would retire a happy ex-Senator if he could leave with a Garland vote (regardless of the outcome) as his last FU to the GOP. He (like Obama) is a politician I already miss….

    *as I’ve opined before, I think even in a Balloon Juice comment

  89. 89.

    cokane

    As I said originally, R’s promise to not vote on a nominee this year was a total bluff. Can’t take R bluster on ANYTHING seriously anymore.

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