If there was an actual Deep State, they could put the current Justices on a bus and then have that bus driven off of a cliff. Biden then draws nine fresh cards from the deck of liberal justice/conservative nightmares.
They might not even need to do that. It certainly wouldn’t be a stretch for Amy to have picked up Covid celebrating at the White House, I’m sure there was a lot of hugging and talking and not a lot of social distancing or masks. Think about what could happen if she does have it and spreads it to other justices.
I agree with this. I’m hearing some compelling reasons for expanding the courts, from the SC on down. Start with the SC, however. If they can be “unconventional” with the rules, then we should be as well. Letting the Repubs be the only party with power, even when they’re not the majority, is a recipe for disaster for the whole country.
Exactly this. We need to tackle this head on. If the judiciary isn’t as non-partisan as we can make it, the entire country suffers.
Agreed. I think a certain percentage of Trump voters will sit this one out. They’ve gotten their SC judges and they may not feel any sense of urgency to vote for the Idiot now. I hate that she was appointed, but I can see a possible silver lining. We better fix this later, however.
I’m leaning towards at least 4 more judges: one for Merrick Garland, and the rest to reflect the greatly expanded population in the country.
While we’re at it, let’s approve statehood for DC, Puerto Rico, and Guam. They all deserve representation in our government.
Let’s also change the law that limited the size of the House of Representatives. Everyone in this country deserves equal representation. I’m tired of most of the population of this country not having as large a voice as the smaller states.
For sure. But, to clarify, I meant a conservative majority on the bench.
The time to be ashamed was when she was nominated. Anyone of good character would have refused the nomination under these circumstances.
For a while I had the faint hope that although ACB was clearly a religious nutter, she might somehow turn out to at least be a fair-minded non-nutter on other issues. But no such luck. Doing a bit of reading, to quote PG Wodehouse talking about something else entirely, “the faint hope gave a little cough, and died”. NYT article (not paywalled, but limited number of free articles):
Or check these out (from a different source):
- Affordable Care Act: Barrett wrote in 2017 that Chief Justice John Roberts pushed the Affordable Care Act beyond its plausible meaning in order to save it.
- Guns: Barrett dissented when the appeals court upheld a decision restricting the Second Amendment rights of a felon convicted of mail fraud.
- Immigration: In a dissent, Barrett defended the Trump administration’s rule denying immigrants permanent residence if they become regular users of public assistance.
- Race: Barrett helped to block the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s effort to stop an employer from transferring Chicago-area employees based on their race or ethnicity.
- Age discrimination: Barrett ruled that the Age Discrimination in Employment Act does not apply when policies impact plaintiffs unintentionally. The ruling went against a 58-year-old job applicant who lost out to someone half his age when the company sought to hire a person with less than seven years’ experience.
Exactly. We knew enough about her character when she accepted the nomination.
Even if impeached, there would never be a 2/3 majority in the Senate to remove those justices from the Supreme Court; even the biggest of blue tsunami waves wouldn’t give the D’s that kind of majority. And it would likely backfire and stiffen the Republicans, maybe give the GOP a boost.
I honestly wonder how many nominees would have turned down such a prestigious lifetime appointment on the grounds of principle. Especially if the person believed they could be fair and open-minded, and recuse themselves in rare cases when they could not be. The tragic thing about the ACB appointment is that she appears to be the furthest thing from that, a shameless ideologue, a fact that I’m afraid we’re going to see play out in abundance. I sure hope I’m wrong but all signs point in that direction. She may even be of great help to Trump and his enablers stealing the election, a fact which no doubt did not escape any of them.
And we don’t know how many did turn it down.
They aren’t going to go public until they know that one is going to accept the nomination. She may not have been the first they went to, and they may have chosen to keep their spots on a lower court, rather than be elevated where everyone will always append an asterisk to their name.
You’re just not thinking dirty enough.
“The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments. When sitting for that Purpose, they shall be on Oath or Affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: And no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two thirds of the Members present.”
Just spring a surprise impeachment and trial on a day when a lot of GOP senators are out of town.
After all, the Republicans have made it clear that the new rule is, you can do anything that they can’t stop you from doing. It’s about time the Democrats started playing by that rule.
In all likelihood, there weren’t any people to turn it down; Barrett was touted as the No. 1 Republican choice for “the next SCOTUS vacancy” ever since Kavanaugh was confirmed. She has been the front-runner for two years; Trump himself even said “I’m saving her for Ginsburg.”
It’s not like the Republicans went through a long Rolodex and got repeated ‘no’ after ‘no’ until reaching Barrett at the end of the deck.
Please, Og, let her hug Clarence Thomas. That might provide Biden his first SCOTUS nomination.
How hard would it be to set up a much less partisan system of nomination…
I’m recalling Jack Ryan in (I think) Executive Orders laying out his “philosophy” for nominating judges -
some of the requirements included
- years of experience
- minimal number of rulings overturned on appeal
IF the court were to be expanded, would it also make sense to take nominations out of the hands of politicians and put it into a much more transparent process?
No, it would not. What you call “politicians” are in fact the result of the democratic process. If they don’t fairly represent the will of the people (and they very often don’t) then you need to deal with the fact that you have a flawed democracy that needs fixing, not merely a flawed judicial-appointment process.
Let’s face it; If one of the justices suddenly keeled over tomorrow, Trump would probably nominate a horse, and the GOP senate would confirm the horse before November 3.
If any of them even gets sick enough that dying is a possibility, it wouldn’t surprise me if they were pressured to step down so that Trump can sneak one more in rather than letting them die/retire during Biden’s administration.