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^ The impression that I got from The Nine and The Oath (both thread favorites on the Obama era court and growing constitutional crisis, read them) is that Thomas is a lucky man with one hell of a work ethic, the result of which is a true believer in bootstraps whose jurisprudence on racial issues is an earnest "If only you would..." FYGM that he really does not see as FYGM. Not to be all "omg elitism," but a huge issue with the way we select public servants is that, for every person who worked their rear end off and saw a few fortunate turns in life that resulted in a high-flyer fairy tale, there's a thousand others which our system burned out, exploited, and otherwise kept under its boot. The needs of the many are thus not represented in government, and Thomas is an example of this problem in this way. I mean, most members of the court manifest this disconnect from the common civilian plight--and thus a disconnect from reality--in varying degrees and various political issues. Potato Salad fucked around with this message at 20:24 on Jul 27, 2022 |
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Jul 27, 2022 20:03
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The Enigma of Clarence Thomas makes the argument, unique to the book, I think, that Thomas's views have their roots in Black Nationalism. Thomas was a big black nationalist in his 20s, and the book argues that that led him to the idea that American government is inherently white supremacist and racist, which leads to a deep distrust of government and governmental programs that claim to help black people, and government programs in general.
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Jul 27, 2022 21:15
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Never forget that the man most responsible for Thomas even being on the Court is Joe loving Biden. He had another woman ready to testify about similar allegations as Anita Hill and he chickened out because Conservative press was howling and he didn't want to be seen as "political" so he abandoned the testimony.
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Jul 27, 2022 22:24
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Pook Good Mook posted:Never forget that the man most responsible for Thomas even being on the Court is Joe loving Biden. He had another woman ready to testify about similar allegations as Anita Hill and he chickened out because Conservative press was howling and he didn't want to be seen as "political" so he abandoned the testimony. Wouldn't the person most responsible for Thomas being on the Court be either George Bush, who nominated him, or the 52 Senators who voted for him, even after knowing about Anita Hill?
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Jul 27, 2022 22:36
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Epicurius posted:Wouldn't the person most responsible for Thomas being on the Court be either George Bush, who nominated him, or the 52 Senators who voted for him, even after knowing about Anita Hill? The President is going to make a political appointment based on ideology, and it was Biden's job to make sure Thomas got vetted and the other senators knew what they were voting for.
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Jul 27, 2022 22:43
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I have a question. I asked this in another thread but this is the much more logical place for it. I probably have some of this wrong, and I want to make sure I am understanding this correctly: The case USSC is going to hear this fall about voting… what’s going to happen is that lawyers are going to argue in front of the Court that because the Constitution says state legislatures shall appoint electors who will go to DC to cast their electoral votes for a candidate AND ...says nothing about how a statewide election shall be held, and whoever gets the most votes, the state then appoints electors to go and cast the electoral votes for *that* candidate THEREFORE How the populace votes, makes no difference. It is meaningless because the state legislature can send electors for whoever they want, including a candidate who only got 40% of the vote, or 10% of the vote. Is this right? Am I missing something, oversimplifying, or anything?
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Jul 27, 2022 22:52
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MrMojok posted:I have a question. I asked this in another thread but this is the much more logical place for it. I probably have some of this wrong, and I want to make sure I am understanding this correctly: Yes, the goal is that if Biden wins a red state, then the state legislature convenes and goes "well, we get to control how the electors are chosen, so actually Trump wins" and that the state courts aren't allowed to slap that down. Note: the state legislature could already do this in advance, if they wanted to, because they absolutely can return to olden times where they were picked directly by the state legislature. This is because they want to push it off until after the election is over so that there is no state court slapdown in the hope that SCOTUS will let it pass, or take too long to rule and say "well it was bad that happened, don't do it again, but since the electors already went to Trump we'll allow it this time" Piell fucked around with this message at 23:05 on Jul 27, 2022 |
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Jul 27, 2022 23:02
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Pook Good Mook posted:The President is going to make a political appointment based on ideology, and it was Biden's job to make sure Thomas got vetted and the other senators knew what they were voting for. Do you think the other senators didn't believe Anita Hill? Everyone knew what was up. Biden sucks but you'd have to put him at like 53rd most responsible, but that doesn't make for a feel good post huh?
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Jul 27, 2022 23:04
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Pook Good Mook posted:The President is going to make a political appointment based on ideology, and it was Biden's job to make sure Thomas got vetted and the other senators knew what they were voting for. Hearings had been held for 12 days and the ABA, even after pressure by the administration, barely gave him a qualified rating.. Also it seems kind of counterintuitive to me to say, "Well, Bush does t have responsibility for his nomination, because he was of course going to nominate him, and senators don't have any responsibility for his pick(including the conservative democrats who voted for him) because Biden did a bad job convincing them not to. These people have their own agency, and they made choices.
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Jul 27, 2022 23:05
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MrMojok posted:I have a question. I asked this in another thread but this is the much more logical place for it. I probably have some of this wrong, and I want to make sure I am understanding this correctly: E: The case as I understand it is about whether federal legislation/courts can intervene in that process. ilkhan fucked around with this message at 23:16 on Jul 27, 2022 |
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Jul 27, 2022 23:12
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Thomas himself surely deserves some blame for not rejecting his own nomination.
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Jul 27, 2022 23:24
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On the subject of judicial activism in elections and the states, a Georgia judge just excused the leading GOP candidate for Lieutenant Governor from answering to the Fulton County DA regarding his status in actual election fraud, namely submitting himself alongside others as one of Georgia's duly appointed electors before Congress after the 2020 General election and before the electoral college convened. This was done on the thinnest of pretenses that frankly the judge involved needs to step back and open his exceptionally-selective eyes about. You bet your rear end that red state actors have already concluded that democracy is the enemy of their divinely-ordained right to rule.
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Jul 28, 2022 00:06
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Was that the case where the DA idiotically participated in a fundraiser for his opponent? If thats the case, then a different DA in another office was expected to take over for investigating that guy.
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Jul 28, 2022 00:27
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Potato Salad posted:On the subject of judicial activism in elections and the states, a Georgia judge just excused the leading GOP candidate for Lieutenant Governor from answering to the Fulton County DA regarding his status in actual election fraud, namely submitting himself alongside others as one of Georgia's duly appointed electors before Congress after the 2020 General election and before the electoral college convened. This was done on the thinnest of pretenses that frankly the judge involved needs to step back and open his exceptionally-selective eyes about. The DA was dumb as hell for openly fundraising for his opponent in her official capacity. Moving his case to a different prosecutor is a no brainer. His case is not dismissed or something, he's still being investigated criminally and the DA is still overseeing the whole set of investigations, including his. If this hadn't happened he would have a cakewalk basis for an appeal because of her blatant conflict of interest.
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Jul 28, 2022 00:28
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ilkhan posted:That's the entire basis of the dem's popular vote compact scheme to subvert the electoral college. The NIPV is a different method of democratically electing a president, not state officials choosing the president with no recourse for how the country actually voted.
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Jul 28, 2022 01:55
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ilkhan posted:That's the entire basis of the dem's popular vote compact scheme to subvert the electoral college. You really need to stop getting your news from propaganda outlets. The case is directly about directly about state constitutional restrictions on gerrymandering, and only tangentially affects the popular vote compact in the sense that if it goes the way Republicans want then state legislatures would not be bound to follow state constitutions that had been amended to incorporate the compact. Republicans want this ruling because it would give Republican legislatures basically unchecked power to gerrymander, suppress votes, or even chose representatives and presidential electors without regard to existing laws or state constitutions. They would ostensibly still be restricted by the federal constitution and laws, but the VRA has been neutered and congress is paralyzed so clearly won't take up the slack. Chamale posted:The NIPV is a different method of democratically electing a president, not state officials choosing the president with no recourse for how the country actually voted. R's winning this would effectively kill the NIPV is the sense that state legislatures would no longer be bound by law or state constitution to follow it, but the NIPV doesn't really even need killing anyway. It's stuck with no effective path to a majority of EC.
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Jul 28, 2022 01:57
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Stickman posted:R's winning this would effectively kill the NIPV is the sense that state legislatures would no longer be bound by law or state constitution to follow it, but the NIPV doesn't really even need killing anyway. It's stuck with no effective path to a majority of EC. I would expect that to get litigated out of existence the very minute it flips one single state in any direction anyway Javid fucked around with this message at 02:49 on Jul 28, 2022 |
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Jul 28, 2022 02:29
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Javid posted:I would expect that to get litigated out of existence the very minute it flips one single state in any direction By who? The case in question to allow this in the first place is being taken up by the U.S. Supreme Court, the court of final appeal.
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Jul 28, 2022 02:36
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I think it's unfair to blame Biden for not allowing victims of sexual assault to testify in the senate, because if you set a precedent of victims of sexual assault testifying in the senate every time a powerful man grabbed some boob or snatch it would inevitably destroy his career. The man was in an impossible position.
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Jul 28, 2022 02:37
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MrMojok posted:I have a question. I asked this in another thread but this is the much more logical place for it. I probably have some of this wrong, and I want to make sure I am understanding this correctly: It's completely wrong, but that's not surprising because that's more or less how it's spread around social media. The Constitution does not require states to hold direct popular votes for presidential elections. Your state could pass a law right now abolishing the presidential election in their state and giving the choice to the legislature instead. There's nothing stopping them. It's already perfectly legal and has plenty of precedent. The Supreme Court doesn't need to do anything to make it happen. The case that's going in front of the Supreme Court concerns the increasing legal wrangling over the details of how elections are held. State legislatures pass election laws and draw district boundaries, but in recent years there've been a lot of lawsuits alleging that those election laws and district boundaries violate the state constitution, especially considering that there's also been an increasing number of state constitutional amendments requiring things like nonpartisan districting boards. In the case in question, North Carolina Republicans are arguing that the federal Constitution places the power to oversee federal elections in the hands of state legislatures, and therefore state courts do not have jurisdiction to intervene in election matters - not even if the legislature is violating the state constitution. The primary effect of a broad ruling in the GOP's favor would be that state courts would not be able to intervene in election-related matters, and state constitutions would have no power over how the state administers federal elections. In other words, it'd be a big green light to gerrymandering and voter suppression, and state constitutional amendments would no longer be a viable path for reining that stuff in. Note, however, that federal courts and federal law would both still have authority over states when it comes to election matters,
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Jul 28, 2022 04:29
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Main Paineframe posted:The primary effect of a broad ruling in the GOP's favor would be that state courts would not be able to intervene in election-related matters, and state constitutions would have no power over how the state administers federal elections. In other words, it'd be a big green light to gerrymandering and voter suppression, and state constitutional amendments would no longer be a viable path for reining that stuff in. Note, however, that federal courts and federal law would both still have authority over states when it comes to election matters, Until they rule that whoops, no they don't, that's a nonjusticiable question, like they did with gerrymandering in 2019.
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Jul 28, 2022 04:46
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VitalSigns posted:I think it's unfair to blame Biden for not allowing victims of sexual assault to testify in the senate, because if you set a precedent of victims of sexual assault testifying in the senate every time a powerful man grabbed some boob or snatch it would inevitably destroy his career. Presidents and senators don't have confirmation hearings where such witnesses would be called, so if we assume Biden's plans for his career resembled how his career went, such a custom would have no effect. In addition, he called exactly one witness to testify about sexual assault by the subject of the hearings, and there was also only one notable allegation toward him, so if this precedent were followed and he had pursued a position where there were hearings to determine his good character, it still wouldn't have helped him.
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Jul 28, 2022 05:32
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Two things are true at once: More witnesses should have been called. and Senators who voted for Thomas didn’t care.
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Jul 28, 2022 06:08
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Main Paineframe posted:The Constitution does not require states to hold direct popular votes for presidential elections. Your state could pass a law right now abolishing the presidential election in their state and giving the choice to the legislature instead. There's nothing stopping them. It's already perfectly legal and has plenty of precedent. The Supreme Court doesn't need to do anything to make it happen. I fail to see how any state actually choosing to DO it that will not result in a civil war. The Supreme Court doesn't need to do anything to make it happen, but is going to choose to do so.
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Jul 28, 2022 09:00
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Main Paineframe posted:Your state could pass a law right now abolishing the presidential election in their state and giving the choice to the legislature instead. There's nothing stopping them. It's already perfectly legal and has plenty of precedent. The Supreme Court doesn't need to do anything to make it happen.
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Jul 28, 2022 09:04
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SubG posted:I guess it would be entertaining to see if and how Section 2 of the 14th Amendment (which says that any State trying this loses their seats in the House) is enforced. Even though the language is broad, the general interpretation is that the right to vote that's being protected is the right as established by the laws of the state (which has always been an idiotic interpretation since legislatures denying people the right to vote via state law is exactly what that section was supposed to fix). It's why literacy tests/wealth requirements/etc. didn't reduce representation. In any event, it's never been enforced before, I doubt there's much of a chance that it would get enforced now.
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Jul 28, 2022 10:17
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Fuschia tude posted:The DA was dumb as hell for openly fundraising for his opponent in her official capacity. Moving his case to a different prosecutor is a no brainer. His case is not dismissed or something, he's still being investigated criminally and the DA is still overseeing the whole set of investigations, including his. If this hadn't happened he would have a cakewalk basis for an appeal because of her blatant conflict of interest. Counterpoint: every citizen is expected and (facially) encouraged to vote for one candidate or the other and be politically active. Imo this is a farce; this is a state where the governor provided oversight on his own loving campaign for Christ sake.
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Jul 28, 2022 12:48
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Koos Group posted:Presidents and senators don't have confirmation hearings where such witnesses would be called, so if we assume Biden's plans for his career resembled how his career went, such a custom would have no effect. In addition, he called exactly one witness to testify about sexual assault by the subject of the hearings, and there was also only one notable allegation toward him, so if this precedent were followed and he had pursued a position where there were hearings to determine his good character, it still wouldn't have helped him. https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/what-joe-biden-hasnt-owned-up-to-about-anita-hill quote:Biden said in a later interview that he believed Hill from the start, but Thomas and his wife have said that Biden called them after reading the F.B.I. reports and assured them that there was “no merit” to Hill’s accusations. Further, Senator John Danforth, a Republican from Missouri who was Thomas’s primary sponsor, later said that Biden promised Thomas and his wife that, if Hill’s allegations leaked, he would be Thomas’s “most adamant and vigorous defender.” Which is why the people blaming Biden for Thomas' confirmation are being ridiculous. What choice did the man have, allow a powerful man to be destroyed by the consequences of his own abusive actions toward women? Biden's not going to voluntarily ruin his own career!
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Jul 28, 2022 14:23
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Main Paineframe posted:In the case in question, North Carolina Republicans are arguing that the federal Constitution places the power to oversee federal elections in the hands of state legislatures, and therefore state courts do not have jurisdiction to intervene in election matters - not even if the legislature is violating the state constitution. As I pointed out upthread, this is a completely empty argument. State legislatures exist only as defined by their states' constitutions. There is simply no plausible mechanism by which the actions of state legislatures can escape review by their own states' supreme courts.
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Jul 28, 2022 15:03
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tagesschau posted:As I pointed out upthread, this is a completely empty argument. State legislatures exist only as defined by their states' constitutions. There is simply no plausible mechanism by which the actions of state legislatures can escape review by their own states' supreme courts. You'd think so, yes. But if that's the case, then why is the Supreme Court taking up Moore v. Harper? If they wanted to affirm the decision, they could have declined to hear the case for the same result.
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Jul 28, 2022 15:27
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tagesschau posted:As I pointed out upthread, this is a completely empty argument. State legislatures exist only as defined by their states' constitutions. There is simply no plausible mechanism by which the actions of state legislatures can escape review by their own states' supreme courts. Buddy I don't think you understand how judicial capture works or what the GOP have been spending literally decades working towards. If the SCOTUS rules in the NCGOP's favor the correct response would be for states to go "lolnope we're going to enforce our election laws that the legislature passed, even if we have to do it at gunpoint" but that won't happen because everyone wants to continue to pretend the decades long constitutional crisis we've been in isn't real.
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Jul 28, 2022 15:54
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It boils back to whether American courts in general are enforcing legalism in good faith versus finding post-hoc justification for authoritarian activism There's not presently anyone doing anything about the latter running rampant, and media personalities analyzing the current situation through the lens of the former are not actually reporting on what's going on. A metaphor would be that the engine is stuck at full throttle, and rather than talking about how to turn the engine off, our political thought leadership in non-fascist media and the non-fascist party is discussing whether we can trust that the brakes can keep taking the heat. Potato Salad fucked around with this message at 23:22 on Jul 28, 2022 |
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Jul 28, 2022 16:06
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No one in a position to talk to a mass audience has the tools to do so because the money-having public at large is not prepared to accept the various axiomatic truths that would need to be accepted in order for a real discussion around reform to take place (eg. Cops are your enemy not your friend; our entire criminal legal system is based on, at best, pseudoscience and barbarity and petty vengeance; it is impossible to enforce the law while being a good person because the whole system is evil; America is a bad evil country full of bad evil systems that exist to do evil; etc.) Like, "defund the police" is simultaneously the exact correct policy prescription, and a complete political impossibility because too many Americans think police = good, more police = better, period. That's the core problem.
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Jul 28, 2022 16:21
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Evil Fluffy posted:Buddy I don't think you understand how judicial capture works or what the GOP have been spending literally decades working towards. The correct reaction is to reiterate, correctly, that the legislature is subject to the state constitution, and to ignore and/or thwart any attempts by outside bodies to interfere with that fact. It's no different from the queen waking up one day and deciding to fire Boris Johnson and appoint me as prime minister. There's no appropriate reaction other than going "well, that was weird, wasn't it?" and carrying on as though it didn't happen, because it certainly can't constitutionally happen.
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Jul 28, 2022 16:58
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tagesschau posted:The correct reaction is to reiterate, correctly, that the legislature is subject to the state constitution, and to ignore and/or thwart any attempts by outside bodies to interfere with that fact. It can't constitutionally happen right until the U.S. Supreme Court rules that  actually it can happen. And again - if you think that they are going to rule otherwise, then explain why you think they took the case up in the first place when not agreeing to hear it would have shut the door on that just as well as ruling against it.People ignoring it and carrying on would be technically possible, but that would require Joe Biden to step up and say, "no it can't", and he might not do that, because once he says that Supreme Court decisions can just be outright ignored, that's precedent for all the deep red states to go "great!" and selectively ignore decisions that they hate, and that path is chaos which leads towards civil war and/or balkanization.
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Jul 28, 2022 17:17
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Stabbey_the_Clown posted:People ignoring it and carrying on would be technically possible, but that would require Joe Biden to step up and say, "no it can't", and he might not do that, because once he says that Supreme Court decisions can just be outright ignored, that's precedent for all the deep red states to go "great!" and selectively ignore decisions that they hate, and that path is chaos which leads towards civil war and/or balkanization. Biden doesn't have to do it, a purple state with a divided government will do it
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Jul 28, 2022 17:20
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:No one in a position to talk to a mass audience has the tools to do so because the money-having public at large is not prepared to accept the various axiomatic truths that would need to be accepted in order for a real discussion around reform to take place (eg. Cops are your enemy not your friend; our entire criminal legal system is based on, at best, pseudoscience and barbarity and petty vengeance; it is impossible to enforce the law while being a good person because the whole system is evil; America is a bad evil country full of bad evil systems that exist to do evil; etc.) Yeah. Climate change too. People aren't ready to accept the facts of our world.
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Jul 28, 2022 17:21
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Stabbey_the_Clown posted:It can't constitutionally happen right until the U.S. Supreme Court rules that The U.S. Supreme Court isn't even the final arbiter of what the North Carolina state constitution means. edit: You're also missing the point that the U.S. Supreme Court would be an interfering outside body in this scenario. tagesschau fucked around with this message at 17:26 on Jul 28, 2022 |
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Jul 28, 2022 17:22
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tagesschau posted:The U.S. Supreme Court isn't even the final arbiter of what the North Carolina state constitution means. Yes but they are ruling that the federal constitution is superceding here. Which is something they regularly do, it's just a very specifically lovely version of it.
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Jul 28, 2022 17:23
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Comstar posted:I fail to see how any state actually choosing to DO it that will not result in a civil war. When I say that there's precedent for it, I mean that some states did at one point do the "legislature directly picks the electors without an actual election" thing. And the states that did this weren't forced to stop by the federal government or by the courts, because it was (and still is) perfectly legal. They stopped on their own - presumably due to internal political pressure from their own voters. Realistically, though, I don't think it's really all that likely. After all, the case in front of the Supreme Court is about giving legislatures a free ticket to solidify their positions through extreme gerrymandering and rigging the hell out of the election laws. With that, there's hardly any need for the legislature to directly appoint the electors. They can just control how easy it is for various groups to vote. And that'll help lock down not just the presidential elections, but also House and Senate elections. That's very clearly the North Carolina GOP's play.
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Jul 28, 2022 17:47
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