211–220 of 382 posts
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Point of Inquiry, Is there a parliamentarian in the house? There may be one or more ways to force McConnell's hand.
The president can use a recess appointment. It would probably end up looking worse than blocking a nomination for 11 months so it seems unlikely, if technically possible.
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> You will find that there is a hell of a lot of thought that goes into opinions, and there is much less predetermined ideology than the way these things often get painted. Yeah, retconning to twist everything that seeks to disturb one's bigoted and repressive worldview does take an extraordinary amount of thought, credit where it is due. I encourage everyone to not just read the opinions, but to be vigilant of this…
> I encourage everyone to not just read the opinions, but to be vigilante of this when doing so. Vigilantism, particularly against judges and justices for written opinions, is not the way to deal with laws and interpretations you find unjust. We must not fight the unjust with injustice.
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You can't possibly put the result of Bush being elected on a Supreme Court Justice. Any more than you can put it on a single person who voted for him. Yes, they all share some responsibility, but the amount is so miniscule given future actions and how many people were fooled and lied to so as to be almost completely disconnected.
Actually one can. Just like the cause of a hanged man's death is the knot the hangman tied. There's a great big sequence of events preceding it for sure.
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Text, tradition, and contemporary practice being far more important than justice, to Scalia.
Text and tradition are uniquely important to the Supreme Court, whose members hold almost absolutely unaccountable lifetime appointments and the power to overrule Congress and thus shape the actions of the administration. Without rigorous traditions and principles, they're a panel of philosopher-kings. More so than in any other government position, it is possible for a Supreme Court justice to be wrong on the substan…
The Founding Fathers et al so disliked the injustice of tradition they started a new country.
To your other point about being unaccountable, the Supreme Court is checked by the balance of power between the three branches as much as the other two are. They aren't all-powerful beings, and I've seen it around this discussion that they hold unmatched power - which just isn't true.
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Point of Inquiry, Is there a parliamentarian in the house? There may be one or more ways to force McConnell's hand.
The parliamentarian is an advisor to the presiding officer of the senate, which is either the vice president or in his absence the president pro tempore (by tradition the senior member in years of service of the majority party) or his designee. In any event any parliamentary ruling is appealable to the floor where it is subject to a majority vote. The is the basis of the so-called nuclear option. McConnell's hand can…
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>Scalia was foremost an advocate of judicial restraint When convenient.
Totally agree. The stay he supported on the Florida recount was rampant federal interference in a state matter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_v._Gore#Stay_of_the_Flori... Indirectly, he gave us eight years of incompetence and Iraq, a horrible farce of a war.
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> I encourage everyone to not just read the opinions, but to be vigilante of this when doing so. Vigilantism, particularly against judges and justices for written opinions, is not the way to deal with laws and interpretations you find unjust. We must not fight the unjust with injustice.
I think it was meant "vigilant" in the Latin sense, ie.: watchful, attentive. Otherwise, the statement ("vigilant of") doesn't seem to make much sense.
Kidding.
...kind of.
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The president can use a recess appointment. It would probably end up looking worse than blocking a nomination for 11 months so it seems unlikely, if technically possible.
I mean they do have to vote on a recess appointment. IIRC