Still waiting for a reply from you to my Ideology and Extraordinary Circumstances thread, Bricker. 
Link?
I’d love to get your take on the questions posed in posts #1 and #16. John Mace, too.
He went to all that trouble of buying the lumber and getting the plans for the crucifix; it’d be a shame to let them go to waste. 
You need plans for a crucifix? Hell, I saw Basil Rathbone whip one together on the spot and moulderify Chris Lee in about two seconds flat!
From here:
We’ll get the alarmist views from Boxer, Kennedy & Co., but when push comes to shove, I don’t think that even if there WAS a fillibuster attempt, that there would be great difficulty in finding 5 extra votes from moderate dems to force the eventual vote.
It appears that I posted a similar story as the one posted by Fear Itself…sorry 'bout that
Yeah, I think the Democrats are playing this smart and (so far) very reasonable. Sometimes a supreme court pick comes along who is so obviously qualified and reasonable that you just can’t help but admit it. I’ve been reading glowing tributes to Roberts from all sides of the political spectrum. Larry Tribe said he’s an outstanding judge and a very good choice, and that he would need to see serious evidence against Roberts before it would shake his positive feelings towards this pick.
The Democrats are going to be reasonable about this one, and not just for partisan reasons. They personally like him, and think he’s a decent choice. Remember, he’s a Washington insider with a glowing reputation for being personable and professional. I suspect he’s got friends on both sides of the aisle all over the hill.
The usual suspects will come out against him (Kennedy, Schumer, Durbin, MoveOn, People for the American Way, etc). It remains to be seen how much pressure the lobby groups and the funding groups are willing to put on the Democrats over this. That’s what will make the difference between a long confirmation and a short one. But he’ll be confirmed in either case.
Let’s not overdo it. He’s not a good choice. The Dems would rather not have to confirm him. He will probably not be good for the Supreme Court. The fact his wife is an anti-abortion zealot is VERY disturbing. Let’s not canonize the guy. All he’s got going for him is that he doesn’t suck as bad as John Ashcroft. This is not a positive development for the Court, it’s just not as horrific as it could have been.
I hope so. As Dio points out, Roberts is definitely undesirable for liberals as a Supreme Court justice in a number of ways, and this needs to be stressed by liberal activists. Just because he’s an acceptable candidate in terms of his qualifications doesn’t mean we have to be happy about his ideology or confident that he’ll make good decisions. It’s the duty of what you call the “usual suspects” to give the world fair warning about what we can realistically expect from him (and hope that we’ll be wrong, as we were about Souter).
Then the Dems can confirm him anyway, since there’s no compelling objection against his basic competence or qualifications, and look statesmanlike and principled in resisting the objections from their liberal base. It doesn’t add up to an overall positive development, as Dio said, but it’s probably about as good as we could have hoped for.
What I wonder about in situations like this (and I’d say the same if it was conservative activists who felt the need to “warn the world” about a liberal nominee) is how the activists feel about being relegated to this role.
IOW…if I’m contributing money to NARAL or PAW (Or National Right to Life or NRA) lobbying efforts, it would seem a bit insulting to feel that your political allies in the Senate (except for folks like Boxer & Kennedy…maybe a few others) have already decided to ignore your desires.
If you take a gander at the NARAL site, for example. They’re all about raising money to help “fund the fight”. This is a “fight”, that barring unforseen circumstances…probably won’t really be a meaningful (in terms of influencing whether he gets on the bench) fight at all…
I don’t think most activists are stupid people. On all sides, I think the groups are realistic, at least internally. They know there are fights they can win and fights they can’t, and it’s the activists’ job to push agendas that candidates might not be able to risk pushing.
So I’d think they’re probably frustrated but resigned.
Well, I was thinking of the folks who need faxed memos from the GOP front office before they can proceed on how to handwave away the Administration’s latest fuckup du jour. Much like instructions on how to use a toothpick, it’s one of those things that doesn’t make sense to those of us in the reality-based coalition.
Well, Bricker, now that Roberts has sailed through, how much have you lost on this bet?
I don’t think anyone took me up on an actual bet.
And if they did, the issue hasn’t been settled yet. My commentary was for O’Connor’s replacement. I knew that replacing a conservative with a conservative would not be as contentious as replacing a swing vote with a conservative.
We have yet to see whether or not O’Connor’s replacement is filibustered.
I just reread the thread, and am confused. There was some discussion about “raising the stakes” with Fear, and you (wisely) conditioned doing so on an escrow, and that condition was never met. I saw no espress description of an earlier wager, although the “rasing the stakes” commentary seems to allude to one.
I did see another wager in this thread, or at least a discussion of one, but that dealt with another issue – not the filubuster.
Sheesh. Sorry about the poor spelling. Express. Filibuster.
Hmm. I thought the bet was over Bush’s next judicial nominee. Obviously, it was assumed that it would be for O’Connor’s seat, but the language of the OP doesn’t seem to specify that.
Moot point, of course, if no one took you up on it.
The word “replacement” appears nowhere in your OP. Nor is the word replacement written by you in any post. You used the word “replace” only in reference to Potter Stewart.
Lawyerin’ is fun.
