The Supremes

[Js1 85,337]

20 minutes ago, Aqua Buddha said:

This is a winning issue for the Dems here but they're too incompetent to do anything about it.  Biden should come out with a plan to double their salaries but then have real, actual, ethic reform.  Also, end lifetime appointments.  That's the worst idea ever and if you were to suggest it now, you'd be laughed out of the room.

Double their salaries? Dark money groups can match that and exceed it 

[Aqua Buddha 14,596]

30 minutes ago, Js1 said:

Double their salaries? Dark money groups can match that and exceed it 

That's where the ethics reform comes in.  I don't know what the looks like but it needs to have teeth.  One of Thomas' complaints was that he was underpaid or something.  Fine.  Pay them more but cut off the gravy train.

['stache 21,815]

23 hours ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

I don't understand how the only check or balance that Congress and the Exec branch have over the Supreme Court appears to be nomination/confirmation and impeachment. The legislature and exec branches can somewhat force each other to find compromise but the judicial appears to have zero checks. And the judicial can effectively order around the Legis and Exec branches. Makes no sense that we give the people with lifetime appointments the ability to police themselves.

I assume the ultimate check could be that the Administrative branch could choose to ignore/not enforce the judicial's rulings. That would be a dangerous precedence if we went down that path. 

The checks and balance are fine, but like everything involving governance, it requires good faith on behalf of the governed, and one of the two major political parties in this country has thrown that out the window. It's also not completely true that the court can bind Congress and the Executive, Congress can in fact effectively overturn many SCOTUS decisions through legislation, the court only really has final word on constitutional questions, which historically has been a good thing, as in, the Constitution precludes legislation banning interracial marriage, voting suppression, etc. But again, the problem is that a majority of the country doesn't give a shit and likes suppressing "others," or at least the majority in the elctoral college and Senate that gives hateful pieces of shit in tiny states a much larger voice than people who actually live around other people. It's why I truly think that a constitutional crisis is coming, either the right will scrap it entirely and impose a fascist right wing regime, or when they try to take it that far, the left/moderates will revolt and the constitution will need to be rewritten anyway to avoid this bullshit in the future (i.e., stop giving white rednecks in Wyoming 2.5 times stronger votes than someone living in Los Angeles or Philadelphia).

[Ted Lange 16,085]

 

[HenryJames 66,052]

[Fudge Nuggets 19,190]

11 hours ago, Aqua Buddha said:

That's where the ethics reform comes in.  I don't know what the looks like but it needs to have teeth.  One of Thomas' complaints was that he was underpaid or something.  Fine.  Pay them more but cut off the gravy train.

Uncle Ruckus didn't have to take the job if he thought it didn't pay enough.

[Willfully Horn 8,017]

28 minutes ago, Fudge Nuggets said:

Uncle Ruckus didn't have to take the job if he thought it didn't pay enough.

Dude can claim he has served his country, and now chase the private windfall. Somehow, I believe quid pro quo-Ing beats his open market value.

[Biff Tannen 45,685]

Aside from the dotard not winning again, I think SCOTUS reform may be the most dire need to this nation.  Unbelievable. 

[bluto 4,929]

I wish Raskin would run for higher ofc. 

[tx 3 putt 76,958]

14 hours ago, Js1 said:

Double their salaries? Dark money groups can match that and exceed it 

 

if thomas is claiming $4mil, I'm guessing he's raked in $50mil+ 

[WhatTheBuck 28,781]

15 hours ago, A-Tex Devil said:

Justice Roberts could grow a spine and publicly demand their recusal and/or resignation

ROTFLMAO

[Dutchrudder 11,139]

15 hours ago, Aqua Buddha said:

This is a winning issue for the Dems here but they're too incompetent to do anything about it.  Biden should come out with a plan to double their salaries but then have real, actual, ethic reform.  Also, end lifetime appointments.  That's the worst idea ever and if you were to suggest it now, you'd be laughed out of the room.

Well back in the late 1700s the average lifespan was around 60 years old, so for those who believe in the spirit of the originalist intent of the Constitution, these old guys should resign.

[tx 3 putt 76,958]

No judge should be appointed for life 

[Nice Guy Eddie 13,512]

5 hours ago, tx 3 putt said:

No judge should be appointed for life 

Each scotus seat should be for 9 or 18 years. If someone retires or dies early, then their replacement serves the remainder of that time. This would give each president 4 (or 2) full replacements each term.

and for the justices that still want to serve/earn in the govt, they’ll eligible to help out in the lower courts after this retirement plan.

Edited June 12 by Nice Guy Eddie

[Keef 764]

We also need more judges.  It's crazy that you can have a situation where one judge (RBG) kicks the bucket and so many entrenched civil liberties are threatened.  If you triple the number of judges, you reduce the impact of one person leaving.

[Fudge Nuggets 19,190]

10 hours ago, Willfully Horn said:

Dude can claim he has served his country, and now chase the private windfall. Somehow, I believe quid pro quo-Ing beats his open market value.

Reporter:  "If you don't think the job pays enough, why don't you step down and find a better paying job?"

Uncle Ruckus:  "I took this position as a way to serve my country."

Reporter:  "You have been on the bench for nearly 33 years now.  When do you plan on getting around to the part where you serve the country?"

7 hours ago, Dutchrudder said:

Well back in the late 1700s the average lifespan was around 60 years old, so for those who believe in the spirit of the originalist intent of the Constitution, these old guys should resign.

Or die.

[WhatTheBuck 28,781]

1 hour ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

Each scotus seat should be for 9 or 18 years. If someone retires or dies early, then their replacement serves the remainder of that time. This would give each president 4 (or 2) full replacements each term.

and for the justices that still want to serve/earn in the govt, they’ll eligible to help out in the lower courts after this retirement plan.

Or they can go earn a fat paycheck from one of the companies they ruled favorably for. 

[HenryJames 66,052]

[Nice Guy Eddie 13,512]

This new recording of Alito doesn't reveal anything that we all didn't know.

But to not be a hypocrite, I dislike the release of secret recordings unless it flat out details a crime. I hate it when someone like James O'Keefe did it with his old Project Veritas group and I hate this one.

Secret recordings will also put more and more public officials on guard against saying anything in public. You can argue that you don't need to worry about secret recordings if you don't do/say anything wrong but it's too easy to take something out of context. Besides we're at a point or close to it, that audio recordings don't mean anything.

[jimmyjazz 45,955]

31 minutes ago, HenryJames said:

Took me a moment.  Well played, Maggie.

[Captainant 27,669]

1 hour ago, Keef said:

We also need more judges.  It's crazy that you can have a situation where one judge (RBG) kicks the bucket and so many entrenched civil liberties are threatened.  If you triple the number of judges, you reduce the impact of one person leaving.

I think it's much cleaner to just increase to 13 seats. We previously increased to 9 justices in order to have a one to one ratio with the various circuit courts, and over time we have grown from 9 to 13 appellate courts.

That is consistent with past norms and serves to dilute the fascist and/or corrupt justices out of taking away civil liberties

[yoladu 4,094]

56 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

This new recording of Alito doesn't reveal anything that we all didn't know.

But to not be a hypocrite, I dislike the release of secret recordings unless it flat out details a crime. I hate it when someone like James O'Keefe did it with his old Project Veritas group and I hate this one.

Secret recordings will also put more and more public officials on guard against saying anything in public. You can argue that you don't need to worry about secret recordings if you don't do/say anything wrong but it's too easy to take something out of context. Besides we're at a point or close to it, that audio recordings don't mean anything.

at a party or function where i might feel "captive" to a conversation, i might agree to just about anything a person is saying or wanting to hear in order to politely shorten or end that conversation.

[Nivek 16,930]

28 minutes ago, yoladu said:

at a party or function where i might feel "captive" to a conversation, i might agree to just about anything a person is saying or wanting to hear in order to politely shorten or end that conversation.

Tahoe agrees

[ROFL BOX 6,649]

[Pancho 44,803]

 

[Jive Turkey 12,598]

A little more from the opinion. 

 

['stache 21,815]

So are priests going to start withholding communion from Kavanaugh and Barrett? Probably not, they only try to do that to Joe Biden and democrats. 

[RPM 26,321]

genuinelyshockedmeme

[A-Tex Devil 2,446]

3 minutes ago, RPM said:

genuinelyshockedmeme

Meh.  It’s procedural.  Once the right plaintiffs come along, bye bye Griswold. 

[wildcat09 29,354]

[HenryJames 66,052]

15 minutes ago, Jive Turkey said:

A little more from the opinion. 

 

Showing just how fucking nuts the 5th Circuit is.

[NotActuallyALonghorn 4,976]

On 6/12/2024 at 6:47 AM, Nice Guy Eddie said:

Each scotus seat should be for 9 or 18 years. If someone retires or dies early, then their replacement serves the remainder of that time. This would give each president 4 (or 2) full replacements each term.

and for the justices that still want to serve/earn in the govt, they’ll eligible to help out in the lower courts after this retirement plan.

I'm not opposed to spmething like this, but I think you would have to combine it with an expansion of the court so that decisions wouldn't fluctuate too much due to the makeup of the court shifting. And any plan to increase the size would need to be gradual with set expansions every few years.

[HenryJames 66,052]

Harlan Crow Provided Clarence Thomas Additional Private Jet Flights: Senate Investigators — ProPublica

[Dnaguy 11,964]

12 minutes ago, HenryJames said:

Harlan Crow Provided Clarence Thomas Additional Private Jet Flights: Senate Investigators — ProPublica

[tx 3 putt 76,958]

1 hour ago, HenryJames said:

Harlan Crow Provided Clarence Thomas Additional Private Jet Flights: Senate Investigators — ProPublica

[A-Tex Devil 2,446]

2 hours ago, tx 3 putt said:

Guys, he didn’t know he had to.   Remember when he said that the last 5 times?   This shit is complicated. 

[elfenix 34,241]

4 hours ago, HenryJames said:

Harlan Crow Provided Clarence Thomas Additional Private Jet Flights: Senate Investigators — ProPublica

[tx 3 putt 76,958]

More and more will keep leaking out 

[DixonHur 11,304]

If only there had been some sign that Thomas was a piece of shit during his confirmation hearings.

[Pato del Muerto 52,498]

[Jiggy-Z 3,432]

On 6/12/2024 at 12:48 PM, ROFL BOX said:

Are you married to ArmyBrat?

[The Dark Knight 173]

It would be almost laughable now if it wasn’t so rage-inducing. Seriously, has there ever been such a blatantly corrupt USC justice? Not to mention such a self-loathing individual, given his rulings on civil rights/race? Obviously I know the answer to my question.

[Francisco 2.0 32,393]

https://snyder.substack.com/p/a-short-course-in-the-rule-of-law

The Shamans and the Chieftain

Quote

We have the rule of law so as not to have a culture of revenge.

For much of human history, it was an eye for an eye, as we read in the Bible.  In a revenge culture, a chieftain decides who is to blame, and the shamans explain how the blood and chaos is just and necessary.

In the Greek tragedies of Aeschylus and Euripides, the grand problem is escaping from reciprocal violence within and among families.  In early discussions of European law, in Icelandic sagas or in the Primary Chronicle of Kyivan Rus, an incipient government regulates revenge, so that it does not continue indefintely. 

 

Quote

The rule of law is a solution: if we are all equal subjects of law, then we plead our case before a court, rather than seek after blood.  A constitution, like ours, gives flesh to this conception. It might not be perfect: when it is not, we interpret it in the spirit of equality and non-violence rather than grievance and violence. No one can be above the law, and no one can be the judge in their own case. A constitutional order will depend upon judges who understands these fundamental ideas.

 

 

Quote

The other day, Mrs. Alito gave us a good exhibition of revenge culture: “I’m German. I’m German.  My heritage is German.  You come after me, I’m going to give it back to you.  And there will be a way. It doesn’t have to be now. But there will be a way – they will know."  Those remarks about the delights of revenge related to her choice to fly an insurrectionist flag after Donald Trump's attempt to overthrow American constitutional order in January 2021. 

The political theory of Trump's coup attempt is that all that matters is the chieftain.  He does not have to win an election, because the chieftain has the right to rule simply because he is the chieftain.  Requiring Trump to win an election is thus a provocation.  The claim that he should leave office when he loses an election justifies revenge.  And of course retribution is Trump's platform.

 

Spoiler

The legal theory of Trump's coup attempt, made explicit in argument before the Supreme Court, is that the chieftain is immune to law.  There is magic around the chieftain's person, such that he need respond only to himself.  The words "presidential immunity" are an incantation directed to directed to people in black robes, summoning them to act as the chieftain's shamans and confirm his magical status.

Some of the people in black robes, Supreme Court justices, like being shamans. Our shamans are allowed to take bribes from those who support the chieftain, and also allowed to claim that as magicians, people unlike others, they are unaffected by them. If there is any doubt, our shamans tell us, they can be trusted to be judges in their own case.

Shamans thus installed will protect their chieftain, and surround him with their magical aura. Unlike other courts, the Supreme Court can make things up as it goes along, and there has been a good deal of that lately, especially on the part of Mr. Alito. Its members can claim fidelity to the words of the Constitution, then cast all that aside when the chieftain is threatened. 

To contemplate "presidential immunity," as the shamans are now doing, is to cast aside the rule of law and summon up the ghost of revenge culture.  It is constitutionally ridiculous to say that the person whose responsibility is to execute the laws is above them.  

But the problem is deeper than that.  If any individual is untouched by law, that individual can be expected to shift the entire society back towards revenge.  Trump openly affirms this. His entire platform is retribution — retribution against others for the crime that he himself committed. Once we replace law with revenge, there will be no way to hold him back. And, as we know from experience, revenge culture quickly spreads. As we know from history, it takes on a certain political form.

Mrs. Alito affirmed revenge culture as a German way of doing things. The context was America's Reichstag fire, Trump’s attempted coup of January 2021. She flew the insurrectionist flag, defending the chieftain’s Big Lie, and his magical claim to keep power regardless of reality and constitutional order. 

The fascist attitude towards law was a modernization of the notion that the chieftain, the shamans, and the enemy who is to be attacked for our own crimes.  For the Nazis, this was the natural order to be restored. Because a constitutional order already existed, part of the restoration of revenge culture had to be carried out by the judges themselves.

Nazi legal theorists argued that politics was a matter of defining the enemy and choosing a side.  The rule of law was to yield to a special sort unrule, in which the chieftain defined politics by choosing an enemy to be blamed for his own crimes. Law would be whatever shielded the chieftain as he divided society, in what the Nazi legal theorists would then describe as a natural struggle for power. 

Following the Nazi logic, sitting judges would reverse their previous role in a constitutional order, covering up the transformation with legalistic language. They would accept their role by warping law so that it served the chieftain, defining an us-and-them, rather than protecting everyone. 

As a judge put it: "one side or the other is going to win."

That was Mr. Alito.

 

 

 

 

[Sawbonz 27,562]

Tell me again why Thomas has not been called before the senate judicial subcommittee 

[SubliminalHorn 6,788]

24 minutes ago, Sawbonz said:

Tell me again why Thomas has not been called before the senate judicial subcommittee 

Separation of powers, bro. Can’t have the Legislative branch meddling in the corruption and affairs of the Judicial

[wildcat09 29,354]

28 minutes ago, Sawbonz said:

Tell me again why Thomas has not been called before the senate judicial subcommittee 

Dick Durbin is chickenshit, basically.

[Neonmoon 38,129]

27 minutes ago, Sawbonz said:

Tell me again why Thomas has not been called before the senate judicial subcommittee 

The legislative branch is half controlled by members of a cult. 

We no longer agree on the basic tenet that corruption is bad, or that breaking the law is bad. It’s only bad if the cult leaders deems it bad. There is no longer a shared reality. Things will only get worse until cult leader is dead 

[jimmyjazz 45,955]

American's disapproval of the Supreme Court is up to 61%, the highest level yet during the Biden administration:

Marquette Law School poll

 

[Nice Guy Eddie 13,512]

1 hour ago, SubliminalHorn said:

Separation of powers, bro. Can’t have the Legislative branch meddling in the corruption and affairs of the Judicial

But Congress can grill Executive officials all day long. I don’t understand why Judicial gets a free pass.

[TwiceHorn 31,471]

6 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

But Congress can grill Executive officials all day long. I don’t understand why Judicial gets a free pass.

The reasoning is historically sound:  as a general proposition, we don't want the legislative branch controlling the judicial branch.

That principle is less compelling when it comes to the executive branch, at least those portions of the executive branch that aren't directly involved in the judicial branch, that is, the AG, line prosecutors, state DAs.

The executive could probably be as recalcitrant at appearing before Congress as the judicial branch, legally.  But the executive answers politically in a way the judicial generally does not and so it is incentivized to cooperate with Congress, which is why you see so many executive officials there.  

When push comes to shove, though, the executive can raise the middle finger.  As you will see with Garland, the House contempt citation will go nowhere.