Not that I can think of.
No.
Here’s what I expect: unlike many of the subjects we debate, this particular question will be answered, definitively, this year. I am not going to expend effort countering what you see as fatual information concerning vote margins, and the inferences we should draw, when the entire question will be answered soon with actual fact, and not guesswork.
If I’m wrong, I’ll admit I know nothing about prognosticating, and won’t offer any future opinions about future political events.
What will you do if you’re wrong?
(This reminds me of how the polls showed that Kerry would win, because of all the cell phone users that were not getting surveyed, and how they’d turn out for Kerry in a landslide. Same deal: confident assertions then, followed by embarrassed throat-clearing after the event).
So tell me: what will you do if you are wrong? Answer: nothing. You’ll continue to blather. Right? You won’t take any responsibility for being wrong; it won’t affect your view of your credibility or your ability to accurately predict political events… right?
Here is my impression:
[ul]
[li]Three then-nominees for appellate courts stalled by Democratic filibusters could go to an up-or-down vote by the full Senate[/li][li]Two other then-nominees would remain subject to filibuster[/li][li]No future judicial nominees could be filibustered except under “extraordinary circumstances”[/li][/ul]
You really can’t make yourself admit that I have ‘em and you don’t, can you? “What I see as factual” indeed. :rolleyes: But you’re gonna go on to complain about others’ actions when shown to be yanking assertions outta *their * butts now, I suppose.
Yep, I guessed right. It’s already been explained to you - that isn’t what this discussion is about.
The occasion hasn’t come up here. You’ve been invited many times to provide an example - but you still ain’t got none of them neither, do you?
So answer me anyway.
What will you do if you are wrong?
I’ve answered it.
What will you do if you are wrong?
As I already pointed out, you ain’t got shit, and can’t make yourself admit it .
If you can’t force yourself to stick to the topic of a thread, start a new thread. You must know that by now.
In other words, you’re not willing to admit that any ideological differences, no matter how extreme, absurd or divergent from the mainstream are sufficient to constitute “extraordinary circumstances?”
Well, in that case, I think you’re you’re just wrong. I believe that iff Bush nominates an Ashcroft or a Santorum or a Roy Moore, then that is an extraordinary circumstance and any Democratic invocation of that special circumstance would be completely fair and justified and within both the spirit and the letter of the agreement. I don’t think you’re going to be very successful in trying convince anyone that the Dems will have broken the agreement - at least not anyone who already shares your predisposed political bias.
I’ve already said that someone like Gonzales would not be “extraordinarily” far from the center ideologically and should be confirmed and that Dems would probably be violating their nebulous agreement if the fillibustered his appointment (although the torture stuff is very disturbing).
Having said all that, I wouldn’t care if the Dems broke the agreement. I see it as their right under our system and I think the Pubs were out of line for trying to impose any kind of restrictions in the first place.
If you read the question Bricker was answering it was pretty specific, and didn’t include either Moore or Santorum.
It would, however, include Bork, whom I assume you would oppose. But that’s a different matter.
So let’s broaden the question. Do you believe the filibuster is an appropriate tool to use in the confirmation process at all? If so could you give some examples of where it was apropriately used and why?
Enjoy,
Steven
It doesn’t cost you anything to simply answer the question here. What will you do if you’re wrong?
Just answer it. What will you do?
But the question I answered was specific, and didn’t include either Santorum or Moore.
Ideology may become an extraordinary circumstance when the ideology is extraordinary itself - when it’s so far divorced from the mainstream that calling it “extraordinary” is not a stretch.
But since you wouldn’t care if they broke the agreement no matter what the circumstances are, you’re not really the audience I’m likely to persuade.
How would you feel if the Republicans broke their agreement?
I don’t think there have been any instances where it’s been appropriately used. As a tool, I suppose it would be legitimate if the President were to nominate Roy Moore, as an example.
That’s fair. I misunderstood your position to be more overly broad than what you were actually asked (in my defense, I was skimming the thread with a baby in my lap). However, it was my understanding that Ashcroft, at least, has been mentioned in the media as a possible SC nomminee, though I concede that it probably hasn’t amounted to much more than rank speculation.
What about an ideology which is so antithetical to the core values of a party that it feels it cannot, in good conscience, confirm the nomination? An example would be a nominee who pledges to overturn Roe. Perhaps a parallel example on the other side would be a nominee who avows that the 2nd Amendment does not guarantee private ownership of firearms or pledges to rule against any legislation which would ban same-sex marriage.
It’s my position that a nominee who pledges to rule against Roe would automatically be an extraordinary circumstance, at least inasmuch as it concerns the fundamental values of the Democrats.
Their part of the agreement was what…that they wouldn’t use their numerical advantage to outlaw the filibuster?
It would piss me off if they did that no matter what the circumstances. I wouldn’t care about them breaking an agreement per se, but I think it would be a horrible, short-sighted, and utterly partisan piece of legislation.
For a minority part, sometimes the filibuster is all they’ve got. We need that check. If the tactic is abused or used inappropriately, then the voters will hold them accountable. Trying to legislate against it takes the voters completely out of these battles.
All right, here’s a pat on the head for you. IF it were to happen, and as you know there’s no basis in fact or precedent to suppose it will, I’d certainly be willing to admit it - which is far more than you’ve done here on the topic at hand, please note.
I also predict the sun will rise tomorrow morning, but IF you were to tell me otherwise based only on your own hopes and dreams and the sun somehow didn’t rise, I’d give you credit for that as well. That is an exact analogy.
How about YOU answer a question for a most-refreshing change, one not only about the topic at hand but about the basics of ignorance-fighting: What makes you think your own hopes and dreams, all you’ve provided us as a basis for your confident prediction, are more reliable gauges of the future of SSM in MA (or anything else for that matter) than actual factual knowledge and reasoning therefrom?
I’m sorry, I don’t quite get this… you’d admit that it happened, if it happened?
Wow. That IS big of you. Are you sure you’d be willing to stretch that far?
So you view the failure of the MA legislature to again pass the bill it’s already passed once as being on par with the likelihood of the earth’s changing its orbit?
OK. That’s OK. But here’s my problem: you say “that is an exact analogy.” Which suggests to me that when this DOES come to pass as I say it will, you’ll claim that it was tremendously unpredictable, that no one could have known it, and that my accurate prediction - which you will give me credit for – was merely a long shot lucky guess that paid off.
Firstly: this doesn’t represent either a hope or a dream: I believe the MA legislature will be reacting to citizen anger at the judicial usurption of the legislature’s role. And that citizen anger will be drummed up through targeted phone calls and mailings to certain churches, and other target-fundamentalist-rich areas, in an effort to put pressure on the legislators to vote AYE. The effects of that campaign have not started yet, have not been felt, and most assuredly are being ignored or minimized by the publications you quoted earlier, just as simialr publications ignored similar trends and tactics leading up to the presidential election last year.
Where the same thing happened: I predicted the result, others told me how the numbers showed I was wrong, and I was dismissed from these discussions as merely grinding a partisan axe. Not only did I neutrally predict the result, I aggressively bet on it, and put my own credibility on the line. I was right. Now I do the same thing: put my credibility on the line… and you don’t respond in kind. No surprise. And when I link back to this thread in October, after the damn thing passes a second time, I’ll be accused of gloating, won’t I?
Now, if these are merely long-shot victories that happen to pay off… where are the losses? I’m not claiming any retroactive victories. I’m making predictions ahead of time. And winning. How is this possible?
I am sure we are all very impressed with your prescience, Bricker. Not as impressed as you are, true, but nonetheless… Thoughtfully, lest we forget, you are kind enough to bring it up in any argument where you imagine it might be remotely relevent.
Hardly anyone with the good sense God gave a goose doubted that the last election would be close, and it was. Your awe-inspiring analysis amounts to predicting “heads” in a coin toss. Your endless attempts to shoehorn some relevence out of that amounts to little more than a reverse ad hominem: I’m so smart, if you disagree with me, you must be wrong.
I’m usually right too, but that’s because I’m a pessimist.
Well, let’s just see what it’s based on, then:
Looking around for facts or reasoning … nope, none offered. There might be some evidence in polls of that attitude if it existed in substantial numbers, polls being taken heavily in this first-in-the-nation state, and you could have linked to some if they showed factual support for that position. But you haven’t. I have, previously, shown you otherwise. Still in hopes and dreams territory. Shall we proceed?
Already tried, intensively, and backfired. Another fact you’re not aware of, or would simply dismiss as inconvenient even if you were.
The little information that could be considered a statement of fact there is, unfortunately, false. Factual information to the contrary, in the publications you describe as “left-leaning” (question: Do you even know what they are? Have you, in fact, *read * anything that’s been presented to you? Or do you simply know that they’re left-leaning because they disagree with your preferred conclusion?)
Nope, still entirely in hopes and dreams territory. Yes, friend, if you want to have your views considered reasonable, you have to show us your reasoning, as well as the facts they’re based on. But, to quote myself once again, you ain’t got shit and can’t make yourself admit it.
One election, a tossup, is not (plural) “predictions”. Yes, you did bet on Heads, but not enough to change your life in any meaningful way, eh what? (“Aggressively” you say - snort). One sees a lot of people in casinos win a few spins of the roulette wheel in a row and claim that as evidence of their own skill. Your latest expression of faith in the face of fact is exactly the same thing.
On a somewhat lighter note…
I just got my Stanford Alumni magazine in the mail today. They did a cover story on Rehnquist!! Man, is some editor hitting himself in the head right now… :smack:
the smack is directed at the editor, not anyone on this board.
This single phrase strikes me as incredibly important. The Commonwealth of Massachussettes…with citizens who are angry at judicial usurption of the legislature’s role. Can we say, historical precedent?
I find it oddly comforting that the good citizens of that Commonwealth ( former colony 
) are waging war one citizen at a time, for a cause that they feel might undermine self-determination and the equal rights of all. Perhaps the Mass. legislature is going to give the anger of the citizens it’s due voice and influence in the State House, and attempt to legislate from the heart and soul as well as the Fundraising Account. Whether or not I want SSM to pass in Mass, I find the process to be admirable, not reprehensible.
As they said in This Is Spinal Tap, " Too fucking much perspective ! ".
Well, there are several signs to indicate that it’s not as likely as you make it sound, even if certainly far likelier than any significant change in the earth’s rotation. As I mentioned above, the anti-ammendment side picked up two or three votes in elections between the last time and this time. Also, the House of Representatives is no longer run (with an iron fist) by anti-SSM former Speaker Tom Finneran, but by pro-SSM current Speaker Sal Di Masi. While no legislators admitted that their votes on the ammendment were inspired by loyalty to Finneran, the cadre that marched in lockstep with his every move are certainly freer to vote their consciences.
Also, as I said above, the staunchest anti-SSM advocates might abandon this ammendment in favor of a citizens’ petition (with no civil union provisions) that would only need 25% approval in the legislature to get to the ballot in 2008. This was not done in 2004 because, at that time, the SJC’s decision had not gone into effect, so all effort was poured into at least getting something passed, hoping that they could get the SJC to stay its ruling if they did. Even then, the legislature could do what it did several years ago when faced with a similar ammendment, and just vote by simple majority to close the constitutional convention without putting the matter to a vote. They may not be able to get away with that trick again, but an ammendment with no civil union provisions would be supported by less than a majority, if they voted the same way they did last March.
Also, of course, there will be more reluctance to undoing existing marriages than there was to banning marriages that didn’t yet exist. Not that that will translate into any vote switches, but if it did, they’d be against the ammendment.
Just for the record, the bet I was proposing was for the overall faring of SSM in Massachusetts. Given that the last vote was 105-92, the ammendment quite likely has the votes. I’d give it even or better odds of passing. I don’t think, as the polls show gay marriage already in the majority, and constantly increasing in popularity, that in November 2006 an ammendment banning it will be able to pass.
I think that is indeed a hope and a dream. The ammendment will pass or fail due to feelings on gay marriage. When the MA legislature wants to shove the judiciary around, they do it by eviscerating the judiciary’s budget (incidentally, as the legislature and governor have refused to raise the public defenders’ pay from the lowest in the nation at $37.50, the state is days away from having to release criminals that cannot get a public defender, as the SJC has ruled that seven days is the most the state can hold anyone without counsel). In this state, the legislature seems content with a fairly active judiciary, and the public probably even more so. The legislature is very slow to act at overturning antiquated laws (I think 20 years for sodomy is still on the books, even if no longer enforceable), and people seem to consider the courts a decent counterbalance to that.
Really, as far as I see (and, admittedly, I’m in Cambridge, which is liberal by even Massachusetts standards), there is almost no anger at the SJC on judicial restraint grounds other than by people who are already strongly opposed to gay marriage already. As a matter of fact, I’ve primarily noticed a strong tendency for deference to the courts in this matter. For example, the State Senator in my parents’ district, Marian Walsh, a staunch Catholic in a heavily Catholic district, was never a supporter of gay marriage prior to the SJC’s decision, and is still (I believe) morally opposed to it, but with the rationale of “my level of comfort is not the appropriate monitor for the Constitutional Rights of my constituents,” has steadfastedly opposed the ammendment. Her whole speech is here. And while her example is unusual, I do think it is indicitive of the general acceptance of Bay Staters towards judicial activism.
Also, the proposed ammendment does nothing to rectify, to the extent that it might be considered so, the problem of judicial activism. It has no appeal to people who support gay marriage but oppose judicial activism. It would just make it harder to legislate gay marriage in the future. So, I really doubt that anger at the state judiciary is going to come into play in any meaningful way.