U.S. Supreme Court: Post-Nino Edition

see you in four years!

I would say we could at least thank McConnell for definitely proving with his Garland pocket veto that voters don't give a shit about procedural or institutional norms but the Dems did a shit job of making that into a pressure point so who knows really

Betting on this doesn't change anything. People should light up the phones demanding that Markey apologize for being such a fucking twit

Since he claims to speak for all Democrats I suppose even a disenfranchised DC loser like me can call his office on this one, eh?

TROY, N.Y. (AP) — U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts says the “partisan hostility” surrounding the confirmation of Justice Neil Gorsuch is of concern because it could undermine public confidence in the apolitical nature of the judicial system.

Roberts spoke Tuesday at an upstate New York college a day after Gorsuch was sworn in by President Donald Trump at the White House. The appearance in Troy was billed as a conversation with Rensselaer (rehn-suh-LEER’) Polytechnic Institute President Shirley Ann Jackson.

When Jackson asked about the “extremely partisan” confirmation process, Roberts said politics don’t carry over into the court’s decision-making. Roberts says the judiciary does its business in a “completely non-partisan way.”

I feel like perpetuating this myth is generally considered the most sacred task by SCOTUS judges

Roberts said he was an umpire -- he just calls the shots, recall.

Good thing there was nothing partisan or politicized about the handling of the Garland nomination - then you would have really seen the gloves come off!

It was so non-political, he didn't even need a hearing

all of the justices act like the partisan jockeying in their confirmation hearings are beneath them. It's part of this larger commitment (that does actually cut across party lines, afaict) to the idea that non-partisan impartiality is a defining characteristic of the courts. Dem and GOP-nominated justices both pay homage to this cuz they know it increases their power relative to the other branches, it gives them an air of authority that compensates for them not being elected. The other branches can always say they represent the will of the people via voting, but SCOTUS judges don't have that defense. They're supposed to be *above* all that, messy elections, party politics, etc. But of course they aren't, so it's annoying to see this myth clung to so desperately.

It's like they all fear that once that mythology is stripped away, the entire edifice of the courts will crumble. Maybe they're right, idk.

Panem baby

Bork was the last justice to joust with senators about his jurisprudence, and the Dem majority (and some Republicans) were so repulsed they voted against him. Ginsberg started the practice of saying shit.

er, Bork was the last nominee

so glad Bork never got confirmed

Never forget:

On one of NRs early cruises, the first one the Borks attended, I met the judge for the first time at NRs cocktail party and offered to get him a drink. I asked what he was drinking. A martini, of course, was the reply. I said I would join him. We bellied up to the bar and asked for two martinis. The bartender started to make them when Judge Bork looked at him and said, give me those (meaning the gin, vermouth, and the shaker). The bartender dutifully turned them over and the judge proceeded to make our martinis the way they were SUPPOSED to be made. A great man with a great sense of humor.

great man that was more than happy to do Nixon's massacring

the rudeness to the waiter is an example of the great man's great sense of humor

let me show you how you're SUPPOSED TO fire a Special Prosecutor

I was listening to Ezra Klein's podcast a few weeks ago and someone brought up the Saturday Night Massacre--Klein was amazed to learn that Bork was the AG who finally carried out Nixon's orders and that he was later nominated to the SC. So weird when political junkie folks don't alre4ady know a thing like that.

Can't believe I would ever defend Bork, but there IS a correct way to make a martini, and a bartender who does it rong should probably be in a different line of work.

tip: don't go drinking with Mad Puffin lest he yells GIMME THAT to the bartender for his shaker

here lemme show you how my heart bypass sugrey SHOULD

here lemme show you how my heart bypass surgery SHOULD be done, hand me those ribspreaders

(good bartending being at least as important as cardiothoracic surgery, obv)

https://www.conservativebookclub.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/A-Time-to-Speak.jpg

I once suggested Bob write a book with the title: Martinis: The Original Understanding. He was partial to The Road to Hell is Paved with Olives. Bob observed that the original martini was a careful mixture of three or four (or five or six) parts gin (preferably Bombay or Tanqueray) to one part vermouth. The whole was shaken (not stirred) over ice in a cocktail shaker, served in a chilled martini glass, and garnished with a twist of lemon. A twist of lemon, mind you. That is what a martini was.

On the occasion of his eightieth birthday, I gave Bob a silver vermouth dispenser in the shape of an tiny old-fashioned oiling can (you can get them at Tiffany's). He found it amusing, but he regarded the unbridled diminution of vermouth, favored by many asking for a dry martini, as dangerously latitudinarian.

He recognized, however, that the battle to preserve the martini had far more radical enemies than the vermouth minimalists. One large heresy concerned the very foundation of the martini: gin. People might ask for a "vodka martini" (let's say) but that concoction, though possibly delicious (my concession, not his) was not a martini.

He sounds fun

oh man: http://www.nysun.com/editorials/robert-bork/88118/

Once the judge was in place, we sat down again. A waiter approached. Bork asked for a double martini. We sat solemnly while the martini was fetched. When it was set before the judge, he pulled out a pack of cigarettes (Kents, if we recall), and tapped one on his fingernail. The judge lit his cigarette. He inhaled deeply, and then exhaled. We remember to this day watching him and thinking to ourselves, “Don’t speak first. The judge will have to say something.”

The judge raised his martini glass by the stem. He took a long satisfying drink. He set it down carefully. He took another drag on his cigarette, exhaled. Then, the man who could have been the next Chief Justice of the United States uttered the wistful words: “You know, I could have been a newspaperman.” We recognize the moment mightn’t resonate but for those of us ink-stained wretches who labor in the press. But there it is.

The whole was shaken (not stirred)

just a cool guy insisting on a shitty drink so he can pretend to be james bond nbd

shaking it dilutes the drink by smashing and metling the ice u savage

actually he thinks James Bond debased the martini!

and martinis are heaven wtf

martinis are heaven when you're not insisting on preparing them incorrectly

Even as a gin partisan I have to say that shaking a martini is very, very important given the amount of heartburn that much unadulterated gin is likely to give you. You want it cold and slightly undercut by the vermouth and ice fragments so the harsh bite is rounded off and you just have the flavor leftover oh my fucking god who borked me

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e7/The_Swedish_Chef.jpg

Dan, GIMME THOSE

I dislike bits of shaved ice in my martini but will not get homicidal about it like the rejected SCOTUS nominee

I keep imagining Bork shouting "GIMME THEM THANGS" a la Damon Wayans Jr as Brad in Happy Endings

Bork sounds like a bigger pain the ass to serve than Fred Schneider.

Is Justice Ant planning to leave?

“Kennedy leaving and being replaced by a Trump pick will almost certainly move the court to the right and perhaps make the court the most conservative court we have had since the 1930s,” said Neal Devins, a William & Mary Law School professor who is co-writing a book on the court and its partisan divisions.

Kennedy has given no public indication of his plans, but he has drawn attention with a handful of semiprivate scheduling decisions. Perhaps most significantly, his next law clerk reunion will take place during the last weekend of June, offering the possibility that he will spring a piece of news on the gathering.

The timing is noteworthy because previous Kennedy reunions took place every five years, and this one comes four years after the 2013 event. In addition, it’s taking place at the end of June, just as the term concludes, rather than in mid-June like previous reunions.

https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-04-11/supreme-court-retirement-talk-focuses-on-pivotal-justice-kennedy

He sounds fun

about as fun as anyone who is always absolutely right about everything (while you are not) could be

JUSTICE Gorsuch had a busy day!

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/17/us/politics/justice-neil-gorsuch-supreme-court.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

Ugh. We'll be stuck with that annoying tone forever.

If tone were the worst thing about him...

Dayenu

You're right,this is worse than his tone-- Gorsuch cast the 5th vote in a 5 to 4 decision to execute this man--

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/04/21/gorsuch_votes_to_let_arkansas_execute_ledell_lee.html

Lee insisted upon his innocence from the day of his arrest through the night of his execution. He implored Arkansas to let him take a DNA test and compare the results to DNA collected at the scene of the murder he allegedly committed, but the state refused. Lee also presented evidence that his trial attorney provided ineffective assistance of counsel and that the presiding judge lacked neutrality: At the time, the judge was having an undisclosed affair with the assistant prosecutor. (They later married.) Lee’s counsel on appeal appeared in court so drunk that he slurred his words. Moreover, Lee asserted that Arkansas’ use of midazolam to render him unconscious before stopping his heart was cruel and unusual in violation of the Eighth Amendment: The drug may not actually induce unconsciousness and has caused other executions to go terribly awry.

But the Supreme Court split 5–4 on the Eighth Amendment question, with Gorsuch joining the conservatives in permitting Lee’s execution to move forward.

regardless of his guilt or innocence, it is a good thing that the death penalty exists so that we can make sure that the state can preserve the capability to kill bad people in the future.

I read that lees public defender was so stinkin drunk someone suggested they drug test him

The other Arkansas prisoner scheduled to be executed on the same day as Lee:

Stacey Johnson was convicted of the 1993 rape and murder of Carol Jean Heath. His conviction rested largely on testimony from the victim's 6-year-old daughter, but records obtained by the defense after the trial indicate that the girl told her therapist that she had not seen anything and was being pressured by her family to identify Johnson. Technology available at the time of Johnson's trial was not sensitive enough to provide DNA results from the sexual assault evidence collected from the victim's body, but newer methods may be able to rule out Johnson and even provide a match to an alternative suspect.

I'm less concerned about the midazolam than the second step of lethal injection, pancuronium bromide, which causes an intense, body-wide burning sensation for the minutes between when the anesthetic wears off and the potassium chloride stops the heart. There is a perfectly pain-free execution method, inert gas asphyxiation, but death penalty proponents oppose it because they believe that convicts should feel pain. This documentary, How to Kill a Human Being, in which former UK Conservative MP Michael Portillo examines the available methods, is eye-opening.

cool

http://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/329981-trump-eyeing-second-supreme-court-seat