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OneEightHundred posted:The assumption was that eliminating the Supreme Court filibuster wouldn't happen because the Senate must really like the smell of its own farts if it's keeping this dumb unnecessary 60 vote threshold around in the first place, and it would be an outrageously flagrant power grab to get rid of it. Well that's obviously wrong because her colleagues Sotomayor and Kagan were confirmed 68-31 and 63-37, respectively. Since Ginsburg's retirement wouldn't have changed the balance of the court, it's certain her replacement would have been confirmed by similar numbers and not been filibustered. And Democrats ended up removing the judicial filibuster for a bunch of courts anyway, so she could have retired the day after that. It was all just her rationalization for clinging to power at the expense of everything she spent her life fighting for getting rolled back the instant she was gone, nothing more. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 17:23 on May 7, 2020 |
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May 7, 2020 17:21
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galenanorth posted:https://apnews.com/d99cfadbffbf8ca4abed94ac62b8ad11?utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=AP Now if you or I do this, I’m sure SCOTUS will save us, right?
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May 7, 2020 18:12
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quote:The Government could not have proved—on either of its theories, though for different reasons—that Baroni’s and Kelly’s scheme was “directed at the [Port Authority’s] property.” Baroni and Kelly indeed “plotted to reduce [Fort Lee’s] lanes.” Id., at 34. But that realignment was a quintessential exercise of regulatory power. And this Court has already held that a scheme to alter such a regulatory choice is not one to appropriate the government’s property. Essentially the Supreme Court says that with "regulatory power" you can do pretty much whatever you want, even if it's nakedly corrupt, as long as the objective of your corruption is not to steal or misuse government property, even if that happens as part of your scheme. Or to put it another way, they would like someone to prosecute this under a law that applies to the crime in question, likely on the state level. Newspapers are saying that this scheme derailed Christie's presidential campaign, even though it in no way stopped him from running. It's the reason he's not vice president, though.
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May 7, 2020 18:50
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since all things lead back to Donnie not sure why Donnie would want to give a favor to NJ Fatass's minions. 1) Jared hates Christie for getting his first/real dad. 2) Donnie hates Christie for that one plank second of not being 10000% loyal.
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May 7, 2020 18:57
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Jared was never going to let Christie be the VP He was allegedly the reason why Christie got booted off the transition team
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May 7, 2020 18:59
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Dont forget that Donnie's first campaign manager faked airplane maintence so he could stall and get pissbaby to rashly say "yeah fine the horse guy now give me my happy meal"
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May 7, 2020 19:03
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It was an unanimous decision. I think the law probably just legitimately doesn’t apply because of its plain wording and needs to be fixed. Not that Congress has any interest in doing that.
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May 7, 2020 19:38
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rjmccall posted:It was an unanimous decision. I think the law probably just legitimately doesn’t apply because of its plain wording and needs to be fixed. Not that Congress has any interest in doing that. They're absolutely right that comandeering a bridge and forcing the port authority to pay people to do nothing/block the roads aren't legally property. The state did not argue that the mayor's endorsement was property at any point in the trial or on appeal that I can see.
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May 7, 2020 20:00
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 Opinions! UNITED STATES v. SINENENG-SMITH Holding / Majority Opinion (Ginsburg): This case concerns 8 U. S. C. §1324, which makes it a federal felony to “encourag[e] or induc[e] an alien to come to, enter, or reside in the United States, knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that such coming to, entry, or residence is or will be in violation of law.” The crime carries an enhanced penalty if “done for the purpose of commercial advantage or private financial gain.” Respondent Evelyn Sineneng-Smith operated an immigration consulting firm in San Jose, California. She was indicted for multiple violations of §1324(a)(1)(A)(iv) and (B)(i). Her clients, most of them from the Philippines, worked without authorization in the home health care industry in the United States. Between 2001 and 2008, Sineneng-Smith assisted her clients in applying for a “labor certification” that once allowed certain aliens to adjust their status to that of lawful permanent resident permitted to live and work in the United States. §1255(i)(1)(B)(ii). There was a hindrance to the efficacy of Sineneng-Smith’s advice and assistance. To qualify for the labor-certification dispensation she promoted to her clients, an alien had to be in the United States on December 21, 2000, and apply for certification before April 30, 2001.Sineneng-Smith knew her clients did not meet the application-filing deadline; hence, their applications could not put them on a path to lawful residence. Nevertheless, she charged each client $5,900 to file an application with the Department of Labor and another $900 to file with the U. S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. For her services in this regard, she collected more than $3.3 million from her unwitting clients. In the District Court, Sineneng-Smith urged unsuccessfully, inter alia, that the above-cited provisions, properly construed, did not cover her conduct, and if they did, they violated the Petition and Free Speech Clauses of the First Amendment as applied. … Instead of adjudicating the case presented by the parties, the appeals court named three amici and invited them to brief and argue issues framed by the panel, including a question Sineneng-Smith herself never raised earlier: “[W]hether the statute of conviction is overbroad . . . under the First Amendment.” In the ensuing do over of the appeal, counsel for the parties were assigned a secondary role. The Ninth Circuit ultimately concluded, in accord with the invited amici’s arguments, that §1324(a)(1)(A)(iv) is unconstitutionally overbroad. The Government petitioned for our review because the judgment of the Court of Appeals invalidated a federal statute. We granted the petition. As developed more completely hereinafter, we now hold that the appeals panel departed so drastically from the principle of party presentation as to constitute an abuse of discretion. We therefore vacate the Ninth Circuit’s judgment and remand the case for an adjudication of the appeal attuned to the case shaped by the parties rather than the case designed by the appeals panel. … In our adversarial system of adjudication, we follow the principle of party presentation. As this Court stated in Greenlaw v. United States, 554 U. S. 237 (2008), “in both civil and criminal cases, in the first instance and on appeal . . . , we rely on the parties to frame the issues for decision and assign to courts the role of neutral arbiter of matters the parties present.” … “[C]ourts are essentially passive instruments of government.” They “do not, or should not, sally forth each day looking for wrongs to right. [They] wait for cases to come to [them], and when [cases arise, courts] normally decide only questions presented by the parties.” … In July 2010, a grand jury returned a multicount indictment against Sineneng-Smith, including three counts of violating §1324, three counts of mail fraud in violation of 18 U. S. C. §1341, and two counts of willfully subscribing to a false tax return in violation of 26 U. S. C. §7206(1). … Before trial, Sineneng-Smith moved to dismiss the §1324 counts. She asserted first that the conduct with which she was charged—advising and assisting aliens about labor certifications—is not proscribed by §1324(a)(1)(A)(iv) and (B)(i). Being hired to file lawful applications on behalf of aliens already residing in the United States, she maintained, did not “encourage” or “induce” them to remain in this country. Next, she urged, alternatively, that clause (iv) is unconstitutionally vague and therefore did not provide fair notice that her conduct was prohibited, id., at 13–18, or should rank as a content-based restraint on her speech, id., at 22–24. She further asserted that she has a right safeguarded to her by the Petition and Free Speech Clauses of the First Amendment to file applications on her clients’ behalf. Nowhere did she so much as hint that the statute is infirm, not because her own conduct is protected, but because it trenches on the First Amendment sheltered expression of others. … The District Court denied the motion to dismiss...After a 12-day trial, the jury found Sineneng-Smith guilty on the three §1324 counts charged in the indictment, along with the three mail-fraud counts. SinenengSmith then moved for a judgment of acquittal. She renewed, “almost verbatim,” the arguments made in her motion to dismiss, and the District Court rejected those arguments “[f]or the same reasons as the court expressed in its order denying Sineneng-Smith’s motion to dismiss.” … Sineneng-Smith’s appeal to the Ninth Circuit from the District Court’s §1324 convictions commenced unremarkably. On brief and at oral argument, she reasserted the self-regarding arguments twice rehearsed, initially in her motion to dismiss, and later in her motion for acquittal. With the appeal poised for decision based upon the parties’ presentations, the appeals panel intervened. It ordered further briefing, App. 122–124, but not from the parties. Instead, it named three organizations—“the Federal Defender Organizations of the Ninth Circuit (as a group)[,] the Immigrant Defense Project[,] and the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild”—and invited them to file amicus briefs. … Counsel for the parties were permitted, but “not required,” to file supplemental briefs “limited to responding to any and all amicus/amici briefs.” Invited amici and amici not specifically invited to file were free to “brief such further issues as they, respectively, believe the law, and the record calls for.” Ibid. The panel gave invited amici 20 minutes for argument, and allocated only 10 minutes to Sineneng-Smith’s counsel. … No extraordinary circumstances justified the panel’s takeover of the appeal. Sineneng-Smith herself had raised a vagueness argument and First Amendment arguments homing in on her own conduct, not that of others. Electing not to address the party-presented controversy, the panel projected that §1324(a)(1)(A)(iv) might cover a wide swath of protected speech, including political advocacy, legal advice, even a grandmother’s plea to her alien grandchild to remain in the United States. Nevermind that Sineneng-Smith’s counsel had presented a contrary theory of the case in the District Court, and that this Court has repeatedly warned that “invalidation for [First Amendment] overbreadth is ‘strong medicine’ that is not to be ‘casually employed.’” … A court is not hidebound by the precise arguments of counsel, but the Ninth Circuit’s radical transformation of this case goes well beyond the pale. For the reasons stated, we vacate the Ninth Circuit’s judgment and remand the case for reconsideration shorn of the overbreadth inquiry interjected by the appellate panel and bearing a fair resemblance to the case shaped by the parties. It is so ordered. Lineup: Ginsburg, unanimous. Concurrence by Thomas. Concurrence (Thomas): I agree with the Court that the Ninth Circuit abused its discretion in reaching out to decide whether 8 U. S. C. §1324(a)(1)(A)(iv) is unconstitutionally overbroad. In my view, however, the Court of Appeals’ decision violates far more than the party presentation rule. The merits of that decision also highlight the troubling nature of this Court’s overbreadth doctrine. That doctrine provides that “a law may be invalidated as overbroad if ‘a substantial number of its applications are unconstitutional, judged in relation to the statute’s plainly legitimate sweep.’” Although I have previously joined the Court in applying this doctrine, I have since developed doubts about its origins and application. It appears that the overbreadth doctrine lacks any basis in the Constitution’s text, violates the usual standard for facial challenges, and contravenes traditional standing principles. I would therefore consider revisiting this doctrine in an appropriate case. … The overbreadth doctrine appears to be the handiwork of judges, based on the misguided “notion that some constitutional rights demand preferential treatment.” It seemingly lacks any basis in the text or history of the First Amendment, relaxes the traditional standard for facial challenges, and violates Article III principles regarding judicial power and standing. In an appropriate case, we should consider revisiting this doctrine. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/19-67_n6io.pdf KELLY v. UNITED STATES ET AL. Holding / Majority Opinion (Kagan): For four days in September 2013, traffic ground to a halt in Fort Lee, New Jersey. The cause was an unannounced realignment of 12 toll lanes leading to the George Washington Bridge, an entryway into Manhattan administered by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. For decades, three of those access lanes had been reserved during morning rush hour for commuters coming from the streets of Fort Lee. But on these four days—with predictable consequences—only a single lane was set aside. The public officials who ordered that change claimed they were reducing the number of dedicated lanes to conduct a traffic study. In fact, they did so for a political reason—to punish the mayor of Fort Lee for refusing to support the New Jersey Governor’s reelection bid. Exposure of their behavior led to the criminal convictions we review here. The Government charged the responsible officials under the federal statutes prohibiting wire fraud and fraud on a federally funded program or entity. Both those laws target fraudulent schemes for obtaining property. The jury convicted the defendants, and the lower courts upheld the verdicts. The question presented is whether the defendants committed property fraud. The evidence the jury heard no doubt shows wrongdoing—deception, corruption, abuse of power. But the federal fraud statutes at issue do not criminalize all such conduct. Under settled precedent, the officials could violate those laws only if an object of their dishonesty was to obtain the Port Authority’s money or property. The Government contends it was, because the officials sought both to “commandeer” the Bridge’s access lanes and to divert the wage labor of the Port Authority employees used in that effort. We disagree. The realignment of the toll lanes was an exercise of regulatory power—something this Court has already held fails to meet the statutes’ property requirement. And the employees’ labor was just the incidental cost of that regulation, rather than itself an object of the officials’ scheme. We therefore reverse the convictions. … In 2013, Governor Christie was up for reelection, and he wanted to notch a large, bipartisan victory as he ramped up for a presidential campaign. On his behalf, Kelly avidly courted Democratic mayors for their endorsements—among them, Mark Sokolich of Fort Lee. As a result, that town received some valuable benefits from the Port Authority, including an expensive shuttle-bus service. But that summer, Mayor Sokolich informed Kelly’s office that he would not back the Governor’s campaign. A frustrated Kelly reached out to Wildstein for ideas on how to respond. He suggested that getting rid of the dedicated Fort Lee lanes on the Bridge’s toll plaza would cause rush-hour traffic to back up onto local streets, leading to gridlock there. Kelly agreed to the idea in an admirably concise e-mail: “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee.” … To complete the scheme, Wildstein then devised “a cover story”—that the lane change was part of a traffic study, intended to assess whether to retain the dedicated Fort Lee lanes in the future. Wildstein, Baroni, and Kelly all agreed to use that “public policy” justification when speaking with the media, local officials, and the Port Authority’s own employees. And to give their story credibility, Wildstein in fact told the Port Authority’s engineers to collect “some numbers on how[] far back the traffic was delayed.” … The plan was now ready, and on September 9 it went into effect. Without advance notice and on the (traffic-heavy) first day of school, Port Authority employees placed traffic cones two lanes further to the right than usual, restricting cars from Fort Lee to a single lane. Almost immediately, the town’s streets came to a standstill. According to the Fort Lee Chief of Police, the traffic rivaled that of 9/11, when the George Washington Bridge had shut down. School buses stood in place for hours. An ambulance struggled to reach the victim of a heart attack; police had trouble responding to a report of a missing child. … The three merrily kept the lane realignment in place for another three days. It ended only when the Port Authority’s Executive Director found out what had happened and reversed what he called their “abusive decision.” The fallout from the scheme was swift and severe. Baroni, Kelly, and Wildstein all lost their jobs. More to the point here, they all ran afoul of federal prosecutors. Wildstein pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges and agreed to cooperate with the Government. Baroni and Kelly went to trial on charges of wire fraud, fraud on a federally funded program or entity (the Port Authority), and conspiracy to commit each of those crimes. The jury found both of them guilty on all counts. The Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit affirmed, rejecting Baroni’s and Kelly’s claim that the evidence was insufficient to support their convictions. ... The Government in this case needed to prove property fraud. The federal wire fraud statute makes it a crime to effect (with use of the wires) “any scheme or artifice to defraud, or for obtaining money or property by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises.” Construing that disjunctive language as a unitary whole, this Court has held that “the money-or-property requirement of the latter phrase” also limits the former. The wire fraud statute thus prohibits only deceptive “schemes to deprive [the victim of] money or property.” Id., at 356. Similarly, the federal-program fraud statute bars “obtain[ing] by fraud” the “property” (including money) of a federally funded program or entity like the Port Authority. So under either provision, the Government had to show not only that Baroni and Kelly engaged in deception, but that an “object of the[ir] fraud [was] ‘property.’” That requirement, this Court has made clear, prevents these statutes from criminalizing all acts of dishonesty by state and local officials….We specifically rejected a proposal to construe the statute as encompassing “undisclosed self-dealing by a public official,” even when he hid financial interests. The upshot is that federal fraud law leaves much public corruption to the States (or their electorates) to rectify. Save for bribes or kickbacks (not at issue here), a state or local official’s fraudulent schemes violate that law only when, again, they are “for obtaining money or property.” The Government acknowledges this much, but thinks Baroni’s and Kelly’s convictions remain valid. According to the Government’s theory of the case, Baroni and Kelly “used a lie about a fictional traffic study” to achieve their goal of reallocating the Bridge’s toll lanes. The Government accepts that the lie itself—i.e., that the lane change was part of a traffic study, rather than political payback—could not get the prosecution all the way home. As the Government recognizes, the deceit must also have had the “object” of obtaining the Port Authority’s money or property. The scheme met that requirement, the Government argues, in two ways. First, the Government claims that Baroni and Kelly sought to “commandeer[]” part of the Bridge itself—to “take control” of its “physical lanes.” Second, the Government asserts that the two defendants aimed to deprive the Port Authority of the costs of compensating the traffic engineers and back-up toll collectors who performed work relating to the lane realignment. On either theory, the Government insists, Baroni’s and Kelly’s scheme targeted “a ‘species of valuable right [or] interest’ that constitutes ‘property’ under the fraud statutes.” We cannot agree. As we explain below, the Government could not have proved—on either of its theories, though for different reasons—that Baroni’s and Kelly’s scheme was “directed at the [Port Authority’s] property.” … Contrary to the Government’s view, the two defendants did not “commandeer” the Bridge’s access lanes (supposing that word bears its normal meaning). They (of course) did not walk away with the lanes; nor did they take the lanes from the Government by converting them to a non-public use. Rather, Baroni and Kelly regulated use of the lanes, as officials responsible for roadways so often do—allocating lanes as between different groups of drivers...And under Cleveland, that run-of-the-mine exercise of regulatory power cannot count as the taking of property. A government’s right to its employees’ time and labor, by contrast, can undergird a property fraud prosecution….But that property must play more than some bit part in a scheme: It must be an “object of the fraud.”...The time and labor of Port Authority employees were just the implementation costs of the defendants’ scheme to reallocate the Bridge’s access lanes. Or said another way, the labor costs were an incidental (even if foreseen) byproduct of Baroni’s and Kelly’s regulatory object. … Not every corrupt act by state or local officials is a federal crime. Because the scheme here did not aim to obtain money or property, Baroni and Kelly could not have violated the federal-program fraud or wire fraud laws. We therefore reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals and remand the case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. It is so ordered. Lineup: Kagan, unanimous. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/18-1059_e2p3.pdf
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May 7, 2020 20:08
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rjmccall posted:It was an unanimous decision. I think the law probably just legitimately doesn’t apply because of its plain wording and needs to be fixed. Not that Congress has any interest in doing that. SCOTUS is very clear here that not all corrupt state and local governmental acts are federal crimes. Mr. Nice! posted:They're absolutely right that comandeering a bridge and forcing the port authority to pay people to do nothing/block the roads aren't legally property. The state did not argue that the mayor's endorsement was property at any point in the trial or on appeal that I can see. It was a federal prosecution, so it was DoJ arguing, but they went under two theories - (a) the lanes of the Bridge as property or (b) the hours of the engineers etc. as property. Both don't work.
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May 7, 2020 20:10
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Hurt Whitey Maybe posted:RBG should have retired over a decade ago and no later than 6 years ago. Complete mishandling of the situation. Next democrat to win should demand the resignation of every justice they can pressure to resign and replace them with 25 year old leftist law school graduates. There are multiple problems with this. 1. 2008 was not a good time to pull this sort of stunt and by the time it was clear that Republicans would fervently oppose everything and anything it was too late. 2. RBG would've likely refused, because why should someone who is still mentally in their prime and enjoying their work retire? 3. Even if you argue that there existed enough foreknowledge to argue she should retire for the good of the bench and to maintain her legacy, you still have issues of decorum. The court is ostensibly independent, and ostensibly the Executive branch wheeling and dealing to replace justices according to electoral strategizing is not something most people look well on. After 2012 we had Republicans stonewall the ability for POTUS to get a vote on their USSC pick, had Mitch pressuring older Reagan era justices to retire so they can put younger heritage society stooges to pack the courts with, and Justice Stevens(?) retiring to get a hand picked successor to replace him. I think there's no doubt that the next time a Dem gets the White House RBG is probably going to highly considering retiring at this point. (It isn't clear to me that Republicans would obstruct a Democrat's USSC pick if it doesn't change the balance of the court, especially if a pick like Merrick Garland would still succeed at making the court slightly more conservative on average) Because the stakes have racheted up; but it isn't really reasonable to apply 20/20 hindsight to the one short window of opportunity in which RGB could have retired seamlessly but it would've required Democrats to have the same sort of mentality as Republicans and not universally acting like their characters in the West Wing.
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May 7, 2020 20:50
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Raenir Salazar posted:
bullshit, O'Connor came right out and said that she was waiting for a Republican administration to retire. No one believes in that poo poo unless maybe they're an actual child she also really really really felt like retiring in 2000, and then a case that let the court overturn a presidential election came up and welp
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May 7, 2020 20:58
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VitalSigns posted:bullshit, O'Connor came right out and said that she was waiting for a Republican administration to retire. No one believes in that poo poo unless maybe they're an actual child And its only ever Republicans that don't get punished for it. Democrats get punished for it and it takes that before enough of that decorum has been eroded for the dam to break. Additionally there was also points 1 and 2 you didn't address, or the conclusion.
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May 7, 2020 21:01
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Well, that's because "clear" that Republicans would oppose everything is a subjective interpretation that can't be countered factually. As late as 2014, Obama was arguing that after mid-terms the Republicans would go back to normal. We know that Democrats are naive enough that they might have seriously interpreted it that way, and that RBG on paper had no reason to retire in 2008 if this were any other job, but that doesn't matter because this isn't just any job. Why bring up 2008 specifically, though? 2009 would have been better. I don't think you can say "it isn't really reasonable to apply 20/20 hindsight" because, again, "reasonable" is subjective and we have a lot of Democrats like Sen. Chris Coons who want to re-instate the judicial filibuster to herald a new era of bipartisanship even right now. There were plenty of Democrats back then who saw the slow-motion train wreck who just didn't have any power to stop it. This is like talking about hindsight after the Iraq War went badly. galenanorth fucked around with this message at 21:13 on May 7, 2020 |
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May 7, 2020 21:07
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Raenir Salazar posted:And its only ever Republicans that don't get punished for it. Democrats get punished for it and it takes that before enough of that decorum has been eroded for the dam to break. Who is going to "punish" Ginsburg for retiring. Nobody but nobody, "oh well Republicans don't get punished but we will" is just an excuse. Democrats lost every branch of government over the next 8 years anyway, so how exactly would one old judge retiring have made it any worse, it wouldn't that's dumb. Raenir Salazar posted:Additionally there was also points 1 and 2 you didn't address, or the conclusion. You conceded points 1 and 2 but okay Point 1: Republicans filibustered critical judicial seats long before 2014, it was abundantly clear that if Republicans took the senate no Democratic judges would get confirmed ever again. Operating from the assumption that Democrats would never lose again was dumb as hell. Point 2: Who cares, it's not about her. What's more important, whether she's bored in retirement, or whether hundreds of millions of people have their civil rights rolled back. If she says gently caress those people all that matters is her, well that's a lovely attitude and criticism is well deserved
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May 7, 2020 21:18
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quote:Democrats lost every branch of government over the next 8 years anyway Shelby County was 2013. The conservative justices were as responsible for the republican electoral victories since as they were for Bush in 2000. It wasn't some thing that just happened..
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May 7, 2020 21:23
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Ron Jeremy posted:Shelby County was 2013. The conservative justices were as responsible for the republican electoral victories since as they were for Bush in 2000. It wasn't some thing that just happened.. ok this makes the argument that Democrats would be 'punished' for the partisanship of judges planning their retirements like Republican judges openly and brazenly do even more ludicrous what did Ginsburg's  get Democrats, when as you note the GOP was already cheating to win in 2013 (and had been doing it since 2000 lol, anyone who was on the court for Bush v Gore and talks about the importance of maintaining the public fiction of nonpartisanship is either stupid or dishonest)like did Roberts go "gee I was going to say black people voting was unconstitutional, buuuut since RBG didn't opportunistically retire to deny us a 6-3 bench I guess I'll just rule that it's unconstitutional to require black people be allowed to vote"
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May 7, 2020 21:33
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Anthony Kennedy retired under a Republican president right before the midterms in exchange for getting to handpick his successor. Nobody but nobody clutched their pearls over the polite fiction of a nonpartisan court or anything, even Ginsburg herself hasn't criticized this supposed colossal breach of As it turned out, Republicans laid an almighty smackdown on the Democratic Senate, taking seats they couldn't take in their 2014 wave election, so Kennedy's retirement was unnecessary and he could have waited another two years. But Republicans didn't take that chance, they had a unified government, Kennedy stayed the maximum possible time, then got out before it was too late. And that's why Republicans have another 30 year majority locked in despite only winning two presidential contests in the past 28 years, and everything Ginsburg fought for her whole life is on the chopping block once she kicks it and the swing vote shifts from Roberts to like Gorsuch or whoever. Oh well.
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May 7, 2020 21:44
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Again, it wasn't even remotely on the radar for RBG to retire back in 2009. There wasn't like a meeting where the choice was made/not made. It would've been completely alien to the thought processes to anyone who fundamentally believes in principles like abiding by the process even if it temporarily has bad results. The facts are the facts and you can't change the past.
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May 7, 2020 21:57
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That's not her stated reason. She didn't say "look I'm going to stay here until I can't do the job and if Republicans get my seat and everything I've done for half a century gets undone, it's worth it for the principle of fictional nonpartisan courts". She had a bunch of excuses for why it wouldn't have worked anyway, which are obvious bullshit. And it's not true that it "wasn't on anyone's radar" because the title of the fuckin article is U.S. Justice Ginsburg hits back at liberals who want her to retire
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May 7, 2020 22:02
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Raenir Salazar posted:Again, it wasn't even remotely on the radar for RBG to retire back in 2009. There wasn't like a meeting where the choice was made/not made. It would've been completely alien to the thought processes to anyone who fundamentally believes in principles like abiding by the process even if it temporarily has bad results. The facts are the facts and you can't change the past. Even if that were true of every single person in Washington, D.C., it still wouldn't really have anything to do with whether it was the right thing to do. It's like Barbara Lee saying the 2001 AUMF was ripe for abuse, except it rounds down from 1/435 to 0, before bringing that article VitalSigns posted into it
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May 7, 2020 22:03
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ulmont posted:
This is real loving rich, given that SCOTUS just asked Sekulow to brief them on the non-Justiciability question, despite the fact it wasn't raised in his brief. The conservatives are looking for a way to give themselves a non-embarrassing out, since his arguments were a dumpster fire. Pardon my garbage formatting below (it's clearer in the link) - the article is a summary of some stuff that Opening Arguments seems to have broken. https://www.dailykos.com/stories/20...e-looks-like-it quote:This story concerns the the consolidated Deutsche Bank and Mazars cases which are set for oral arguments before SCOTUS on May 12.
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May 7, 2020 22:22
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VitalSigns posted:That's not her stated reason. She didn't say "look I'm going to stay here until I can't do the job and if Republicans get my seat and everything I've done for half a century gets undone, it's worth it for the principle of fictional nonpartisan courts". Exactly, she wouldn't have wanted to retire even if it was on peoples radar, which was front and center of my point no. 2. Acting like it was some political miscarriage of justice to not try to pressure her to retire in 2009 is applying 20/20 hindsight to a situation in which there was no clear cut reason to do so.
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May 7, 2020 22:40
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I was of the opinion that the Democrats should have filibustered Bush's Republican appointees and not seated them, because of the expectation that Bush v. Gore, O'Connor timing her retiring, and Republicans gaming "blue slip" rules meant that Republicans were going to play hardball after Democrats took back the presidency in 2008. Then Republicans didn't filibuster Sotomayor or Kagan, so during 2009-2010, I thought maybe I was wrong, but in hindsight that was only because they knew Democrats could nuke the filibuster right then anyway, so they could only get away with stealing a SCOTUS seat once they had the Senate majority. Regardless, I don't really see how you can assert "you're just saying that in hindsight" as if you've mindread where every poster was at before the Trump years
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May 7, 2020 22:52
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Raenir Salazar posted:Exactly, she wouldn't have wanted to retire even if it was on peoples radar, which was front and center of my point no. 2. yes correct, that was lovely of her and now we're all living in the consequences Raenir Salazar posted:Acting like it was some political miscarriage of justice to not try to pressure her to retire in 2009 is applying 20/20 hindsight to a situation in which there was no clear cut reason to do so. Nope, people saw this coming at the time and asked her to step down while Obama and the Democrats could replace her because you can't count on it lasting forever, those people were applying 20/20 foresight Probably they got that foresight by applying 20/20 hindsight to pre-2009 history and seeing how we lost the court in the first place and how Republicans had been strategizing around it since the 80s by nominating young healthy conservative nutjobs to any empty liberal seat then timing their retirements to ensure their seats don't flip back. Maybe we should be like those people who were right and learn from what happened here idk
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May 7, 2020 22:57
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Why should ostensibly, a justice who is really good at her job, mentally fit, and by all accounts, a hero and example for women entering the legal profession, retire when she doesn't feel like retiring?
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May 7, 2020 23:07
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Raenir Salazar posted:Why should ostensibly, a justice who is really good at her job, mentally fit, and by all accounts, a hero and example for women entering the legal profession, retire when she doesn't feel like retiring? Because she cares about the effect on hundreds of millions of women if she gets replaced by another Alito-level nutjob If she doesn't care about that though then no reason I guess YOLO!
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May 7, 2020 23:12
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VitalSigns posted:Because she cares about the effect on hundreds of millions of women if she gets replaced by another Alito-level nutjob None of this is remotely a given. Not wanting to retire when she is enjoying her work and calling means she doesn't care about the consequences if something bad happens at the wrong time; anything can happen at the wrong time at any time. The calls to retire circa 2009 were not reasonable at the time, only in hindsight with 20/20 vision.
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May 7, 2020 23:20
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You asked me why she should, that's why. You just don't think that's worth caring about. Ok. Of course the calls for her to resign were warranted, the Democrats had been out of power for eight years, now they were in power and nobody could predict how long that would last. Not taking advantage of that when you have the opportunity is rolling the dice with other people's lives.
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May 7, 2020 23:32
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As well, it's kinda inconsistent to believe that the Democrats would be in power forever while simultaneously keeping the filibuster out of belief in the inevitability of the pendulum edit: This was a bad post, because the people responsible for this collective inconsistency are in two separate branches galenanorth fucked around with this message at 23:47 on May 7, 2020 |
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May 7, 2020 23:36
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I don't really get why you're putting words in other peoples mouth, you're just arguing with a strawman.
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May 7, 2020 23:37
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Devor posted:This is real loving rich, given that SCOTUS just asked Sekulow to brief them on the non-Justiciability question, despite the fact it wasn't raised in his brief. The difference is that justiciability is a threshold question of whether a court is even supposed to be able to hear the case. Those kind of jurisdictional questions have a long history of being addressed by courts whether or not the parties raise them because the court isn’t supposed to issue a ruling if it’s not supposed to be able to hear the case. In contrast, Sineng was about a merits issue raised for the first time by the court. I don’t think it’s wrong for courts to ask the parties to address issues (ie Sineng is a bad ruling) but there is a meaningful difference between what happened in Sineng and the justiciability request.
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May 7, 2020 23:47
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Devor posted:This is real loving rich, given that SCOTUS just asked Sekulow to brief them on the non-Justiciability question, despite the fact it wasn't raised in his brief. It’s basically what happened in Citizens United where the Court wasn’t even being asked to rule on the Constitutionality of campaign finance law, but that was what the case ended up being about because the SC asked the CU lawyers to restate their case in these terms There is absolutely no justifiable reason as to why SCOTUS should be allowing the President to block subpoenas on a legitimate impeachment issue coming from Congress. It’s been long established that Congress has oversight on matters including the Executive Branch.
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May 8, 2020 15:47
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I'm wondering how much longer it's going to be until there's a SCOTUS ruling where the conservative majority's reasoning just flat out states "because we say so, gently caress you" instead of just implying it like they usually do.
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May 8, 2020 16:25
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Evil Fluffy posted:I'm wondering how much longer it's going to be until there's a SCOTUS ruling where the conservative majority's reasoning just flat out states "because we say so, gently caress you" instead of just implying it like they usually do. Bush v. Gore
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May 8, 2020 16:41
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I think US conservative jurisprudence has shifted from an attempt to break 'liberal' history and precedent through appeal to plain text readings to a full on 'rule by law' rather than 'rule of law'. Most justices, especially the newer crop, are very willing to shift interpretation of laws based on who is committing acts and who is being harmed. Takings law interpretation Congress out one way when farmers are blocked from using land to preserve endangered species but another way when government positions are abused to harm political opponents. The power of Congress to see a president's tax returns is very, very likely to come out 9-0 if the Biden wins and 5-4 the other way of Trump wins. It's kind of fascinating that the side using the rhetoric of balls and strikes has so blatantly switched to just calling based on jersey colours.
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May 8, 2020 18:02
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It’s been especially bad since Roberts became CJ
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May 8, 2020 18:41
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There are some really lovely arguments in this thread. Ginsberg should have pre-emptively retired in 2009? Just lmao
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May 8, 2020 18:41
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NaanViolence posted:There are some really lovely arguments in this thread. Ginsberg should have pre-emptively retired in 2009? Just lmao Yup she should have. We have enough racist assholes on the court already 
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May 8, 2020 19:09
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NaanViolence posted:There are some really lovely arguments in this thread. Ginsberg should have pre-emptively retired in 2009? Just lmao If you have an argument against that, feel free to make it instead of just complaining that everyone you disagree with is lovely.
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May 8, 2020 19:11
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