And that Kavanaugh throws the best keg parties in his offices, and she doesn’t want to be dis-invited from next seasons’.
What do you mean? Just last year, t rumpp said there were “good people on both sides” of the racist divide in Charlottesville. IOW, being racist does not disqualify you from still be being a good person. The Dotard said so.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah… You’re kidding, right?
RBG needs to work with these folks, and more importantly she needs to try and find their support in order to reduce the number of terrible decisions the SC passes.
It’s a good thing she is being nice and trying to build relationships with them.
Justice Ginsburg is, as far as I know, honest. And has good judgment. And has enough personal experience of Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh to know whereof she speaks.
So I suppose my takeaway from this would have to be that Gorsuch and Kavanaugh are smart and decent people.
Which, frankly, isn’t too hard to accept. I know smart and decent people who have ideas about democracy and justice that I think will have bad consequences if put into practice.
Is it just me or should literally life or death decisions that come in front of the SCOTUS be decided by more than persuading her colleagues with kind words?
Also, the court passed the point of being partisan in Bush v Gore. I respect RBG, but in this case, she is wrong wrong wrong.
Was just about to go there. Glad someone did.
Also for those that missed it, this is what grace looks like. I have to admit, she’s a much bigger person than me when it comes to those two.
In my heroes I look for qualities where I fall short of what I would like to see in myself.
I used to feel this way about presidents.
Two psychos, united as one. Ain’t love grand? ![]()
She’s a much bigger person than I, as well.
I love RBG, but on this question she is completely wrong. Every Supreme Court vacancy today is a political crisis, and therefore every nominee is now required to be a reliable partisan. Expanding the Court reduces the partisan value of each individual seat, making each nomination less of an existential political crisis.
So here’s my proposal for fixing the Court through legislation. None of this would require a constitutional amendment:
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Expand the Court to 25 (or more!) justices. Starting with the existing 9 seats, we add a new seat every year, or 18 months, or two years, or whatever, until we get to 25. Point is, we add them over a meaningful period of time so no one president or Senate gets to decide the next 16 justices all at once. Anytime one of them croaks or quits, the sitting president gets to nominate the replacement, but we continue to add the new seats on the set schedule too.
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Reorganize the Supreme Court into basically a Super Circuit Court of Appeals, which is pretty much what it was for the first 100 years of its existence. No more discretionary review. Instead, every appeal from a U.S. Court of Appeals or a state supreme court gets decided on the merits by a panel of three randomly selected justices. The Court can adopt rules to streamline that review and summarily dispose of cases that are obviously correct, but make it an appellate court again, not one that gets to determine what cases it wants to decide. If the caseload gets too great, add more seats.
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Random three judge panels and non-discretionary review mean that the justices are not just there to be reliable partisan hacks. The great majority of their work will be judging cases. And they can’t just rely on the overall partisan balance of the Court all the damn time, because they will never know who they’ll have to work with on any particular case.
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Just like the circuit courts of appeal, the revamped SCOTUS can still vote to hear a case en banc after it is decided by a panel. But as a practical matter, en banc review is pretty rare in the circuit courts of appeal. Judges tend to be very deferential to their colleagues’ panel decisions. So huge matters like the ACA cases and marriage would probably still be decided by the whole Court, but not as a matter of routine like it is now.
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Random SCOTUS panels and larger overall numbers of judges will also mean that partisan hack lawyers and AG’s will have less incentive to file partisan hack lawsuits whenever they think they might be able to cobble together a 5-judge majority. Think it might be hard to get to 5 votes? It will be much harder to predict when you can reliably get to 13.
None of that would get through Congress, and all of it would be challenged in the federal courts if it did.
My god are you clueless. go play in traffic.
I didn’t say it would get through Congress, at least not today. And none of it would be even remotely unconstitutional, so phooey on your hypothetical legal challenge.
WTF? get bent. ageism defined.
This.
I think “decent” is a clever choice of words. It often means “Okay but not great”: a decent meal as opposed to a delicious meal, a decent movie as opposed to a fabulous movie, etc.
A perfectly psychotic relationship…yin and yang.
RBG and Biden can delude themselves that we’re just seeing a hiccup in the normal comity. The rest of us know the days of reasonable Republicans capable of being non-partisan are gone.
Bent? Like RBG’s posture? 
If you’re thinking the progressive long game is to end up in the dust bin of history, I agree.
Bill Clinton put the progressive long game in a coma and Obama pulled the plug.