U.S. Politics: Hey! Teachers! Leave Them Kids Alone

[Larry of the Lawn]

2 hours ago, chiKanery et al. said:

Not really when everyone is running around with their hair on fire. It's terrible for certain groups who've historically been mistreated, but this isn't the end of the country or anything close to it. Frankly, crying wolf about the end of the country numbs people to the concept and makes them less likely to fight for it. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

'Nice way' of saying "well it sucked for people like you before, so it's not the end of the world.". Nice, pal.  You're a real fucking charmer.  

Everybody chill out, they haven't come for white dudes yet.

[fionwe1987]

Just now, larrytheimp said:

  Everybody chill out, they haven't come for white dudes yet.

Straight, white, wealthy white dudes, to be precise. But those poor souls have had to deal with incivility, and losing the culture wars. So long as they can lash out and punish everyone else, America is alive!

[The Marquis de Leech]

2 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

'Nice way' of saying "well it sucked for people like you before, so it's not the end of the world.". Nice, pal.  You're a real fucking charmer.  

Everybody chill out, they haven't come for white dudes yet.

Along those lines, the truly dark possibility isn't merely a repeal of Roe. It's a Supreme Court that allows Trump to pardon himself.

[DMC]

21 minutes ago, fionwe1987 said:

The ideal scenario would be to add 10 seats, but also change the way the Court functions, so each case is heard by a random subset of 3 or 5 justices, with an option for an en blac review. Pretty much, make the Supreme Court work like the Federal courts do. This makes any given Justice way less powerful, and you cannot definitely know picking a guy will mean a decision goes one way or another, so the political heat surrounding the nomination process will reduce. 

Does anyone know if the second part just needs an act of Congress or an Amendment? 

I'm not aware of any such efforts but wikipedia claims there have been in the past (annoyingly without any citation):

Quote

Proposals to divide the Supreme Court into separate panels have been made, but all have failed. Because all such proposals have failed, the Supreme Court has never ruled on the constitutionality of such a division. Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes wrote, "the Constitution does not appear to authorize two or more Supreme Courts functioning in effect as separate courts."

I agree with the bolded, at least to the best of my knowledge.  Anyway, I'm not sure about the efficacy of this.  Even appellate courts can demand an en banc review if majority is dissatisfied with the 3 (or 5) judge panel's decision.  I expect that would frequently happen, and almost certainly happen in any controversial decision, so you'd really just be slowing down an already laborious process.  The only aspect that certainly needs a constitutional amendment would be if they tried to abolish SCOTUS.  Everything else is either a grey area or Congress has the authority to enact changes.

That being said, I agree about packing the court if/when Dems achieve unified government.  I'd say add 2 - one for Garland and the other to make it an odd number.  And looking over other congressional changes to SCOTUS, this has precedent - for a while there they added a justice for each circuit court of appeals (there are 13 right now - 11 regional plus Fed and DC).

[fionwe1987]

2 minutes ago, DMBouazizi said:

I'm not aware of any such efforts but wikipedia claims there have been in the past (annoyingly without any citation):

I agree with the bolded, at least to the best of my knowledge.  Anyway, I'm not sure about the efficacy of this.  Even appellate courts can demand an en banc review if majority is dissatisfied with the 3 (or 5) judge panel's decision.  I expect that would frequently happen, and almost certainly happen in any controversial decision, so you'd really just be slowing down an already laborious process.  The only aspect that certainly needs a constitutional amendment would be if they tried to abolish SCOTUS.  Everything else is either a grey area or Congress has the authority to enact changes.

That being said, I agree about packing the court if/when Dems achieve unified government.  I'd say add 2 - one for Garland and the other to make it an odd number.  And looking over other congressional changes to SCOTUS, this has precedent - for a while there they added a justice for each circuit court of appeals (there are 13 right now - 11 regional plus Fed and DC).

Thanks! The lack of citations is infuriating, but it is wikipedia. What else can we expect?

I'm sure it will indeed often result in requests for en blanc reviews, but hardly will all be granted. But even if they were, the larger number of justices will mean no one Justice will have as much sway. That's still better than the current situation.

[The Marquis de Leech]

Note that court-packing will mean the Republicans respond in kind - which will continue until a compromise is reached.

Though frankly, that's looking better than the current situation.

[DMC]

2 minutes ago, fionwe1987 said:

But even if they were, the larger number of justices will mean no one Justice will have as much sway. That's still better than the current situation.

 

1 minute ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

Note that court-packing will mean the Republicans respond in kind - which will continue until a compromise is reached.

Though frankly, that's looking better than the current situation.

I agree with all of the above.

[fionwe1987]

1 minute ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

Note that court-packing will mean the Republicans respond in kind - which will continue until a compromise is reached.

Though frankly, that's looking better than the current situation.

It isn't like they'll be able to respond in kind right away. In the 4-8 years it will take for them to do so, the Dems should try to find a way to close the ability to increase court size. Hypocritical? Damn right. But needed, I think.

[Rippounet]

4 minutes ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

Note that court-packing will mean the Republicans respond in kind - which will continue until a compromise is reached.

It would allow the Dems to legislate without the possibility of a major judicial opposition if they ever win Congress and the presidency again. In other words, it's mainly a solution to be able to do something after a huge electoral win. It would be temporary, yes, but better than having to deal with a conservative SCOTUS for decades  - without interruption.

[The Marquis de Leech]

Just now, Rippounet said:

It would allow the Dems to legislate without the possibility of a major judicial opposition if they ever win Congress and the presidency again. In other words, it's mainly a solution to be able to do something after a huge electoral win. It would be temporary, yes, but better than having to deal with a conservative SCOTUS for decades.

What I meant is that it dismantles the power of judicial review - if the President and Congress face opposition from the Court, they will simply stack it. Which means that the Court basically has to do as it's told. If the Democrats increase the Court to 11, the Republicans will increase it to 13, and so on.

Coming from a country without judicial review, I don't find this inherently problematic, but it means a sharp break from the way the American government has traditionally functioned.

[JGP]

Ok, fuck this. I was just starting to relax after a long cool down and now I'm getting really fucking pissed off again.

[Rippounet]

1 minute ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

What I meant is that it dismantles the power of judicial review - if the President and Congress face opposition from the Court, they will simply stack it. Which means that the Court basically has to do as it's told. If the Democrats increase the Court to 11, the Republicans will increase it to 13, and so on.

Coming from a country without judicial review, I don't find this inherently problematic, but it means a sharp break from the way the American government has traditionally functioned.

I agree, but it's really the logical conclusion of the way the SCOTUS has become politicized in the last decades. When the Republicans started weaponizing the courts (something which may have come from the rejection of Brown), they effectively ended the independence of the judiciary.
In fact, the Democrats could have considered doing just that in 2009, arguing that Bush v. Gore had already shown that the SCOTUS could no longer be seen as a neutral arbiter in constitutional matters. The Dems weren't willing to go that far at the time, but the price that was paid since then is proving to be very high. In fact, with the benefit of hindsight, the Dems were far too meek after their wins in 2008 ; of course, no one was even considering something like trumpism back then.
To drive the point home: given how partisan Gorsuch's nomination was in the end (with only two or three Democrats voting to confirm him), the U.S. is already at the point where judicial review has become a farce. It's useless to attempt to preserve it as it was.

[Altherion]

2 hours ago, Scott de Montevideo! said:

Declining to have hearings for a year had no historical precedent.  Changing the size of the Court does.

There is precedent for both. Millard Fillmore nominated 3 different guys to fill an open Supreme Court seat and the Senate basically ignored him for 8 months (Garland was nominated in March so he was ignored for very nearly the same amount of time). Andrew Johnson nominated one and the Senate actually eliminated the seat and kept eliminating seats until Johnson was gone. There were a few other lame ducks who were ignored, but for significantly shorter time periods.

That said, ignoring a lame duck has historically been a much less contentious issue than packing the court. The last time the latter was tried, the President's party had 69 out of 96 Senate seats and 334 out of 445 Representatives which is way more than any party is likely to see in the foreseeable future... but the court packing still failed.

[DMC]

16 minutes ago, Altherion said:

but the court packing still failed.

No, it didn't.  It precipitated the "switch in time that saved nine" in West Coast Hotel Co. v Parrish.  That rendered the plan moot as FDR already had won strategically.

[The Anti-Targ]

1 hour ago, JEORDHl said:

Why not? I'd generally like to understand this, or at least, how you surmise it's some invioable truth.

 

Pretty obvious really. Dems aren't winning elections with them, and the other Democrat demographics are pretty maxed out in terms of proportions that vote Democratic. And if you want to take enough purple seats / states to have majorities aren't those the voters and the candidates who will get you those seats? Is there some way that you can put a young, left, Latino/a, or African American into these purple districts and feel confident of a win? Where are you going to get your votes from to shift the needle at the same time as telling one of your demographics to feck right off? They might not vote for the other side, but the last thing you want to do is demoralise any parts of your voter base and have them either stay home or vote 3rd party.

If you want to win legitimately through elections you can't afford to alienate anyone who is nominally in your camp.

I'm not sure telling centrist white people to eff off is a good strategic move. Unless you are planning to win by revolution rather than election. But even that's not a great look for you, since it's the white folks who have all the guns, and the cops and the military.

I can understand the rage, but where's the strategic thinking and the clear mapping of a pathway to victory? I'm not seeing it. All I'm seeing is people getting more and more pissed off at things going in the wrong direction. No clue about what to really do about it, and lashing out at anyone who isn't in lock step with the outpouring of progressive rage. 

The right has been out-strategising the left for decades and I don't see that ending any time soon.

 

 

 

[Jace, Extat]

2 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Pretty obvious really. Dems aren't winning elections with them, and the other Democrat demographics are pretty maxed out in terms of proportions that vote Democratic. And if you want to take enough purple seats / states to have majorities aren't those the voters and the candidates who will get you those seats? Is there some way that you can put a young, left, Latino/a, or African American into these purple districts and feel confident of a win? Where are you going to get your votes from to shift the needle at the same time as telling one of your demographics to feck right off? They might not vote for the other side, but the last thing you want to do is demoralise any parts of your voter base and have them either stay home or vote 3rd party.

If you want to win legitimately through elections you can't afford to alienate anyone who is nominally in your camp.

I'm not sure telling centrist white people to eff off is a good strategic move. Unless you are planning to win by revolution rather than election. But even that's not a great look for you, since it's the white folks who have all the guns, and the cops and the military.

I can understand the rage, but where's the strategic thinking and the clear mapping of a pathway to victory? I'm not seeing it. All I'm seeing is people getting more and more pissed off at things going in the wrong direction. No clue about what to really do about it, and lashing out at anyone who isn't in lock step with the outpouring of progressive rage. 

The right has been out-strategising the left for decades and I don't see that ending any time soon.

 

 

 

There is no path to victory. Hence the anger.

[Bonnot OG]

There is no clear path to victory when one side gets pissy about people calling a group of neo nazis assholes like they are inthe same ball park, and then the other side that sides with the klan, the neo nazis, and highly corrupt fucks to fund them and give them some extra money to look the other way when they want to do some shady shit, or so they can get judges in place that will be more favorable to their greedy ways.

Violence is going to look like the only out if things continue to go the way they are going.

[The Anti-Targ]

11 minutes ago, Jace, The Sugarcube said:

There is no path to victory. Hence the anger.

That's fine. But it seems like some people are still looking for that path, and at the same time burning bridges. Your fatalism is distressing, but arguably more rational.

[The Anti-Targ]

1 minute ago, Bonnot OG said:

There is no clear path to victory when one side gets pissy about people calling a group of neo nazis assholes like they are inthe same ball park, and then the other side that sides with the klan, the neo nazis, and highly corrupt fucks to fund them and give them some extra money to look the other way when they want to do some shady shit, or so they can get judges in place that will be more favorable to their greedy ways.

Violence is going to look like the only out if things continue to go the way they are going.

That seems to be likely. When democracy isn't working for you, it seems illogical to continue to try to use democracy to get the things you want. The USA, and probably many/most other democracies, and possibly in a weekend at Bernie's situation, where the dead body is the democratic institutions that people like to believe is still alive and functional, but it's really a rotting corpse that has been liberally sprinkled with perfume to hide the stink.

 

[Jace, Extat]

1 minute ago, The Anti-Targ said:

That's fine. But it seems like some people are still looking for that path, and at the same time burning bridges. You fatalism is distressing, but arguably more rational.

They're just lost and confused. They'll give up eventually, but denying them their targets of grievance is a decidedly unfriendly endeavor. 

I mean just look at poor Tywin. He's actually trying to talk himself into believing in Collins and Murkowski. That's just not healthy. And even the suggestion that lashing out at the complicit is counterproductive gives false hope that something else might be, furthering the cycle of self delusional abuse.