Says it was out of context. Read his explanation yourself and see what you think.
Here’s the reporter’s reaction:
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Mike SacksVerified account@MikeSacksHP
Aw Judge , no @huffpostlive #LegaleseIt link? Richard Posner: I Did Not Recant My Opinion on Voter ID @tnr http://feedly.com/k/1dfgdHG
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Mike SacksVerified account@MikeSacksHP
Let’s go to the tape. Cut to 9:04: http://huff.lv/GJHJS0 via @HuffPostLive #LegaleseIt!
cleek
fuck twitter.
speak English.
Biff Longbotham
Posner’s Illuminati masters must have had a come to Jesus talk with him.
Mike E
Fucking winger psycho.
Kay
@Biff Longbotham:
By the time you get to the end of the explanation he’s recanted the recant of the recant, IMO. Maybe he should quit while he’s ahead.
Comrade Dread
@cleek: Amen.
cat
“Our opinion pointed out that “as far as anyone knows, no one in Indiana, and not many people elsewhere, are known to have been prosecuted for impersonating a registered voter. But [this could not be decisive, because] the absence of prosecutions is explained by the endemic underenforcement of minor criminal laws (minor as they appear to the public and prosecutors, at all events) and by the extreme difficulty of apprehending a voter impersonator.”
WTF… to paraphrase “We admit there hasn’t been a known impersonators, but we KNOW it has to be happening because we know the plebs are a bunch of law breakers and we can’t be bothered to prosecute them all, therefor they’d break this law just as often as they DUI, Get High, and mouth of to their betters.”
rikyrah
BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA
so true.
PeakVT
Really don’t give a fuck what Posner says anymore. Never did, in fact.
patrick II
Posner is the tribal intellectual. He is allowed, for appearances sake, to speak with intellectual integrity as long as what he says doesn’t upset the tribal chiefs. In the end, he must satisfy the tribe as much as a Somali pirate must satisfy his warlord or Iraqi militia member his leader, but with more pretension of intellectual rigor.
schrodinger's cat
@PeakVT: Funny how these so-called moderate Republicans turn out not to be all that moderate after all. I prefer wingnuttia, at least they are more upfront and honest in their hate.
legion
That’s unfortunate. Recanting that shitstain of an opinion is the only thing that would leave his judicial legacy as anything other than a tragic cautionary tale…
schrodinger's cat
@patrick II: So Posner is the Bobo of judges?
handsmile
Recantation or not, the more important question to be answered is whether what Judge Posner knows now about the consequences of voter identification laws, the “evidentiary gaps” of which seem have to been salient in his Crawford ruling, will be determinative in any such cases that come before the federal Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals on which he sits.
PeakVT
Speaking of conservatives who should shut up and go away, Alan Greenspan has written a new book.
ETA: I suppose they should all shut up and go away. Some more than others, though.
schrodinger's cat
@PeakVT: So when is he going on the TDS to get his tongue bath from giggly Jon Stewart?
Kay
@PeakVT:
It amazes me. Enough from him.
They can’t let it go, and just go off and enjoy the cushy life they created, the free marketeers. They have to keep on dazzling us with their brilliance.
schrodinger's cat
@Kay: Posner or Greenspan?
cleek
@schrodinger’s cat:
last week
handsmile
@schrodinger’s cat:
One week ago today.
ETA: cleek with the faster fingers…
schrodinger's cat
@cleek: How bad was it?
patrick II
@schrodinger’s cat:
Yes, but with actual judicial power. It makes a difference.
cleek
@schrodinger’s cat:
IIRC, it wasn’t terrible. he didn’t grill Greenspan, but there was some eye-rolling and push-back.
http://www.businessinsider.com/alan-greenspan-on-the-daily-show-2013-10
Anoniminous
Why I despise Right Wingers.
Intellectual honesty; they haz none.
feebog
If, on the one hand, you have absolutely no proof than anyone in Indiana EVER attempted to commit voter fraud via inpersonation, while on the other hand you have the admission of the state that the law will disenfranchise thousands of otherwise eligible voters, this should not be a hard decision. Unless of course you don’t really give a shit about disenfranchising voters.
Kay
@schrodinger’s cat:
Greenspan. Posner is still a judge and he has this whole theory he’s expounding. I’ve already heard all Greenspan’s theories. Lived them. There should be something internal that tells them “I’m just not pontificating anymore”, but there doesn’t seem to be. To me, it’s almost a lack of discipline. I don’t respect that.
I feel real rage when I see Dan Senor, for example. OMFG, is there no shame? He’s BACK?
Anoniminous
@cleek:
Of course he didn’t. The moment someone starts actually questioning the 1%’s tick birds, toadies, and lackeys they are fired.
TooManyJens
@feebog: Yes. Posner seems to be saying that it was right for the court to consider the documented difficulties in obtaining the proper ID to only count as theoretical disenfranchisement, while at the same time considering voter fraud to be real despite the lack of evidence for it. The double standard is noteworthy.
Omnes Omnibus
Posner is still saying that, given the information presented in their briefs and at oral argument, he made the “right ” decision at the time, but that subsequent events have added info that changes things. It is what he has been saying all the time.
ETA: I think that he got the original decision wrong. The evidence was there, but he didn’t give it proper weight.
Cacti
@Kay:
I feel real rage when I see Dan Senor, for example. OMFG, is there no shame? He’s BACK?
Ditto for Dick Cheney. Aside from the sociopathy, his ideas on foreign and domestic policy were completely discredited before he left office. Why is he still given a forum and treated as an authority on anything remotely important?
Yatsuno
@Kay: Dan Senor is always going to be coming back. He and his wife are Very Serious People. Very. Serious.
MomSense
@Cacti:
Every time I see Senor’s face on my teevee I start shouting where are the missing BILLIONS?!?!?!
Ditto on the Ditto on Dick Cheney. I recently watched the documentary The World According to Dick Cheney and all I can say is that it is a good thing there are no heavy objects in the same room as the tv.
Citizen_X
@cat:
This is a very useful logical principle, and I’m glad to see Posner argue for it. I look forward to seeing it used in the search for unicorns, Bigfoot, and the interstellar ether, as well.
Kay
@Cacti:
I get Cheney a little. He was elected, so that’s the general rule. right?
I canvassed with a young Republican yesterday on a school bond issue (horrible canvasser, BTW, does a door every thirty minutes) and he feels the same way you do about Cheney about Jimmy Carter.I told him “you don’t know the first thing about Jimmy Carter”.
Dan Senor and Campbell Brown? Never elected. Pure inner-circle media-pundit clubbiness. No one elected either of them, and one of them should stop playing “journalist” when she’s clearly a wingnut lobbyist.
Brown pontificates on public schools now. She’s an education expert. The answer is…privatize! Really? I have to listen to another idiot on public schools? It’s like the fashionable thing to do now, lecture public school teachers.
There is apparently NO LIMIT to the arrogance and hubris of that couple. Ask them anything! They know!
Omnes Omnibus
@Kay:
What have I got in my pocket?
MomSense
@Kay:
Wait, hates Jimmy Carter? I can understand that people disagree with him but he has to be one of the more admirable human beings on the planet.
handsmile
@Kay:
Mrs. Senor indeed now suckles at the lavish anti-public school trough, but she is no longer an active member of the Press Corpse. Of course, one might say she was always “playing ‘journalist'” while at CNN.
I expect Mr. Brown, the mouthpiece of the Coalition Provisional Authority, is rarely asked about that excellent adventure when his opinions are sought on how President Obama has most recently and egregiously diminished the USA’s standing in the world. He could be asked about progress like this, for instance:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/27/iraq-bombings-kill-dozens-baghdad-mosul
And boy howdy! Lookee at Darth Cheney spewing his filth on the “liberal” MSNBC! Funny how Joe and his fifteen-hour weekly frat party is always forgotten about in that characterization.
eemom
@Omnes Omnibus:
Technically, what he (i.e., the panel majority) did was “accept” the district judge’s finding that the evidence was “unreliable” on the basis of some kind of methodological flaws.
On what basis did they “accept” it, however? I’d have to go look at the decision, which I don’t have time to do……but it sounds like some weaselly shit to me.
eemom
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Xecky Gilchrist
@cleek: I was gonna say. Makes me all nostalgic for the telegraph days.
Kay
@MomSense:
He doesn’t know anything about Jimmy Carter except that he’s a “liberal”, something something, “surrender”.
We used to make fun of national Republican operatives bringing up Carter because it was so long ago, who understands the Carter-hate? I found the person they were talking to.
It’s okay, the other Republicans on the school levy team didn’t like the Carter-hater either, which is how I ended up with him. They know him. Now I know him, so that won’t happen again.
MomSense
@Kay:
Yeah that Carter was such a weak, liberal unlike Reagan who never surrendered–except that one time in Lebanon.
Geoduck
@MomSense:
Where have you been for the past forty years? To quote the Simpsons, “He’s History’s Greatest Monster!!”
Shalimar
@MomSense: Jimmy Carter made a few negative comparisons about the way US elections are regulated and supervised vis a vis those in the third world, maybe 4 or 5 years ago. Many wingnuts absolutely despise him for that, and it’s really the only thing those under 50 remember him for other than the vast humanitarian works that they ignore. You never ever question that the US is the most awesomest nation on earth and in history.
I don’t think they even remember why they despise most of the people they despise, they heard something once on FoxNews that linked the name in their mind with burning hatred and all they have to do is hear that name again to trigger the hatred response. This is why they can’t really answer you when you wonder why the hate. They don’t know anymore.
Omnes Omnibus
@eemom: I pulled up the case. The relevant quote is this:
I don’t think they were required to accept that finding.
Judge Evans, in the dissent, nails it in the first sentence:
MomSense
@Geoduck:
When my kids complain of being cold and want to turn up the heat–I tell them to put on a sweater so I guess I’m a monster, too. I have never understood how he could be considered a monster. He always seemed so sensible to me.
@Shalimar:
Funny that the wingnuts are so concerned about voter fraud that they support extreme changes to voting laws but resent criticism from the left about elections?
geg6
@schrodinger’s cat:
Yeah, he’s like catnip to Stewart. Almost as much as John Yoo is.
And people wonder why I hate TDS. The fact that he practically gives people like this a knob job on air apparently isn’t a disqualifier for their viewership, I guess. Gimme Colbert any day. Stewart is as much a Village wannabe as David Gregory and Bob Schieffer.
geg6
@Anoniminous:
Except Colbert. He’s the exception that proves the rules, I guess.
Shalimar
@MomSense: Fox highlighted it because Carter supports national standards and much greater accountability, which Republicans are opposed to for precisely the voter ID issues. They want to suppress Democratic voting groups where they can without suppressing Republican voting groups elsewhere. They think they gain tactical advantages from a system that isn’t fair, and Carter needed to be demonized for opposing that.
The rank and file think it’s about principle, good vs. evil: “federal mandates, state’s rights”, etc. They have been taught over and over that national is bad. Carter was against them, so he must be evil. Rank and file are rarely very bright as a group.
Ruckus
@MomSense:
Which is probably why he hates him. They can’t stand good people. Shatters their whole premise of life.
LanceThruster
It’s bad enough that Diebold has proven what most every thinking person knew (that it was crooked), but these people impeding voting rights are traitors and seditionists…pure and simple.
Jay C
@MomSense:
Well, many political movements require a Designated Boogeyman/Scapegoat/Buffoon, and the American Right (conservatives in general, Republicans in particular) are no exception. They have spent more than 30 years trying to make sure that the only image/recollection the public has of Jimmy Carter is a virtually exclusively negative: a Presidency re-imagined as a cheapjack mash-up of gas lines, “malaise”, negativity, “lust in my heart”, killer rabbits, Billy Beer, and above all: the Iranian Hostage Crisis. Which hideous “malaise” of course, was only – could only – be resolved by the election of the Right’s Designated Hero/Great Man Reagan as President. IOW, a simplistic morality-play reading of 20th-Century American history: but, being so, exactly the interpretation the Right wants to foster. What a surprise….
dww44
@cleek: I agree. I’ve no earthly idea what that post said.
LanceThruster
@Jay C:
The depth of hatred for Pres. Carter is meant to contrast the polished turd that is “St. Ronnie.”
Jay C
@LanceThruster:
BTW, it’s not just Republicans: my wife who is a Party-line Democrat and bog-standard liberal on virtually every issue, has a deep hatred for Jimmy Carter – based, she says, on his “anti-Semitism”: details of which she can’t supply (though it seems NOT to relate to his criticisms of Israel and its Governments(s)), but which she is sure is there. Go figure….
Dolly Llama
@Kay: I assume this young man was born well after the Carter presidency? Just wondering. I have a burning hatred for Warren Harding that’s at least as well-informed as your guy’s hatred of Carter, no?
Kay
@Dolly Llama:
He was way too young to remember Carter, and seemed fuzzy at best on what it was Carter did that was so wrong, so, yes.
I’m fine with “teasing the token liberal” when I’m with Republicans (I’m with them a lot here, because there are a lot of them) but it has to be funny.
It can’t be “haw haw haw THE BLUE DRESS!” or uninformed rants on Jimmy Carter. Those jokes are boring. They’re not funny.
Dolly Llama
@Kay: Well all I know is that I will take my seething anger over the Teapot Dome scandal to my grave.
LanceThruster
@Jay C:
That reminds me of the revised def of “anti-Semite”…someone the Zionists don’t like.
No one in that office would be able to please everyone, but on a scale of good person doing/trying to do a good job vs utter and complete disaster…I would rate Pres. Carter high, and St. Ronnie, Bush’s Senior and Lesser as, at least, consistently, a danger to the Republic. Don’t forget that Rethugs negotiated with Iran outside of the elected govt. An act of treason by def.
Gene108
@geg6:
I think Stewart and Olbermann, to an extant, are not hardcore liberal ideologues.
They were just the only people, nine to ten years ago, who were openly calling out the bullshit spewing from Bush&Co and their media enablers.
They were at the wrong place, at the wrong time, so naturally they became heroes has more to do with Stewart than anything else in my opinion.
Kay
@geg6:
His mistake with Yoo was having him on and not knowing anything. Yoo ran all over him, of course, because Stewart had no idea what he was talking about.
No one said Yoo was stupid. Stewart has to prepare, or it’s just an hour for Yoo to lecture.
Ugh. Cringe-worthy.
EcoNerd
@schrodinger’s cat:
The official title is High Bobo of Juriprudery.
MomSense
@Gene108:
Let’s face it, George W. Bush was comedy gold. You really didn’t need to do much to satirize him and his administration. Stewart was funny mostly because of the material. Colbert on the other hand is genius. He did segments on TDS about religion and other topics that were hysterical and his jokes didn’t write themselves. I think Stewart has fumbled quite a bit with Obama for a lot of reasons. Colbert’s show has been much funnier and certainly much more original. I did enjoy TDS when Oliver was hosting but I think Oliver is much funnier than Stewart.
Mnemosyne
@MomSense:
It helps that Oliver is British, so he’s more able to get the Can you believe these guys? kind of comedy (IMO).
His podcast started to annoy me since it had some creeping Broderism, but he will always be remembered as the creator of the Fuckeulogy, which he originated with the death of Osama bin Laden.