Sounds like, “The person consented to sex by virtue of choosing not to explicitly say no.”
No it doesn’t.
My sentence was not disjunctive.
Yes, it does. “We aren’t even going to consider the nomination” isn’t consenting to the nomination anymore than “We aren’t even going on a date” is consenting to sex.
Regards,
Shodan
If Republicans see no difference between intimate sexual relations and political maneuvering, well, no wonder we’re all fucked.
“We” in this sense not being a plurality, or even more than one person.
“We” in this sense is coming from one person. There were no hearings, there was no vote. You can only take McConnell’s word that there were no republicans willing to consider and even support an Obama nomination.
That’s like saying when the girl’s father says “We aren’t going on a date.” That is the girl refusing to date you. She may still feel that way, but you are taking the word of someone who has reason to mislead you.
When did McConnell release the rest of the caucus from the basement and take off their gags?
On the day that they held a vote for Garland.
Like I’ve said, maybe in this thread, maybe in one parallel and like it, I predict that come 2018, it is not unlikely that in one of the weaker republican states like nevada or arizona, likely during the primary, they will walk back that non-vote, and claim that they would have supported Garland. As there are only 2 really competitive races in 2018, I only give that even odds, but come 2020 when there will be 20+ republican senators up for reelection, many of them in more moderate states, I see quite a bit of distancing of the candidate from the republican leadership, especially if the republican leadership continues to drive the trainwreck that they are currently conducting.
To continue Shodan’s analogy, it’s like after the girl you are interested in’s father warns you off, and a few years later, when you are developing a relationship with someone else, and she says, “You should go out with me, I would have gone out with you years ago if my father had let me.”
That one person was selected by his peers to represent them and act with powers consistent with those exercised. Those peers were elected by the people, according to the rules of their states and the constitution. If McConnell’s peers desired, they could remove him from his position and choose someone who better represents their will. To say that it is the will of one person is to discount the idea of representative democracy - it’s nothing more than a poor talking point.
But nothing stopped any of those senators from tweeting their desire to vote. They didn’t even need to hold a press conference.
That’s a bit of a stretch. McConnell was elected by fellow Senators to a position of power but not to “represent” them. He doesn’t control their votes, that’s why there’s a Whip position. Yes, it’s in his authority to decide whether a vote takes place but it’s not a rejection of representative democracy to say he should have allowed a vote by directly elected representatives.
McConnell’s fellow senators elected him to decide whether a vote takes place. If those senators wanted to vote, they could have replaced him. I think it’s analogous enough to representative democracy to criticize the complaint that it was only one man.
So, what is the point of having senate votes, If the senators have decided that he will represent them? You could just ask him.
He chose to prevent a vote from taking place.
Why would he make that decision? If he knew that Garland would be voted down, he wouldn’t even need to waste time on hearings, just schedule a vote and vote it down.
The only reasons to not allow a vote is either because he was afraid that some of the more moderate republicans might cross the aisle and vote for Garland, or because he wants to give cover for senators later so that they don’t have the fact that they voted against him on their record.
Obviously, the senators to whom he is giving cover aren’t going to complain about that, and the senators that would have been willing to vote for garland aren’t so enthused about that possibility that they would risk pissing off their leadership at this point by making such a statement.
At this point, there is no reason for them to be fleeing from republican leadership. If they continue to govern in the way they have since gaining electoral power, you will start seeing senators move away from that leadership. It is at this point that I believe that they will start claiming that they had no problem with voting to confirm garland, if only they had had the chance.
If they get primaried by a more moderate republican, and that moderate republican brings up the garland vote, I can definitely see them blaming the leadership for not allowing them to have a vote.
Who knows, maybe the republicans will start to actually govern responsibly, and there will be no reason for the senators to throw McConnell under the bus to save their own seats, but given the rather rocky start they have gotten off to, and how they have had a history of obstructing the functionings of government rather than actually running them, I doubt that will be the case.
Does it make sense that they wouldn’t be throwing the republican leadership under the bus at this point? Does it make sense to you that they would wait until it would benefit them with their constituency much closer to their election?
Can you come up with any single reason as to why they would come out at this time, alienating their colleagues and leadership, and not getting any advantage at their own election?
To a limited degree, I suppose. But the role of Senators as representatives and the Senate’s role in advise and consent are part of the Constitution; the majority leader role is a relatively recent political party custom. I think allowing the latter to trump the former is a greater affront to representative democracy.
Perhaps in context you were referring to more specific circumstances, but what you wrote was that you were unaware of any legal requirement to hold a hearing, and that the political cost would likely be quite high. This Senate has already proved that they don’t have to hold a SCOTUS nominee hearing if they don’t want to, and there is virtually no political downside. As we’ve seen over and over again in the last two months, hearings are just for show and the outcome is a foregone conclusion. I see very little risk for the current Senate to rubber-stamp a nominee without a hearing.
They probably won’t do it, because they like the TV exposure. But if anything, it would further endear them to their base.
It’s not that the “political cost” of not having hearings will be high - thought it might be. It’s that there is absolutely no benefit to not having a hearing, and there is definitely some benefit to having it (even if only in terms of face time on the news for grandstanding senators).
I wouldn’t draw that conclusion with such little time passing. The Garland nomination will likely be a talking point for many many years, just as the treatment of Bork is still raised. There may not be immediate tangible downsides, but those downsides may well have been masked by other factors. Time will tell if Garland’s treatment truly cost no political capital. It certainly energized some members of the Democratic Party - and to the extent it continues to do so could be a political downside to Republicans in future elections.
I think it basically sealed the deal (which was already well on its way thanks to individuals from both sides) that SCOTUS nominations will now be as political as anything else. I won’t be surprised if (barring a big change, like the Constitutional amendment I offered), from now on, Democratic-led Senates won’t confirm most Republican SCOTUS nominations, and vice versa. They’ll just continue to vote down (or even not hold hearings) until we get a President and Senate from the same party.
Earl Warren, in 1954, was the last Supreme Court justice confirmed by the Senate without a hearing.
Warren was initially given a recess appointment by Eisenhower on October 1, 1953 upon the death of Justice Fred Vinson (who died Sept 8, 1953). On March 1, 1954 the Senate granted Advice and Consent by voice vote to confirm a permanent seat on the Court for Warren.
[quote=“Bricker, post:174, topic:783020”]
But isn’t that because you like the result? If the Supreme Court agreed with me that abortion kills a human being, and ruled that abortion is the deprivation of life without due process of law and forbid it, would you be equally glad?
You’re happy to get your way, is what you’re saying.
I am not a lawyer (duh). And it has been quite some time since I last read the Constitution. But I am pretty sure that it says nothing about the legal personhood of an embryo. It does, however, specify various rights of (post-birth) persons.
I assume that for you to be procedurally (as opposed to personally) satisfied by a Supreme Court ruling that “abortion is the deprivation of life without due process of law” on Constitutional grounds, that would have required locating in the Constitution some textual grounds for defining an embryo as a legal person. I can’t see any path that argument could take that wouldn’t be far more tortuous than the path from “right to privacy” to “stay out of my personal medical decisions”.
And the same with same-sex marriage; the Constitution says nothing about the topic, but there is a pretty clear path from “equality of legal rights” to “equality of legal right to marry”*. As far as I can remember, there is nothing in the Constitution that leads to “we can discriminate against this class of persons because we always have before”, which is what all of the dissenting opinions boiled down to.
I suppose from what you’ve said around here that you think the Supreme Court should have simply refused to take on those cases, on the grounds that in both cases there is no textural grounding for a decision either way? In my case, I don’t have a problem with interpretation being hammered out in the courts, and I don’t see anything that would make the other side more “textually correct” than the decisions that were made.
If either case had gone the other way, I would to expect to continue to fight, just as the opponents of both rulings currently are. If the will of the people is in fact against those two rulings, then I expect that they will in time be overturned. (But in fact it’s pretty clear that the opposition is on the losing side.)
- I am aware of the “marriage isn’t a legal right” argument, I just find it dumb beyond belief.