Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has died

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 382 posts

Re: U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has died

#321

Post by sangnoir »

tptacek wrote: post #94
sangnoir wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They have a duty and obligation to oppose Which is why they are likely to put up token opposition - enough to placate their supporters. Everyone panders to the center when election time comes, because that's where most of the voters are. This is why the rhetoric is extreme during the primaries, but is significantly toned afterwards.

They have a majority of Senate. They don't need token opposition. They can just decide, as Mitch McConnell has already said, that this is a rare opportunity for the people to vote directly on the direction they want to take the court, and that's that. This isn't unprecedented. Obama is a lame-duck President facing a majority opposition party in both Houses of Congress. His influence is close to its nadir. Scalia is a…

Will the central-mass of the voting public be amused by yet another "obstructionist move" by Republicans? That is how it will be spun by the Democrats: the ads will basically write themselves ("instead of working, the GOP is shutting down government. Again")

Re: U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has died

#322

Post by rdancer »

nindalf wrote: post #306
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And as such, they have the right to try to get those opinions represented. At best, Scalia represented the opinions of an opinionated and influential but not truly representative minority of the population. Now - there's nothing in the constitution that says explicitly that the Supreme Court should be a representative body. But the political reality is that judges aren't picked for the SC because they're the best l…

This seems to make sense but it is the Supreme Court's responsibility to drag society forward when society's inertia is at odds with the Constitution. For example, 90% of people didn't support interracial marriage when the Supreme Court legalised it. If the bench's political values were the same as the general population, that would never have happened.

It was closer to 80%, and on a question of disapproval of[1], not illegality. I may disapprove of your misquoting stats, but that doesn't mean I want you to go to jail for it. Also the majority of population lived in a state where interracial marriage was legal since before 1940, and by 1967 the only states that have miscegenation laws were the ones apt to fly Dixie. It was not so much about dragging against inertia, unless by inertia you mean stalemate—the South would never have repealed those laws.

[1] http://www.gallup.com/poll/163697/approve-marriage-blacks-wh...

Re: U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has died

#323

Post by emmelaich »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #315
emmelaich wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capriciously? Can you find a ".. basis in text, tradition, or even in contemporary practice .."

As I stated, the Eighth Amendment alone would have sufficed. Basically, Scalia was always steadfastly loyal to the Constitution's original intent, except when it conflicted with his religion, his political ideology, or his personal opinion. It's unfortunate to see all these hagiographies being written about him.

The long term of imprisonment of innocent people in the USA is disturbing and perhaps if I was on the Supreme Court I would ave allowed it. But. It sounds like the 8th amendment applies to events after conviction, even if you're not guilty. So the letter of the law has been applied.

Put it this way; if the law is never wrong because you can rely on the good people on the Supreme Court to fix things, then the law will never be changed.

(btw, I didn't downvote you at any time)

Re: U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has died

#324

Post by nindalf »

rdancer wrote: post #322
nindalf wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems to make sense but it is the Supreme Court's responsibility to drag society forward when society's inertia is at odds with the Constitution. For example, 90% of people didn't support interracial marriage when the Supreme Court legalised it. If the bench's political values were the same as the general population, that would never have happened.

It was closer to 80%, and on a question of disapproval of[1], not illegality. I may disapprove of your misquoting stats, but that doesn't mean I want you to go to jail for it. Also the majority of population lived in a state where interracial marriage was legal since before 1940, and by 1967 the only states that have miscegenation laws were the ones apt to fly Dixie. It was not so much about dragging against inertia,…

My apologies, I misread the the Gallup graph because the one I saw didn't have 1968 marked. Anyhow, my point stands. It would not have been legalised if the bench voted like the general population did.

Re: U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has died

#325

Post by oska »

ianamartin wrote: post #261
fpgeek wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to feel like that - that Justice Scalia was an thoughtful, intellectually honest justice that I profoundly disagreed with simply because I found his foundational principles alien and wrong. Then came Eldred v. Ashcroft . Larry Lessig, argued the case before the Supreme Court. In his retrospective on the case [1], Lessig describes how he built his argument on the Lopez/Morrison line of decisions which said that…

This isn't really directed at you, but it seems like a good place to address the crowd. I didn't say the man was a saint or that he was always perfectly intellectually honest all the time. No one is. But I think was a lot more of those things than he often got credit for. Some of you seem to forget that people who have different opinions than you are also people. And as such, they have the right to try to get those o…

Glenn Greenwald:

“This demand for respectful silence in the wake of a public figure's death is not just misguided but dangerous. That one should not speak ill of the dead is arguably appropriate when a private person dies, but it is wildly inappropriate for the death of a controversial public figure, particularly one who wielded significant influence and political power.”

“...the key point is this: those who admire the deceased public figure (and their politics) aren't silent at all. They are aggressively exploiting the emotions generated by the person's death to create hagiography. [...] Those gushing depictions can be quite consequential, as it was for the week-long tidal wave of unbroken reverence that was heaped on Ronald Reagan upon his death, an episode that to this day shapes how Americans view him and the political ideas he symbolized. Demanding that no criticisms be voiced to counter that hagiography is to enable false history and a propagandistic whitewashing of bad acts, distortions that become quickly ossified and then endure by virtue of no opposition and the powerful emotions created by death.”

Source: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/apr/08/margare...

Re: U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has died

#326

Post by icebraining »

dredmorbius wrote: post #298
icebraining wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly, and as an outsider, purposefully waiting for a recess to appoint someone seems like the trick to me.

Like it or not, that trick's specifically enshrined and established in the Constitution. That same document Scalia claimed to defend to vigilantly. Probably there for good reasons.

Again, I'm hardly a scholar of the US Constitution, but if the excerpt of the Federalist papers by Hamilton quoted by Wikipedia[1] is anything to go by, the reason is very clear: to allow for an appointment which "might be necessary for the public service to fill without delay" while the Senate is in recess. That it allows for this trick seems like an unintended consequence.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recess_appointment#Legitimacy_...

Re: U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has died

#327

Post by dinkumthinkum »

I'm sorry but I don't think you have any idea how American politics and elections actually work.

Democrats in meaningful numbers aren't going to vote for your Cruz, Rubio, Bush, or Trump because the president chose to use a recess appointment because he faced senate leader in McConnell that blatantly proclaimed he and his cohort would not be interested in governance and rather just play obstructionist games.

On the contrary, elections in America are more (or less depending on your perspective) complicated than you imagine. First, of course, the idea that this would make democrats vote for Cruz is pretty, I hate to say it but, dumb. Second, presidential politics in our time is only about a small handful of states. Alabama isn't voting for Hillary and New York isn't voting Cruz. Third, you over estimate how much the electorate would care or understand about recess appointment. Have you ever met a voter other than yourself. We have college students at Texas Tech that don't know even know what the civil war was or what country on the other side of the Atlantic the Americans fought a revolutionary war against. You sound like you are probably very educated about those matters but you are hardly a meaningful representation of the electorate.

There is so much time between now and the election, there are so many late night comedy skits, gotcha moments, weird and potentially racist statements yet to be said on the campaign trail that your idea that some kerfuffle about "recess appointments", which was actually not committed by any of the actual candidates, would even matter at all in the election seem pretty naive, impractical, and uninformed.

Re: U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has died

#328

Post by waterlesscloud »

dinkumthinkum wrote: post #327

I'm sorry but I don't think you have any idea how American politics and elections actually work. Democrats in meaningful numbers aren't going to vote for your Cruz, Rubio, Bush, or Trump because the president chose to use a recess appointment because he faced senate leader in McConnell that blatantly proclaimed he and his cohort would not be interested in governance and rather just play obstructionist games. On the c…

You're dreaming politics as you want them to be, not as reality is.

Not to mention delusional interpretations of what I stated.

We'll talk after the returns in November.

Re: U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has died

#329

Post by dredmorbius »

icebraining wrote: post #326
dredmorbius wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like it or not, that trick's specifically enshrined and established in the Constitution. That same document Scalia claimed to defend to vigilantly. Probably there for good reasons.

Again, I'm hardly a scholar of the US Constitution, but if the excerpt of the Federalist papers by Hamilton quoted by Wikipedia[1] is anything to go by, the reason is very clear: to allow for an appointment which "might be necessary for the public service to fill without delay" while the Senate is in recess. That it allows for this trick seems like an unintended consequence. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recess_a…

And if the Senate itself is engineering that delay?

See also rules for allowing legislation to become law, or deny same, without explicit action. Pocket veto and default approval can both happen in this manner:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pocket_veto

Re: U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has died

#330

Post by ars »

dang wrote: post #50
jdminhbg wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it's your site, so you can do what you want, but allowing these political threads is, in my opinion at least, really dragging down the quality of conversation across the site. It attracts users whose main contribution is willingness to initiate and prolong political flamewars.

There are far fewer outright political stories than there used to be. Probably fewer than ever, in fact. So if discussion quality is being dragged down, something else is dragging it. As for this post, experience has taught us that when a story crosses a certain magnitude, there's no stopping it from getting discussed on HN, so we may as well have a single thread.

> So if discussion quality is being dragged down, something else is dragging it.

It seems the partisanship in congress is not just congress, it's all Americans. (I do wonder which caused which.)

Reading the comments, insults and battles in the thread, ouch, and wow!

Post reply on HN