U.S. Supreme Court: Post-Ginsburg Edition

Have at it.

I nominate AOC

i nominate tom cotton, a good guy with a gun

get in here, goons

Can Trump nominate himself?

and continuing the SCOTUS term limit discussion, reposting the explainer
https://fixthecourt.com/2019/11/myth-facts-scotus-term-limits/

https://www.texastribune.org/2020/09/09/ted-cruz-supreme-court-donald-trump/

No idea if these proposed changes are ideal or if they could ever plausibly come to pass, but I like that they are being put out there. It's a good step to start getting people used to the idea of major changes to the court.

Bryant Johnson, Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s personal trainer, does push-ups as Justice Ginsburg lies in state in the U.S. Capitol.

Full video: https://t.co/vri1sJcUV6 pic.twitter.com/C11uVFeQlQ

— CSPAN (@cspan) September 25, 2020

He isn’t stupid so wtf is he thinking https://t.co/uyEcGDZRIy

— Doug Henwood (@DougHenwood) September 25, 2020

I'm very sorry but if the pushup video is real it's extremely funny

CNN reporting that it's Barrett:
https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/25/politics/donald-trump-amy-coney-barrett-supreme-court/index.html

South Bend is really knocking it out of the park this year.

Whoever Trump was going to pick was going to be a horror story, so I expect soon to be reading about the many horrors of Ms. Barrett, which no doubt will be many and hair-raising. Lindsey Graham will love her.

democrats will have grave concerns and strongly worded appeals to decency

democratic fundraising will go through the roof, blood will boil, the election will be won (eventually) by democrats. and at the end, it'll be a 6-3 conservative court for the forseeable future, and possible a 5-4 majority for another 20-30 years, unless the golden boy or gorsuch unexpectedly croak, which would be a tragedy

those are impressive lifespans you're projecting for thomas and alito imo

They get magic life drugs injected in their butts

haha, well it also builds in known unknowns, like republicans preserving a seat in a future GOP presidency. let's role play it

2020 (the present. you are in hell)
barrett is confirmed before election. fuck you liberals
6-3 conservative majority

roberts is 65
thomas is 72
alito is 70
gorsuch is 53
the golden boy is 55
barrett is 48

breyer is 82
sotomayor is 66
kagan is 60

2021 (biden is elected. you are in tartarus)
biden wins. breyer tags out for a younger replacement. i will create SC justice names using this thread Fighting Baseball for Super Famicom: A League of Fake Americans POLL
6-3 conservative majority

roberts is 66
thomas is 73
alito is 71
gorsuch is 54
the golden boy is 56
barrett is 49

sotomayor is 67
kagan is 61
willie dustice is 50

EVENT
2024 election. The democrat has a 70% chance of victory (same as clinton v trump), due to me running this simulation. RNG: no joke, i rolled a random number from 1 to 10, with 1-7 being democratic victory and 8-10 being republican, and i rolled an 8. REPUBLICANS WIN

2025 (tom cotton is the president of the united states. you have killed 2 people now and haven't talked in weeks.)
tom cotton casts Executive Righteousness on thomas, 77 years old, who is replaced by Sleve McDichael
6-3 conservative majority

roberts is 70
alito is 75
the golden boy is 60
barrett is 53
sleve mcdichael is 50

sotomayor is 71
kagan is 65
gorsuch is 58
willie dustice is 54

EVENT
World War III, totally started by tom cotton. 2028 election. The democrat has a 80% chance of victory, due to me running this simulation. RNG: 3, democratic victory

2029 (first influencers on mars)
AOC is the president of the united states of america, fuck yeah. sotomayor, the second oldest justice at 75, taps out. bobsun dugnutt is the new junior united states supreme court justice.
6-3 conservative majority

roberts is 74
alito is 79
gorsuch is 62
the golden boy is 64
barrett is 57
sleve mcdichael is 54

kagan is 69
willie dustice is 58
bobsun dognutt is 50

EVENT
in 2031, the golden boy brett kavanaugh, just 66 years old, FUCKING DIES OUT OF NOWHERE and it's REALLY EMBARRASSING FOR HIM

2031 (VR sex surpasses videogames in revenue generation)
brett kavanaugh fucking dies out of nowhere, best thing that's happened in a generation. president AOC appoints a justice so left-leaning that she's impeached by sergeant ivanka trump, leader of the paramilitary republican subcommittee known as Gold Team. Onson Sweemey, the first justice with a normal name in 11 years, takes the golden boy's spot and shifts the balance toward a near-balance.

5-4 conservative majority

roberts is 76
alito is 81
gorsuch is 64
barrett is 59
sleve mcdichael is 56

kagan is 71
willie dustice is 60
bobsun dognutt is 52
onson sweemey is 50

EVENT
2032 Election. there's no more random numbers, it's just me making it up. the democrats win again. AOC is on the wheaties box.

then, near the end of her second term, the unspeakable happens. Samuel Alito, at the age of 85, just fucking dies out of nowhere.
2035
some observers expect the krang-like brain of mitch mcconnell to somehow delay a democratic confirmation in his spot, but AOC casts total victory and again appoints an extremely-left greatest of time justice named Todd Bonzalez.
5-4 liberal majority

roberts is 80
gorsuch is 68
barrett is 63
sleve mcdichael is 60

kagan is 75
willie dustice is 64
bobsun dognutt is 56
onson sweemey is 54
todd bonzalez is 50

EVENT
2036 Election. it's been 8 years of supreme relaxation and greatness. even gum is genuinely _better_. everything's great. something has to change, so somehow it's time for PRESIDENT CHARLIE KIRK

2037
under PRESIDENT CHARLIE KIRK, roberts immediately resigns. the new chief justice of the united states is SCOTT DOURQUE, 50 years old, catholic conservative
5-4 liberal majority

chief justice scott dourque, 50
gorsuch is 70
barrett is 65
sleve mcdichael is 62

kagan is 77
willie dustice is 66
bobsun dognutt is 58
onson sweemey is 56
todd bonzalez is 52

I actually think that’s not a terrible way of gaming things out. The arc of the moral universe is long. We fight the fights that we have today, and we train our young folks. Good post KM.

DOGNUTT

https://res.cloudinary.com/teepublic/image/private/s--QTcxwhPT--/t_Preview/b_rgb:ffffff,c_limit,f_jpg,h_630,q_90,w_630/v1495739359/production/designs/1624926_1.jpg

in 2031, the golden boy brett kavanaugh, just 66 years old, FUCKING DIES OUT OF NOWHERE and it's REALLY EMBARRASSING FOR HIM

whoa how did he die?!

Shot by one of Dick Cheney's grandkids

Karl, that was perfect (ly horrifying).

Shot by one of Dick Cheney's grandkids

― LaRusso Auto (Neanderthal), Friday, September 25, 2020 6:49 PM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

At a UB40 reunion concert

in 2031, the golden boy brett kavanaugh, just 66 years old, FUCKING DIES OUT OF NOWHERE and it's REALLY EMBARRASSING FOR HIM

whoa how did he die?!

he dies of doing a kegstand in the kitchen of amy klobuchar's wake

karl this is some excellent scenario running and first rate use of the Fighting Baseball thread and i applaud it

i have a rejoinder percolating but it may take a while to get around to crunching the hard numbers so i just wanted to say that for now

_in 2031, the golden boy brett kavanaugh, just 66 years old, FUCKING DIES OUT OF NOWHERE and it's REALLY EMBARRASSING FOR HIM_

whoa how did he die?!

xp thanks doctor c! your questioning of that was really valid, and i don't think my answer is any sort of proof of anything. i got lazy and didn't project it out to 2045 (my original goal), but even though i ended with a slim 5-4 liberal majority by 2037, i don't think it takes much to keep it at a 5-4 conservative majority either. then again, maybe the republicans will truly never win again (lol) and it will be 6-3 liberal by 2040, who knows

So we get 40 some years of this...from an article Barrett co-wrote as quoted by SCOTUS blog

The article also noted that, when the late Justice William Brennan was asked about potential conflict between his Catholic faith and his duties as a justice, he responded that he would be governed by “the oath I took to support the Constitution and laws of the United States”; Barrett and Garvey observed that they did not “defend this position as the proper response for a Catholic judge to take with respect to abortion or the death penalty.”

https://www.scotusblog.com/2018/07/potential-nominee-profile-amy-coney-barrett/

Can't wait for her book, "Jesus is the Speaker of MY House"

@ Karl - okay! you've already gotten there, but yeah basically my rejoinder would be that you didn't actually end up showing "a 6-3 conservative court for the forseeable future, and possible a 5-4 majority for another 20-30 years." but the scenario was worth it anyway. a quibble: you don't game out the Senate, which i respect because that would be even more absurd fanfic work, but it's worth allowing at least dice-roll possibilities that the Dems control the Senate during your Republican admins, AND that they stand firm against prematurely ghoulish ideologues like Sleve McDichael, whose pasty-faced appearance and hot-mic comments during the nominations process turn the public against him. i would not put money on that chance myself, but it's at least possible.

also though, a fair bit hinges on that first d10 roll and some choices about the EVENTS - suppose Biden rolls a 6 in 2024, and is re-elected to a foggy but popular second term, his "Reagan in the late 80s" zone, AND ALSO that during that term, Thomas has a health scare and decides to retire. i don't know that the odds are so heavily stacked against something like that.

obviously in that event, Biden's replacement pick would be the mushy, not-all-that liberal Rey McSriff (48), a former bank-industry lobbyist, seen as a move back in the direction of racial and gender diversity on the court who will at least be a reliable liberal vote in civil-rights and abortion cases.

so in january 2029, we've got:

roberts is 74
alito is 79
gorsuch is 62
the golden boy is 64
barrett is 57

kagan is 69
willie dustice is 58
bobsun dognutt is 50
rey mcsriff is 50

eight years of the biden administration have left many festering wounds unaddressed, but thankfully the republican "gold team" have been mostly braying in the margins without control of either congress or the executive to formally empower them. on the other hand, in the absence of the Cotton presidency, World War III has not happened, but let's say AOC wins in 2028 anyway. why not?!

thus, following B.K.'s horrible death in 2031, AOC's super left-wing appointee is able to remain in office. you didn't name them but it's pretty obvious you had Shown Furcotte in mind. maybe kagan is worried enough about the next election, and spooked by what is by then a Sunday-morning-show conventional wisdom about "the Tragedy of Ginsburg," that she retires too. by this point AOC is not fucking around at all and appoints millennial twitter SJW Raul Chamgerlain, 44. if AOC goes on to win a second term and also grabs the Alito seat, then in 2035 we have:

roberts is 80
gorsuch is 68
barrett is 63

raul chamgerlain is 49
willie dustice is 64
bobsun dognutt is 56
rey mcscriff is 56
shown furcotte is 53
todd bonzalez is 50

... and our biggest problem is that sometimes McSriff aligns with the conservatives to dissent in 5-4 corporate-law decisions, and we see a lot of online left grousing about how Biden wasted a pick on her.

now yes, i admit........... this depends on the democrats winning four straight national elections. IMPOSSIBLE you say? or merely... improbable???! depends how much faith you put in changing demographics etc. but if none of the Dem-appointed justices die in office, they can also afford to lose one of those elections! because it might be that the Republicans can only replace Thomas or Alito with McDichael or Dorque, giving them an edge in age but not a leg up in the balance of the court.

todd bonzalez makes history as the first male latino justice

is there a relevant quote linking Barrett's sect to The Handmaid's Tale?

there must be. ominous lord, truth is stranger than fiction

xp

doc casino, first of all, obviously i had Shown Furcotte in mind. but secondly, the rest of your scenario seems plausible!

obviously gaming it out like that is a goof, but i did actually learn a few things. or maybe not. i feel like just laying out their ages, combined with the fact that they have lifetime appointments, explains 99% of the game:

christmas near-future:

roberts is 65
thomas is 72
alito is 70
gorsuch is 53
the golden boy is 55
barrett is 48

breyer is 82
sotomayor is 66
kagan is 60

that there is a stacked deck, combined with republican weakness (in terms of what we might expect, possibly overoptimistically, from their presidential chances for the next few decades after elevating a white supremacist fascist to the presidency and then ripping the country to shreds in an attempt to keep him there). even with a couple 2-term democratic administrations in a row, through 2036, there is still a decent chance that at least 5 or even all 6 of the conservative majority stays right where they are, their ass-molds worn deep

in unrelated news, just before i fell asleep face down on the couch last night, i ran across a disturbing headline about increasing the maximum human lifespans beyond its current soft limit of 125. apparently the consensus is that it will soon (10 years?) be possible to extend human lifespans using genetic modifiers, physical devices, and secret codes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_extension jfc

agreed, it's a useful exercise to grasp exactly how much the age advantage of the GWB and DJT appointees presses on into the future. but also, focusing too much on that just takes us into a zone of gloom, so unless it's directly useful for motivating present-day action and the long-term fight, i think it's also useful to bear in mind all the ways that the scenario could suddenly break down. nobody saw Scalia's death coming, for example, even though he was 79. that ended up working out horribly for the cause of justice and freedom, but it could have gone differently. so long as our rights are subject to these bizarre matters of fate and circumstance, we may as well remind ourselves that there are ways the probabilistic parts could break our way.

and the stacked deck there does look better the moment Biden can replace Breyer, which i think we all do need to be praying for (or whatever equivalent practice).

and... all these scenarios also presume a successful barrett confirmation. tbh, i'm pretty doom-and-gloom about that, seems like there's no reason to think it won't happen. but it's still probably not good for my head to already accept her as a solid number until 2049 or w/e. like if i'm driving myself crazy with all the bad things that have already happened, and the ones that could probably happen, and the ones that are near-certainties, that's a lot to do to my head, if i'm not also considering the good equivalents of all of those things.

there's also some non-zero chance that, in the event that a Democrat wins the presidential race four times in a row and this permanent 5-4 Court keeps shutting down every exciting thing the people are turning out to vote for, then a mandate for court-packing develops much much more quickly than we might expect right now.

so long as our rights are subject to these bizarre matters of fate and circumstance, we may as well remind ourselves that there are ways the probabilistic parts could break our way.

otm

i know that's not a convincing or comforting thought for everyone, but to me that really is what gives me hope

NEW: Senate Democrats say they will press President Trump’s SCOTUS nominee to commit to recuse herself if the justices hear a case that could impact the outcome of the fall elections, @mkraju reports.

— Ana Cabrera (@AnaCabrera) September 25, 2020

That seems a little dumb

I mean it makes sense but they'd still have a 5-3 advantage anyway

"Will you commit to not doing the exact thing you were hired for" is a dumb question

and... all these scenarios also presume a successful barrett confirmation. tbh, i'm pretty doom-and-gloom about that, seems like there's no reason to think it won't happen

i will continue to return to my dumb "we simulate the future and then experience it in real time, somehow diminished, as something that was already familiar" theory, until someone or something convinces me that it's not accurate. in that line of thinking, you can already see the barrett confirmation and how it happens. i already saw a headline, last night, talking about how barrett was confirmed in October. i looked at the calendar and it was september 25th, then re-read the headline and it still said that she was confirmed in October, past tense. i can't remember where i saw it, and i had a socially distanced hangout with a friend last night and got way too drunk. but still, it was there all the same.

that was just a drunken horror, but i woke up today and it's still there. the republicans have the votes. 2 have been allowed to deviate (murkowski and collins), which just so happens to allow exactly enough remaining republicans to unilaterally install barrett. what a coincidence. this outcome has already been focus-grouped on a national scale - it turns out that most republicans think it's a great idea, most democrats think it's a bad idea, and the majority of "independents" think it's a bad idea. it sounds like most ideas these days. so they'll do it, because they can.

we're currently simulating the outraged response, right now. at least, i am. and then, when it happens, it won't be the first time.

---

^i think all of that is a very bad way to go about thinking about life, believe it or not. but that's what i see happening over and over, lately.

xpost they're not asking her to not be a justice, they're saying 'Hey, you were literally just nominated by one of the President candidates in this election 5 minutes before the election, maybe it's a conflict of interest for you ruling on a case challenging his results".

But this is the primary reason they are in such a rush. If she can't guarantee to hand over the election, it's pointless for Trump. Surely he already told her she needs to deliver that vote, or there would be a different pick.

lol of course it's not going to actually happen but would you rather the Democrats not try it first so that they can frame it as "Justice Coney Barrett refused to recuse, she and Trump win, while Americans lose!"

I mean, compared to other things they should be trying, this is VERY low on my list of importance and I wouldn't want it to take the place of promising to pack the fuck out of courts, but we're kinda fucked unless someone has a McCain surprise during the vote.

Karl, I agree that it would be legitimate to inquire whether Judge Barrett would defer to established precedent over her strongly held religious beliefs, but in reality that is a softball question, because as I said every SCOTUS decision will come with a formal constitutional justification, so she will always be able to plead that the constitutional argument was uppermost in her thinking. It's child's play to deflect such a question.

xpost man alive, i don't know. i guess. i understand the problems with asking about their religion. there's a reason that employers are not allowed to ask about religion in the job hiring process. i get that.

but if the position directly influences public policy, and the religion directly influences their thinking on public policy (like conservative christianity clearly do with barrett's opinions on abortion)...? why do religious people get a secret hiding zone where they can put ideas and policies that they don't want to be asked about, while non-religious people don't?

and again, to use the job hiring process analogy - i understand why someone's religion almost has zero bearing on their job. it doesn't matter what divine voices ACB thinks are guiding her when she's working at Autozone.

so that some extremist christians can continue to believe that God wants to banish abortion and gay marriage and point to her future decisions on the court as evidence of that

I confidently predict that nothing Barrett was likely to say in these hearings, regardless of the questions asked her, would even slightly affect their beliefs or deter them from pointing to any court decision they wish to laud as evidence of god's will.

yeah, 100% agreed on the pointlessness of asking those kinds of questions. deflect, deflect, deflect. vote. lifetime appointment. it doesn't matter.

The fact that it gets asked of some religions and not others is further evidence of the problem here. Extremist christians get a free pass.

What religions does it get asked of?

I mean the only question I think would be fair to ask would be "If the constitution or a statute as clearly worded conflicted with your religious belief, would you uphold the constitution/statute regardless?" Anything beyond that strikes me as baiting.

I'm also not saying it would make any difference in the process or ultimate outcome of her confirmation. The result would be in the minds of her christian supporters. They really do believe that she is God's chosen justice sent to right our wrongs and having her deflect, demure or outright deny that characterization would be a very good thing.

As I said above, the right tactic is putting the focus on the issues, how they are decided, and the effect of those decisions on the public. It makes little difference whether Barrett helps a conservative court to screw the public because of deeply held religious beliefs or because she is just deeply wrong-headed, like Gorsuch. The outcomes are what matter.

also I know this is a bit pedantic, but the Supreme Court lacks the power to banish abortion or gay marriage. All they can do is say whether it's constitutional or not for the federal or a state government to banish gay marriage or abortion. And you're not going to wind up with a federal gay marriage or abortion ban if decisions get overturned, you're going to wind up with states deciding whether they want to continue to recognize gay marriage/allow abortion. Which still would be very bad, but would not equate to "banishing abortion" or "banishing gay marriage." There's no question that a judge who is pro-life is going to be more inclined to say "leave it to the states" and a person who is pro-choice is going to be more inclined to say "don't leave it to the states." Same with gay marriage. I don't know what about Barrett's particular brand of catholicism makes the religious aspect more of interest than with a judge of any other religion - the only question is do you put your religion above the law or not. And they will say they don't, and as Aimless points out, may very well find a way to inject their religion into their decisions anyway. But there are, in fact, judges in this world who DON'T inject their religion into their decisions. There are pro-life judges who still abide by Roe v. Wade and its progeny.

and what Aimless said - the outcomes matter, not the religion. Maybe I am extra sensitive to this having seen a lot of wild theories about what my own religion supposedly says and dictates based on texts taken out of context and often mistranslated or misquoted. Religions are vast and complex and no one on this planet abides 100% literally by every word of every precept of their religion.

tbf "leaving it to the states" means "stripping right from tens of millions of people"

also I know this is a bit pedantic, but the Supreme Court lacks the power to banish abortion or gay marriage. All they can do is say whether it's constitutional or not for the federal or a state government to banish gay marriage or abortion. And you're not going to wind up with a federal gay marriage or abortion ban if decisions get overturned, you're going to wind up with states deciding whether they want to continue to recognize gay marriage/allow abortion. Which still would be very bad, but would not equate to "banishing abortion" or "banishing gay marriage."

so they can't banish it, but they can directly open up the door to a bunch of states who are clearly going to do it, as soon as they're allowed to do it. and they're the only ones who can open that door. i think that is a bit pedantic

xp

tbf to man alive it's a fair thing to point out, not as a "it's not THAT bad guys" (which m.a. wasn't saying) but pointing out it's actually way worse than an outright 'ban' in many ways because now you're giving 50 individual state governments the right to set 50 different sets of rules without federal protections for the act itself.

guessing many states that have been relatively pro-choice and relied on the Roe ruling would have to add legislation if they wanted to protect it for their state. and then there'd be criminalizing people who got it done out of state?

it's a nightmare I don't want to even think through

well

how much should I be panicking about the kavanaugh bush v. gore thing

^^ same question

I don't understand. He and Roberts worked on it.

oh they were ... on Bush's legal team. right.

kavanaugh citing/endorsing rehnquist's stance in the other big piece of supreme court news

with Bush v Gore, we have to remember this was actually the Bush campaign playing defense. Bush won the Florida vote on original count, Gore was the party that contested the results and wanted a manual recount, and SCOTUS halted it. Gore winning at SCOTUS unfortunately probably wouldn't have helped as Florida officials were working on selecting electors who would vote the way they felt the vote went, meaning they'd vote for Bush even if the recount found Gore the winner, which would tie more up in court.

In this scenario, Trump would be Gore, and from the looks of it, his move would probably be trying to file lawsuits in several swing states claiming the count from election night should be the prevailing count, a move essentially asking for the remove of legal ballots from the count, which is the opposite of what Gore argued. it's easier to prevail in SCOTUS in a federal election case if you're the party that won.

i get nerves re: SCOTUS, but they're already seated, and voting against Trump isn't going to put them in any kind of jeopardy - no SCOTUS justice has ever been impeached successfully. SCOTUS has sided with Trump on many cases, but that's because many of the conservative jurists are lunatics and probably would have voted the same way even pre-Trump. but some of the more ludicrous cases that have made it to SCOTUS, even the 5-4 conservative court bucked Trump.

i'm no longer going to say something won't happen because that's fruitless, but i'd rather focus on what we have control over at this point.

*justices

there are literally friends of mine now who seem to think all Trump has to do is say "I won, do u agree SCOTUS, how many EVs do you think I deserve?" and SCOTUS hold up cards with numbers on them like they're figure skating judges.

good article: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/09/can-trump-supreme-court-decide-election.html

I'm one of the "discrete majorities" that a liberal Court would've protected under Footnote Four, but since Ginsberg's death I've been numb if not indifferent to the inevitability of Barrett's confirmation. Too close to election, I suppose.

xp -- that article is somewhat out of date; for instance, as of today, the "legal dispute over how long mail-in ballots will be counted for" in Wisconsin is no longer disputed but settled, and not in favor of voters

it's the most recent one I could find, especially considering how quickly the courts are moving through the barrage of state cases. I don't think its general thesis is out of date at all though

this one gets at what I had mentioned before: http://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/10/barrett-election-bush-v-gore-vengeance.html

I think the fear for some people is less that the Court is going to wave a wand and overturn the results, but rather how much fuckery and voter disenfranchisement they will muster up in the next week and immediately after.

lol why is anybody worrying? she's got this, chill out

https://i.imgur.com/otf79gg.jpg

It doesn’t matter what this court does, this court is illegitimate.

If the Dems don’t pack this shit I’m going fucking tankie

this is a pretty grim night in US history. even if we all saw it coming and even if there are possible ways out of it, it is so fucking wrong and unfair and cruel that things came to this.

If the Dems don’t pack this shit I’m going fucking tankie

https://i.imgur.com/mw5dlee.png

Silence on my twitter timeline, pretty much. Had to go to newspapers to look at the confirmation headline.

It is literally the only thing people on my Twitter timeline are discussing, save from the Tory MP's big dinners

Ha, I bet it was the ghost of RBG that gave Bitch McConnell them purple hands! Yaaaaas Queen!

What do you mean I have to file a medical visa if I'm admitted to an out-of-state hospital?

Can’t wait for Breyer not to retire over the next four years and then President Tom Cotton gets to name his replacement

Can't wait for the first "Cotton eyes Joe" headline

BIDEN - It Beats Picking Cotton!

These dueling opinions from Kavanaugh and Kagan on mail-in ballots may be the most important story of the day:

Kavanaugh: late ballots could “flip the results of an election”

Kagan: “there are no results to ‘flip’ until all valid votes are counted”https://t.co/o4Ew6IEQ2C

— Ryan Lizza (@RyanLizza) October 27, 2020

Bush v. Gore was so weird and seemingly such an anomaly that I feel Dems rolled over partly out of a misplaced sense of honor and partly in shock. If this happened again in even more dramatic fashion in this current climate, I feel the SC might as well be voting to light the country on fire.

BIDEN - It Beats Picking Cotton!

xpost to be honest, this is the type of fuckery that I think is more likely to succeed in the Supreme Court. States basically successfully lobbying to discard late-received votes due to the bullshit narrative of it 'flipping' the election. Obviously Justice Kagan is correct but it won't matter as the conservative bloc will win this battle every time.

this unfortunately means we gotta do our shit and get our ballots back early and show up in person to vote if it looks like we're cutting it close. it's bullshit, it's unfair, but it's the only way to be sure that we exterminate the cockroach in the White House.

Kavanaugh's concurrence in the Wisconsin case is sloppy AF.

(A thread.)

— Tierney Sneed (@Tierney_Megan) October 27, 2020

So Barrett might not even be the most incompetent justice. This is fine.

ACB's opinions will also be sloppy, but mostly because of the stigmata blood dripping all over the pages

Does sloppy matter when they can do whatever the fuck they want?

I prefer fastidious fascism myself

Yeah, the more power they gain and hold, the less they need to pretend to care about correct jurisprudence