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Ed Justice Barrett

I think announcing that they have the votes to confirm before the nominee is even chosen is something everyone should have a problem with. But at that point the content of the hearings themselves are rather meaningless.
 
dirtywick said:
I think announcing that they have the votes to confirm before the nominee is even chosen is something everyone should have a problem with. But at that point the content of the hearings themselves are rather meaningless.
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Agreed. The hearings themselves mean nothing when the GOP senators have already made it clear it doesn't matter who the nominee is, they are going to approve whomever it is.
 
Of course the hearings matter. They're the opportunity for dissenters to drop bombshells that flip a few crucial votes. If they'd been able to show a clear pattern of prejudice in her rulings on cases touching human sexuality. If they'd presented evidence of dark money connections. But they didn't.

The hearings are pointless not because they GOP has the votes, but because the Dems don't have anything that could change a vote. And since they can't just acknowledge that she's an acceptable nominee, they have to grandstand pointlessly about the implications.

But is it really pointless? If it were, wouldn't someone have moved to skip the hearings and go straight to the vote? The folks praising Hirono and dark money guy: Does your praise take into account the fact that their efforts are pointless and they're apparently too stupid to realize it? Or do you think maybe there is a point to the hearings, even if the GOP already has the votes?
 
theprestige said:
Of course the hearings matter. They're the opportunity for dissenters to drop bombshells that flip a few crucial votes. If they'd been able to show a clear pattern of prejudice in her rulings on cases touching human sexuality. If they'd presented evidence of dark money connections. But they didn't.

The hearings are pointless not because they GOP has the votes, but because the Dems don't have anything that could change a vote. And since they can't just acknowledge that she's an acceptable nominee, they have to grandstand pointlessly about the implications.
But is it really pointless? If it were, wouldn't someone have moved to skip the hearings and go straight to the vote? The folks praising Hirono and dark money guy: Does your praise take into account the fact that their efforts are pointless and they're apparently too stupid to realize it? Or do you think maybe there is a point to the hearings, even if the GOP already has the votes?
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No. They're pointless because the GOP senators made it clear they would pass the nominee before they even knew who the nominee was. If they didn't know who it was, then it obviously didn't matter what 'bombshells' anyone had or what 'pattern of prejudice in (their) rulings on cases touching human sexuality' existed. What mattered is that they put a conservative judge on the SC and they assumed it would be from the list Trump released on Sept 9, 2020. Which it was.
 
Stacyhs said:
No. They're pointless because the GOP senators made it clear they would pass the nominee before they even knew who the nominee was.
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But they did know. There was a short list, and everyone on that short list was acceptable.
 
Ziggurat said:
But they did know. There was a short list, and everyone on that short list was acceptable.
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That "short list" consisted of Forty-Four ultra-conservative judges all approved by the ultraconservative Heritage Foundation and Federalist Society. You don't think there was anything in the backgrounds of any of those judges that might be unacceptable to any of the more moderate GOP senators? Not a thing? And let's not forget one of those on that list was Ted Cruz. One of the least liked senators in Congress. Do you seriously think they'd have put that POS on the SC?
 
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Yes, anyone nominated was acceptable regardless of what happened in the confirmation hearing.
 
Ziggurat said:
To Republicans. Duh.
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We all know that. My question was to maybe have supporters contemplate that the judges on the SCOTUS should be deemed about equally acceptable to both sides. These days it's essentially a purely party line affair.

That the Courts have become a political battleground is a damning and dangerous state of degeneration. Anyone not alarmed by this is brain-dead.
 
Stacyhs said:
That "short list" consisted of Forty-Four ultra-conservative judges all approved by the ultraconservative Heritage Foundation and Federalist Society.
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No. That was the published list from 2016. Everybody knew that the list of candidates Trump was considering for this appointment was a lot shorter than that.
 
Lurch said:
We all know that. My question was to maybe have supporters contemplate that the judges on the SCOTUS should be deemed about equally acceptable to both sides. These days it's essentially a purely party line affair.

That the Courts have become a political battleground is a damning and dangerous state of degeneration. Anyone not alarmed by this is brain-dead.
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I agree that it's a problem, but 1) it's not new, and 2) Democrats have the wrong solutions to it. The driving force behind this problem is in my sig.
 
Ziggurat said:
No. That was the published list from 2016. Everybody knew that the list of candidates Trump was considering for this appointment was a lot shorter than that.
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No, it is not. That was the list from this nomination.
https://www.afj.org/our-work/judicial-nominations/trumps-scotus-short-list/

And you didn't answer my question:

You don't think there was anything in the backgrounds of any of those judges that might be unacceptable to any of the more moderate GOP senators? Not a thing?
 
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Ziggurat said:
I agree that it's a problem, but 1) it's not new, and 2) Democrats have the wrong solutions to it. The driving force behind this problem is in my sig.
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I have sigs turned off. ;)

It was when the confirmation threshold was changed from 2/3 to a simple majority vote that this crap really took off. For such momentous and long lasting appointments, it should never have even been possible to contemplate less than 2/3, so as to ensure the impossibility of a purely partisan outcome (unless more than 2/3 of the seats should be held by one Party.)

I wonder how Barrett feels to know that more than half the country sees her fast-tracked installation in this ramming down their collective throat as wrong. Not enough, I guess, to heed the pleas of some 100 professors from her alma mater to decline this confirmation and await the election result.
 
Lurch said:
I have sigs turned off. ;)

It was when the confirmation threshold was changed from 2/3 to a simple majority vote that this crap really took off. For such momentous and long lasting appointments, it should never have even been possible to contemplate less than 2/3, so as to ensure the impossibility of a purely partisan outcome (unless more than 2/3 of the seats should be held by one Party.)

I wonder how Barrett feels to know that more than half the country sees her fast-tracked installation in this ramming down their collective throat as wrong. Not enough, I guess, to heed the pleas of some 100 professors from her alma mater to decline this confirmation and await the election result.
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It used to require 60 votes, not two-thirds, before the end of the filibuster.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...filibuster-supreme-court-nominees/3573369001/
 
Lurch said:
That the Courts have become a political battleground is a damning and dangerous state of degeneration. Anyone not alarmed by this is brain-dead.
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IMO, they always have been political, because tribes are largely political and most people are tribal. They probably know where they stand on a given spectrum before they ever get to law school. Plus the spirit of the age changes: Separate but equal was upheld in 1896; by 1955 separate was deemed inherently unequal. Many if not most groundbreaking civil rights cases are contrived to some extent.

My dad was a lawyer credentialed to argue before the Supreme Court and as a teenager I told him I wanted to read some opinions ... and he said, "No you don't." He meant that I was going to find a mishmash of rationalizations, not necessarily brilliant legal insights. Our whole system of justice is built on the ability of lawyers to argue opposite points of view with at least a plausible veneer of rational justification.

ETA: I'm talking about the U.S. system; can't speak to how things are done in other countries.
 
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