they'r th party of principle

Edit: nope, forgot, that was the Libertarian Party. Whatever...

An invisible fighter jet crashed



https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/sep/29/f-35-fighter-jet-crashes-in-south-carolina-on-day-115bn-deal-announced

They're a party that believes in power, and specifically power for white people. I haven't found a catchy way to describe this worldview yet, unfortunately.

how do they know

Either an ignorant post, I hope, or disingenuous at best. There really is no historical custom. There should be. Qualified candidates should be confirmed but that's just not the case. Biden cited numerous example of battles in his "little-known" speech given on the floor of the senate:

[quote=Joe Biden]Can our Supreme Court nomination and confirmation processes, so racked by discord and bitterness, be repaired in a Presidential election year? History teaches us that this is extremely unlikely. Some of our Nation’s most bitter and heated confirmation fights have come in Presidential election years. The bruising confirmation fight over Roger Taney’s nomination in 1836; the Senate’s refusal to confirm four nominations by President Tyler in 1844; the single vote rejections of nominees Badger and Black by lameduck Presidents Fillmore and Buchanan, in the mid-19th century; and the narrow approvals of Justices Lamar and Fuller in 1888 are just some examples of these fights in the 19th century.[/quote]

He offers up the so-called Biden Rule during the conclusion of his speech:

[quote=Joe Biden]I am sure, Mr. President, after having uttered these words some will criticize such a decision and say it was nothing more than an attempt to save the seat on the Court in the hopes that a Democrat will be permitted to fill it, but that would not be our intention, Mr. President, if that were the course to choose in the Senate to not consider holding hearings until after the election. Instead, it would be our pragmatic conclusion that once the political season is under way, and it is, action on a Supreme Court nomination must be put off until after the election campaign is over. That is what is fair to the nominee and is central to the process. Otherwise, it seems to me, Mr. President, we will be in deep trouble as an institution.[/quote]

Of course that was from a speech Senator Biden gave in is youth way back in 1992. He did later "clarify" that there was no pending nominee and also during the "election campaign" He did not say anything that equals absolutely denying a lameduck president a nominee but it is kind of hard to imagine that if you deny a nominee for many months you would suddenly confirm them at the very end and it is significant to note, even though he downplayed it, that he offered this rule while hoping for his party to defeat the opposing party's incumbent president. Speaking of incumbent presidents, Senator Schumer opined a mere eleven years ago:

[quote=Charles Schumer]For the rest of this President’s term and if there is another Republican elected with the same selection criteria let me say this: We should reverse the presumption of confirmation. The Supreme Court is dangerously out of balance. We cannot afford to see Justice Stevens replaced by another Roberts; or Justice Ginsburg by another Alito. Given the track record of this President and the experience of obfuscation at the hearings, with respect to the Supreme Court, at least: I will recommend to my colleagues that we should not confirm a Supreme Court nominee EXCEPT in extraordinary circumstances.[/quote]

Senator Dianne Feinstein has even opined that this nomination should not be confirmed because, well, if you shouldn't do it in a presidential election year you shouldn't do it in a congressional election year.

[quote=Dianne Feinstein]4 months away from an election, there should be no consideration of a Supreme Court nominee until the American people have a say. Leader McConnell set that standard when he denied Judge Garland a hearing for nearly a year, and the Senate should follow the McConnell Standard now.[/quote]

Isn't it also Senator Feinstein that's implicated in illegally releasing Ford's letter?

Having said all that, and I wanted this to be in a separate post, this does help demonstrate how extra-constitutional rules can be enacted and enforced that work against the constitutional process. I'm sure it is hoping for too much for this to ever be reviewed/addressed.

What's "the constitutional process"?

That's a great question. The constitution empowers each house to enact rules for proceedings but I think it's fair to understand that the constitution doesn't empower them to enact rules that diminish the powers granted to others in the constitution. I think nominations are the easiest place to see this abuse. They'd have to want to change it from within, though. I doubt that will happen. Having the senate popularly elected compounds this. The senate should be abolished or returned to the states.

How are we to trust what you say to be fair and balanced when so much of it is prescriptive? (And isn't this the same problem with so-called "originalist" justices?)

This goes back to treating the law like religious scripture. Are we to believe you or the lawyers of the world, however corrupt they are in your eyes?

Disclaimer: I think I only read 10% of what you wrote before I started typing

Also, how is Kavanaugh an originalist rather than a partisan hack anyway? Can you justify your support for a party that backs Trump on any other grounds than "he will nominate conservative supreme court justices", now that the replacement of the archetype of originalism with a partisan hack?

Who said it was illegal?

Except Feinstein isn't citing Biden as the person who established the rule. She's citing McConnell as that person.

I doubt that she was really calling on McConnell to adhere to his principle that there should be no SCOTUS nominees during an election year. At the very least, she didn't expect that her demand would be honored and that the nomination would be called off until 2019. Rather, she was pointing out that McConnell isn't abiding by his own rule.

She’s a Democrat who published something unfavourable about a Trumpian. Obviously it’s illegal.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0705945/quotes/qt2626593

That's interesting because over 50% of the post were quotes. Thank you for providing an excellent example of why I don't get too wound up in these discussions anymore. I'm curious, how does it make you to think about the amount of time you've spent in this thread and probably only three people have read your posts?



I have drawn no conclusions about Kavanaugh and have no idea what his record as a judge is nor how he will rule. I've never said I support him. I just think personally destroying a man solely because he is a Trump nominee is wrong. And what support of Republicans of mine are you referring to? Other than Ted Cruz I don't think I've been particularly kind to Republicans in general and I've been out right hostile regarding Trump most of the time.

That reminds me. I wanted to thank Jon`C for finally updating his attacks on me to acknowledge I'm a Cruz supporter.



Good question. I don't recall of the top of my head if leaking the letter was considered to be illegal or just immoral. Perhaps this will be clarified during the FBI investigation and I'm not going to look it up now. If I mischaracterized Feinstein's leak I regret the error.



Actually you are of course completely mistaken here. McConnell misrepresented the Biden Rule as applying to confirming a nominee during a presidential election cycle. That's not actually what Biden said (but really pretty damn close). Feinstein is claiming now that McConnell doesn't want to confirm during congressional election cycles. So, according to her logic, I guess her position is nominees can only be considered every other year.

No, I think being associated with Trump is actually a pretty good reason to presume they need to be destroyed. Edit: and you'd be right at least 50% of the time, including this time.



It must be nice being able to constantly defend a political party while pretending not to care.

Dude, the election has been over for two years. Cruz and his fellow Republicans threw their weight behind Trump.

That's probably why I stopped.

Honored! I imagine that's a lot of people for sassy politassassi. If I wanted a larger audience of dumber people I'd take it to social media.

It must be nice to constantly pretend to want to have a discussion and then dismiss anything that contradicts your world view. And never in that man's career had he ever been associated with Trump until nominated.

Yeah, it is true that 1) Biden did not specify that he meant Supreme Court justices should not be nominated during presidential election years specifically and that 2) McConnell specified that he only meant that SCOTUS should not not be considered during presidential election years.

But from what I've read, he's always been a partisan hack. He's somebody the Tea Party always would have loved to appoint to the Supreme Court, but which most respectable politicians knew he wasn't suited to sit on the court. So of course Trump picks him.

What have you actually learned? Come to think of it, i've learned very little, aside from that famous story about his about-face regarding how much presidents should be scrutinized. (That is, in the 90s he had been part of the Starr investigation and had written the section the the Starr report that argued for impeachment, yet in the course of working in the Bush White House, he later came to think that the president should have much more latitude -- something which his critics point argue suggests he changed his view out of political expediency, rather than it being the mea culpa his defenders claim it is). After consuming media about this guy for a few months, most of the stuff I've learned has had to do with his character: the mystery of his debt for a home seemingly outside what he could afford disappearing, paying for Yankees tickets, etc. But I've learned very little about his judicial record.

Is this actually true? I mean, I thought the story was that Trump effectively outsourced everything having to do with picking Supreme Court justices to the Federalist Society, so all his picks are reflective of where elite conservative legal opinion is. I was under the impression his views are aligned with that of most Republican senators.

I don't know anything about his judicial record. I am presuming him to be something of a partisan hack because of all the politically charged statements he's been making surrounding his appointment. For example I read somewhere he blamed the Clintons for orchestrating a concerted effort to undermine his confirmation. We don't need somebody on the same wavelength as Sean Hannity sitting on the Supreme Court!

I think people are searching for some Trumpy reason why Kavanaugh was picked rather than someone else. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if Trump chose Kavanaugh because he "looks the part". That seems to drive a lot of Trump's personnel choices. I'm not sure that I buy it that he picked Kavanaugh because of his views on executive power. And I doubt that his views would really separate from him from any conservative SC justice. Somehow the Supreme Court managed to vote Bush v. Gore without having Kavanaugh as a justice on the court...

Yeah, he said that during the confirmation hearing. He definitely presented himself as highly partisan during the hearing.

I won't deny that. The last guy he picked was pretty by the books.

Fortunately it is quite easy to look up his judicial record. His lower court confirmation was on hard party lines, amid Democratic concerns that he was too absurdly partisan to be an effective judge. He has proven this without exception, toeing the Republican Party line on everything from abortion, environmental protections, the ACA, the CFPB, net neutrality, government surveillance, and beyond.

More concerning is his record before becoming a judge, when he worked for the George W. Bush administration. It is known that he advised the administration on their foreign combatant detention policies. It is not known what else he has done, because the Republican Party refused to disclose this information to anybody outside their party. It’s most likely something that would be very damaging for powerful Republicans besides Kavanaugh.

He should not be a judge of any sort.

To stave off the inevitable cry “but all judges do that, he’s just a principled Republican voting for what he believes”,

1.) No they don’t.

2.) That’s not what judges are supposed to do.

most so-called judges are cucks, they're betraying Western Civilization by letting in Obama's aunts and uncles and turning America brown and terroristy

My grandparents were real Americans, who worked hard to be born here

This doesn't surprise me. It sounds like conservative judges who want to be considered to be a Supreme Court justice need to have a history of toeing the party line, to put it your way. One mistake -- meaning one vote on a ruling that bucks GOP orthodoxy -- can ruin a person aspirations to be a Supreme Court justice, from what I gather. That's likely especially true in the case of Anthony Kennedy's replacement, given how Kennedy ended up getting it to begin with (for those who don't know, in the minds of Republicans, the seat was "stolen" from Robert Bork by Democrats back during the Reagan administration, and many cite this as the beginning of the politicization of the Supreme Court, as I've mentioned before).

Is the constitution prepared to handle a conspiracy to corrupt the courts and install tainted judges?

According to conservatives, that already happened 200 years ago, and the country has been ruined ever since, thereby justifying conservatives in doing whatever they want in the name of rolling back centuries of mistakes.

Make America 1802 Again

John Marshall made us all slaves to the federal judiciary. That's why I don't send `em any tax monies

I'm honestly not sure what the point of having a constitution is without review from an independent judiciary.