U.S. Supreme Court: Post-Nino Edition

America Rising Squared

America Rising Prime was already taken?

http://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/84/ed/23/84ed2366ea80475c58edf760e9e5b0ba.jpg

http://statici.behindthevoiceactors.com/behindthevoiceactors/_img/chars/char_533.jpg

Hill Rodhimus Prime

some Dem counter op should just name itself America Rising Cubed

sinking ship: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2016/03/18/mark-kirk-is-first-republican-senator-to-call-for-vote-on-garland/

Further complicating matters for Kirk is that Garland grew up in Illinois, in a Chicago suburb only a few miles from the border of the congressional district Kirk used to represent.

lol that's a good out. "Well, I just figgered, him bein' a home-town feller and all, well, a man oughta give him a fair shake and such."

Sam Nunn : Clarence Thomas

Not surprised with Kirk, thought he would give in pretty easily. He's going to have a hell of a fight against Duckworth in November, he's didn't need this held against him.

Yeah, ever since his stroke Kirk has been the first to kave.

Nina Tottenberg sez "zero chance" Obama withdraws nomination after/if HRC wins.

this was a dumb hill to die on, i look forward to shameful joy in seeing this resistance atomize as people realize they're gonna look moronic to their constituency

kirk is running for senate in a liberal state, he's also a centrist (one of the few) by disposition, so this isn't surprising in the least. but it gives a few other GOP senators some wiggle room, i think.

Senator Franken admirably bangs his head against a wall (the wall being Orrin Hatch):

https://www.facebook.com/senatoralfranken/videos/972614816157734/?fref=nf

Curious to know what freaked out Klobuchar so much that Franken had to reassure her mid-scold.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/21/us/politics/merrick-garland-supreme-court-mitch-mcconnell.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0

sounds good to me!

ha, they've boxed themselves into a corner.

Vituperative jiggery pokery

“I can’t imagine that a Republican majority Senate, even if it were assumed to be a minority, would want to confirm a judge that would move the court dramatically to the left,” he added.

imagine how horrific a judge would have to be to replace Antonin Scalia and not move the court dramatically to the left

they'd have to appoint grover norquist or something

so punchable

http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/blogs/the_slatest/2016/03/20/mcconnell_says_republicans_won_t_vote_for_supreme_court_nominee_after_election/514347028-senate-majority-leader-sen-mitch-mcconnell-speaks-as.jpg.CROP.promo-xlarge2.jpg

he looks like his face is already half-punched-in

Last month, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. delivered some blunt remarks about the Supreme Court confirmation process. The Senate should ensure that nominees are qualified, he said, and leave politics out of it.

The chief justice spoke 10 days before Justice Antonin Scalia died, and he could not have known how timely and telling his comments would turn out to be. They now amount to a stern, if abstract, rebuke to the Republican senators who refuse to hold hearings on President Obama’s nomination of Judge Merrick B. Garland.

Some people are hoping that the chief justice will speak out again, and more directly, addressing the actual nomination of an actual nominee.

It was not long ago that qualified nominees coasted onto the court, Chief Justice Roberts said last month. In 1986, Justice Scalia was confirmed by a vote of 98 to 0. In 1993, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was confirmed by a vote of 96 to 3.

These days, Chief Justice Roberts said, “the process is not functioning very well.”

The last three justices should have sailed through, too, he said. He was referring to Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., appointed by President George W. Bush, and Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, appointed by Mr. Obama. Forty-two senators voted against Justice Alito, 31 against Justice Sotomayor and 37 against Justice Kagan.

“Look at my more recent colleagues, all extremely well qualified for the court,” Chief Justice Roberts said, “and the votes were, I think, strictly on party lines for the last three of them, or close to it, and that doesn’t make any sense. That suggests to me that the process is being used for something other than ensuring the qualifications of the nominees.”

If Justices Sotomayor and Kagan were “extremely well qualified for the court,” it is a safe bet that Chief Justice Roberts has a similarly high regard for Judge Garland, with whom he served on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

link?

am driving but it's on the NYT's front page

"Antonin Scalia would not return calls requesting comment despite several attempts."

The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a conservative challenge to the marijuana legalization laws adopted in Colorado and elsewhere that permit adults to buy, sell or use one ounce of the drug.

By a 6-2 vote, the justices turned away a lawsuit brought by Nebraska and Oklahoma, whose state attorneys complained that illegal marijuana was pouring into their states as a result of Colorado's liberalized laws.

"The state of Colorado authorizes, oversees, protects and profits from a sprawling $100-million-per-month marijuana growing, processing and retailing organization that exported thousands of pounds of marijuana to some 36 states in 2014," they said. "If this entity were based south of our border, the federal government would prosecute it as a drug cartel."

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-court-marijuana-states-20160321-story.html

Quad-City Times goes after Grassley:
http://qctimes.com/news/opinion/editorial/editorial-majority-s-voice-ignored-in-scotus-stall/article_90b6da66-1f34-57d3-93b4-ea4b12c2fe56.html

who the fuck are these Freedomworks millenials that are into Goldwater:
http://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/03/21/us/21court-web02/21court-web02-articleLarge.jpg

in 2016 Goldwater is Henry Wallace, Shakes.

Apparently the kind that think it is cool to put facebook and instagram stickers on our cubicle, not to mention that vest. I revoke their youth.

on *your cubicle

Goldwater, their hero, staunchly stood against both the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, but purely on the basis of state's rights, mind you, not because he had a single drop of racist blood in his veins. He was just that principled, you know.

nyt:

"A study of 14 cases showed that Merrick B. Garland, the Supreme Court nominee, favored the police and prosecutors 10 times, bolstering his reputation as a moderate."

tp:

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2016/03/17/3761337/merrick-garland-isnt-especially-liberal-heres-what-that-means-for-how-hell-decide-cases/

Important qualifier: "So a partial explanation for why he’s sided with so few criminal defendants is probably that he hears fewer criminal cases than other judges."

Also: "Nevertheless, Garland is a former prosecutor who, if confirmed to the Supreme Court, is likely to be more conservative on criminal justice issues than an average Democratic appointee."

Sotomayor was a prosecutor too.

Garland is likely to be more conservative than Kagan and Sotomayor based on what we know of his record.

My wife's anecdotal impression of him is that he will align much closer to Kagan than people are assuming, but she is basing this primarily on interactions outside of the courtroom.

being a prosecutor definitely does not automatically mean conservative -- it's a sought-after job for law school grads to work in a DA or US Atty office just because of what it opens up.

Agency deference isn’t one of the sexiest issues that comes before the Supreme Court, but it is one of the most important. Especially as Congress falls into deeper and deeper dysfunction, presidents must turn to their existing authority under federal statutes (and the authority held by agencies within the executive branch) in order to be able to govern. Smart and influential conservative groups are very aware of this fact, and they have very well developed plans to effectively shut down much of President Obama’s power by shrinking executive agencies’ authority and limiting judicial deference to agency actions.

Garland’s confirmation would end many of these plans. It would almost certainly cut off the challenge to the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan, the administration’s most ambitious effort to fight climate change. And it would most likely add another vote to the Supreme Court who would uphold the administration’s authority to temporarily allow millions of undocumented immigrants to live and work in this country.

these days I'm thinking Garland's a sacrificial lamb, not really gonna waste time worrying about how marginally lefty he is

He is totally a sacrificial lamb but I think the important thing is that he is not a Thomas/Alito in disguise; this fantasy of stacking the court with ultraliberal judges was never going to happen regardless of who the Democratic president was due to the makeup of the Senate anyway so I don't understand why a) people are surprised that Obama nominated a moderate; b) why people thought Obama wouldn't nominate someone that the Republicans held up as a consensus pick in the past; and C) why people are looking for ways to cast Garland himself as anything but a centrist who swings right on some issues and left on others

Also: he's not ugly like last centrist Lewis Powell:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/images/powell_082598ap.jpg

Obama played a good hand here - doesn't lose much if (through some miracle) Garland actually gets confirmed, otherwise provides maximum embarassment/electoral trouble for GOP Senators. He wins either way.

xp

Yeah, exactly. It's semi-amazing to me that people are lamenting a lost hypothetical scenario that was never, ever going to happen, even if Scalia lived past the election and Sanders won.

i'm 100% rooting for him not to get confirmed so 1) it hurts the GOP as much as possible in november (though i do think the influence this is going to have on any elections is wildly overstated) and 2) we get someone better if he gets withdrawn

that's some political jiggery pokery

I mean, I am hoping he gets withdrawn so that one of my wife's classmates gets nominated instead but that's kind of beside the point of this being an excellent choice that maximizes the competing poles of "good for the Supreme Court" and "good as a political weapon that embarrasses the hapless pile of nonsense that is the modern Republican party"

Yeah, exactly. It's semi-amazing to me that people are lamenting a lost hypothetical scenario that was never, ever going to happen, even if Scalia lived past the election and Sanders won.

― i like to trump and i am crazy (DJP), Tuesday, March 22, 2016 4:43 PM (9 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

no one (here) thinks the 2016 equivalent of brennan was going to get confirmed given the current senate, but the two of you do seem to be very eager to downplay the opportunity cost of confirming a 63-year old moderate in your boundless zeal to gush over obama's every chess move. it's a real risk

Would you rather he nominated a 50-year-old centrist?

it is the least risky path

xp

personally, since as I mentioned my feeling is that the nomination's impact on the election is overstated, i put more value in getting the best nominee confirmed. shifting the court as much as possible for 25 years vs maybe, potentially altering some smaller races this november somehow xp

nominating anyone leftier would've given the McConnell et al's even more ammo for not approving the nominee. With someone like Garland, their response/messaging is confused, and they come out looking stupid. They can't go back on their "this is NEVER going to happen" nonsense, and their arguments for it are revealed as petty, partisan, and transparent.