Biden wrote an op-ed in the Post today about the most corrupt part of our corrupt federal judiciary. Here’s a gift link if you’re willing to sign in. His proposals:
- A constitutional amendment to reverse the presidential immunity ruling.
- Legislating term limits for Supreme Court justices.
- Legislating a binding code of conduct for Supremos.
(1) is a non-starter. (2) and (3) would probably be overturned by the current court, since constitutional law is now whatever they say it is, neener, neener, neener.
This is not to criticize Biden (and Harris’) efforts to draw attention to this issue. Everything he says is a good idea, and if laws (2) and (3) were passed, watching the Supremes overrule them would just keep the issue in front of the public.
Impeaching Thomas and Alito, which again would not result in a conviction barring some miracle in the Senate, is probably more effective in the short term, because it subjects them to really uncomfortable personal scrutiny and shitty publicity. I’d expect them to resign if Harris is elected and Democrats take the House and Senate because it would suck for them to go through an impeachment trial and four more years of work. AOC knew what she was doing when she filed articles of impeachment.
Also, yes, I am traveling, but I happen to be camping in a powered spot so I can run my Starlink all day. I am in Canada and only licensed outlets can sell beer, liquor or cannibis, and the nearest one is miles away, and for some reason my wife and I decided that a few sober days wouldn’t be so bad. We were wrong, so now the only addictions I can satisfy are the Internet and politics, and I’m hitting it hard.
Worker Power Leadership School – Field Notes Vol. 2
Lobo
Someone correct me. But I think Congress has the power to insert language to remove jurisdiction from a piece of legislation.
That would allow for (2) and (3).
rikyrah
I wanted a couple of more Circuits added, but, this is a good start.
p.a.
When this was first proposed, when Joe was still the presumptive nominee but the step-down pressure was building, I thought it might be a hail-Mary to bump support, to preserve his candidacy.
Yeah,
not much chanceno chance of this happening, but get the conversation going. Let opponents say “no, we don’t want ANY restrictions on the preznit, and judges-for-sale is A O K.”John Carpenter’s Return of the Overton Window!!!
Hildebrand
Whether it will go anywhere or not, this is an important step in the evolution of Biden’s institutionalism. That Biden, a president who would have found this push for such a significant reform to be deeply problematic even a couple of years ago, is writing this and believes it is newsworthy just on its face.
Biden is using the ‘bully pulpit’ that the Green Lantern fetishists always kvetch about – he is putting the argument out there and making everyone respond to it. This is a very good thing.
Jeffro
Anything that gets the ball rolling on the many, many things we must do to renovate our democracy is a good thing.
It’s a long list so yeah, big fan of anything at all that moves these discussions/eventual solutions forward.
Trivia Man
@Lobo: Silly goose, that only works if the SCOTUS follows the law. And i have my doubts they would ever rule on reducing their own control.
Chris
Practically speaking, I don’t see any way around this that doesn’t involve expanding the court. Otherwise, everything short of a constitutional amendment (which we can’t get in any kind of realistic time frame) is simply going to be nullified by the existing Supreme Court.
Not to say that this isn’t a good start. Nothing happens until we get it into our heads that we need to do something about this court, and if this gets that ball rolling, good.
ArchTeryx
@Lobo: That is absolutely true. It’s in the constitution’s text itself – Congress has the absolute right to strip jurisdiction from the Supremes. They were written in as the weakest branch, meant only to resolve appellate issues circuit courts could not.
The trouble is, starting with Marbury vs. Madison, they’ve arrogated to themselves the power to have final say on any legislation. And in the total power vacuum left by a perpetually gridlocked Congress, they’ve just kept assigning more and more power to themselves. Now they are straight out pulling legislation out of their asses and daring blue states to defy them.
The amendment that needs to pass is the one that reverses Marbury vs. Madison. Period. Kill that, and all the Supreme Court’s self-assigned power vanishes in a puff of smoke. Congress becomes the final arbiter of constitutionality again.
The alternative is to pack the court so much, a tit-for-tat with Republicans, that it simply becomes another legislative body, and eventually people just start ignoring their rulings altogether, like House of Lords rulings are ignored in the UK after their veto power was stripped.
frog
Oh, I don’t know. If President Harris sends out a memo that any state that has not started the process after 6 months, will know the joy of an immune President … I think the prospects look good.
hueyplong
Not sure I agree with the part about how those MFs would resign. I do, however, think they’d fly their flags upside down.
BR
Meanwhile I see they’re having a normal time over at Melon Husk’s site:
randy khan
You can make an ethics code binding and not run into Constitutional issues* by putting penalties in place for violating it that fall short of kicking someone off the Court, like escalating fines administered by a body other than the Supreme Court.
Term limits are harder, particularly as applied to sitting Justices. The Roosevelt court-packing scheme basically was a response to a similar problem, but would have worked by diluting the power of the dead-enders. I’m not sure I’d like it even now, but it was pretty clever. (And lest people forget, it wasn’t passed largely because the Court corrected course; FDR likely had the votes to put it into place.)
*I mean this in the sense of “actual Constitutional issues that a rational Court would consider,” so all bets are off with this bunch.
LAC
@Hildebrand: Kvetching is their brand. What are their plans – shot putting Alito and Thomas into the sun? It is good to get this conversation going at a high level. We have to start somewhere…
ArchTeryx
@Chris: They’re happy to nullify parts of or entire amendments, too. They’ve written the 14th and 15th amendments virtually out of the Constitution. They ignore the plain text of the Constitution itself on a routine basis. At this point, they’re a lawless, extraconstitutional body, and defanging them has to be the absolute priority of any incoming D president, if they don’t want every single thing they do struck down. This court is Lochner on steroids. Their next step is an outright coup, Bush vs. Gore taken up to 11. At that point, there will either be political violence, the court is defanged, or it’s simply ignored.
RaflW
Related, the completely off the rails / fully Trumpy 5th Circuit days ago totally trashed congress’s rural broadband program. (Some of) Our courts are run amok. It has to change.
They’re just calvinballing and making legislating a crapshoot where “unconstitutional” is just whatever some deeply ideological freaks say it is.
hueyplong
@BR: Gotta assume there was also a link to make a contribution or buy some Trump Kitsch and you just didn’t copy it.
randy khan
@ArchTeryx:
Marbury isn’t a terrible problem if you have a functioning Congress. For instance, all of the awful decisions on administrative law issues could be fixed by Congress passing a law overturning them (and the underlying principles – a term I’m using very loosely – used to overturn them), but there’s no prospect of that now that the Republicans have weaponized the filibuster in ways nobody contemplated for the first couple of hundred years of the Constitution.
And, frankly, while the Marbury world has its problems, it’s better than a world where the Executive gets the last word about what’s Constitutional and what’s not or about what a law says.
HumboldtBlue
OMG, John Oliver says the reason you always find change in couch cushions is because “JD Vance always leaves a tip”
Weftage
@Hildebrand: Over on Daily Kos, the takes include a lot of “It’s completely impossible, and he should have done it earlier in his presidency,” with a side of “and anyway, it’s all Merrick Garland’s fault.”
ArchTeryx
@RaflW: Speaking of lawless, extraconstitutional bodies… the 5th Circuit is so lawless the fascist Supreme Court is striking down their decisions. If any court needs to be brought to heel HARD, it is them.
KatKapCC
Just a reminder: You can enter any email address at all in the field, and it will let you read the article. It can be completely made up. I’ve done it three times with three different emails, all fake.
ArchTeryx
@randy khan: I have to disagree. Because in the end, you can vote out a rogue legislature or a rogue President. You can’t vote out a rogue Supreme Court. They are now our House of Lords, and destroying Marbury would bring that to a crashing halt. It’s about time we returned the judiciary to its proper role.
Chris
@randy khan:
Incidentally, I really hate the fact that “FDR’s court-packing scheme was a mistake, it was overreach and the fact that it failed was a good thing for Democratic Norms” has turned into such a widely accepted narrative even to this day. It’s on par with “pardoning Nixon was a good thing because The Nation Needed To Heal” when it comes to conventional wisdom that amounts to demanding that powerful public figures be immune from any kind of accountability, and similarly needs to die in a fire.
gvg
I think the lifetime office is in the constitution so that is set unless we get a constitutional amendment through. I honestly don’t think that is all that important because I don’t think it is the problem.
Congress has been flaking out on it’s responsibilities for quite a few decades, and delegating stuff it shouldn’t (wars not declared for instance). Right now, they should have been impeaching the judges. I think they aren’t because some of them are MORE corrupt from the same sources as the judges. Its the money.
Also I wonder why the FBI and the Justice department can’t seem to catch and prosecute the corrupt Congressmen and judges? Can it be that the actual laws have been corrupted and not enough is illegal? I suspect that is the case.
We need to win the Senate and presidency then expand the court. Then impeach and JAIL the corrupt ones. Then we need cases that put the laws back on logical foundations as well as more careful laws.
Many financial regulations, expand oversight agencies so they can track down the money and then have the lawyers and courts staffed to pursue in a timely fashion.
Pass ERA.
Keep building infrastructure. Prosperity makes this possible.
Give Ukraine more permission and weapons.
Invest in more spies. Fraid I think we will need it.
Citizen Alan
Term limits are out. I’m not even going to contemplate any solution that requires a Constitutional amendment and therefore 2/3 of both houses and 3/4 of the state legislatures. That was too big a lift for something as basic as “the government shall not discriminate on the basis of sex.” There’s no way an Amendment would pass on anything that diminishes the political power of the GOP in any way. You might as well ask for a unicorn to save us.
Increasing the size of SCOTUS, however, is perfectly within Congressional authority, as is increasing the size of the House to dilute the power of small states over the Electoral College.
bbleh
@ArchTeryx: This I think is correct in almost* all respects, according to the plain text of the Constitution (“with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make”), but as noted, given the present paralysis of Congress — the Senate is slow at best, and the House presently is nearly entirely nonfunctional — the SC have executed some major power grabs and there’s no reason to suppose they won’t continue. That it ultimately undermines their own authority — if people just stop listening to them, it’s game over — doesn’t seem to matter to most of them: as noted previously Alito and Thomas have devolved into near-nihilists (“après nous, le déluge“) and I think Roberts and Gorsuch have decided it’s time for smash-and-grab.
But Biden’s smart to bring this up anyway. The Supremes are NOT popular, and they ARE closely associated with Republican laws and policies that are even MORE NOT popular.
Biden, good at politics, who knew?
(* I dunno about overruling Marbury. The Court HAS protected individual rights against political mob rule on occasion.)
ArchTeryx
@randy khan: He didn’t actually have the votes at that time. But he told the court flat-out that if they kept nullifying the entire New Deal and immiserated the country enough, in the next Congress, he’d have the votes not only to pack the court, but impeach their asses. He was right, and they knew it. So they backed down.
David Hunt
“I’d expect them to resign if Harris is elected and Democrats take the House and Senate because it would suck for them to go through an impeachment trial and four more years of work.”
That is not something that I would expect. I simply can’t see either of them letting a Democrat nominate their replacements while they’re still breathing. Still, if it got either (or even better, both) of them out and replaced with a Democratic appointment, I’d call the event being defamed as “worse than Borking” on the Right to be worth that happening.
Eyeroller
@gvg: The leading idea is that they would remain federal judges but would serve fixed terms on the Supreme Court. Whether that will work or not is unclear but it’s a start.
matt
When the courts rule that rule of law is illegal, you have a real pickle. We used to have a culture that disliked corruption, but this generation of Republicans has really embraced it.
hueyplong
@ArchTeryx: I don’t know. If Joe Robinson hadn’t died, he might well have had the votes. Probably not, but maybe.
randy khan
@RaflW:
Since this is my space, let me say that it is an utterly insane decision, sadly the result of a campaign by Consumers Union that strikes me as utterly misguided.
CU has been filing suits all over the country trying to get a court to say that the way universal service is funded violates the Constitution because it wants a different mechanism. (Everyone in the field agrees that there should be reform, but there is strong opposition to every idea about how to reform it. I have no idea why CU thought that blowing the whole thing up would solve any problems, but that seems to be what it thinks.) Two other circuits rejected the suits, and the Supreme Court just turned down the appeals of those suits. In the Fifth, the original panel of judges turned it down, too, on the same grounds as the other two circuits, but CU got the whole Fifth Circuit to rehear the case, and won, 9-7.
The decision is bonkers in almost every way. It totally mischaracterizes what the Communications Act says about the FCC’s power to set up the universal service program, then totally mischaracterizes how the contractor sets the fees that are paid to fund the program. (The biggest howler is that it says the contractor is beholden to telephone companies in setting the fees because several of them sit on the board, when in fact the FCC sets the budget for the universal service program and the contractor basically is doing addition, multiplication, and division to come up with the number – it literally has no discretion in doing the calculation.) Even then, the judges couldn’t conclude that either the FCC or the contractor is doing anything wrong, so instead they decided that it’s the combination of the two that’s bad, which is something the Supreme Court never has contemplated in decisions on similar topics. And, of course, they don’t care that the Supreme Court turned down both of the other appeals, figuring apparently that it’s their job to tell the Supreme Court what it should do, not the other way around. (Technically, the Supreme Court turning down an appeal does not bind other courts, but when it turns down two at once, you might want to take the hint.)
Everybody I’ve talked to about this thinks it’s going to be reversed at the Supreme Court. Now, with this bunch, it’s possible we’re all wrong, but the betting right now is more on the question of which particular part of the ruling will be reason it’s overturned. (The slight betting favorite seems to be that CU already lost the same case twice against the same party (the FCC), and isn’t permitted to have another bite at the apple, but there are lots of choices.)
David 🐝KHive🐝 Koch
Under Article Three, Congress can pass number #2 and #3
The problem is getting 60 votes in the senate because of Cleek’s Law.
ArchTeryx
@bbleh: With the exception of the evangelicals, nobody really wanted a House of Lords. Even the rural Republican base wasn’t happy when Jim Crow and their precious anti-sodomy and anti-gay-marriage laws were summarily overturned. There needs to be some kind of accountability assigned to this court or the rest of the federal government may as well turn out the lights and go home until one of them dies.
Omnes Omnibus
I think it is great these ideas are being put out there even if they are legislative nonstarters at the moment. My solution to the problem is Court expansion. Expand to 13 Justices. That is one for each circuit. It is within Congress’s power and has been done before. To reduce the screaming, we do it over time. Two immediately and two more in four years.
Martin
1 isn’t a non-starter, but it’s going to be ages before it could be ratified, and it would really get a good boost toward ratification if he would seal team 6 Alito and Thomas before he leaves office. Be careful about what kind of feedback loops you create.
I’m not sure why the question is about impeaching Thomas when he’s pretty clearly broken federal law and could simply be arrested and tried alongside Harlan Crow. I know the court just issued their ‘bribery is legal now’ opinion, but Democrats really need to stop surrendering every time the GOP pulls out a finger gun and threatens to say ‘bang’.
You can’t do 2 and 3 without the trifecta, so if you get the trifecta, add 4 justices to align the number of justices to the number of districts and tie them together in the legislation, and use 2 and 3 to get shaky dems on board.
I wonder what would happen if Congress passed a law saying that Plessy vs Ferguson transfers too much power to the judiciary, giving them a veto over the decisions of two other branches. No other part of our constitutional system transfers so much power to one branch, and that cases which evaluate the constitutionality of a given law should be taken up by Congress as a new bill whether that evaluation should be accepted or rejected and approved by the executive, and failing that process only then would USSCs decision be binding.
I mean, that’s really the heart of the problem that USSC doesn’t have a check or balance on matters of constitutionality which results in this high risk game around nominations. Surely legal scholars have tackled this problem and there’s someone way smarter than me we could simply point to.
gvg
@Chris: I wasn’t taught that it was a bad idea. I was taught “a stitch in time saves nine” and all meant they realized they had gone too far and backed down on time to avert the drastic measures.
At this point I don’t think I would necessarily accept them backing down. There are good population and work load reasons to increase the size anyway. Several of them are corrupt and should be removed, including Roberts because of his wife taking all the money to “place” people due to her connections(being his wife).
At the very least, they should have to live with the same rules as all the other judges do. and they should be audited because of the news stories showing they have lied on tax returns and prior disclosures,
Mart
Reminded me of a time when I checked into the small town hotel in KY and then remembered dry counties. Asked the front desk where to get a beer and pizza and he said I passed it twenty five miles back.
Martin
@David 🐝KHive🐝 Koch: If you can get to 50 you can eliminate the need to get to 60 with one vote.
Scott P.
There’s no such thing as a ‘non-starter’. The 18th Amendment went from zero support to ratification in around 25 years. anything can be ‘started,’ and with continued effort, can succeed. The Right understood this with regards to overturning Roe v. Wade, why does our side not understand it?
randy khan
@ArchTeryx:
Okay, so explain to me what happens when Congress and the Executive disagree about what a law means, or if someone sues claiming that a President’s decision to require school prayer is unconstitutional.
Rogue actors are going to ignore norms and rules under any circumstances. The problem is not the rules; it’s the people.
Chris
@ArchTeryx:
I would add –
The practical effect of the Supreme Court is to shackle any new governments with needing the approval of their predecessors, even after those predecessors are long gone, even when the whole point of voting in new governments is that their predecessors fucked up royal and a course correction was badly needed.
So in practice, even after a tidal wave of New Deal elections has swept away the Harding/Coolidge/Hoover legacy, even though there was an incredibly good reason for that because these people’s ultimate legacy was to damn near destroy the entire country – per the U.S. Constitution, we still needed the approval of the arsonists before placing a call to the fire department. And sure enough the arsonists started ruling against the fire department, which is how the court-packing controversy came to a head.
It’s ridiculous. It’s the ultimate fuck-you to the concept of elections having consequences. We cannot have a self-governing nation if people aren’t allowed to throw their leaders out when those leaders fuck up, and under the current Supreme Court, that’s effectively what we have.
RaflW
I also wonder, in the past, a shot across the bow like this might have caused the political actors on the Court (all of ’em, Katie) to at least consider recalibrating. CJ Roberts in particular was once thought to be caring of his reputation and his place among Chiefs.
I no longer believe he cares. As someone said on Bsky today, “the fate of the Universal Service Fund will now slowly head to a Supreme Court easily corrupted by a free Winnebago.” That is now Robert’s ‘reputation.’ In corrupt tatters.
So, does that mean Kavanaugh and Coney Barrett carry on in full press to revolutionize (in the worst way) or do they have the sense to tap the brakes?
hueyplong
The fundamental problem is that our system of government depends on good faith, and one of our two major parties is acting in bad faith and has signaled that it intends to do so indefinitely.
randy khan
@Chris:
Yeah, FDR’s plan actually got him exactly what he wanted – a Court that gave up its hostility to the New Deal. As the saying at the time went, it was “the switch in time that saved Nine.”
ArchTeryx
@bbleh: I don’t think Marbury is compatible with democracy. There’s a very good reason most of the other countries (many with parliamentary democracies) have completely defanged or never allowed their “Supreme” courts this much power.
Political mob rule can bring disasters like Brexit, yes. But guess what? After enough years of immiseration, the UK voters just threw the entire Tory party out on their asses. They can do that with their parliament. We can’t do that with a lawless Supreme Court.
oldgold
@Citizen Alan: BINGO!
Chris
@RaflW:
I think the shift from a 5-4 to a 6-3 court has done a lot of damage, because the additional safety cushion means that not only do Republicans have to worry a lot less about defections, but they’re now fairly secure in the feeling that they won’t see a liberal court in decades.
The Supreme Court decisions legalizing gay marriage and upholding (most of) the ACA would never happen today.
bbleh
@ArchTeryx: I agree reform is needed desperately; I just don’t want to throw the baby out with the bath water. And with Congress paralyzed, I don’t know where reform is going to come from. I’d like to think that Dems continue our recent streak of materially out-performing both polls and expectations when it comes to actual elections, and we can eventually get something done, but I don’t see real structural reform within reach in ’24 because of the Senate calendar. About the best I hope for is a trifecta passing some clear and pointed legislation (bypassing the filibuster if necessary) telling the Court very clearly thou shalt / shalt not, stripping them of jurisdiction in particular matters as appropriate, and then applying the Jacksonian Solution if necessary (which I think it might not be, because I think Roberts, at least, is smart enough to know not to cut off his nose to spite his face). Maybe also pass articles against Thomas & possibly Alito for corruption etc., just to make sure the message gets through.
Martin
@gvg: The suggestion on the lifetime appointment thing is to institute a system of ‘Senior Justice’ where they keep their lifetime appointment, they only sit on cases for 18 years, and then after they move to senior status, get a different set of responsibilities (which might involve filling in if there’s a vacancy or recusal, or could just be to advise the district they are assigned to, etc). It keeps the lifetime part but rewrites the responsibilities.
Jeffro
THANK YOU
Belafon
@ArchTeryx: And so did the conservative Democrats, who refused to pass any more of his agenda until Pearl Harbor.
lamh47
Kyle Rayner
My time has co- oh, that’s not what you meant? Hm… back to tumblr.
ArchTeryx
@randy khan: Simple. It reverts to what happens in most Western democracies – the legislature has the final say in what a law means. If states go rogue, the Feds bring them to heel. It switches the center of power from an unelected House of Lords to an electable Congress. Admittedly, this is more of a problem with our archaic first-past-the-post system, because parliamentary democracies are FAR more reactive to voters than ours is. A good part of why our Congress is paralyzed is because of the real House of Lords – the Senate – insulates Congress from accountability to the voters. But one problem at a time. Bringing a lawless Supreme Court to heel has to be Priority 1 or nothing else matters.
ArchTeryx
@Belafon: Yep. That’s a good part of why he had such big majorities. The Dixiecrats, that forced the New Deal to exclude POC else they’d block it too.
JoyceH
Lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court is not in the Constitution, I just checked. So yeah, term limits can be passed by Congress and signed by the President. And if we can retake the Senate, as others have noted, that 60 vote requirement can be eliminated by a 51 vote majority in the Senate. I would hope that if the Dems take the trifecta, they will understand the mandate from the public to GET ER DONE! and those filibuster lovers who’ve been hiding behind Manchin and Sinema’s skirts for so long won’t have the guts to go public with their opposition.
And I especially agree with the need to expand the court. Long before the Supreme Court became famous for its corruption and extremism, noted court watchers were complaining that the SC was just too small for its current environment and workload. When the Court was first expanded to 9, there were 9 circuits. There are now 13. So let’s expand the SC to 13. Perfectly workable.
And for the complainers that think that’s too extreme, tell them the real extreme – expand the court along with the population. When the SC was expanded to 9, the population was a smidge under 40 million. It’s now 330 million. If the SC expanded based on population the correct size of the court would be over 70 by now!
Ramona
I completely agree with this!
Martin
@Chris: With the reminder that USSC did give the executive a remedy to this problem that they didn’t previously had, which was extralegal consequences under the banner of ‘official acts’. The problem there is that USSC trusts that Democrats will never use that power, but Republicans will, and they’re right.
Danielx
@Jeffro:
OT, but how did you like Goose?
Martin
@Ramona: Reminder that we only call something ‘conventional wisdom’ when people think it’s wrong.
RaflW
@randy khan: My understanding is Consumers Union is a stalking horse interest group of the far right, and has very few actual consumers of broadband as members.
Their mission is to dismantle both the regulatory and subsidy systems of government. Let me rephrase that. Their mission is to dismantle government.
The current, rogue 5th Circuit is in agreement on this mission.
lowtechcyclist
@RaflW:
I’ve heard the notion before (as was proposed upthread) that Congress can strip SCOTUS of appellate jurisdiction. I think there’s a debate about what the wording of Article III really means there, but that aside, what happens in a case like this? Who bells the 5th Circuit?
gvg
A supreme court that protects peoples rights gradually acquires more power due to reputation that it earned. Think of Civil rights. Now look at the court we have. Just a couple of decades have destroyed their respect. mainly the last 10 years. They didn’t rule for Trumps silly election claims, but they have ruled for money and corruption.
We have a real mess to clean up.
I think there are more investigations of the money to be done on all of them. Probably ought to check the democrats too just so we aren’t blindsided, but mainly find out a lot and make sure people hear about it. Get the public aware even more so.
ArchTeryx
@bbleh: Well, reversing Marbury would take either an extremely bold act of Congress – a Congress willing to openly defy the Supremes and create a Constitutional crisis – or a Constitutional amendment. I just think the amendment might actually have more chance of passing than one limiting the President’s power, because both sides don’t really like the idea of a completely lawless Star Chamber court and stripping their power in toto may be the only alternative to political violence. The evangelicals, the only ones that really like this Court, can go suck eggs.
Belafon
@Omnes Omnibus: Two immediately, unless one of the sinister six resigns, won’t fix anything, though.
gvg
@RaflW: No. Consumers Union is Consumers Report-the magazine that evaluates and tests products for reliability and safety. The union is their lobbying arm. they do things like advocate for car seats and recalls and cleared labels on food.
cain
@David Hunt: On the other hand, when we get all 2 branches of the govt – we will make sure their lives are a living hell with a extra extra scrutiny. Dragging their personnel over for interrogations even if they can’t come.
Make them come to the realizations that the beatings are going to continue until they leave and there is no chance of a republican presidency in the next 25 years. Watching them just wither because how utterly they failed. Of course, they could go after Loving and what not – but it will only fuel keeping the presidency and congress away from GOP hands.
Omnes Omnibus
@ArchTeryx: You are conflating some things here. There are countries with parliamentary systems that have first past the post elections. They are not incompatible. At the same time, we could introduce RCV and our elections would remain at fixed intervals and our presidential system would remain intact.
Martin
@randy khan: Pretty much everything Congress does needs to be bicameral and signed by the executive.
That’s why I laid it out the way I did above. If Congress + Executive (2 branches) pass a law they think is constitutional and USSC disagrees – that judgment goes on hold and if Congress can pass a new bill that says they disagree with USSC and the Executive signs it, then you have a 2 branch veto over USSCs judgement. If USSCs case is persuasive and they can’t pass that through both houses or if the executive doesn’t sign it, then USSCs ruling goes into effect.
So it doesn’t strip USSC of the job of evaluating the constitutionality of laws, or even of the power to make them unconstitutional – it simply makes that power subject to being overridden if the other two branches are in agreement.
If USSC is an independent body, then it can kind of work without a check, but nobody can say looking at Leonard Leo’s operation in partnership with Mitch McConnell that it’s an independent body. It’s an unchecked political body. So, add a check.
Omnes Omnibus
@Belafon: It starts the process though. And it is a shot across the bows that might get the attention of the less crazed of the six.
ArchTeryx
@Omnes Omnibus: Point. Canada and the UK are both (IIRC) First Past the Post for their MP elections. It’s just that they can call snap elections and hold votes of no confidence, whereas we are stuck with our House for at least 2 years and our Senate for at least 6, and gerrymandering has all but locked the House into place – my number may be wrong, but 95% of their retention elections result in the incumbent’s re-election. THAT is the real problem, not necessarily the lack of RCV or something besides First Past the Post. (FPP is a massive problem in a two-party democracy because of the spoiler effect but that’s a whole other topic).
lowtechcyclist
@gvg:
@Citizen Alan:
I’m not sure a Constitutional amendment would be needed. The One Weird Trick would be for Congress to define the ‘Office’ (as Article III words it) that they are appointing a judge to, to consist of eighteen years on the Supreme Court followed by as many years as they want as a District Court judge. ETA: That would create an ‘office’ that a judge would hold ‘on good behavior’ but that would be limited to 18 years on SCOTUS.
Martin
@Omnes Omnibus: Yeah, I think part of the problem here is that Democrats have so thoroughly disarmed themselves in this fight that USSC is convinced they have no guardrails. They can take bribes, they can tell Congress to go fuck themselves if they demand answers around those bribes or failure to recuse.
Democrats need to demonstrate that they do have some authority here, and they’ve completely failed on that.
catclub
stupid CNN headlines:
More than half of American renters who want to buy a home fear they’ll never afford one
here’s mine: “More than half of incels who want to date a supermodel fear they’ll never afford it.”
cain
@JoyceH:
I hope that this time, we will get rid of the filibuster or make them actually filibuster and get up there and run the clock. This whole lazy “filibuster!” and then not doing it is some stupid shit.
Once Dems stop losing their fear of chasing white men votes, we will be a lot better as a party.
Omnes Omnibus
@ArchTeryx: Well, I doubt we are going to switch to a parliamentary system anytime soon, so any solutions premised on that are nonstarters.
Captain C
@BR: This one definitely falls under Every Accusation Is a Confession.
scav
@catclub: More than half of American dieters fear they’ll never fit in a size 2.
Martin
@lowtechcyclist: One weird trick is already in place.
Just pass a law that says after 18 years a Supreme Court justice will be placed on senior status and a replacement chosen. It’s already there for other lifetime appointment judges, it’s just not there for USSC.
The whole endeavor exists by statute already.
SatanicPanic
I know this won’t happen but if Harris wins I hope Biden has them all carted off to some CIA black site in Eastern Europe. Harris allows them back, but with a message that hey you know it could happen again.
ArchTeryx
@Omnes Omnibus: Agreed. That’s why I basically said Marbury is what we have to go after. Destroy their power and return it to the legislature. A parliamentary democracy would never have allowed this to happen (and they haven’t, in most other Western democracies) but we don’t have one and won’t get one short of a revolution. Anyone betting on a revolution being the only solution is young, naïve, or completely illiterate about history (but I repeat myself).
Geminid
@Scott P.: There is such a thing as a “legislative non-starter at the moment,” which is what the other commenter said. Next January, when the next Congress commences, is the soonest this kind of legislation wiould be introduced.
This Congress will not get much done between now and the election. It might pass some stuff in the Lame Duck session, but not judicial reform.
Baud
So is impeaching and removing Thomas and Alito, but folks here were supportive of that attempt.
Ksmiami
The states can just start disregarding the Supreme Court decisions as well. Might as well go into a hot Constitutional Crisis versus this cold one.
SatanicPanic
@Martin: Right- Madison v Marbury was their ruling, not legislation. No one has to just accept it. At a minimum Democrats should start including something along the lines of “their power is mostly persuasive “ in their criticisms.
Frequent_lurker
@ArchTeryx: I would like to add that Alito pretended that the the 9th amendment didn’t exist to overturn Roe. Alito stating that if rights are not explicitly enumerated in the Constitution that those rights do not exist when the 9th amendment says the exact opposite. I also remember hearing that Scalia had called the 9th amendment an “ink blot.” And I’ve heard of some conservatives telling the Courts to throw out textualism in what I think is an effort more of trying to get courts to grant them more preferred outcomes. So much for that conservative “principle.”
ArchTeryx
@Baud: Symbolic acts are often the prelude to real ones. It may be a non-starter but it gets the public engaged, and with this Congress it’s the best we can hope for. For now.
Eyeroller
@gvg: Which is why I think this crusade they appear to be conducting is extremely misguided. I’ve let the subscription to Consumer Reports run out because I often found they usually recommended the higher-end products (duh, higher-end is usually though not always higher quality) and I have also been disappointed in some of their fixations, e.g. with Toyota. But they are trying to help consumers. I suppose they believe if this broadband initiative is done how they want it will be cheaper.
RaflW
@Chris: True. But reversing them might bring out real pitchforks.
Baud
@ArchTeryx: So (1) gets the public engaged. That’s usually how constitutional amendments pass anyway.
I guess each person gets to randomly piss on efforts they don’t like, but I find we lose collective credibility when we say “be aggressive” and then say “not like that” when the action doesn’t line up exactly with what we had envisioned.
Subsole
@ArchTeryx: Ah, the good ol’ 5th. The shame of our Republic…
lowtechcyclist
@Martin:
Maybe, but in the meantime, keeping it in play is worthwhile just to be able to ask its opponents, “why do you want the President to be above the law? Why do you want to elect a king? I thought we fought a Revolution to get rid of kings.”
Baud
@randy khan:
The lead party is Consumers’ Research, not Consumers Union, which doesn’t appear in the caption.
https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/22/22-60008-CV2.pdf
...now I try to be amused
I wonder if this Court will step so far over the line that Biden (or Harris) will reply like Andrew Jackson did: “Mr. Roberts has made his decision; now let him enforce it.”
Mousebumples
@lamh47: as said in the comments, please pull an Ossoff!
ETtheLibrarian
If Roberts and the Supremes don’t want the changes from the outside, they should make meaningful changes themselves. That he didn’t is why people outside want to now.
If uncle Clarence had recused himself (or was made to recuse himself), and been punished in a meaningful way for this “forgetfulness” by Roberts, maybe he could have headed some attention off.
Kagan had some thoughts on this and she is a Justice. Roberts dithering and wishywashyness will only create some internal problems. Nothing may come of this but more negative attention on the court undermines it which was the opposite of what Roberts likely wants.
Omnes Omnibus
@ArchTeryx: Overturning Marbury would throw out 220+ years of Constitutional jurisprudence. I am not really sure we want to take a complete wrecking ball to our legal system without thinking it through a bit. YMMV.
lashonharangue
@Martin:
I think one of the ideas was that the senior justices would be limited to cases of original jurisdiction ( cases that go straight to the SC).
Sean
@lamh47:
I think Kamala standing next to an empty podium, giving solid, thoughtful answers, while occasionally adding “isn’t it nice to discuss policy without someone screaming lies and bizarre threats the entire time?” or “I’m here to discuss the work we want to do, unfortunately our cowardly opponents have nothing to offer people” would be pretty cool.
RevRick
The Zoom meeting WhiteDudesforHarris tonight is over 75,000 and they hope to hit 100,000 before the 8 pm start. Luke Skywalker will be in the house!
...now I try to be amused
@Omnes Omnibus:
True, but the Roberts Court is using Marbury as a wrecking ball right now.
Omnes Omnibus
@ETtheLibrarian: Remind me again how Roberts could have punished Thomas.
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
Throw him into the Supreme Court dungeon.
Philbert
How about defining ‘during good conduct’ as adhering to the duly-enacted ethics laws? Is ‘good conduct’ only to be determined by 2/3 vote of the Senate?
SatanicPanic
Trump continues to get endorsements from lame rappers, this time French Montana is palling around with Lara Trump. I bet Diddy endorses him next
Baud
@SatanicPanic: R Kelly needs a pardon.
Martin
@catclub: It’s not a stupid headline. If you add up the high housing cost parts of this country you do get about half of the population. My son is an engineer in the Bay Area. He earns a solid 6 figures, lives in a not very nice 1BR apartment, no garage, no amenities, doesn’t own a car, generally cooks for himself. His living expenses are about as low as you would categorize as ‘not in poverty’. His rent is about $3400/mo for that 1BR. That is the cheapest witin distance of his job that wouldn’t require a car. And going further out might save him a couple hundred a month – not enough to come out ahead with a car.
Median home price in his area is $1.8M – and that extends about 50 miles. So he could find cheaper housing if he accepted a 2 hour each way commute by car. In order to get the mortgage payment down to 50% of his take home, he needs a $1.1M down payment on a $1.8M house. That will take him at least 15 years at his current rate of savings. That’s the median, there are cheaper options, but it’s still 10 years even for the cheapest stuff on the market. And that presumes that you can even get insurance for a house in his part of California when the time comes (it’s not looking likely). Right now the Park Fire is doing it’s level best to negate this years new home start numbers.
So, most of California, and all major urban/suburban areas with tech/engineering markets look like this. If there were jobs in Des Moines he could almost buy a house cash, but there are no jobs for him there. There are jobs in Texas, but Texas is hostile to him. There are jobs in those other markets, but the wage/housing relationship isn’t any different there than where he is – especially when you factor in the car. For workers who do need a car, their ability to save is probably cut in half or worse, so take my numbers and double them for those people.
Chris
@ETtheLibrarian:
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable.” Or something to that effect.
Martin
@Omnes Omnibus: Pretty sure he could have made a recommendation to the DOJ that Thomas be arrested for accepting bribes as a federal employee.
trollhattan
Short term none of those is happening. Good goals that can be packaged into meaningful campaign messages.Clarence and the RV, baby.
What we know 100% is should Trump win, he will get more SCOTUS appointments to cement his god-king bonafides and we will get a metric crapton of judge Cannons in every federal district.
Do not want.
lowtechcyclist
@Martin:
I’m no legal eagle, but afaict your link doesn’t support that, in that it isn’t mandatory that a lower court judge be assigned to senior status if age and years of service sum to 80; it’s an option that the judge can elect for themself. And its application to SCOTUS would need to be mandatory to limit Justices’ terms to 18 years, so this would break new ground.
RaflW
@gvg: @randy khan: The case was brought by Consumers Research. Not CU. And CR in this case is definitely not Consumer Reports. Karl Bode, who is a dystopia beat guy, wrote about the case.
Consumers Research is noted as a ‘dark money’ group. Their Exec Dir. has a Fed. Soc. page.
Chris
@Martin:
Yeah, it’s really not unreasonable to say that people should be able to own their own home.
Martin
@SatanicPanic: Oh, right, wrong case. Whoops.
Marbury does address a valid point – who gets to decide constitutionality, and my argument is to not change that – to leave that with USSC, but simply to make it so that one branch doesn’t get a veto over two, but two get a veto over one.
lowtechcyclist
@Omnes Omnibus:
You’re such a spoilsport! ;-)
Eyeroller
@Baud: So Consumers’ Research is the astroturf organization?
Baud
@Chris:
Homeownership rates are still historically high. The mid-2000s and a big spike in 2020 are really the outliers.
Homeownership Rate in the United States (RHORUSQ156N) | FRED | St. Louis Fed (stlouisfed.org)
Omnes Omnibus
@Martin: Roberts reporting someone to the DOJ isn’t Roberts punishing anyone. The implication was that Roberts had some power to actively punish a wayward associate justice. He doesn’t.
Baud
@Eyeroller: I’ve never heard of them before. I assume they are.
Martin
@lowtechcyclist: No, they need legislation to do that, but the entire framework of senior status already exists by statute – it’s not there because of the constitution. And USSCs lifetime appointment are not special relative to other federal judges. So extend senior status and change is so that it’s not voluntary but mandatory, but they continue to be a federal judge, get paid, have an office, etc. You can give those judges other duties – the constitution only says the appointment is for life, not what the nature of the duties will be. So pass a law that just changes that part and maybe a with a provision that transitions the timing such that each president get an equal number of appointments, etc.
SatanicPanic
@Baud: Trump would, wouldn’t he?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Eyeroller:
Yup
SatanicPanic
@Martin: I like that framing
Baud
@SatanicPanic: Yes.
Cheryl from Maryland
@Citizen Alan: THIS. Now that most of are experienced with Zoom, there is NO reason to have balanced House districts.
hueyplong
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): “Woke Capitalism” might be the lamest bogeyman ever. Oh, shit, they’re marketing to everyone? INTOLERABLE!!!
RevRick
@Chris: All it would require is wholesale scrapping of zoning laws, enabling increasing housing density. The reason why home prices are so ridiculously high is because huge sections are limited to single family homes with minimum lot size.
Baud
@RevRick: Who wants to live next to a pig farm?
NotMax
@Kyle Rayner
I see what you did there.
:)
Captain C
@SatanicPanic:
“By the way, whatever happened to Clarence and Sam? They seem to have vanished over there…”
Martin
@Omnes Omnibus: I think you’re being a little too lawyerly on this. If the Chief Justice tells the DOJ and Congressional committees that he believes an associate justice has violated federal bribery laws, there is no universe in which there are not consequences of some sort for the associate justice. No, they aren’t directly by the Chief Justices hand, but there will be consequences. It might be arrest, it might be impeachment, it might be so much scrutiny that he’s forced to step down – but there will be something.
Kyle Rayner
@NotMax: :) 💚
hueyplong
@Baud: “Who wants to live next to a pig farm?”
I’m surrounded by Republicans, so I don’t want to dismiss the concept out of hand without learning more.
Jay
@gvg:
According to the Extreme Court, if you get the money first, then do the deed, it’s bribery.
If you do the deed, then get money, it’s a gratuity or a tip.
If you get the money, but don’t appear to be doing anything obvious in exchange for it, it’s just an allowance from a generous Corporation or Donor.
lamh47
Yup…this feels different…and def giving 2008 vibes.
Harrison Wesley
@SatanicPanic: P Diddy endorsing P Tape? Makes sense.
CaseyL
Please, everyone, don’t get Consumer Union and Consumer Research mixed up with Consumer Reports, which is a real consumer-protecting, consumer-advocating group.
hueyplong
@Harrison Wesley: We shouldn’t be surprised that the rap world has its own versions of Ted Nugent. I’m glad we didn’t have to find out whether the Hammer, in his economic distress, would have gone Trumper back in ’96 or whenever it was.
japa21
@Omnes Omnibus: Of course they just threw out over 230 years of a basic constitutional principal that no one is above the law with some of the most specious reasoning ever seen in a legal document.
Steve in the ATL
@Martin: is your son a member of “the rent is too damn high!” party?
Kay
@Sean:
She can do the same if Trump shows up. He doesn’t address anything asked or the person he’s debating anyway.
lowtechcyclist
@Martin:
That’s a big change for the lower courts; that’s not just extending something that already applies to them to SCOTUS. If it already were mandatory for the lower courts, there wouldn’t be much of an argument that the Constitution allows this sort of redefinition of ‘office’ because they’d been living with it all this time without objection.
And that’s why I used the One Weird Trick formulation: if Congress passed such a law for SCOTUS, it’s not entirely clear how things would play out, whether it would settle the issue or not.
BTW, you wouldn’t want to just make the current law mandatory and apply it to SCOTUS. A 50 year old elevated to SCOTUS would become senior after 15 years; a 60 year old, after only 10.
Eyeroller
@CaseyL: Interesting that some right-wing astroturfers grabbed the name and any assets of the dormant organization from which Consumers Union split, however. I would not have guessed that it would be something pre-existing and so old.
Steve in the ATL
@Martin: you’re forgetting that SCOTUS has already defined bribery out of existence
Kay
@Sean:
When children are small they don’t really recognize that other people exist in any real way so they can’t play cooperatively:
She can do parallel debate because her opponent is stunted. This might actually work.
lowtechcyclist
@CaseyL:
Consumers Union is the parent organization of the Consumer Reports magazine. Don’t mix up Consumers Union/Consumer Reports with Consumer Research.
Martin
@Baud: That misses the problem. Right now, you have historically high rates of homeownership among older demographics, with even higher rates of having homes paid off. Those numbers have never been higher. I’m in that group – paid off what is now a $1.7M house in 2020. Of course, I originally paid ¼ that much, and we never had a mortgage over $200K because we just used equity growth to get into this one. Paying it off was easy relative to its value. I can confidently say we didn’t add $1.2M worth of value to this home, it only acquired that because if you don’t want to be homeless when supply is well below demand for housing, you gotta pay up. It’s basically market extortion.
For people under 40, their rates of homeownership are falling fast because they’re simply unaffordable, and rents aren’t helping matters either as landlords have all new tools to extract maximum revenue between occupancy and rent. Landlords squeeze tenants for rent because the alternative is homelessness, and then turn around and block new development because they can make more money squeezing tenants than they can renting/selling new units.
Things get out of hand really quickly in inelastic markets – and inelastic markets are REALLY profitable to manipulate – see Enron, see egg prices during covid, and so on.
Baud
@Martin: The comment I was responding to wasn’t confined to particular demographics. It was talking about home ownership as a general matter.
Omnes Omnibus
@Martin: Sure thing.
ArchTeryx
@Omnes Omnibus: Haven’t we already crossed that Rubicon with Chevron and the nondelegation doctrine?
rikyrah
@Kay:
truth
john b
Unfortunately, as I understand it, that ruling says that the courts can decide whether something is an official act or not. So basically, it’s a pass for the GOP and not for dems.
Geoduck
Have to agree, there’s no way either of them is resigning if Harris wins, and probably not even if the Shiatgibbon slimes back in.
Martin
@Steve in the ATL: Why are you accepting that at face value? Why don’t Democrats force that to be implemented in every single situation? When the courts say something is unconstitutional, red states don’t stop testing that assertion. They keep passing laws banning abortion over and over and over and forcing the courts to affirm that decision until the day comes that they win.
Democrats on the other hand just surrender. Make USSC own the decision that Thomas’ bribes were legal. Let them tell the American public that it’s okay for someone to buy a conservative Justice an RV, buy their mom’s house, put their kid through private school. See if that maybe causes voters to change who they vote for.
Stop arguing that USSC is political and then abandoning all political responses to the court as if it’s not political. It’s fucking infuriating.
lamh47
Another great clip from Harris campaign. And it’s not even a new clip. It’s a clip from Harris at an event discussing reproductive rights/freedoms. More evidence to show MVP Harris has ALWAYS been saying these things, just now MSM has to actually report it instead of ignore it.
The Harris train is completely taking ALL the air out of Chump co. Bout only Faux news even shows his rally in full anymore! Harris is overtaking the airways and social media. So you KNOW this is making Chump mad AF!
I LOVE IT!
KatKapCC
@Kay: They should give Trump one of these to keep him occupied.
randy khan
@ArchTeryx:
But you know the Constitution doesn’t say that the legislature gets to decide if there’s a dispute. So it’s simple, but unimplementable absent a Constitutional amendment.
And you haven’t solved the problem of the person who sues to stop a school prayer mandate.
Omnes Omnibus
@japa21: That’s one decision, a terrible one, but just one decision. Tossing Marbury throws every decision premised on Marbury into doubt.
Omnes Omnibus
@ArchTeryx: No.
trollhattan
@hueyplong: That’s how we got Rainbow-Flavored Bud Light.
Ksmiami
Or we win Congress and defund the Supreme Court: turn off the lights, shut down the A/C and lock the doors until they cry uncle
UncleEbeneezer
Feel the Harris excitement/energy? It’s a Femininomenon!
randy khan
@RaflW
baud points out that I confused my organizations, so I am wrong and you are right.
Kay
@KatKapCC:
I would also like to play with that though.
What do they call that when an actor addresses the audience? Breaking the wall? She should just talk to us. Glance over at him once in a while and do that “sheesh – weird!” face women have, also just to us.
randy khan
@Martin:
I am kind of interested that you write about this proposal in the context of the current political environment. I have other thoughts as well, but I think I’ll stop there.
SW
Order a drone strike on the court while invoking Presidential immunity.
rikyrah
@Kay:
BWA HA HA HA HA AH HA HA HA AHH A
japa21
@Omnes Omnibus: I agree. I have my issues with Marbury but tossing it out would create chaos. Some say, well, if the voters don’t like certain laws, just vote for legislators who will overturn the law. Unfortunately, some of those laws might very well prevent the voters from doing that.
randy khan
@Baud:
You’re right; I’m wrong. I will see which of my posts I can fix.
hueyplong
@trollhattan: Oh. I thought it was a nefarious plot to subject the LGBTQ community to Budweiser products.
Doug R
@Jeffro:
@Scott P.:
EVERYTHING is impossible until it isn’t.
KatKapCC
@Kay: Breaking the fourth wall :) I recall a moment in one of Hillary’s debates where he was rambling on and she slowly moved her eyes to stare into the camera. It was EXCELLENT
ETA found the clip!
BR
Good Washington Monthly piece to send to lefty friends:
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2024/07/26/biden-and-harris-broke-the-suffocating-washington-consensus-on-economics/
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
Not sure what your point is. Nobody’s going to buy up a bunch of single-family homes, raze them and turn the lots into a pig farm; the land cost is way too high for pig farming. If single-family residential is next to pig farms at all, it would happen because the exurbs have gotten pushed out far enough that they’re building single-family housing next to pig farms.
But say you’ve got an urban corridor in a city where dense development – apartments/condos, office buildings, stores, etc. – are allowed. And just off that corridor, on either side, there’s single-family housing. There ought to be a way of widening the corridor, a block at a time, when it approaches having filled its allowable zoning envelope so that the adjacent blocks with their single-family homes become eligible for more dense development through more or less automatic zoning changes. The people immediately adjacent to the corridor when the change took place would be able to sell their homes for a lot more money, and everyone else would eventually be one block closer to the dense urban corridor.
Baud
@lowtechcyclist: Zoning laws are what make residential communities livable. I would not want to throw them out wholesale.
suzanne
I will note that a pig farm is a different zoning type than residential, so changing a single-family zone to a dense residential zone doesn’t make it either more or less likely to have an adjacency to agricultural.
Most municipalities that engage in any degree of urban planning will restrict what zones are adjacent to one another.
Steve in the ATL
@Baud:
And one of the many reasons that Houston is an unlivable shithole!
Baud
@Steve in the ATL: The solution is to get rid of Houston.
(j/k Texas friends)
laura
I hope President Biden goes all NFLTG on the Supreme Court and starts asking for Thomas and Alito’s resignations for their absolute bullshit refusals to recuse. Just call them out as compromised, corrupt and ugly as sin itself. If it helps AOC in an impeachment, so be it.
oldgold
Article III was not well drafted.
There needed to be some form of review as to the constitutionality of the actions of the legislative branch. Article III was silent on this. Marbury filled this void, but not well.
The problem is there is no check or balance to the review power the Court granted itself.
Article III should have granted the Court the review authority, but provided Congress authority to override the Court’s determination by a 2/3rds vote in each house.
suzanne
@Baud: You don’t have to throw zoning laws out at all. You can take the areas zoned R-1 and change them to R-2 or R-3. That allows denser residential construction but if the municipality requires an agricultural buffer, that can be maintained. Churches, schools, daycares, etc are typically allowed by conditional use permit in R zones. Things like farms, concrete batching plants, mining, and other stinky things are not.
Sister Golden Bear
As I was dreading, Republicans are leaning into using trans people as the scary bogeywomen*
to club Harris and Dems with: Kirk: “Harris Will Kidnap Your Child Via Trans Agenda”
While I expect the attack to fail to sway any undecideds, and Harris to have our back, given long experience, I can’t say I have the same confidence in other Dem leaders. I’m hopeful this time around will be different, but haven’t see enough signs to make a leap of faith that it will.
Regardless, I fear for my brothers, sisters and niblings in Red States. It’s gonna be a rough ride, and may become even rougher when we win.
*I’m trying to erase trans men, but they’re not who the anti-trans haters obsess over.
Baud
@suzanne: Right. But the comment I was replying to said
sdhays
@Kay: I wonder if candidates know what camera is actually being broadcast at a given moment. Would she know where to look, and would the audience (us) actually see it?
wjca
I think the critical change was that they no longer have to actually get up and talk constantly in order to block something. Just saying there aren’t 60 votes to invoke cloture takes minimal effort. It just makes it way too easy to block stuff now.
The good news is, it only takes a simple majority to change the rules. So the “talking filibuster” could be restored pretty easily. And without setting off the filibuster fetishists.
rikyrah
Reminder:
Joy Reid is doing Project 2025 on this week’s shows.
suzanne
@Baud: i think that is just the fairly imprecise language of a normie. Scrapping isn’t necessary, nor is it advantageous, IMO.
I would like to see most residential areas zoned to R-2 or R-3, which would allow most single-family homeowners to add an ADU, or allow a small-scale developer to purchase some adjacent lots and do a townhouse/rowhouse-type building. Can still have height restrictions and reasonable setbacks.
sdhays
@wjca: I think you underestimate filibuster fetishists.
But I agree. If you’re invested in the idea that the minority should have major obstruction tools, they should need to really work for that obstruction, and they shouldn’t be able just shut down the majority’s entire agenda.
Jay
@suzanne:
Rev Rick’s suggestion that Baud is replying to, was to get rid of zoning laws.
KatKapCC
@Sister Golden Bear: “They’re gonna trans your kids” is the new “They’re gonna take your guns”. These people are so ridiculous.
BCHS Class of 1980
@David Hunt: Exactly. When MVP becomes MP, they will retire the way RBG did: feet first.
hueyplong
@BCHS Class of 1980: I think this is where someone says, “Your offer is acceptable.”
Fleeting Expletive
@Martin: If his brand of engineering has to be on location or with people, certainly. The computer based work my kid does can be done from anyplace with access to broadband. He’s considering locations in Wyoming, Washington, South Dakota, and other places which are less-peopled but not off the grid.
Central Planning
@Martin:
I’ve started a response at least 5 times and it turns into to something that requires lots of thought. Needless to say, if companies embraced remote work, or, built facilities/offices in Tier2/3 cities, we could have a win-win for everyone.
I think the trick is getting the people to want to move to those smaller cities and fight the allure of NYC, San Francisco, Seattle, Atlanta, Austin, etc.
And I get it – I LOVE going to big cities. I would be happy to live in one except for my wife who is not a fan.
Ramona
@Martin: true dat
Sean
@Kay:
I think you’re probably right. I think part of the strategy is largely treating him as a petulant non-entity. “Can anyone even understand a word the guy just said – why do we even try, it’s pure insanity. He’s talking about Hannibal Lecter” and then pivot to a rational answer about whatever topic. Responding to Trump’s word salad is pointless and he’s going to lie anyway. Just have several pre-prepared answers – “That was incoherent and extremely strange. You ok, Donald? Maybe you fell asleep during the question? I’ve got an actual answer for you.” Pivot and repeat. Probably needs to be less cute, but needling him might get him to blow up, while KH just proceeds with her normal aplomb, without getting bogged down in fact checking him.
pajaro
It is within the power of Congress to alter the number of Supreme Court justices. There is nothing magic about the number 9, the number has changed over time, and there is no mechanism for fixing the size other than Congress. Term limits of Supreme Court Justices, on the other hand, is new, and therefore, more risky. It is also obviously within Congress’ power to change the filibuster for legislation involving the federal judiciary. This could not have been done previously, since there were two Democrats opposed to any changes, Manchin and Sinema. If we somehow hold the Senate and White House and win back the House, it should be item one on the agenda. Item two would then be for Smith to make sure one of the Trump cases gets back to the Supreme Court and argue for the overturning of the immunity decision.
prostratedragon
@randy khan:
“The problem is not the rules; it’s the people.”
Another tagworthy statement.
Jeffro
@Kay: yup!
She’d do well to lead off with “I don’t really intend to debate Donald Trump. He lies like he breathes and doesn’t actually know anything. I’m here tonight to talk directly to the American people about the choice in this election, and their future, and their kids’ future…”
Jeffro
How about a drone strike on 6/9 (or 2/3, if we’re reducing fractions here) of the Court?
cmorenc
Because the constitution explicitly says federal judges, including SCOTUS, shall hold office “during good behavior” – effectively life appointments, term limits would require a constitutional amendment. It’s a more open question whether “good behavior” can only be enforced through impeachment ie 2/3 senate vote.
Martin
@Steve in the ATL: He is a leftist that tolerates Democrats because he is pragmatic.
wjca
Typically, there is a (red) light on top of the camera, which is lit when it is the one being broadcast.
You may have noticed shows where someone is talking looking towards you, then suddenly you are looking from a different direction/camera. And the calmly speaker turns his head to be looking at you again. That’s how that happens: the speaker turns to the red light.
wjca
The apple does not fall far from the tree. (Although perhaps the “pragmatic” part is from his mother…?)
SomeRandomGuy
Oh, come now, SAY IT.
Impeaching Alito and Thomas would result in Republican Senators once again violating their oath, before the Christian God, to see impartial justice done, resulting in 0 loss of support against the “10 commandments” assholes who forget that “not taking the lords name in vain” doesn’t mean “no blessing your heroin before shooting up” (though we’d bet 45 out of 50 Republican Senators to get that wrong) – it means no swearing before god, and violating that oath. “By god, I’d punch you if you gave me permission,” “Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain!” “You’re right (gentle punch on the shoulder, I’d be glad to demonstrate to every member of the jury). By god, I said I’d punch you, and I didn’t take the Lord’s name in vane[sic].”
It’s amazing how little “Christian” means: opposition to abortion, gay folks, trans folk, and pornography – which, to some, means letting your SON scan your devices
(not your wife, who deserves to see what nasty shit you’re watching… especially if *she* might be interested in playing along, making it good and honorable sex, rather than sinful onanism?)
Uh, where was I? Right, having your ADULT CHILD scan your devices to make sure you’re not viewing porn, because that’s not despicably creepy at all, is it? The rest of that crap, feeding the hungry? Nah. Sheltering the needy? Nah. Visiting the sick, and imprisoned? Who does *that*?
So, we can’t expect the corruption of the US Senate Republicans to be broken, by facts, evidence, or the results of a trial, and, we know that no Christian Republican takes their oaths before God, or the Constitution, seriously. (Seriously, if *any* Christian Republican cared, where was the uproar, at all those commandment breakers?)
Also: don’t just mock Christians with this. You meet someone, they say they want to vote for a Christian candidate, tell them, “yeah, it sucks, all those Republican senators all pretended to care about god, then they broke their oath before him. Isn’t that one of the early commandments? Don’t take the name of the Lord Thy God in vain? And they all swore an oath before god they never intended to fulfill? Well, but they didn’t even *hold* a trial – they just said they didn’t like the indictment, because it didn’t have all the facts that would come out during the trial they refused to hold.”
Some of them will say “you’re just suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome!” which doesn’t matter. You’re not trying to get them to agree. You’re trying to get them say, a week or so later, “is it true Senate Republicans didn’t even hold a trial for the first Trumpy-bear impeachment?” and then think about what that might mean, if they are a real Christian, not an Evangelical.
(Don’t fart around about “real Christian” here – I’m just talking about the people who care about the moral guidelines for real… not Evangelicals, which are just Republicans in fancy dress. So, no “No True Scotsman” fallacy, just, a title disambiguation. )
Josie
@Steve in the ATL:
Oh, really! I assume you are speaking with the authority of one who has lived for a long tine in Houston?
ssdd
Even if nothing can be done it’s good politics.
https://digbysblog.net/2024/07/29/the-supremes-have-trashed-their-credibility/
Those term limit numbers are pretty eye-popping!
Gvg
@Martin: what kind of engineer? Housing costs in California are NOT typical. Really, I know you wouldn’t like Florida’s politics but the housing market is not that bad here or many places.
my father was an engineer. Computer designer (the insides, hardware) for defense contractors. For him with his skills after a few decades of specialization that happened gradually he explained that there were 4 cities that paid for him. San Francisco, Texas (forget which city), Boston and Orlando. But most kinds of engineers have a lot more choices, especially early in their career.
Housing markets change suddenly and drastically including interest rates and from seller markets to buyers. Now California has been high priced for decades because of its economy and population and that probably isn’t going to change, but almost any other state will have opportunities at some point.
Martin
@Baud: Well, that’s kind of like saying Jim Crow isn’t a problem because statistically most people are pretty happy with it.
There are serious structural economic and demographic problems building up because of this problem. Yes, it’s not a problem across the country, but it IS a problem where Democrats get most of their votes from and if Democrats don’t fucking do something about it, that can change. California’s homelessness problem is mostly a byproduct of this and that carries a lot of downstream effects on the electorate. Young people are choosing to not have kids because they can’t afford it, and housing cost are a big part of that. That’s now central in the presidential debate thanks to J.D. Forced Breeder over there.
Democrats need to work on this. It is doing real harm to their base of voter, and due to structural employment issues (which is what my son is caught up in) the typically expectation of ‘just move to South Bend’ don’t apply. A more specialized workforce is going to run into this problem more often because jobs aren’t nearly as uniformly distributed as they used to be. Yeah, he could leave his career as an engineer in tech and go be an insurance analyst in Des Moines, but that’s not a good trade for the nation – we should want him in that specialized, high output, high GDP contributing job.
Gvg
@Martin: what if it’s the chief Justice that took the bribe?
why does it need the chief Justice to act? It seems to me that these revelations in the news should be sufficient reason for the department of Justice to open an official investigation. Of course we would not and should not here anything about it until and if any charges are made.
Martin
@Fleeting Expletive: His can’t. They’re an employee owned engineering firm, doing very specialized work for the semiconductor industry. Manufacturing is on site and he needs to be there to interact with it. He needs access to equipment that would not even be legal to put in a residence.
Some tech can be remote. Management has made a collective decision that’s not viable even in those cases, which is resulting in a lot of remote workers who fled the state due to housing costs returning to keep their job. A lot of tech can’t be remote, like his. Because we have this cultural hard-on for manufacturing, all of those jobs can’t be remote either, so all of the current efforts to boost that will need to have workers on premises.
I will note, there was effectively no single family zoning in the United States prior to WWII. This low-density housing and car dependency through zoning is the solitary cause of this problem. The united states has more land area dedicated to parking cars than housing. NYC has been trying to build a new housing unit on a plot of land a judge has declared to be a ‘historic parking lot’. In case anyone was curious where our priorities are on this.
SomeRandomGuy
@Steve in the ATL: Not at all! If a person – okay, a Democrat – bribes *before* the desired action, that’s still unlawful! At least, until a prominent Republican needs a technicality to skate on.
To be brutally honest with the SCROTUS, they tried to make their decision sound like the “upskirt photos” decision. See, a lot of states didn’t have a law against taking a picture of a woman by getting the camera under her skirt/dress. She’s not *naked*, you see? And what’s “on display” is “public” in the sense, if she fell on her ass, you *might* get an upskirt glimpse, so, “goddamn it, we can’t find the defendant guilty.”
Well, if you and I were businessmen, who did a lot of work together, and I won you a big contract, and later, I said I was on hard times, and you said “you know, I think I forgot to pay you for Job X” (i.e., “I’m flush enough to give you a gift, and make it sound like it’s for work, to help you save face.”), well, is that now a bribe?
Is it a bribe if I helped you win the contract, on merit alone? What if it was “he’s just as good, and he’s my friend”? What if… well, you can imagine all the complications.
It’s true, they opened the door for “all but direct quid pro quo” bribes to be allowed, because reasonable doubt will nibble away at all but the most ridiculously perfect prosecutions.
But the nature of the case, “the bribe happened *afterward*” means a kickback was paid, not a bribe, and it wasn’t pre-arranged, so unless the law included a prohibition of kickbacks, which might be difficult – like trying to stretch a “no naked photos, no photos in a private location (like a bathroom or bedroom), but photos in public, showing them clothed, are okay” to cover an upskirt photo.
(The “upskirt photo exception” was an old case, from the 90s, I believe. I reckon most states have laws covering it now.)
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@RevRick:
Um, no. That’s simply glibertarian-backed/sourced “market urbanism” bullshit that’s unfortunately peddled by a number of “valued commenters” here. No data supports it…unless it’s sourced from said origins. It’s setup just like Big Tobacco was and the astroturf groups that were formed (and originally financed by Peter Thiel) to scream about it basically use conservative messaging techniques with a healthy dose of forced birther language.
Martin
@Gvg: It doesn’t. Could be any justice. In fact, I’d try and work in a ‘duty to report’ on the judiciary on that one. It’s just astonishing that teachers can be better relied on to report criminal behavior than judges are.
SomeRandomGuy
@ETtheLibrarian: Of all the things in my life, “What Roberts really wants,” is roughly the equivalent of how worried I’d be if my family found microscopic potato blight while on an ocean cruise. The blight killed a huge number of Irish folks who were forced to watch the food they grew get shipped off to feed Britain.
But people are no longer dependent on a monocrop for subsistence, and, “middle of the ocean” is not the worst place to try to isolate a blight.
The goddamned fool doesn’t even realize that “viability” is a bright line, because if a woman is dying, pre-viability, there’s only one patient to worry about; post-viability, there are *two*.
If you went to fucking *LAW SCHOOL*, I don’t care if you went to Saul Goodman’s correspondence class, even a fictional dirty lawyer could figure that out!
So, I figure Roberts got a chance to play “youth pastor” to Republican kindergarteners, and staring down the “little tyrants” is giving him the chops to stare down Chairman Kim of North Korea! Well, according to Noem, so maybe you only get those chops after you blow away the family dog and a goat you never liked that much.
Martin
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: That’s actually a pretty accurate summary of where things are in CA. My city builds housing – pretty much the only one in the county that does. We grew 50% in the last decade – added 100,000 people. Like, a whole city’s worth of people.
But very little of that development was single family because we’re pretty much out of land to develop. The city shifted over to medium density and mixed use, and that’s almost all we’re going to get from here out. All new development is targeting low-density commercial and industrial land that the city originally zoned with the intention of redeveloping it some decades out, and that day has arrived. So yay, the city is doing the thing they should be doing.
The problem is transit. The city never developed transit out ahead of housing. With all of the single family housing that the city originally built out on – it wouldn’t have gotten used. But now with much higher density, it would. And it’s a catch-22. Higher density housing means higher density workplaces and higher density retail. Suddenly the land you were trying to reclaim for housing you need to instead reclaim for parking, because you have no way to transition people off of driving. So we have grocery stores building parking structures and idiotic shit like that.
Once we had committed to car-dependent low density single family housing, it becomes almost impossible to transition to anything else, so the city is caught in this trap where it needs to build transit and reduce the need (and even ability) for people to own a car, but it has no way to incorporate the single family parts of the city in that – because if your job has no place to park, the car you rely on isn’t useful, and the cost to extend transit to you is too high because the density is too low. It’s a goddamn mess.
Now, CA has basically eliminated R1 zoning, so developers can come in and buy up lots and convert them to multifamily. Cities have been largely stripped of that. But incorporating parking/transit in that, especially given how high land values are becomes prohibitive. And the state hasn’t pursued measures to force cities to solve transit, and the cities know if they don’t, then it’s pretty much impossible for these neighborhoods to stop being R1, even if they aren’t zoned as such.
Miki
@Omnes Omnibus: And?
M v. M was itself a sort of coup by SCOTUS, grabbing power never given to it by the Constitution but most assuredly acquiesced to by another branch of government because it served their power purposes. Since then, it has maintained its legitimacy only because we – the governed – have agreed, until our political disagreement fractured us, violently, at least once.
There is nothing sacred about Marbury. There’s “just” a boatload of law and practice and politics and elections that we’ve lived with and mostly moved through. But the current SCOTUS has blown up the power formula, imo. And, thus, deserves a robust, serious challenge.
Geminid
@Martin: Now that the CHIPS bill is finally being implemented, there here are new chip plants slated for the Syracuse, Columbus, Ohio and other areas. Some of these projects have broken ground with concete poured. Housing in these places is more affordable than in California.
But I would not blame your son if he wants to stay in California.
Jeffro
OT but serious question here in the Fro household re: Josh of PA
Is it “Sha-peer-o” or “Sha-pie-ro”? We just want to pronounce it however he pronounces it. Also there may be a small bet riding on this. =)
divF
@Omnes Omnibus: I would like to see someone make a more detailed affirmative case for Marbury, other than, “that’s the way we’ve done it for 220 years.”
Constitutional jurisprudence has not exactly covered itself in glory, and decisions such Dred Scott, Plessy, and Lochner had dreadful human costs, as will Dobbs and its progeny. Yeah, I know, Brown vs. Board of Education, Roe – we had a 20-year blip where the Court was on the side of the angels. But it’s a different world now. Modern information technology has implicit in it the ability to micro-optimize the exercise of power, and we have a major component of the polity who is trying to do so ruthlessly. There are no mechanisms for accountability to restrain the unlimited power implicit in Marbury, and we may need to just take a meataxe to it in order for our country to survive. What’s left may be damaged and ugly, but it will still have the ability to respond to bad decisions via elections.
Omnes Omnibus
@Miki: I am not saying that Marbury should be sacred. I am saying that people should be aware of what tossing Marbury will do to the legal system.
Mike S. (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!)
@bbleh: For the current ones that have served over 18 years put them on senior status with full pay and have them only sit on “Original Juristiction” cases* and put new Justices on get the ones with fewer years up to 9 justices or 13 if Congress want sto do that. As Senator Whitehouse and Mark Elias talk about in this Democracy Docket on Youtube discuss how this can be done
* Conflicts between states and a few other rare issues.
Slightly_peeved
@Trivia Man:
I think at that point, the inevitable next step is the full Andrew Jackson. The court ruled on something they have no power to rule on, so that part of their ruling is ignored.
Miki
@Omnes Omnibus: I love seeing Biden et al exploring legislative and Constitutional ways to limit Marbury’s reach. It’s a BFD.
FWIW, Con Law Powers was, surprisingly to me, one of my favorite classes in law school (as was Administrative Law because it was about Powers). Politics is, essentially, about powers as well and some of us are primed to want the power to be exercised for the benefit of the people, the governed.
I’m on jury duty this week and all of this is way up on my “What do I care about?” meter. I doubt I would be accepted on a jury, but showing up for my civic duty is pretty awesome.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
That may be, but in a lot of ways they make them less livable.
The problem is, it’s next to impossible to throw any out retail either.
Miki
@divF: Yep.
lowtechcyclist
@pajaro:
Turn me on dead man, turn me on dead man…
;-)
David T Rickard
Sadly, no. If Ds hold the White House and Senate, then the only way Alito and Thomas leave the Court (before a potential R President/Senate in 2029) is in a body bag. There’s no way those ideologues would allow a Democrat to replace them. And if either of them did die during a Democratic presidency, I would not put it past their wives/the Federalist Society to pull a Weekend at Bernie’s with their corpses.
SomeRandomGuy
@Martin: I’ve always wondered why people in the West Wing aren’t mandatory reporters, and why “loyalty” is considered a meaningful thing to discuss, when illegality is afoot.
I mean, there’s some loser who works at MAL who’s whining because he’s being prosecuted for not rolling on Trump. Well, yes, if you’re part of an alleged criminal conspiracy, and you’re not guilty, you’re going to tell the investigators everything because that’s what honest people do. If you don’t, you’re obstructing justice, and likely becoming an accomplice after the fact.
And it’s like, geez. Hasn’t that poor schmoe spent a couple hundred of his own money, to learn that from a real lawyer?
Anyway: I think the biggest crime is, if a nurse sees you give a child a too long time-out, the nurse is in far more trouble for failing to report than, say, a Mark Meadows watching a crime in progress while playing on his phone. Executive Privilege, like all privilege, is not for covering up criminal wrongdoing.
Martin
@Geminid: He’d have to start up a new firm there. And the market for the stuff he does is really quite small. They are the global supplier for this particularly thing and they have 50 employees. The semiconductor industry is extraordinarily narrow.
He could jump to adjacent parts of the industry, but they’re all within 30 miles of him anyway. Like, no part of this industry exists outside of CA, not until you get down to the foundries themselves or up to the device makers that are mainly in Japan and Netherlands.
But even a lot of the other tech areas that he would be well suited for are in other high housing cost areas. I mean, companies keep moving to my city with a median home price of $1.6M for a reason – we have the workforce they want, and the quality of life, schools, reproductive policies, etc their employees want. The housing problem is just money, and money is a problem an employer can solve. But it lags, and he’s still early in his career.
SomeRandomGuy
@pajaro: Right. It’s 3 that’s a magic number.
Martin
@SomeRandomGuy: Yeah. Now, I was a mandatory reporter and I thought it was a good idea. I think every government employee should be one. I think social media companies should be. I think they hide a lot of illegality behind their moderation policies – not that it’s necessarily malicious, just that hiding the post that calls for murdering someone doesn’t really cut it.
SomeRandomGuy
Or the pig farms are next to “undesirable” housing, owned by people who don’t have the political power to say “no” to pig farmers, who will make a profit by spraying pig poop all over their living space.
This is sometimes called stuff like “environmental racism” though it’s often soot, particulate matter, stink, and noise, rather than literal pig poop, but, Republicans have lots of power in the south.
Geminid
@Martin: I read that Dutch company ASML will have a local support operation for the Syracuse area chip plants, probably the other ones as well. I expect they are hiring engineers like your son for their US operations. But it sounds like there are plenty of opportunities in California if he wants to stay.
janesays
I would be absolutely floored if either of those assholes resigned knowing that by doing so they were going to be replaced by a Kamala Harris nominated jurist. The only way Harris gets to replace either of them in the next 4-8 years is if they die while she’s in the White House.