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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Have to realize that in the 1990s nazis were still comedy villains from The Blues Brothers They also blew up the Oklahoma City Government Building.
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Jul 5, 2022 15:05
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SMEGMA_MAIL posted:Watching cable news footage of Bush v Gore is bizarre too, the tone is very unserious, like “can you believe this wacky political bullshit, it’s so dumb.” The attitude around not caring about politics and actively dissuading people from getting involved only benefitted one political party, which was the Republicans and the conservative movement within. It amazed me when Trump got elected how many people came to me, in their late 30s and and said so how do I understand/get involved in the political process here. The power grabs on the local level which enabled some of these federal power grabs is part because of that attitude. There was also the remnants of the hippie/60s politics backlash happening as Clinton had become this representation of 60s culture backlash. To your point, 2000 election becomes this tipping point especially because the process of rightward lurch accelerates on 9/11. Mooseontheloose fucked around with this message at 15:28 on Jul 5, 2022 |
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Jul 5, 2022 15:26
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Kaal posted:It seems like your objection here is that it's a counterfactual. "If it hasn't happened yet, it couldn't have happened and it will never happen." But that just doesn't carry much water in a world where justice and the constitution is basically whatever the people in power say it is. It's absurd to act as if the blatant corruptive act of overturning an election in the interests of your own political party, who funds you and who you've sworn a personal allegiance to, can't ever be viewed as a crime. If you asked the average American how to describe a government worker accepting $50,000 in annual "gifts" from a group that they then provide with favors, they'd call it bribery and they'd be right. Prosecuting corrupt officials is a normal part of a functioning democracy. The DOJ and an independent prosecutor are of course allowed to investigate suspect judges, and federal courts are fully empowered to enjoin and censure the actions of a corrupt supreme court. I'd suggest reviewing how limited the constitutional guidelines actually are for this sort of thing. Talking about what McConnell or Trump would do as a hypothetical doesn't make much sense, considering that they spent time in power where we saw exactly what they would do. The GOP won a federal trifecta in 2016, yet we didn't see either Trump or McConnell carrying out corruption investigations into liberal Supreme Court justices, and we didn't see Trump rolling in the US Marshals to jail them on some shoddy pretext. Trump eagerly appealed to the courts to intervene in the 2020 election, and none of them played along. The fact that even Donald Trump failed to overturn the election, despite his total lack of respect for decorum and his openly expressed intention to overturn the election, suggests that the ability of the executive branch to intervene in the result of a presidential election after the fact is actually extremely limited after all. Throwing out precedent is what the Supreme Court does. Sure, theoretically they're supposed to respect precedent. But realistically, the reason everyone cares so much more about the Supreme Court than the lower courts is because it has the ability to overturn precedent and effectively legislate from the bench, changing decades or even centuries of constitutional law with the stroke of a pen. This is the power the Supreme Court is famous for - and it's one that's widely seen as legitimate. That's how they were able to issue rulings like Roe and Obergefell. So the idea that overturning precedent and existing law makes the Supreme Court illegitimate doesn't really land well with me. SMEGMA_MAIL posted:Watching cable news footage of Bush v Gore is bizarre too, the tone is very unserious, like “can you believe this wacky political bullshit, it’s so dumb.” People didn't care that much about the difference between the Dem president and the GOP president back then. This was before 9/11, before Trump, before the Tea Party. It was only a few years into the Republican Revolution, and the the triangulating New Democrats still dominated the Dems. Despite the Clinton impeachment, the era of bipartisanship and Senators crossing the aisle was still not that far in the past. George W. Bush was not widely regarded as the vanguard of an openly fascist movement, and expecting people to have reacted as though he was is extremely anachronistic.
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Jul 5, 2022 15:44
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Blue Footed Booby posted:They also blew up the Oklahoma City Government Building. At that point in time that was just one crazy dude. One data point not a trendline.
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Jul 5, 2022 16:13
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Main Paineframe posted:Talking about what McConnell or Trump would do as a hypothetical doesn't make much sense, considering that they spent time in power where we saw exactly what they would do. The GOP won a federal trifecta in 2016, yet we didn't see either Trump or McConnell carrying out corruption investigations into liberal Supreme Court justices, and we didn't see Trump rolling in the US Marshals to jail them on some shoddy pretext. Trump eagerly appealed to the courts to intervene in the 2020 election, and none of them played along. The fact that even Donald Trump failed to overturn the election, despite his total lack of respect for decorum and his openly expressed intention to overturn the election, suggests that the ability of the executive branch to intervene in the result of a presidential election after the fact is actually extremely limited after all. This gets less reassuring when you look at the absolute clownshow Trump dedicated to the effort. It doesn't necessarily prove the system would withstand a sustained, competent attack from real experienced fixers because he was bumping up against his own limits and that of his team, not the intentional and fundamental limits of the system
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Jul 5, 2022 16:20
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:At that point in time that was just one crazy dude. One data point not a trendline. In '95 it was mostly talked about that way, but by the late 90s to early aughts there was increasing public recognition of The Nationalist Front / Turner Diaries connection. In the NYT for example, June '01.
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Jul 5, 2022 16:25
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Armack posted:In '95 it was mostly talked about that way, but by the late 90s to early aughts there was increasing public recognition of The Nationalist Front / Turner Diaries connection. The whole subcurrent of right-wing militias was definitely a through-line of the 90s straight up until September 10, 2001, but I honestly couldn't begin to hazard a guess as to how much John Q. Public was really aware of/paying attention to them.
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Jul 5, 2022 16:54
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HannibalBarca posted:The whole subcurrent of right-wing militias was definitely a through-line of the 90s straight up until September 10, 2001, but I honestly couldn't begin to hazard a guess as to how much John Q. Public was really aware of/paying attention to them. Yeah, I was being a glib wise rear end but that's what I was trying to get at. There was absolutely a far right extremist and neo Nazi problem problem, but it was as far as I can tell under the radar of most folks. Like, even people generally informed about what was happening often didn't realize the groups were explicitly white nationalist, not just incidentally made up of racists. It tended to get framed as "gun nut" or "anti government."
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Jul 5, 2022 18:04
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Blue Footed Booby posted:Yeah, I was being a glib wise rear end but that's what I was trying to get at. There was absolutely a far right extremist and neo Nazi problem problem, but it was as far as I can tell under the radar of most folks. Like, even people generally informed about what was happening often didn't realize the groups were explicitly white nationalist, not just incidentally made up of racists. It tended to get framed as "gun nut" or "anti government." or ignored it like at Columbine. Mooseontheloose fucked around with this message at 18:59 on Jul 5, 2022 |
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Jul 5, 2022 18:54
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Main Paineframe posted:Trump eagerly appealed to the courts to intervene in the 2020 election, and none of them played along. It's worth mentioning that the extreme right has seen this vulnerability in their ambitions and have been electorally patching said hole in courts, Boards of Canvassers, and Secretaries of State to measurable, dangerous success.
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Jul 5, 2022 21:21
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Potato Salad posted:It's worth mentioning that the extreme right has seen this vulnerability in their ambitions and have been electorally patching said hole in courts, Boards of Canvassers, and Secretaries of State to measurable, dangerous success. Also the previously mentioned ISL will let them skip all that pesky "will of the voters" thing when a blue or purple state with a heavily gerrymandered legislature doesn't vote the way the GOP wants. It is literally the result of the Trumpists being told "it doesn't work that way" and them going "gently caress you we're going to make it work that way then."
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Jul 5, 2022 21:42
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ShadowHawk posted:To illustrate this difference, they were still making new episodes of The West Wing when Bush v Gore was argued. There's a reason the show looks like a collegial fantasy-land these days. "Still"? The show had just launched its second season. It ran through nearly the entire Bush administration!
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Jul 5, 2022 21:43
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Evil Fluffy posted:Also the previously mentioned ISL will let them skip all that pesky "will of the voters" thing when a blue or purple state with a heavily gerrymandered legislature doesn't vote the way the GOP wants. It is literally the result of the Trumpists being told "it doesn't work that way" and them going "gently caress you we're going to make it work that way then." I’m pretty sure the solution to that is not “Democrats tell a bunch of Republican generals they’re declaring martial law and hope for the best.” People in these swing states will hate the idea politicians will no longer have to tickle their balls so the right play is good old fashioned messaging including but not limited to good old fashioned cable news hollering any time a Republican comes close to suggesting the popular winner of the state not get the EVs.
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Jul 5, 2022 22:22
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yronic heroism posted:I’m pretty sure the solution to that is not “Democrats tell a bunch of Republican generals they’re declaring martial law and hope for the best.” So long as this conversation continues to avoid needlessly hypothesizing and desires to pull from example when possible, it is worth mentioning that a variant of this very thing worked to quell the J6 coup. I don't fundamentally disagree with you, I just see a place for playing hardball when circumstances call for it. yronic heroism posted:People in these swing states will hate the idea politicians will no longer have to tickle their balls so the right play is good old fashioned messaging including but not limited to good old fashioned cable news hollering any time a Republican comes close to suggesting the popular winner of the state not get the EVs. I question how effective that will be. as we speak, Ron DeSantis is training canvassers and career politicians how to lie to the public about the founders intent on a separation of church and state, preparing bullshit talking points and courses on how the founders somehow intended for the church and state to actually intertwine deeply. The same can be done for any messaging, really, so long as opposition is not willing to bully pulpit. further, a significant fraction of this country's voter base would be perfectly happy to see elections taken from their political opponents ("bahgawd them devil-worshipping, America-hating radical leftist Democrats!"  ), and those people have an awful lot of guns plus one or two decades of desensitization to the notion that their political opponents lives are undesirable.
Potato Salad fucked around with this message at 00:25 on Jul 6, 2022 |
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Jul 6, 2022 00:18
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The bulk of that voter base is in red states where they’ll get the most votes anyway (Florida is one of these). The situation is serious but not preordained. I agree no one should give in to Republican bullying but that means doing the work of recruiting for boards of canvassers, getting everyone on record how their state's electoral votes will be determined, and basically investing in all the state and local races Democrats are known for neglecting. Doubling down on the president to “one weird trick” around the courts, which is I think how the latest discussion started, would be Democrats once again counting on the executive branch control they only (since 2000) by half of the time.
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Jul 6, 2022 01:26
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I don't fundamentally disagree with you, again.
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Jul 6, 2022 02:14
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Main Paineframe posted:Throwing out precedent is what the Supreme Court does. Sure, theoretically they're supposed to respect precedent. But realistically, the reason everyone cares so much more about the Supreme Court than the lower courts is because it has the ability to overturn precedent and effectively legislate from the bench, changing decades or even centuries of constitutional law with the stroke of a pen. This is the power the Supreme Court is famous for - and it's one that's widely seen as legitimate. That's how they were able to issue rulings like Roe and Obergefell. So the idea that overturning precedent and existing law makes the Supreme Court illegitimate doesn't really land well with me. Having an unelected unaccountable wizards' council with unlimited power to rule like dictators (which is what it is if you're saying they can legitimately overturn the law and constitution and everyone ought to accept it no matter what), is actually very dangerous. You could make a consequentialist argument that it was a good thing when we had a liberal court because they could overturn bad and harmful laws with decisions like Roe and Obergefell, but that time has passed and now they're overruling fundamental rights, stripping people of the ability to vote, and are toying with ending democracy outright instead of just putting a thumb on the scale to pull off their coup like they did in 2000. I wonder, how bad would a ruling have to be for you to consider it an illegitimate usurpation of power? Is there a limit? It seems to me that they should be following the constitution, at least. Not necessarily precedent. If a precedent is unconstitutional then I agree they should throw it out. But surely it doesn't follow that we have to agree with every precedent they throw out right, there has to be some kind of standard, no? VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 05:04 on Jul 6, 2022 |
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Jul 6, 2022 05:01
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VitalSigns posted:You could make a consequentialist argument that it was a good thing when we had a liberal court because they could overturn bad and harmful laws with decisions like Roe and Obergefell, The SCOTUS was "liberal" in 2015, a decade and a half after Bush v. Gore, with Roberts, Scalia, Alito, Thomas, and Kennedy forming the majority?
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Jul 6, 2022 05:14
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Fuschia tude posted:The SCOTUS was "liberal" in 2015, a decade and a half after Bush v. Gore, with Roberts, Scalia, Alito, Thomas, and Kennedy forming the majority? On gay rights Kennedy was liberal and I was speaking narrowly about Lawrence and Obergefell because Main Paineframe brought them up Overall though yes that court was still extremely dangerous (Bush v Gore, Citizens United, Shelby County, etc), I didn't mean they were liberal on everything or even most things. Just pointing out that even if one made a consequentialist argument that it was all worth investing them with absolute power if it got us Obergefell, even that argument doesn't work anymore.
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Jul 6, 2022 05:50
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wikipedia posted:The Lochner era is a period in American legal history from 1897 to 1937 in which the Supreme Court of the United States is said to have made it a common practice "to strike down economic regulations adopted by a State based on the Court's own notions of the most appropriate means for the State to implement its considered policies" Here's the last big period where SCOTUS went batshit. That Roberts quote, at his confirmation hearings, is like the new villain explaining that he has a better plan, just before the old villain shows back up and pushes him off the roof. -Blackadder- fucked around with this message at 06:22 on Jul 6, 2022 |
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Jul 6, 2022 06:12
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It’s a good thing they don’t actually have unlimited power then and the court has been expanded and shrunk throughout history
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Jul 6, 2022 06:19
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VitalSigns posted:
6 judges on the Supreme court decided that Roe V Wade was just that sort of thing and ruled to correct it. The pendulum swings both ways. killer_robot fucked around with this message at 07:21 on Jul 6, 2022 |
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Jul 6, 2022 06:49
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Four of those justices were nominated by Presidents who did not win the popular vote to initially enter office, three of those justices were nominated during terms when the President did not win the popular vote, three were nominated by a one term president, one was nominated after a seat was left vacant for nearly a year after the Republican senate abandoned their Constitutional duty, and two were confirmed despite credible and disqualifying accusations of sexual assault. The Supreme Court has always been a not very democratic institution, but the particular court is really bad. And the reality is that if Obama was allowed to put through a nominee which he unquestionably should have been, it would have been a 5-4 decision to not overturn Roe. The decision to overturn Roe is entirely rooted in the US Senate abandoning their Constitutional duty and a man who gladly accepted a position of power through that to then help steal women's body autonomy as if he is some sentinel of the Constitution. killer_robot posted:6 judges on the Supreme court decided that Roe V Wade was just that sort of thing and ruled to correct it. The pendulum swings both ways.
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Jul 6, 2022 13:18
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killer_robot posted:6 judges on the Supreme court decided that Roe V Wade was just that sort of thing and ruled to correct it. The pendulum swings both ways. Well yes that's my point right. yronic heroism posted:It’s a good thing they don’t actually have unlimited power then and the court has been expanded and shrunk throughout history But that can only happen if the court allows you to elect a government of the opposite party right. And he just defended the legitimacy of Bush v Gore, which was the court just exercising naked power to ignore the law and pick their guy. So I'm asking him now if there's any limit in his opinion on the laws the court can legitimately rewrite.
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Jul 6, 2022 13:36
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Mooseontheloose posted:The attitude around not caring about politics and actively dissuading people from getting involved only benefitted one political party, which was the Republicans and the conservative movement within. It amazed me when Trump got elected how many people came to me, in their late 30s and and said so how do I understand/get involved in the political process here. The power grabs on the local level which enabled some of these federal power grabs is part because of that attitude. I think the tipping point of neoliberalism being overdetermined as the only option for most states happened earlier but the 2000 election was imo the peak of belief in neoliberalism’s core assumptions right before challenges emerged like GWOT, Putin’s Russia, Chinese economic dynamism, Eurozone protests and all that and the resurgence of both leftist and reactionary discontent. Hypernormalization was a bit disjointed but it’s imo one of the best documentaries ever, it makes a really good argument that we essentially let first cities and then countries be run not by politics but by econ grads with financial models put together on nonsense assumptions rather than deal with the messy reality that groups of humans have behaviors that are too complicated to reduce to models and on top of that interact with systems that are also too complicated. But the machine seems unstoppable and it works for the most wealthy and powerful people even though it’s almost moved past them and out of even their control, so why would they risk breaking it or even bother to figure it out at this point?
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Jul 6, 2022 15:18
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VitalSigns posted:Having an unelected unaccountable wizards' council with unlimited power to rule like dictators (which is what it is if you're saying they can legitimately overturn the law and constitution and everyone ought to accept it no matter what), is actually very dangerous. Let's not get hyperbolic here. They're not unaccountable and don't have unlimited power. There's like five different ways Congress could rein in the Supreme Court. The actual problem is that Congress has become increasingly dysfunctional over the past few decades, becoming incapable of consistently exercising its own Constitutional powers and obligations. Not only has the lack of oversight emboldened the Supreme Court to defy Congress' clear wishes, but the Court has seen the decline of legislative power as creating a power vacuum that needed to be filled. And that's not something that started just a year or two, either - it's been going on for decades, with the liberal courts doing plenty of it themselves. For example, the Court's justification for the original Bivens ruling was basically "according to the text of the Constitution this is supposed to be the legislature's' role, but they're clearly not gonna do poo poo about it, and we think this is too important to leave unaddressed". Confronted with what was probably a mistake in the Constitution, the Warren Court chose to re-interpret the text to fix the issue. The implied right they created wasn't based on what the text said, but rather on what the text didn't say - they identified a gap in the protections offered by the Constitution, and rather than leaving it open and kicking the issue to Congress, they closed the gap by judicial fiat. Which was a good thing! Rather than construing its role narrowly, the Court actively expanded its power and redefined the Constitution to fix holes and circumvent political logjams. Recognizing its role as the head of one of the major branches of government, the Court chose to act to correct what it saw as holes in the law and in the Constitution. But at the same time, I can't really say that it's illegitimate or unconstitutional for a later court to go striking down those sorts of decisions. It's bad for the American people and it's bad for fairness and equality and democracy in general, but it was honestly never great in the first place that we had to rely on unelected judges with no accountability to the people to legislate that stuff from the bench - and now that the makeup of the Court has changed, we're about to get it from the conservatives who saw all that legal creativity as unconstitutional all along. I don't think people realize just how influential the Warren Court was. The very idea that districting has to be equitable (or even that it has to happen at all) was invented by a Supreme Court ruling in 1962 - overturning previous precedent that said that the courts had no say in district boundaries at all, even in situations much worse than mere gerrymandering. As a result of that previous precedent, some Southern states went more than half a century without conducting any redistricting at all, leaving the growing cities increasingly underrepresented.
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Jul 6, 2022 18:10
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Kaal posted:I mean as I said before, government officials and even judges get prosecuted all the time. Bribery, public corruption, fraud, racketeering, and official misconduct are all standard crimes and there's several examples of the Republican members of the court being exposed to them. The financial and political relationships between many of the judges and their party leadership are extremely sketchy - with many of them benefiting both directly and indirectly from their governmental positions - and in the eyes of a less friendly court it is likely that their favor-making arrangements, paid organizing, and improper activity would be seen extremely critically. What even would the corruption be in Bush v. Gore? "You were appointed by the same party as the person you ruled in favor of, therefore you must be corrupt"? "This court ruling is more specious than normal, so jail time for all of you"? What corruption would you claim where, if Scalia had a heart attack and had been replaced by a Dem jurist in 1998, a 5 v 4 ruling in favor of Gore wouldn't have been equally corrupt? This isn't a rational, defensible position, this is "LOCK HER UP" for leftists.
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Jul 7, 2022 01:26
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skeleton warrior posted:What even would the corruption be in Bush v. Gore? "You were appointed by the same party as the person you ruled in favor of, therefore you must be corrupt"? "This court ruling is more specious than normal, so jail time for all of you"? SCOTUS never had a leg to stand on in Bush v Gore. They admitted as much in the decision, that's why it was a 'special one time only no precedents' opinion. It wasn't corruption in the sense of bribery, but it was an abuse of their office and public trust - which is by almost anyone's standards is close enough.
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Jul 7, 2022 01:53
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VitalSigns posted:Having an unelected unaccountable wizards' council with unlimited power to rule like dictators (which is what it is if you're saying they can legitimately overturn the law and constitution and everyone ought to accept it no matter what), is actually very dangerous. There’s no good answer. If all you have is the majority vote of duly elected representatives to decide if something is constitutional (after all, they have an oath to uphold the constitution and they voted for X, they must think it’s constitutional), then you don’t have any rights that the majority has to respect at all. Same for the executive branch, and doubly so for both if they are deciding if they have the constitutional power to do X (of course they think they do). …on the other hand, if you have an unelected[1] mostly[2] unaccountable council with the power to interpret or nullify[3] federal laws and the federal constitution[4], then yes, they can do what they want unfettered by majority public opinion. That’s the point: you can’t guarantee minority rights through majoritarian institutions.[5] …in conclusion, the only moral form of government is a benevolent dictatorship by Yours Truly. 1. SCOTUS was appointed by a majority and/or super majority of two different elected branches, of course. 2. Congress can impeach. Congress can pass new laws responding to court decisions. 3. SCOTUS has a hard time creating new duties and laws generally, since it’s either interpreting a law/constitutional provision or striking a law down based on a constitutional provision. 4. States remain free to find more rights in their constitutions than in the federal constitutions, and over time the state’s interpretation of its laws wins where it does not contravene the federal constitution. 5. This is also why Justice Rehnquist wrote (long before being on the court) that “in the long run it is the majority who will determine what the constitutional rights of the minority are.”
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Jul 7, 2022 01:57
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In other words, an entity like SCOTUS only works as part of a multifaceted system with other healthy, functioning organs, supported by a culture that responsibly staffs that system with people who value its proper functioning. Too bad the US doesn’t have most of those any more, if it ever did
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Jul 7, 2022 02:20
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Timeless Appeal posted:. I'm not trying to be an edgelord when I say I honestly appreciate the philosophical honesty of crazy regressive anti-abortionists. If you honestly believe abortion is murder, and the little clump of cells is a human, you should be against it in all cases. It's the only actual consistent viewpoint they have, considering they're pro death penalty and against all forms of public assistance.
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Jul 7, 2022 02:23
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Pook Good Mook posted:I'm not trying to be an edgelord when I say I honestly appreciate the philosophical honesty of crazy regressive anti-abortionists. If you honestly believe abortion is murder, and the little clump of cells is a human, you should be against it in all cases. Sorry to burst your bubble, but the people driving all this don't actually care about abortion per se - it's just a convenient way to get traction on the thing they actually care about, which is general reproductive autonomy. They'll freely admit this if you can get them to speak frankly (which is nontrivial but not super difficult), and there's further evidence in the way that they, personally, have no qualms getting abortions if they feel it's the right choice for them. (If I'm right, you'll also see evidence when they drive right through an abortion ban and try to ban contraception and no-fault divorce. I'm pretty confident that that will happen.)
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Jul 7, 2022 02:45
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skeleton warrior posted:What even would the corruption be in Bush v. Gore? "You were appointed by the same party as the person you ruled in favor of, therefore you must be corrupt"? "This court ruling is more specious than normal, so jail time for all of you"? The Republicans on the court get outright paid tens of thousands of dollars each year in "gifts" by their patrons, and profit in a wide variety of other ways as well. The Bush v. Gore decision was demonstrably based on false pretenses, it violated existing laws governing election interference and court authority, and because they're terrible lawyers who were on a time crunch they managed to admit as much in their ruling. It's not difficult to put together a criminal case over their behavior. Investigating them would doubtlessly unveil further crimes, both because they believe they are above the law and because they'd likely react with fury if they were challenged and would end up obstructing justice. The only thing needed would be a court willing to actually challenge a corrupt justice. For what it's worth, Ezra Klein has been popping out bi-weekly podcasts worth checking out. The last couple have been focused on criticizing the diminishment of liberal legal beliefs over the last 40 years. In particular he and several of the very mainstream scholars he brings on are highly critical of the liberal embrace of judicial supremacy and the ceding of the entire field of constitutional law to right-wing lawyers. The Supreme Court is not the only source of constitutional authority, and they are not somehow above the law. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/05/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-larry-kramer.html
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Jul 7, 2022 03:05
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I'm still in disbelief that Ginny Thomas was employed by the Heritage Foundation, the same conservative "think tank" who tells the GOP who they're allowed to nominate.
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Jul 7, 2022 03:26
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Kaal posted:The Republicans on the court get outright paid tens of thousands of dollars each year in "gifts" by their patrons, and profit in a wide variety of other ways as well. The Bush v. Gore decision was demonstrably based on false pretenses, it violated existing laws governing election interference and court authority, and because they're terrible lawyers who were on a time crunch they managed to admit as much in their ruling. It's not difficult to put together a criminal case over their behavior. Investigating them would doubtlessly unveil further crimes, both because they believe they are above the law and because they'd likely react with fury if they were challenged and would end up obstructing justice. The only thing needed would be a court willing to actually challenge a corrupt justice. It would actually be extremely difficult to bring a criminal case against them, because 1) you can't prosecute someone for saying "we didn't do a good job on this"; 2) you can't prosecute someone for an interpretation of conflicting statutes because they didn't find in the direction you wanted them to; and 3) there are no laws restricting justices from accepting gifts. Find me anyone who has put together even an outline of a criminal case against them for Bush v. Gore. If that were within the realm of possibility, something that should be part of sane, normal discussion, someone would have put together a case. As it is, you are just advocating for a leftist dictatorship where you get to arrest judges that don't think the way you think they should think.
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Jul 7, 2022 03:38
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That indicates a lack of vision on your part more than anything else. There's nothing particularly leftist about holding government workers accountable to the law. It's a very moderate concept that the vast majority of Americans are perfectly comfortable with, even if it makes some of the lawyers squirm at the indecorum. The leftist approach isn't to have the DOJ investigate corrupt deal-making and then try them in federal court. The leftist approach is to form a people's court and start prosecuting everyone who enabled it. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Jul 7, 2022 03:55
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lmfao "not having the chief executive simply round up and arrest his political opponents is a lack of vision on your part"
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Jul 7, 2022 04:04
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It remains totally laughable to look at how loose with the law actual courts are, from the Supreme Court down all the way through to the lowliest criminal and civil ones, and then see how Democrats are still plagued with hidebound folks who believe that everything is strictly regimented and there's no room for judgement or interpretation. They're perpetually mystified when Republicans Lucy the ball time and again, as if somehow their inadequate reading of regulation was to blame for not anticipating the latest rewriting of law and order. "Surely they're not allowed to do that!" And yet every SCOTUS opinion is filled with make-believe nonsense that is then treated as coherent and Constitutional, and real-world defendents routinely discover how much latitude judges actually have.
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Jul 7, 2022 04:16
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This whole conversation reminds me of a hilarious cert petition from several years back. I went and dug it up and it's even more on-point than I remembered. Some highlights: quote:Will John Robert$ admit that he already Denied Reviewing 10 criminally- proven Writs because each proved to criminal standards that judge$ like him routinely sell their orders to special interests in what are acts of treason against the United States and its 319,000,000 real, flesh-and-blood, non-corporate People? And of course listed in footnote 3: John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Samuel Alito. https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/2455857/scotus-s226199-8-8-15.pdf So hey, at least someone tried to hold them accountable.
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Jul 7, 2022 04:26
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skeleton warrior posted:What even would the corruption be in Bush v. Gore? "You were appointed by the same party as the person you ruled in favor of, therefore you must be corrupt"? "This court ruling is more specious than normal, so jail time for all of you"? Wild that folks can look at "stop a legally mandated recount because the relatives of a POTUS candidate asked you to" and "let a legally mandated recount continue, despite the relatives of a POTUS candidate asking you to stop it" and think "both of these are corrupt, actually".
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Jul 7, 2022 04:32
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