Biden Decries ‘Rushed And Unprecedented’ Barrett Confirmation | Talking Points Memo

When you’re the daddy to two girls, you get plenty of practice in wearing all kinds of things that you may never have expected.

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Just a gentle reminder. Tempers seem to be fraying as we get closer to the Big Day.

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At least that what you tell the neighbors.

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Disagree. They’re not asking voters to unseat Barrett.

Not only practice in but also joy out of.

I imagine.

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Correctly.

Who said voters of today are being asked to unseat Barrett? What I said was the time to deal with Barrett was years ago when Bernie bros were protest voting and the MSM was “but her emails” its ass off. When folks thought 3rd party idiots were the cure and when Comey was sealing not only his fate but all of America’s. 2016. Then. Not now.

So much frivolous bellyaching!

I can only refer you to a prior comment.

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If you read the comment you refer to and the one you’re referring from you’ll see they are perfectly parallel. In BOTH I say the time to act is prior. Had the USA been properly educated in 2016 the shitstorm of 2020 does not happen. No one is belly aching about 2016. I made a historical reference only. Do you disagree with it? Do you think we’d have a Barrett or a Kav on SCOTUS had Americas been free of FaceBook’s Russian agitprop? Of Uraniumgate, Benghazigate and emailgate ( all of which vanished after Nov. 2016 as there was never anything but electoral utility in them )? Addressing that is not bellyaching. It’s dealing with the facts. Confronting the truth. Just as the recognition that Barrett is on that Court and the time to have kept her off it is past.

Be careful Cerv. Just digging at someone for diggings’s sake is not becoming. If you have to reframe someone words or point to attack them it’s best to put down your pen.

Which you also say is not fatalistic, and so on. Not much of it makes sense to me – but I concede this is my problem, not yours.

 

Luckily, I have my own reasons to quit!

Cheers.

The near-term answer to “6-3, woe is me” is “3.2,2, that’s what we’ll do.” Pass laws walling off personal privacy rights (basis of Roe), campaign finance restrictions, review of ACA, etc. etc. etc. from appellate review. Nullify SCOTUS with the lawmaking power. SCOTUS is an inferior, dependent child of the other branches anyway, as any reading of the Constitution makes clear; remind it of that fact.

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Yet they didn’t blink at Scalia manufacturing a right to self protection that isn’t even remotely mentioned or implied anywhere.

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When you dismiss “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State” as a rhetorical flourish you have to manufacture another reason for the right to bear arms. Barrett might go with god given right under natural law but Scalia wasn’t that brazen.

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This can be legislated as well, Congress can limit what the SC is allowed to rule on. And, in some ways, it’s the easier path, because the average American won’t really get into the details of it…they will fall for the “court packing!” nonsense but not details about court reform.

What I think should happen is that the Democrats look at the entire court system, which is really short on judges and overloaded with cases, and figure out the right number of judges required to handle the case load. Look at the cases and see how they stack up, and if some are being sent there inappropriately. Write up legislation adjusting the parameters, remanding some cases into lower or state courts and reorganize the circuits so they are more balanced (adding some if necessary). Then, increase the size of the SC to match the number of circuits, so they are the “head” of their circuit. There’s also the possibility of creating a rolling “Constitutional Court” which makes rulings on Constitutional matters; have the judges on this rotate every X years from the circuits (or even the SC).

There are plenty of other things to be done, and they are necessary…Roberts complains, justifiably, every year that the courts need more resources. Democrats should give them to him, and then fill all of those new judge slots with good, honest judges who will follow the law instead of twist it to their own ends. That can actually include conservative judges, people like David Souter were technically conservative but still followed the law (and of course Kennedy pushed for LGBT equality)…the current Republicans are unable to appoint many judges like that though. Biden is just the right kind of person to put a balanced judiciary together, one that values the law over partisanship (in either direction) and empathizes with the people affected by the cases in front of them.

Whatever happens, Democrats will need to fix the court system, even without the wild abuses of Trump and McConnell it needs resources and updates to function better for the nation.

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My husband, father of three daughters, is a Girl Scout and pretty proud of it as well. He has also worn his share of “dress up”.

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You cannot reasonably blame voters for the malfeasance of the goverment if you take into consideration the numerous useful tools like gerrymandering and the electoral collage that are used to subvert the vote. If you also take into consideration voter suppression and the hijinks currently on display at the corrupt supreme court you get even further from the proposition that voters are the ones in charge in this country.

Some rights to gun ownership for home security, hunting, and varmint control existed in Common Law. Justice Stevens wrote that as Common Law, those rights were so widely accepted that most of the framers didn’t see them as needing specific protection. But, the Southern framers were very concerned about the federal gov’t regulating the Southern slave patrols (aka “militias” in those states; we would call them organised terror patrols) out of existence, and that is the reason the 2nd is in there. It refers exclusively to keeping of arms when serving in a militia (and some linguistic historians even assert that “Arms” in that time’s parlance referred to weapons of war, not personal items), and under state and federal regulation. There was no general acceptance of the carrying of firearms in public places by private persons and such behavior was in most places proscribed outright or tightly regulated.

Heller is wrongly found, Scalia did invent a personal Constitutional right from thin air, when he could have simply confirmed the Common Law right, and then followed on as he did by laying out the many conditions where a jurisdiction could place limits on the who, what, where, and how of gun ownership. But of course his ambition and arrogance was as likely to drive his opinions as not, and it was so important to put partisan points on the board that we got Heller, claiming a right in the Constitution that is simply not there.

When you argue in front of the SCOTUS you are making your case. Refusing to answer questions would just hamper your ability to make your case for your client(s).
You ask the SCOTUS to take your case - they don’t have to. It would be absurd under the circumstances to refuse to answer questions from certain justices because you don’t think they are legit - that just hurts your client.

Arguing in front of the Gilead 6 will hurt your client in all cases, since your client’s loss will be pre-ordained. Allowing the Gilead 6 to get away with destroying the country will hurt, well, the country. So, do you hurt your client and the country by a) avoiding SCOTUS or b) arguing and losing in front of a corrupt court, or do you hurt your client (in the short run) and help the country by delegitimizing that court?

This is part of the larger discussion about how to deal with a fully corrupt GOP. Do we pretend like the rule of law exists while the GOP runs over it rough shod? That is a noble exercise but one which we will lose, that we are losing.

You don’t reform the court via oral argument.

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