"The Senate had, for most of its two hundred years, scrutinized the philosophy and politics of nominees—not just their competence, or honesty.
And when a President picked a justice for reasons of ideology, it was the Senate’s duty to examine that ideology. Biden spoke for an hour straight, and at the end, no one could lay a glove on him. Mitch McConnell, GOP from Kentucky, actually
had written on this subject at law school ... but when he came at Biden, Joe hammered him with history. And Dole, who had to carry the flag across the aisle, had a little speech ready, with a couple of zingers about 'constituent groups' and 'campaign promises.' But he couldn’t really knock down Biden’s point ... so he ended up just insisting that Bob Bork wasn’t such a bad guy. Biden said not a word about Bork (save to note his nomination, in the first sentence of his speech). He was arguing high principle. Tell the truth, he liked the view from high ground—Joe Biden, Defender of the Constitution! Anyway, if he could set the ground rules, he could take the fight to Bork. Through the millions of words that Bork had written or said, Joe Biden would paint a picture of the judge for the American people. That was how he could win the fight. Problem was, he didn’t know how he could paint the judge, or paint him into a corner, intelligibly. Joe had to make it connect. And he would not know ... till he had to make another speech."
From Richard Ben Cramer's book
"What It Takes: The Way to the White House" (about the 1988 campaign, published in 1992).
President Reagan nominated Robert Bork to fill the Supreme Court seat vacated by Lewis Powell on July 1, 1987, and Joe Biden, who was trying to get somewhere in the Democratic presidential primaries, as the new chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, needed to make his mark.
According to Cramer, Biden didn't know what he thought until he spoke it out loud and sometimes not even then. That's what Cramer meant by writing that Biden would not know if he could make the argument intelligibly "till he had to make another speech."
But the fact is, Joe out-argued the purportedly ultra-smart Yale law professor. And, according to Cramer, Joe had a real thing about the Ivy League elite:
“There’s a river of power that flows through this country... Some people—most people—don’t even know the river is there. But it’s there. Some people know about the river, but they can’t get in ... they only stand at the edge. And some people, a few, get to swim in the river. All the time. They get to swim their whole lives—anywhere they want to go—always in the river of power. And that river...flows from the Ivy League.”
Robert Bork came from the River of Power. And now he was going to the Supreme Court.
Unless he was stopped by Joey Biden—Syracuse Law, ’68.
Posts
81 comments:
Joe was spry for his age...32 years ago.
"Clap for that, you stupid bastards."
And they do.
And which law school did Biden's super-smart son, Hunter, attend? Yale. But, yeah, Joe's just a man of the people.
"The Senate had, for most of its two hundred years, scrutinized the philosophy and politics of nominees—not just their competence, or honesty. And when a President picked a justice for reasons of ideology, it was the Senate’s duty to examine that ideology
which seems to imply, that the Senate should have VOTED on Bork; not filibuster him
examine doesn't mean debate endlessly; debate doesn't mean debate endlessly
If Bork had only need a Majority of the Senate, he would have been on the Supreme Court
Biden spoke for an hour straight, and at the end, no one could lay a glove on him.
Everyone was too busy rolling their eyes. Biden has always been the dumbest guy in the Senate. The idea that he spoke intelligently and extemporaneously is laughable.
Victomhood is self-defining.
Since when is the job of interpreting the Supreme Law of the Land remaking the court in the presidents image?
Joe worshipped that river, and does whatever it tells him to do.
The title of the post is a lie. The advise and consent, feature just means gross negligence by a single person could be averted.
Democrats have no desire to debate this issue.
There is not a single SCOTUS ruling that cannot be overturned by Congress and the Executive.
That the legislature have ceded their power to the court (worship of power?) is the real problem. Democrats discovered they could implement their agenda through the court, all the things they cannot even get close to in legislative action. Democrats discovered a way to ignore the will of the people. Democrats protect their sinecure and sacrifice their power. Getting re-elected is more important than than governing.
Nobody want to examine why abortion is not a dividing issue in europe. A simple guess, is abortion was decided by legislation, not judicial fiat. I sure wish our population could see this simple fact.
And ten years later, for Ginsburg, ideology was irrelevant. The only question according to Democrats and Joe Biden was qualifications. The supine Republicans agreed.
"Joe out-argued"
Wait, what?
Where's the argument?
Was Bork stopped by argument?
"When a President picked a justice for reasons of ideology"? Fundamentally, what other (defensible) reason is there?
Lots of presidents will say that they nominate justices, or even judges, because of their jurisprudence -- but that is really a specific flavor of ideology. The claim that ideology should be examined is a vapid and anodyne one, used in Bork's case to excuse character assassination and imputation of guilt from the existence of criticism.
If ideology should be examined, any other reasons for nominating a justice to the Court are worth even closer examination. Log-rolling and back-scratching? That would be a terribly corrupt reason to nominate someone to our country's highest court. Having the right chromosomes? Fortunately, there are an abundance of good lawyers and judges; while that could be a factor worth examining, it is likely to be less of a deciding, or even dividing, factor than ideological ones.
Joe Biden got us Justice Anthony Kennedy instead of Robert Bork. You could put that on your list of reasons to vote for Joe Biden.
That was then; this is now.
People who have it in for Ivy League schools are people who couldn’t get into an Ivy League school. I don’t know why anyone buys the envy as a virtue. And the idea that Joe Biden or the Democrats are anti-elite is laughable. Hallowed academia is a core constituency.
The Senate was intended, from he start, to represent the States via appointment from the States, further removing the Court from political entanglements.
Dubious about that author. A strange kind of hero-worshiper. He reportedly loved hack politicians, which would put Biden right up his alley.
All started with Obama and Obamacare..
Democrats rammed it down everyone's throat. "We have to pass it to see what is in in."
Remember those words folks?
Then Mitch filibustered Obama judges, judges picked to enforce Obamacare, including SCOTUS picks... till Reid decided to do away with the filibuster rule (and Mitch warned him on that.) All cause the democrats wanted to RAM IT DOWN OUR THROATS.
Well it's karma time. As you roll a stone so shall it be rolled back to you.
But folks, the Founding Fathers could have made he filibuster rule part of the constitution and thus very hard to do away with.. but they didn't. Maybe they thought one day there would be a need to do away with it.
Anyway, genie is out of the bottle now... tough nuts.
"The Senate had, for most of its two hundred years, scrutinized the philosophy and politics of nominees—not just their competence, or honesty. "
Well, no. Until the Louis Brandeis nomination by Wilson in 1916, no nominee had ever appeared before a hearing of the Judiciary Committee. Brandeis was a very controversial nominee and was denounced by many prominent people, especially in the legal community. I believe there may have been a little anti-semitism involved as well. I don't think regular Committee hearings for justice nominations started until much later, maybe in the 1950s. Until Brandeis, nominees got a simple up-or-down vote on the floor of the Senate, sometimes within days of the nomination. I think even one justice was voted on almost immediately when the nomination was received.
That kind of opening sentence is one that makes be doubt much of the rest of the story.
Joe didn't change any minds with his rhetoric. The Democrats had the votes to block Bork and they did so. The change was that majorities or not, the Senate usually signed off on the president's pick as long as the candidate was not obviously unfit.
If you're a populist who hates the idea of a bunch of Ivy League lawyers going into a room and dictating a new rule for our society to follow...
then you hate Roe v. Wade.
The deaths from covid scandal, the fires set in the western dry forests and the riots set in the Dem cities with no law enforcement allowed all are fading away. Now the only issue is the Judicial Fiat. That is to say the somber clown car writing its own new laws from fiction. And that Beat up old Fiat is getting a new driver called Amy.
But we are not tired of winning.
The Supreme Court can do whatever the hell it wants and nobody can do a damn thing about it.
Why? Because they said so-
Marbury v Madison
The fact Sotomayor was made a Supreme Court justice and Bork was not fuels a great deal of the "How you got Trump" movement. Populists and actual evangelicals correctly regard the GOP as hopeless sellouts, which means a lot of leeway offered to Donald Trump. Maybe too much, even by my standards- and I'm the guy calling for Trump to purge elite society like Octavian.
Somewhere, someplace, someone else said it first. Even so, it was then and is now bullshit.
“Advice and consent” is like “high crimes and misdemeanors”, subject to whatever interpretation will forward the Democrat goal of the moment. In fact, the whole Constitution is subject to Democrat whim except when principled judges stop them. That is why Democrats prefer the unprincipled judges we see imposing universal edicts from District Court benches.
It's amazing to me how people can be so dishonest, even to themselves. Joe Biden is a Catholic. Nancy Pelosi is a Catholic, too. Imagine these Catholics attacking a non-Catholic for nominating a Catholic to the Supreme Court so we will stop killing babies.
While they pretend they're still good Catholics!
It's got to be strange to belong to a tribe when what you believe does not agree with the tribe. To me, an outsider, Biden and Pelosi are either good Catholics who are not really Democrats, or they are good Democrats who are not really Catholic.
Here's a woman who claims to be a "pro-life conservative" who is voting for Biden.
It’s wrong to take innocent life. But other things are immoral too.
Wow. Just wow. "I'm voting for the people who kill millions of babies because Donald Trump bugs the shit out of me on an hourly basis."
Wow, just wow. Joe was able to talk for an hour, 22 years ago!! It must follow that he can walk and chew gum today. And keep his finger off the red button.
Biden spoke for an hour straight, and at the end, no one could lay a glove on him.
Perhaps they were still trying to figure out what he'd said.
That the legislature have ceded their power to the court
And to the President. We don't have 3 co-equal branches anymore. Governing is hard. Congress is filled with chickenshits.
America is an amazing country. A dunderhead like Joe Biden can be at the seat of power for almost 50 years. And now, his meager intellect fading with age, he can ascend the presidency.
In heaven, George Washington weeps.
Bork was entirely the educational product of the University of Chicago.
I would like to see a fact-check on the notion that the Senate had traditionally probed the philosophies of Supreme Court nominees. I have my doubts. For most of the country’s history until the Warren Court, the Court stayed in a fairly narrow lane.
Yeah, Joe Biden's a regular Cicero.
Jesus, give it a rest.
In his prime he was a poor student and not very bright.
Now?
What is it with all of these writers and 'journalists' spending every waking hour sucking on the cock of DC power?
What do Joe Biden and Gordon Gekko have in common?
"Bought my way in. Now all these lvy League schmucks are sucking my kneecaps."
"According to Cramer, Biden didn't know what he thought until he spoke it out loud and sometimes not even then."
That sounds like a great description of Biden. Charitably, one might say he thinks out loud, and his thoughts evolve.
Or one might say, it is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than open one's mouth and remove all doubt.
Joe Biden may have made speeches but Ted Kennedy was the assassin.
gilbar said...
"The Senate had, for most of its two hundred years, scrutinized the philosophy and politics of nominees—not just their competence, or honesty. And when a President picked a justice for reasons of ideology, it was the Senate’s duty to examine that ideology
which seems to imply, that the Senate should have VOTED on Bork; not filibuster him
examine doesn't mean debate endlessly; debate doesn't mean debate endlessly
If Bork had only need a Majority of the Senate, he would have been on the Supreme Court
But Bork wasn't filibustered; the Senate did vote on his nomination and he was defeated 42-58. 52 Democrats and 6 Republicans voted against his confirmation.
My recollection of SJC Joe was not so much that he out-argued anyone, admittedly hazy although I've re-watched some clips lately on youtube, but that he was the master of the smirk. He could outsmirk, if not outsmart, pretty much anyone.
"If Bork had only need a Majority of the Senate, he would have been on the Supreme Court"
They did vote on the nomination, Gilbar. 6 Republican joined the entire Democratic Caucus to defeat it. It wasn't filibustered since the Democrats controlled the Senate in 1987.
Here is a fun fact for Biden fans. Bork died in 2012. Had the Democratic controlled Senate confirmed him, Obama would have replaced him in 2012. As it turned out, the man who did replace Powell on the court in 1987 was Anthony Kennedy who was then replaced by Kavanaugh. Kind of an own goal, isn't it in hindsight?
Now I know who Joe Biden reminds me of,
Mr. Cramer. I listened the Bork hearings, and Biden was a fool. Bork sliced and diced him when Biden tried to argue Constitutional Law. In fact, Biden stood out in his idiocy. Which is why I've remembered it for over 30 years.
But at least Biden was better than Teddy Kennedy, who was a bitter nasty clown in the hearings. And he was an even bigger joke in the Thomas hearings, where he kept a low, very low, profile.
Ideology wasn't a factor in Senate hearings for almost 50 years. The standard was that the President was only one elected by the American people to pick judges, and he got his pick unless you could show the Judge was unqualified or unethical. Rehnquist, passed a Liberal D senate by 68-26. Scalia in the early 80s passed by a similar margin. Powell was confirmed 89-0. Carswell was narrowly rejected because he was "mediocre" and had a history of supporting segregation. Hainsworth was rejected for the same reason. Before that, the last Nominee rejected was Parker. Another southerner, he narrowly lost because he was opposed by labor unions and the NAACP.
Jeff Weimer said...
The supine Republicans agreed.
Not supine.
On the other side.
The D's did everything possible to destroy Bork and Thomas. They let Souter and Kennedy go by because they knew both were liberals.
The R's then gave Breyer and Ginsberg almost unanimous votes. The D's returned "The favor" by trashing Alioto, rejecting Miers, and threatening to filibuster Roberts. The R's refused to filibuster Kagan or Sotomayer or engage in character assassination. The D's voted against Goresuch 45-0, then trashed Kavanaugh due to spineless acquiescence of Susan Collins, Lisa Murkey, and Flakey Flake.
Its truly bizarre. If you look at the record since Bork, you'd think the D's have been running the Senate for 35 years, and the R's were never in the majority. What losers!
Talking about a river emu sting from the Ivy League sounds a bit like talking about a swamp in DC. But one of them is conspiratorial, right?
Everyone knows the Court has become more political and less judicial, and thus seems to have permanently reduced its perceived legitimacy.
It's not as if Bork was the norm for Advice and Consent before Bork, nor is it a mystery as to why this happened: as the Court tilted toward 'justice' (what Thomas Sowell called "cosmic justice") and thus away from actual law, it inevitably became more political and thus less judicial. And since its Constitutional role is judicial, its expansion beyond that role has caused it to be perceived as less legitimate.
At this point it seems increasingly unlikely that it will ever recover its lost legitimacy, for it's in no one's immediate interest that it do so and, in any case, perceived legitimacy is far easier to lose than to regain.
And so, confirmations have ceased to be "advice and consent" and become exercises of pure political power: if you've got the votes then you proceed; if not, you don't, and that's all there is.
What's strange is how almost everyone continues to pretend that confirming a new justice is anything else. Or even that confirmation was once routine, before the Court sold its legitimacy in order to achieve political ends.
Harry Reid was unavailable for comment
"Clap for that you stupid bastards"
I saw the video. It was a joke.
BUT
If it were Trump there would be three hundred articles sans context, that Trump called the troops "stupid bastards".
Context might follow. But it would be ignored and have limited distribution.
“the Senate should have VOTED on Bork; not filibuster him ... If Bork had only need a Majority of the Senate, he would have been on the Supreme Court”
Bork wasn’t filibustered. He was voted down 42-58.
“There is not a single SCOTUS ruling that cannot be overturned by Congress and the Executive.”
Important, if true.
“Everyone was too busy rolling their eyes. Biden has always been the dumbest guy in the Senate. The idea that he spoke intelligently and extemporaneously is laughable.”
Not sure if I agree there. He has had a lot of competition for that award over the last several decades.
My impression is that intelligence is really not a requirement for politicians. Rather, I would suggest that the defining characteristic for many of them is duplicity - the ability and willingness to lie convincingly. And being too smart may get in the way there. Plenty of Senators during that time dumb as rocks. Thinking back over my lifetime, the only Presidential candidates of either major party whom I think might have actually been that bright were Adlai Stevenson and Mitt Romney. Maybe Nixon and Ford. And Trump, of course. Maybe another losing candidate or two. Maybe Bill Clinton, but certainly not his wife, who flunked the DC bar exam. Who flunks a bar exam (ignoring the patent bar exam where the pass rate has typically been around 1/3)? Was Biden actually less intelligent than AlGore? Didn’t AlGore almost flunk out of divinity school (to be fair I would have too)? Mr Global Warming got a D+ and a C- in his two bonehead science courses in college. At least Biden graduated from LS, and appears to have passed the bar the first time he tried (hello Crooked Hillary).
My theory is that what separated Biden from most of the rest of the less bright in the Senate is that he actually thought that he was smart, and couldn’t keep his mouth shut, constantly proving to the world that he wasn’t.
“ But the fact is, Joe out-argued the purportedly ultra-smart Yale law professor. ”
Seriously? More like he was able to convince a bunch of imbecile Democrat to prevent a vote. My recollection is that Bork refuses to go down in the intellectual gutter with him.
iowan2:
"There is not a single SCOTUS ruling that cannot be overturned by Congress and the Executive."
*************
OK, I'll bite: how to overturn Gideon v. Wainwright? Brown v. Board of Education? Mapp v. Ohio?
How could the POTUS or Congress overturn the line of cases that applied the Bill of Rights to the states?
The Democrats had a majority. They just needed the nerve to exercise it on what were simply ideological grounds. They needed the people to accept what they were doing and they succeeded. Biden out-argued Bork in the political arena. Bork spoke as if the people would be interested in the adumbrations of a Yale professor. Biden brought to life the image of policemen in the bedroom of a married couple. Police in the bedroom!!!
no he demagogued although not at brutally as soviet tool ted kennedy did,
"Police in the bedroom!!!"
In San Francisco, a lot of people pay extra for that...
Well, at least there are a lot of dark leather outfits in the backs of closets...
@Amadeus:In heaven, George Washington weeps.
Oh, I think he knew what the score was. John Adams wrote of his inauguration:
"A Solenm Scene it was indeed and it was made more affecting to me by the Presence of the General, whose Countenance was as serene and unclouded as the day. He Seem'd to me to enjoy a Tryumph over me. Methought I heard him think Ay! I am fairly out and you fairly in! see which of Us will be happiest. When the Ceremony was over he came and made me a visit and cordially congratulated me and wished my Administration might be happy Successful and honourable."
@Ann:Biden out-argued Bork in the political arena. Bork spoke as if the people would be interested in the adumbrations of a Yale professor. Biden brought to life the image of policemen in the bedroom of a married couple. Police in the bedroom!!!
You mean he lied about Bork, and the media amplified that lie, and Biden reaped an advantage for his party thereby.
Homer: Hey, Ray. Cleaning out the old office, eh?
Ray: If I hadn't already packed my letter opener, I'd give you such a stabbing.
Homer: Whoa, whoa, whoa. Whoa, Ray. Are we gonna let politics get in the way of our friendship?
Ray: Friendship? You told people I lured children into my gingerbread house!
Homer: [Chuckles] Yeah. That was just a lie.
Read more at: https://transcripts.foreverdreaming.org/viewtopic.php?f=431&t=22060
Althouse: "They needed the people to accept what they were doing and they succeeded. Biden out-argued Bork in the political arena. Bork spoke as if the people would be interested in the adumbrations of a Yale professor. Biden brought to life the image of policemen in the bedroom of a married couple. Police in the bedroom!!!"
Police in the bedroom is precisely what the academic woke "justice" warriors have put into the bedroom on college campuses....while at the same time the woke "justice" warriors have also reintroduced segregation on campus.
And the woke "justice" warriors are big on that whole "othering" thingy.
There is so much Fen's Law going on around here it could sink a battleship.
The legislature doesn't want to take any stands that might get cause them to lose the next election. Their jobs have become sinecures, with all the perks of Article I. Pass a budget? No ma'am, that would require work! Pass a law with detailed requirements? No, sir! We'll just wave our magic wand around and let the unelected Executive bureaucrats do that!
They want to keep their jobs without doing the work. Term limits.
for earth we have global warming / GAIA warning
for USA is it time to start using the term/phrase "political warming/warning"
I'm just tired of all of the fake political theater. Unless there's something massive in her background unbeknown be anyone, she's in - Democrats don't have the votes. End of story.
"“There’s a river of power that flows through this country... Some people—most people—don’t even know the river is there. But it’s there. Some people know about the river, but they can’t get in ... they only stand at the edge. And some people, a few, get to swim in the river. “
He stole that from a novel, I am almost sure if it, just about word for word, except substituting the word “power” for “money.” It might have been Kurt Vonnegut, but it could have been someone else. It would be fun to put that through a plagiarism program if anybody has access to one.
Revenge for Saturday Night Massacre. The rest is window dressing for the punters
Joey Biden—Delaware State, 2020.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-said-he-was-a-student-at-delaware-state-university-they-say-otherwise
I wonder if this is what you are thinking of, Tim?
From God bless you Mr Rosewater by Vonnegut. Courtesy of duckduckgo.com
You mean shame about not knowing where the Money River is?
"The what?"
The Money River, where the wealth of the nation flows. We were born on the banks of it. We can slurp from that mighty river to our hearts' content. And we even take slurping lessons, so we can slurp more efficiently.
"Slurping lessons?"
Similar to what Biden said but close enough to be plagiarism? I'm not sure. I think I could give him a pass. I'd have a hard time arguing with someone who couldn't. Seems like a grey area yo me.
On the other hand, he did plagiarize his campaign slogan "build back better" (essentially MAGA) from a UN program of 2015. As well as past plagiarism. So perhaps I shouldn't give a pass to a serial offender.
John Henry
Re plagiarism programs, when I was teaching online for SNHU we. Used Blackboard which had an automatic plagiarism engine. I would often run across a phrase, sentence or paragraph that felt hinky but that blackboard didn't flag.
I'd drop it into a search engine and would often get a hit. Sometimes different wording but close enough that I knew it was plagiarized.
My policy was 1st offense-0 for the assignment. 2nd offense-dropped from the class.
John Henry
AA said: "Biden out-argued Bork in the political arena."
Althouse is occasionally wrong, but she rarely makes no sense. This makes no sense. It's not even wrong.
That river of power sounds an awful lot like the deep state.
But the fact is, Joe out-argued the purportedly ultra-smart Yale law professor.
Bullshti.
Biden lied, smeared, and used the raw power of being the chairman to keep Bork from being able to respond effectively.
One of the cases they attacked bork about still sticks in my mind:
Company had a position where is would not be safe for a pregnant woman to work there, because of the potential of damage to the unborn child. It was established before the case got to Bork that the company could not reasonably make the job safe for a pregnant woman. It was agreed taht the company could have banned all women of child-bearing years from those jobs, and that meant that some women currently holding those jobs were going to have to lose them, and take lower paying jobs.
The ONLY thing at issue in front of Bork was this: did the company violate those women's rights by saying it would not transfer from those positions any women who were provably sterile?
Bork rules that, no, giving women more options did not violate their rights.
Biden et. al. repeatedly attacked Bork for "telling companies it was ok to sterilize women."
I hope there's a Hell, because if there is, Ted Kennedy is roasting in it, and Joe Biden will be.
Bork lost because the Democrats were and are amoral power hungry scum. The Democrats had no intellectual victories at teh Bork hearings.
Left Bank of the Charles said...
Joe Biden got us Justice Anthony Kennedy instead of Robert Bork. You could put that on your list of reasons to vote for Joe Biden.
Bork died while Obama was President, and the Dems controlled the Senate. So take that pain with you
"The Senate had, for most of its two hundred years, scrutinized the philosophy and politics of nominees—not just their competence, or honesty. And when a President picked a justice for reasons of ideology, it was the Senate’s duty to examine that ideology"
Great!
now, stop bitching about Garland.
He was rejected for political reasons. Since you said that's legitimate, you have no grounds for complaint
Althouse worse:
"They needed the people to accept what they were doing and they succeeded. Biden out-argued Bork in the political arena. Bork spoke as if the people would be interested in the adumbrations of a Yale professor. Biden brought to life the image of policemen in the bedroom of a married couple."
Joe lied and sleazed, and Bork spoke as a judge, not a politician. Why you find Joe's choice "better" is not something that's clear to me.
And as for "They needed the people to accept what they were doing and they succeeded", where do you get THAT from. Republicans NEVER accepted that it was legitimate. We've been at war with the Democrats on judges ever since then.
And Democrats don't accept it, either. Otherwise they wouldn't have thrown their childish hissy fit when the GOP deep-sixed Garland.
What happened at the Bork hearings was the abuse of raw political power for illegitimate ends. Nothing more.
And now the chickens are coming home to roost. Because at those hearing the Democrats established that they have no legitimacy, and never will
tim in vermont said ...
"“There’s a river of power that flows through this country... Some people—most people—don’t even know the river is there. But it’s there. Some people know about the river, but they can’t get in ... they only stand at the edge. And some people, a few, get to swim in the river. “
He stole that from a novel, I am almost sure if it, just about word for word, except substituting the word “power” for “money.” It might have been Kurt Vonnegut, but it could have been someone else. It would be fun to put that through a plagiarism program if anybody has access to one.
Yes, that's from Vonnegut's "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater" (1965).
http://akkartik.name/post/money-river
I'm surprised I haven't seen more commentary about the trajectory of the high court from "apolitical" to "hyper partisan". My own inexpert reading is that there are two intertwining strands. One strand is the willingness of the court to interpose its judgments in place of legislative agreements. This encouraged the political left to try to achieve political ends through the courts that it could not achieve through elections and legislation (example: School de-segregation and then abortion). The second strand is the deliberate intentionality of Presidents to appoint justices that will help the President achieve the non-legislative ends that he supports. (Or to put this in the most pro-Republican way that I can, to appoint justices that will refuse to help political opponents of the President achieve their non-legislative ends.) On this second strand, Democratic Presidents have been more successful than Republican Presidents, at least until the last 20 years. I can't think of a Democratic nominee that has "disappointed" the left. While I can think of many (of course, the Nixon nominees, but even more recently Souter, O'Connor, Kennedy) that have disappointed the right. The "Trump revolution" in nominations has been to nominate justices that are as non-disappointing to the right as Democratic nominees have been to the left. (Probably including Alito, but I think Roberts has disappointed some on the right.) And the confirmation votes reflect the trend toward hyper-partisanship. Prior to 2010 everyone confirmed with at least 2/3s of the Senate except Bork and Thomas. Then Kagan, 63-37, Gorsuch 54-45, and Kavanaugh 50-48. We are now in strict party-line lock step.
Back in 2008, Senator Obama wrote a note saying SHOOT ME NOW while listening to Biden speak.
Biden was never very intelligent. This is all revisionist history.
"There is not a single SCOTUS ruling that cannot be overturned by Congress and the Executive. "
That's untrue. When they cloak it as rights hidden in the constitution, it would require a constitutional amendment to change it.
The existence of abortion regulation via Supreme Court rulings since 1972 indicates to me that the legislative branch - both parties - prefer the issue of abortion as a partisan wedge to the legislating of abortion as an individual right with some limitations.
Were gun rights treated like abortion rights, I'd already have a .22LR mini gatling gun for recreational shooting.
When they cloak it as rights hidden in the constitution, it would require a constitutional amendment to change it.
SCOTUS did not declare abortion a right protected from govt action. The court ruled the govt could not tell a woman what she could to with her body. A privacy issue. It's crap. She cant shoot up heroin. She cant sell her services without a license. So the govt has all sorts ways to tell us what we can and cannot do with our bodies(like wear a face covering)
The legislature could determine human life begins at 6 weeks from conception. A woman can do as she pleases, but she cannot harm her baby.
Now the legislature doesn't have the capacity to govern through legislation anymore, but that does not mean SCOTUS can't be overturned by the legislature.
Rivers of power flowing from the Ivy League? It's almost as if Joe thinks there is some sort of "deep state" lurking out there, somewhere.
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