Merged Scalia is dead

[ponderingturtle]

How is the senate undemocratic? Because it's not proportional? How is that undemocratic?

1 man .01-2 votes!

 

[Cain]

How is the senate undemocratic? Because it's not proportional? How is that undemocratic?

I live in a state with over 35 million people. I have two Senators. Wyoming doesn't even have a million people, but the state gets the same number of votes in the Senate. While my Senators may advocate universal health-care and gun control, they're canceled out by The Equality State (Wyoming's nickname).

 

[sunmaster14]

I live in a state with over 35 million people. I have two Senators. Wyoming doesn't even have a million people, but the state gets the same number of votes in the Senate. While my Senators may advocate universal health-care and gun control, they're canceled out by The Equality State (Wyoming's nickname).

You have the freedom to move to Wyoming.

 

[Suddenly]

Your ideas work perfectly fine for innovation they couldn't predict. What about undisputed evidence of their stance on a contemporary issue to them? Can we still apply the principle to our modern understanding or should we exercise deference?

As to the numbering convention, I see no problem in looking to the definition at the time of ratification when the provision is specific rather than a statement of general principle.

As to general statements of principle, modern understanding always controls. If they wanted to bind future generations to their specific understanding, they were perfectly capable of doing so within the document itself.

 

[sunmaster14]

This is for approximately the same reason that I might discipline my kids for misbehaving at the grocery store, but I'm unlikely to discipline someone else's kids, even if they're behaving worse than my kids.

This is so elemental that I'm astounded when I see the sentiment that you express here.

So in your analogy you see Dick Cheney as one of your own kids and KSM as somebody else's? Do you really love Dick Cheney and only want to discipline him to make him a better and happier person in the long run?

 

[varwoche]

So in your analogy you see Dick Cheney as one of your own kids and KSM as somebody else's? Do you really love Dick Cheney and only want to discipline him to make him a better and happier person in the long run?

You're being a bit too literal. (See my sig.)

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

From my reading of this very thread most of the responses have been along the lines of "I didn't agree with him but I wish his family well." Nice job on focusing in on the exception [and adding totally made up as well] to "prove" your point, though.

ftfy

 

[caveman1917]

Street parties erupting everywhere

 

[BobTheCoward]

I live in a state with over 35 million people. I have two Senators. Wyoming doesn't even have a million people, but the state gets the same number of votes in the Senate. While my Senators may advocate universal health-care and gun control, they're canceled out by The Equality State (Wyoming's nickname).

There are other principles that matter besides Democratic representation of the population. For a similar principle, look at the UN. Almost no one advocates UN votes should be proportional to a country's population.

 

[BobTheCoward]

As to the numbering convention, I see no problem in looking to the definition at the time of ratification when the provision is specific rather than a statement of general principle.

As to general statements of principle, modern understanding always controls. If they wanted to bind future generations to their specific understanding, they were perfectly capable of doing so within the document itself.

So there is no limit to how far modern understanding can diverge from their understanding of these principles?

 

[ponderingturtle]

There are other principles that matter besides Democratic representation of the population. For a similar principle, look at the UN. Almost no one advocates UN votes should be proportional to a country's population.

No one claims the UN is a democracy either. The security council is just the start of undemocratic features of the UN.

So we need to stop saying we want to spread democracy and BS like that, and stop claiming that it is a workable system I guess.

 

[BobTheCoward]

But of course getting every state to voluntarily surrender its power is virtually impossible. The Articles of Confederation originally made it so that amendments needed unanimous consent, which may sound nice in theory, but soon proved impractical, so it was supposed to get reworked. Instead delegates secretly drafted a whole new document.

The difficulty with amending the Constitution is the reason so many scholars defend a "loose" interpretation, and claim looseness was the original intent of the Founding Fathers. It's silly to think the Framers knew exactly what they were doing; it was a matter of trial and error. Washington did not believe the Constitution would last more than twenty years. Jefferson famously advocated "perpetual revolution."

The men of the time did not have the sacred reverence we do today, which is probably why they were able to add 12 amendments in almost as many years. If we had kept anything resembling that pace, the Constitution would today have many more amendments. Originally this country had four million people spread out over 13 states. Now we have over 300 million stretched across 50 states.

I think there is a contradiction here. We should use a lose interpretation but the rate of amendments by the founders suggests a strict interpretation on their part where they saw the necessity of amending?

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

You have the freedom to move to Wyoming.

What an absurd answer to the problem of unequal representation.

Also, I can be glad Scalia's dead without wishing he would die. I would be equally glad if he'd have retired.

He died in his sleep at the age of 79 in a luxury hunting resort. I imagine a lot of people close to him are saying that was a good way to go. Would that disgust you as well?

And to equate being against torture for many good reasons with some sort of empathy for KSM shows how distorted your view of 'liberals' is.

 

[sunmaster14]

I just saw an interesting idea. Perhaps not the most likely scenario, but plausible. Suppose that Obama nominates a left-wing judge, and then in November, a Republican president is elected, but the Senate goes Democratic. Could the Democratic Senate take control, nuke the filibuster, and then confirm the nomination before the new president takes over? Seems quite doable.

Perhaps Obama's best strategy is not to nominate anybody, unless and until that scenario comes to pass.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

John Oliver BLASTS Republicans for Making Up ******** Supreme Court Rule

McConnell plans to invoke the Strom Thurmond Rule, a totally unwritten rule in the Senate that says Presidents can’t nominate Supreme Court Justices in the last six months of their terms. (Even though the six month mark for Obama’s term is still well over five months away.)

Which led to perhaps the most triumphantly humiliating part of Oliver’s segment, in which he showed footage of McConnell bitterly mocking the Thurmond Rule back when Democrats were using it against President Bush.

“Our Democratic colleagues continually talk about the so-called ‘Thurmond Rule,’ under which the Senate supposedly stops confirming judges in a presidential election year,” McConnell said in the Bush era. “This seeming obsession with this rule that doesn’t exist is an excuse for our colleagues to run out the clock on qualified nominees who are waiting to fill badly needed vacancies.”

 

[Desert Fox]

Obama has tried, probably too hard, to work with the Republicans in congress. Being blunt, the Affordable Care Act is more or less a Republican program.

Nixon's Health Care program actually in many ways would have been more liberal than what had pass.

 

[Grizzly Bear]

One can express sincere condolence toward the death of a human. I do. Even if trump died, i would express condolence. Those condolence are toward the family not for the dead person. One can be sincere toward the family while at the same time judging the dead person by their act. You may not like it, but a dead person has no right to suddenly have their legacy white-washed just because they are dead. Being dead does not suddenly make you right or innocent. Whatever.

Which is why you are dead wrong. The vitriol (big word frankly). One can express heartfelt condolence (to the family) but still judge the man for what he was in our view.

When i am dead, I hope my family can get heartfelt condolence.
But i will (posthumously) fight for the right to anybody to judge me by how I lived.

I have no ill will to people who dislike people for their ideology as its basic human nature that we don't always hold the same values. It's celebrating the death itself that would really bug me.

I have already seen people cheering his death because of his legacy. That being said... i don't think that aspect is the dominant mentality. Most people who dont like him, did not wish for his death as the means of enacting the change they wanted.

There are people that act like that... but unfortunately in a country of 300 million people its hard not to run into the occasional dude that is morally bankrupt.

 

[sunmaster14]

What an absurd answer to the problem of unequal representation.

Why? The rules of the game are known in advance, and you have the ability to take advantage of them. If you really want to have a lot of influence, you should move to the Congressional district of the current Speaker of the House.

Also, I can be glad Scalia's dead without wishing he would die. I would be equally glad if he'd have retired.

Yes, you might be correct from a theoretical point of view, but in your case, we actually have experience to guide us:

I'm sorry but I am glad. That man said it was OK to execute an innocent person as long as they had due process and was found guilty. I'm not going to pretend I am not happy with this.

Ding dong the witch is dead.

Somehow "ding dong the witch is retired" doesn't have quite the same charm, amirite?

He died in his sleep at the age of 79 in a luxury hunting resort. I imagine a lot of people close to him are saying that was a good way to go. Would that disgust you as well?

And to equate being against torture for many good reasons with some sort of empathy for KSM shows how distorted your view of 'liberals' is.

I am not talking about just being against torture. I am talking about directing unrestrained vitriol at those who authorized torture. I think there is a world of difference between torturing an innocent person for sadistic reasons (as many liberals have accused Bush and Cheney of doing) and torturing a murderous terrorist in order to get information about other murderous plots that the terrorist is taunting us with. The latter is not even in the same morality ballpark.

 

[Cain]

There are other principles that matter besides Democratic representation of the population. For a similar principle, look at the UN. Almost no one advocates UN votes should be proportional to a country's population.

And football teams are not democratic. The U.S. is rather schizophrenic in that it has a bicameral legislature. These Frankenstein creations are borne out of compromise, and run contrary to the purity you otherwise value. Delegates representing large states and small states had very different plans, and the ideas were merged to create what we have today.

The U.N. is problematic in other ways, but similarly ossifies a moment of history (e.g., giving veto power to the victors of World War II).

 

[Desert Fox]

I am not talking about just being against torture. I am talking about directing unrestrained vitriol at those who authorized torture. I think there is a world of difference between torturing an innocent person for sadistic reasons (as many liberals have accused Bush and Cheney of doing) and torturing a murderous terrorist in order to get information about other murderous plots that the terrorist is taunting us with. The latter is not even in the same morality ballpark.

No, there is no difference because it is about being the better human being.