Well, Jefferson was actually quite successful. The failure to impeach Chase was really one of the few set backs he had. He actually gutted the federal judiciary. Since the President didn’t have direct firing ability for Federal judges, Jefferson just eliminated entire courts whole cloth (perfectly legal and constitutional, the only constitutionally protected Federal court being the SCOTUS.)
FDR was arguably successful: he failed at court packing, but most historians agree the SCOTUS more or less kow towed to Rooseveltian will after the affair, having been sufficiently brow beaten and cowed by a popular President.
And for the reading impaired I will again point out there have been a few cases where a republican SCOTUS appointment went all liberal on them.
Now conservatives are substantially more strict in forcing republican presidents to appoint someone they can be sure about. I noted Harriet Miers as an example of conservatives defeating the appointment of one of their own to ensure someone more “reliable” got on the bench.
Little Nemo’s nostalgia is not entirely misplaced.
Just saying the same thing over and over again doesn’t make it any more impressive.
You’re basically saying that because in the past justices have been nominated that later ruled in a manner their initial supporters disliked, this is evidence that in the past justices were expected to be more independent. I’d actually say the shock and anger by their previous supporters suggests they were explicitly not expected to be independent, and in fact were rocking the boat by demonstrating they had a mind of their own about issues.
Exactly but they were nominating people who I am guessing likely deserved nominations for their scholarly and/or extensive work in the law and so on. The thinkers if you will.
Now they want button pushers. Thinkers are the last thing they want. Get them some smart law clerks to spruce up their opinions.
Interesting how somebody calling for reading comprehension seemed to misread what I wrote so badly. I never posted any nostalgic yearning for the “good old days”. I was pointing out some facts based on knowing history.
Are you serious?? Harriet Miers was booted because she was too much of a thinker?
Listen: without trying to make this a Pit comment, Whack-a-Mole – I am going to endorse Kimmy Gibbler’s assessment about you “punching above your weight class.” You eagerly and cheerfully offer up confident and authoritative opinions about legal issues that you clearly haven’t the first clue about.
Honestly…not really. Oh, there were giants on the Earth in those days…a John Marshall, an Oliver Wendel Holmes, a Felix Frankfurter, a Louis Brandeis. But you also had people like David Davis, Lincoln’s crony and campaign manager, James Mcreynolds, Wilson’s Attorney General, who Wilson put on the court because he found him too obnoxious as AG, and Abe Fortas, who, while he had argued in front of the court in Gideon v Wainwright, had as his major qualification that he was LBJ’s friend and lawyer. Fortas, while he was a sitting justice, wrote LBJ’s 1966 State of the Union. Hugo Black’s main qualification was that he could be counted on to vote for the New Deal.
Then going back further, you have people like Thomas Todd, who served on the court for 19 years, and only wrote 14 opinions, all about land claims (and for 5 years didn’t even show up to the court), and Gabriel Duvall, who as far as I can tell, in 23 years, did nothing at all (his most famous moment is a footnote in the Dartmouth College decision).
I could go on. There’s a whole list of thoroughly mediocre Justices who only got on the court because they knew the President or he was doing a political favor for somebody.
Lying on TV is bad, but hardly the worst of it. Perjury isn’t even the worst of it. The worst of it was getting other federal employees to commit perjury on his behalf and participate in a cover-up. This put them into considerable legal peril and was an attempt to obstruct justice.
That was all Republican. They picked her and started to run with her nomination. I remember Jeff Sessions making a speech proclaiming her as the single most qualified person in the country. He is a puppy and rides the party line demonstrating zero self respect. But he keeps getting elected.
The liberals and the Dems had nothing to do with her demise. It was simply too many Republicans realized she was a joke. Not Sessions though.
Yeah, but you keep ignoring the fact that the basis for all the jeopardry and peril you cite was a consensual blowjob. Poisoned fruit as far as I’m concerned.
Go for the Pit because frankly most threads I can recall in recent memory where I have debated against you it was you coming out on the losing end.
I am not surprised you’d make such an assertion. Must be embarrassing for you.
And no, Miers was not a “thinker”. You are correct. However she was opposed by conservatives for not having a solid pedigree of being a reliable conservative. I suppose they are fine with “thinkers” such as Scalia as long as they reflexively pull the conservative lever every time.
You are not reading the law correctly. “Misreporting” is not a crime – there is the requirement to “knowingly and willfully [falsify]” information on that report.
So, if I file my financial disclosure report this year and fail to include something because I didn’t read the directions properly, I’d probably get yelled at and told to fix it. If I tried to conceal something in order to hide income from the eyes of the public, only then would I be subject to civil or criminal penalties.
If Thomas were trying to conceal something from the government, he would be subject to penalties, but it isn’t clear that that was what he was doing. Based on the currently available evidence, I cannot rule out the possibility of him being a dolt who can’t fill out government forms correctly.
Surely you jest. She was opposed because she wouldn’t go conservative? I’d bet you dollars to doughnuts that she didn’t have the integrity to do anything else. I can scarcely think of a person who would have been more reliable in that regard.
She was opposed by everybody, Republican and Democrat alike, because a) she was unqualified based upon her body of work, b) she had all kinds of conflicts of interest, and c) it was a patronage pick, Bush looking to reward his lapdog for years of fetching his slippers.
Really. On this Bricker is absolutely right. Your repetition of this point leads me to believe that you really didn’t know why she got the boot. It’s best to let this one go.
Not to defend anything else WOM has said in this thread, but it is true that conservatives were uneasy with Miers’ conservative credentials, and for this reason were less supportive of her nomination than they otherwise would have been.
Not everybody. Somebody, (guess what party) nominated her. Sessions and other Repubs fell in line and gave speeches lauding what a fine choice she was. A few Repubs decided that she was not qualified and she could not get the votes. If they stayed in line ,she would be on the court now.
Hey, probably not the argument I’d be trying to make if it were my side, but I guess you have to go with what you’ve got. Personally, I think it would look better for Repubs if they just admitted that Thomas was trying to cover up some embarrassing shit. It’s not like he’s going to be impeached, and that way they’re not put in the awkward position of having to argue that one of the brightest Republicans in the country is a fucking moron. (Of course, everyone knows he’s a fucking moron, but he’s their fucking moron, so he gets a pass.)