Change the name to O’Connor and it’s been this way since 1981. What’s the big deal?
Geez, does Scalia have to talk him through everything?
Scalia in 1986.
Thomas in 1991.
Roberts in 2005.
Alito in 2006.
Were any of those guys more liberal than the person they replaced? Thomas more liberal than Marshall? Alito than O’Connor? I think not.
Does not seem the same at all to me since 1981.
Hell, even Obama’s appointments arguably have not been as liberal as those they replaced (although still liberal).
Liberal and conservative can be difficult labels to apply on the Court, though. Take Breyer for example: while seen as a member of the “liberal wing,” Thomas is at times more favorable to free speech, and Scalia more favorable to the protection of rights against the police. Breyer is very deferential to Congress, whatever its persuasion.
That is muddying the waters. There may be nuance to be had on a given case but who will the Tea Partiers invite to their next shindig? Scalia or Ginsburg?
You know, for all the vilification of the “right-wing” Justices, they had a golden opportunity with the Rehnquist Court to overturn Roe and Miranda, among other things, and never did. They were by some accounts specifically chosen to do exactly that. So what’s the deal here?
For all their “conservative” tendencies, they have shown little inclination to exercise them on hot-button issues.
The current expectation is that nominees are expected to be ideological robots who will carry out their programing. Justices don’t get nominated for their legal brilliance - in fact it’s a point against them. Partisans demand justices who are “dependable” and can be counted on to vote the way they’re supposed to without thinking.
And it wasn’t this way until very recently. It certainly was not the case in 1981. We used to expect supreme court justices to be independent and rise above party politics.
As I noted, there are currently only four conservative justices on the court. Let one more be appointed and the conservatives have a majority and then we’ll see if Roe and Miranda stand.
They certainly weakened Roe significantly with their decision in Casey.
You have also manged to pick one single issue and use that to indicate the temperament of the court and wonder what the fuss is about? An issue which they actually did undo rights previously held? :rolleyes:
When was that again? Thomas Jefferson tried to run the whole fucking lot of the Federalist judges out of office because he didn’t like that they had been appointed by his predecessors. Part of that effort lead to the only impeachment of a sitting SCOTUS Justice in history, Samuel Chase (acquitted by the Senate.)
FDR famously tried to pack the courts when he found them disagreeable to his desires.
The elected politicians have always wanted as much power, influence, and control of the third, unelected branch of government for as long as the division of powers has existed. The difference between 1789 and 2011 is there are journalists who pay people to dig through candidate’s garbage, find class lists from candidates High School, undergraduate, and law school classes and grill all of them for information about any statements the candidate may or may not have made in the history of their life. This has created the illusion that the politicians want a tighter hand than they used to; that just isn’t the case. They just now have more effective tools to tighten their grip on the justices, but given the events of history you can bet an Adams or a Jefferson would be grilling SCOTUS candidates just as much as various recent candidates were grilled if the tools had existed to investigate people to such a degree.
Sounds to me like you just agreed with him and made his point for him.
Of course any president is not going to like being saddled with justices appointed by the opposing party but justices far outlast presidents so they will all have some of that to deal with (probably).
However, particularly from republicans, we have seen a desire for justices who can be trusted to toe-the-line. I know there are more examples but the one who pops to mind is David Souter. A Bush Sr. nominee he turned out to be too liberal. Conservatives were not pleased.
So, as a result we saw wholesale revolt from republicans when Bush Jr. tried to appoint Harriet Miers to the bench. Not because she seemed distinctly unqualified but because with no judicial pedigree conservatives could not be sure just what she’d do up there. They wanted someone they could be sure about and they got it in Alito.
Some liberal groups push for the same when a liberal president gets to nominate but frankly Obama ignored those easily and put who he wanted up without (as these things go today) much trouble.
I agree that he was boxed in. And if this was only about perjury, this wouldn’t be as big a deal as it was. However, Clinton also had other people lie on his behalf - and these included federal employees.
That was the basis of the obstruction of justice article of impeachment. This was a valid article based on the facts at hand. The matter of the political damage to the Republican Party, the Clinton Administration, or the damage to the national prestige is a different consideration entirely, and this will be debated until kingdom come.
And both of these attempts failed. In a large part because of widespread opposition to the idea of a President should be able to pack the court. Nowadays we have the opposite - assuming they voted for him, people (and Congress) want and expect the President to pack the court. The only objection you hear to the practice now is when people feel the wrong party is doing it because they wanted to pack the court with their nominees.
Thanks for speaking for the 308 million Americans out there, but please leave me off your list.
I think if a politician is willing to get oral from an intern next to the oval office and lie to his wife about it, he’ll be a terrible leader and untrustworthy to the American people. If your cousin was doing this, you’d think he was pond scum, but for some reason we don’t care if our President does it.
Having said that, I don’t think Congress should have gone after him for that.
But I do think he should have been impeached and convicted of committing perjury. I think my President, (a Yale law school grad, formerly touted as the smartest President ever) should not lie under oath to a Grand Jury.
It isn’t a nuance thing. That’s why I said generally. If I want free speech protected, I am pitching to Thomas, not Breyer. If I want a police search of a house tossed, I am pitching to Scalia, not Breyer. If I want a punitive damages award upheld, I am pitching to Scalia and Thomas, not Breyer and Ginsburg. If I want abortion rights defended, I am pitching to Breyer and Ginsburg…
That really depends on where you are looking at it from. I’d say there are nine conservative justices on the court at the moment.
Led American into war in Iraq based on accusations of the existence of WMD he knew to be untrue: specifically, he had been told by Joe Wilson that the allegations that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium yellowcake in Nigeria were untrue, based on forged documents, well before he made that accusation in his State of the Union message.
Man belongs in a prison cell.
If Roe was overturned by the Supremes, the Repubs would lose their hook on a large percentage of their voters. I doubt it will get that far. They have had a conservative court for a long time. I am sure they could get any case they want handled rapidly. It did not take long for the court to overstep in Bush v Gore.
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Yes he was boxed in, but he got himself in that situation to begin with. The Starr chamber like investigation was overboard BUT I have little sympathy for someone who makes bad choices then is upset that people may want to hold him accountable for those choices.
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Maybe impeachment was overkill, but then again he was banging an intern. Most people in business would be fired for that. Hell, I had a boss fired for spending too much social time with female employees and that was non-sexual but apparently was some sort of discrimination or reverse harrassment or some bullshit.
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Did he commit purjury? He certainly equivocated. Here is what I know. My President looked me in the eye (via the television) and said, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.” Then after the acquittal it was WTF?! I fucked her. My bad. Some of you that want a Justice impeached for filling out a form incorrectly (he never did hide the fact of his wifes connection AND I suspect 50% of Americans would screw up a government form for wiping their ass) but accept a President flat-out lying to them have really bizarre priorities.
I can see where someone who doesn’t read for comprehension might think I was agreeing with Little Nemo, since you so clearly missed the point I’ll try (one final time) to make it clearer for you. Little Nemo was engaging in a very specific flavor of nostalgia in which he yearned for the “good olde days” when judges were just expected to be honest, Apple pie eating, clergy of the court room. I was simply pointing out such a time never existed, while the level of political scrutiny has increased with the advance of personally invasive technologies and a society that has mostly given up the concept of personal privacy, history lessons clearly show that politicians have always infringed on the independence of the judiciary. It’s fair to say they never gave a damn about the concept of judicial independence.