Meet your new Federal judge-Steve Menashi.
This idiot has never tried a case, made oral arguments in court or conducted a deposition, so what qualified him in Trump’s eyes?
This is the type of thing I worry about more than him shooting off a missile at someone. We should vet judges for almost all the courts.
So when Republicans say that they’re willing to overlook Trump’s personal flaws and support him because he will appoint conservative judges, this is what they’re talking about.
Yes.
It’s not just Trump that Republicans are voting for; it’s Trump and McConnell who are a political odd couple that has become a radical right wing judge factory. This is what people who knew better but stayed home or voted third party to spite Hillary didn’t quite consider: it may not matter if we get a progressive president in 2020 because their fresh welfare state ideas will get ground up in the courts.
And I can’t be the only one whose heart skips a beat whenever I read news that Ruth Bader Ginsburg is absent from the Court due to illness.
Trump and McConnell are very close to having total control of the courts, and it won’t matter a damn if John Roberts wants to put on his Anthony Kennedy costume.
I agree wholeheartedly. For good chunks of the “rational” part of the Republican party (say, like Bricker or my sister), the judiciary was a huge reason for tolerating the “fringes” of the Republican party. This is a major reason why the Republicans who want to pretend to be rational are willing to tolerate blatant racism, ceaseless lying, obstruction of justice, and the unstopping bullshit of this administrayion.
This is the long-term damage that has been done by this administration even if he becomes the former president tomorrow.
LOL, you’re still assuming that ‘qualified’ has anything to do with Trump’s (McConnell’s) judicial appointees! It isn’t, and it hasn’t been from the beginning. They are after partisans. The more partisan the better – which is exactly the opposite of how it’s meant to be done.
I won’t insult your intelligence by saying that for a long time, nominated judges would often demonstrate a partisan bent, but it was usually politely mild. Republicans have ripped the mask off. It’s all about partisanship with them now. Merrick Garland, Obama’s attempt at normal judicial nomination, makes me weep with nostalgia.
ThelmaLou nails it. We will live with this damage for decades.
Steve Menashi is a total piece-of-shit loon. I am confident there will be ample reason based on his personal conduct to remove him. If Dems prevail in 2020, such action should be a priority.
OP lays to rest the meme that Republicans are well-intentioned good-spirited people only loosely allied with Donald Trump. All but one R senator voted for a clearly unqualified Trump ass-licker.
Note that every judge appointed now will be a virulent right-winger. They didn’t need to appoint this particular Trump-licking hate-filled slug. But they did.
The fact that these people have no experience is a feature, not a bug.
Should we expect masses of judge impeachments from 2021 onward? I doubt it. Even nominees who explicitly lied during confirmation hearings seem immune.
And all the Bernie Bros smugly assured us silly wimmens that we couldn’t blackmail their pure unicorn selves with the SCOTUS.
Sad but true! This situation sickens me to no end.
While I agree with the sentiment, there’s a rather important practical point: who’s “we”? Because the current system is supposed to involve vetting but isn’t working. Which “we” would work better?
Canadians. You’d be hard pressed to find anybody more trustworthy.
That is what needs to be understood: the standards of judicial appointment, the system that establishes and maintains those standards is essentially broken. Judges don’t have to be competent in the law; they simply have to have the right ideology.
If you look at what dysfunctional authoritarian states and kleptocracies do, this is it. They use the judicial system to validate their regime and whatever it does on the basis of ideology and loyalty. This is what Russian courts do for Putin. This is what Turkish courts do for Erdogan.
During the Cold War, America’s export to Eastern European countries and other less stable allies was support for building a stable state based on self-rule. Trump and McConnell’s America is actually importing Russia’s manual for how to build an autocracy.
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rig the courts
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hire partisans in the justice department
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investigate your enemies (or threaten to)
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threaten journalists and book authors
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limit press access
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suggest that violence against critics and opposition is legitimate
What this country is faced with is the fact that a faction that is small but possessing disproportionate power is governing against the interests and desires of the majority, able to pass tax cuts that are advantageous to an infinitesimally small segment of the population and highly unpopular with the rest.
Both the political minority (white christian nationalist republicans) and the rest of us are aware of the dynamics. We’re now aware that we’re being governed not by a majority but by a powerful faction. What’s more, though, the minority is increasingly aware, increasingly cognizant of this fact, and they’re hyper-vigilant to defend their power by any means that are less than democratic because they know that democracy is their enemy.
Know this: as Democrats pull more and more converts to their side in local elections, statewide races, and congressional races, and as it becomes more apparent that disguised forms of voter suppression may not be as effective as they need these tactics to be, the republicans will become even more desperate, more outlandish, and, more dangerous. It’s good that Matt Bevin was rebuffed by his own party, but that’s probably because the Kentucky GOP felt that Bevin was more of a liability and that they could manage fine working with a Democratic GOP who will be overpowered anyway. If you listened closely, though, they didn’t necessarily reject or dismiss the notion that they couldn’t just give the election to Bevin. Rather, they likely concluded that it wasn’t necessary at this point.