We are finding out just how ineffectual the remedy is when norms are shattered.

Alito says **ck you and the whores you rode in on....

Letter from Justice Alito to Senators Durbin and Whitehouse: “A reasonable person who is not motivated by political or ideological considerations or a desire to affect the outcome of Supreme Court cases would conclude that this event does not meet the applicable standard for recusal. I am therefore duty-bound to reject your recusal request.” Unfortunately the Senators and reporters running with this story fail both prongs of the "unbiased and reasonable person" standard.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GOxDUZqWgAAKyLt?format=png&name=large
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GOxDKp8XUAA-5MB?format=png&name=large

 

This is a philosophy I will never agree with. I hold the opposite philosophy. The philosophy that the Constitution is a "living document" is the philosophy that "anything goes" if we want it to, and if we are too lazy, or lack the broad support, to amend it. I may have told you once before about an Ivy League law professor who believed in the "living document" theory. I read an article by him wherein he referred to the words of the Constitution as "irrelevant." My position is that if you want something that isn't in the Constitution, amend it.

First of all, there are professionals who see themselves as servants of the law. They uphold the law, deliberately suppressing their own biases, in the belief that the rule of law, and living by it, has a value to society that outweighs their biases and preferences. So yes, this is what I expect from SC Justices, the AG, and the FBI Director.

I do agree that flying those flags was unwise given Alito's position. The American flag would have been a better choice.

Lol ... I'm almost sure we've had this discussion before, or it might have been with Golem or Atwater. I can't remember, but I know I'm repeating myself now. Look, I don't want the SC to mete out "justice." I just want them to decide if something is constitutional or not, regardless of who it effects and how it effects them. I want "justice" meted out by lower courts in criminal and civil trials. If a party wishes to challenge an outcome in the lower courts on constitutional grounds, then I want the higher state and federal courts - all the way to the SC if necessary - to decide if XYZ was constitutional or not. But it's not their job to seek justice. And again, I do not want Justices who "adapt to an ever-changing society." That again is the "anything goes", "the Constitution is irrelevant", philosophy.

Aside from some amendments, it's the same Constitution that was ratified in 1788. I don't think the population or geographic size of our country then and now make any difference.

Yes.

But that judge, in determining whether or not to jail Trump, presides over a lower court. In lower courts, judges show a lot of discretion. It is within their purview to do so, and that is why we have higher courts who look at those cases in lower courts to make sure what is happening complies with the law and/or the Constitution.

And yet, what we have is a DOJ and FBI that have been weaponized by presidents and indirectly by Senate partisans. The political world will never stop doing that unless they are forced to, and an 80% vote to confirm, with yearly reconfirmation votes, would put a stop to it.

 

I would be more worried about repairing after Biden’s Russian style law enforcement against his political opponents

 

Really, everything?

The vast majority of SCOTUS rulings go unnoticed.

Did we rally behind Blagojevich?

Did we rally behind Menendez?

You don't appear to be telling the truth, .

 

There have been many Supreme Court nominees rejected by the Senate, usually for political reasons. See for example the fate of Grover Cleveland's nominees. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsuccessful_nominations_to_the_Supreme_Court_of_the_United_States

 

The document cannot be 'static' and the reason is the broad language that is used in many places in the document.
one legal interpretation doesn't speak for the entire legal community.

There is no justice alive who will not interpret the constitution, that's all they can do. They get it wrong sometimes, they get it right sometimes. Sometimes what I believe is right, you believe is wrong.

That's life, and that's they way it is, whether your like it or not.

No, no one is suggesting 'anything goes' and that kind of rhetoric implies total ignoring the document, and that's absurd.

they do their best, but, in my view, the conservative court has gotten major rulings wrong, and it's had a terrible effect on the nation.

Good.

You're conflating the term 'justice', it's broad, philosophical meaning, with 'justice' it's parochial meaning (sentencing, etc).

The symbol of jurisprudence are the scales of justice. Hell, what do we call them on the Supreme Court?

Justices.

And if his or her rulings are not about justice, then what the hell are they about?

Justice isn't' just about punishment, justice is about what is just, what is fair, what is right.

The constitution is ambiguous in some places, so the ONLY CHOICE a justice has it to 'interpret it'.

If all they did was 'what it says', why would we need a supreme court?

We need a supreme court when there is a dispute about what it says.

Now why would there be a dispute about what it says?

There is only one possible reason.

It's not clear what it says.

If it is not clear what says, when what is a justice to do, then?

There is only one thing he or she can do.

To interpret 'justice', to rule about what is fair, what is just, what is right.

What else can he or she do?

By what doctrine should they interpret it when that's all there is left in the face of ambiguity?

Often, they will look to case law to aid them in the search for what they should do.

Sometimes, they'll just disagree and disregard stare decisis, and rule with what they believe is right.

It has to be what is just, what is fair, under a concept called 'justice'.

You dn't believe me? Read the 9th amendment. What the hell are unenumerated rights?

Plenty of room for 'justice' on that one.

Where does it say in the constitution that money is speech? That was an 'interpretation' (Citizen's United v FEC)

They debated the second amendment all the way up until 2008, which finally settled the argument about what it meant.

You can argue they knew what it meant, but no, they didn't really, otherwise why the need for Heller?

Capiche?

The only presidents I know of that tried to weaponize the DOJ where it was clear cut were Nixon and Trump, .

There is no evidence that is clear cut on any other president doing that since FDR, that I can tell.

If you disagree, show me the evidence.

 

That's just what the court needs, an arrogant ******

This:

A reasonable person who is not motivated by political or ideological considerations or a desire to affect the outcome of Supreme Court cases would conclude that this event does not meet the applicable standard for recusal.


His entire reasoning is based on the assumption of a reasonable person.

He's accusing Durbin and Whitehouse of not being reasonable, when their very request was, indeed, reasonable.

This is arrogance on the court.

He thinks he is above and beyond reproach.

Let us see how he handles a Congressional Subpoena.

If he flubs that one, I say impeach.

 

I generally agree with you that Justices do have to interpret the Constitution when an issue is not clearly addressed in the document. And in some cases, interpreting the Constitution results in better justice, and sometimes it doesn't, like the Citizen's United case.

Keep in mind that "weaponizing" the criminal justice system is not only done by who you prosecute, but also by who you don't prosecute. I can think of two glaring examples, one from during the Obama administration, and one from this present administration. You know both cases. But I don't want to deflect into litigating those cases. That's already been done ad nauseam in the earlier case, and endlessly on this forum on the present case.

The point is that the system is flawed. It leaves the door open for this kind of abuse. I offered a suggestion as to how to close that door.

 

If you think that has an affect on people today, or more than 1% of folks are aware of it, I believe you are mistaken.

But he (Nixon) was the first in the modern era to abuse the office as he did.

 

Dude threw his wife directly under the bus and went back and forth over her. In addition, he said indirectly she's the boss of the home but not of her body. He exposed her as a de facto flag fetishizer, a vexillolgist of sort .

 

They aren't. Those concepts were developed due to the wisdom of our more contemporary predecessors.

Independence and Accountability at the Department of Justice

I. Independence from the President

For those who believe in a unitary executive, DOJ/FBI independence is a constitutional solecism. On this view, Article II vests the “executive power” in the President alone, and he alone wields it. That means that the President can do what he likes with his Executive branch subordinates—hire them, fire them, ignore them, order them to act in certain ways, and the like. The presidential authority to direct and control an administration is especially clear with respect to law enforcement and national security, the story goes, since the President himself has a constitutional duty to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,” and is the “Commander in Chief.”

This is a nice theory. Sometimes (though not often) I wish that it were so. But the theory has been repudiated in law, and especially in practice, for a long time. There are far too many examples to cover, but here are a few relevant ones. The President can generally fire his political appointees at will, though the Supreme Court has long upheld certain statutory limitations on the President’s removal power (including in the context of the Clinton-era independent counsel statute). The FBI Director’s ten-year term—through which Congress signaled that the Director has independence from electoral politics—raises the political stakes for a President who fires an FBI Director mid-term, as President Trump learned last year. And career civil servants below these senior political appointees (like just-retired FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe) have extensive legal protections against presidential firing.

Those are the main “legal” guarantees of DOJ/FBI independence. They are very few, and they are not the most important. The most important guarantees of DOJ/FBI come not from the Constitution or statutes, but from norms and practices that since Watergate have emerged within the Executive branch.

Every presidency since Watergate has embraced policies for preserving DOJ and FBI independence from the President in certain law enforcement and intelligence matters.
https://www.lawfaremedia.org/articl...text=The DOJ IG has a,Congress why he does so.

Then came Trump, the violator of accepted norms.

 

Public trust in government has been on the wane since LBJ be that the DOJ, SCOTUS, congress, the presidency. Overall Trust in our own government that we elected has been falling since LBJ. That’s pre-Nixon. It fell from 77% during LBJ down to 28% during Carter, rebounded some during Reagan and G.H.W. Bush, then fell again under Bill Clinton, 19% in 1994. Rose to 54% after 9-11 only to fall again. 2023 ended with just 16% of all Americans trusting their government. You can scroll down for the party breakdown, breakdown by age, political philosophy if you have a hankering.


https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2023/09/19/public-trust-in-government-1958-2023/


It isn’t just Trump. We’ve had a slow steady decline long before Trump. Trump apparently just took advantage of that public distrust. I don’t think any changes in the laws would do anything to alleviate or even put a dent in the overall public distrust in our own government. I believe Trump is a result of that distrust, not the cause. Here you have public trust in our institutions, a further breakdown.


https://news.gallup.com/poll/508169/historically-low-faith-institutions-continues.aspx

 

Those are the main “legal” guarantees of DOJ/FBI independence. They are very few, and they are not the most important. The most important guarantees of DOJ/FBI come not from the Constitution or statutes, but from norms and practices that since Watergate have emerged within the Executive branch.

 

It's a solid fact, an inescapable, indisputable fact that not all crimes are prosecuted.

If they were, the jails would be at least twice as big, and so would the tax burden to support them.

There is a little concept, a very important one, called prosecutorial discretion.

For example:

Four people were charged with Contempt Of Congress for what appeared to be the same crime:

Failure to appear to congress when subpoenaed.

Sounds like open and shut cases, right?

But, of the four republicans who were cited with Contempt, only two were prosecuted.

Now that might sound like a two tiered justice, but, thing is, we are not privy to the facts, context, details that the prosecutors were privy to. Why did they indict two, but not four?

The usual reason is that, given the totality of the facts, many facts we are not privy to, prosecutors didn't believe they could get a conviction on two of them. It couldn't be politics because all four were Republicans.

Just because you see a crime committed and it is not prosecuted doesn't necessarily equal 'unequal justice'.

Why? Because you are not privy to the same set of facts that the prosecutors were privy to.

So, you really are in no position to render such an opinion, on the whole. If you believe you do, I would suggest you are infected by a measure of cynicism.

That doesn't mean there are crimes committed that didn't go punished where we know they should have.

It happens, history has probably plenty of examples, but without context, we don't know how prevalent that is.

In the Obama administration, you really do not have all the facts prosecutors were privy to. You might think you do, but you really don't, in my view. I don't claim to.

Are they anomalies, or are they the norm? I will give the system the benefit of the doubt and say they are anomalies.

Why? Because, without actual facts, giving the system the benefit of the doubt is to support the institution.

Note that, and this is important, just because I (we, as dems) support institutions, doesn't mean we don't believe they need improving, a good working over, etc. Just about everything we can think of in life needs improving. That's a given.

The only people, in my view, are nihilists, or those influenced by nihilism, cynicism, one dimensional bellyachers, etc., are the anti-institutionalists, like Steve Bannon, the premier example, who, by the way, has Trump's ear.

Now then, in a related point, There are only, really, two parties.

Knowing in advance that each party is flawed, but, in my strong opinion, only one of the two is on the better side off history.

In the antebellum era, Republicans were on the better side of history.

But, in my opinion, from the postbellum era, onward, that changed, gradually until today, where I believe, despite their flaws, the Democrats are on the better side of history. Note that today's Republicans, and today's Democrats, are NOT the descendents of the antebellum Republicans and Democrats.

The better side of history for one big reason:

Biden is not a demagogue, and Trump is.

It's really that simple.

For some reason that is elusive, it has been my observation that Republicans are more likely to vote for a demagogue than Democrats are. The last demagogue who tried to hijack the Democrat party was George Wallace. He didn't have a chance.

Along came Trump. He, really, is the first true demagogue America has experienced in the modern era. Some dems would claim Reagan was a demagogue, but I say no, for he had redeemable qualities. The test is this, a real demagogue has no, or very few, or barely detectable redeemable qualities. Hitler's redeemable qualities were so insignificant compared to his irredeemable qualities that it would be repugnant to even mention them (he loved art, architecture and dogs).

So, getting back to the topic under discussion, demagogues are the norm shatterers, and Democrats are the norm upholders (we strive to be, but today's 'repubs' are not even trying).

Demagogues (like Trump) tear down institutions, run on that platform, Democrats uphold institutions, run on that platform.

Demagogues make the argument that it's the institutions that have failed the people, so vote for Demagogues (Trump)

Gullible people believe it.

IN truth, it's the demagogic infection (the pseudo conservative but actually neoliberal movement that achieved fruition in Trump, who exploited it and is pulling a bait in switch, the switch being authoritarianism which falsely painting his opponent as the authoritarian) that did it, they more or less disabled the institutions so effectively now they can run on it on being it's savior. They caused the problem they are promising to solve. That's right out of the demagogue's playbook.

What do I mean by 'neoliberalism'? It's the narrow idea that unfettered/unregulated capitalism is the panacea for all of a nation's
ills. It's really a misguided idea but I'm not going to get into that argument here. That isn't exactly what Trump is promoting, but he is promoting it in areas that benefit him, not in areas that do not benefit him. But, he has the neoliberals fooled. If all the true neolliberals (who call themselves 'conservatives' but really aren't) stayed home and didn't vote, Biden will win. But they've been fooled by Trump, thinking that it's worth it as long as they get their Supreme court Justices. To a guy like Trump, SCOTUS is irrelevant and he will easily offer judges to them in order to get their vote. Why? Because once he has acquired the degree of power he is after, he will have no use for the Supreme Court. Viktor Orbán didn't, Netanyahu didn't, no hard right wing dictator or those close to it, do. So, easy trade.

You want to preserve the norms, vote for Biden. You might not like him, but compared to Trump, you will be on the better side of history.

 

LBJ made a big gamble, and lost, via his policy towards viet nam.

the following has been confirmed, that LBJ had a solid plan to end the war, was negotiating for peace, when, just before the election, Nixon sent people to S. Viet Nam and told them to hold off, because he can give them a better deal if he is elected.

Nixon did deliver on that promise, but it took another couple of years and more lives lost but lost to N Viet Nam, anyway, so I don't know fi it were a better deal (not saying LBJ's deal would have been better, but thousands of lives would have been saved).

How different it would have been if Nixon hadn't committed that treason. Thing is, LBJ found about it, yet he didn't nothing. That's another big mistake he made.

But, that was LJB errors. The trust in government really is on the back of Republican, for the following reasons:

CRIMES committed at the executive branch.

Republicans win that pissing contest. Nixon/watergate, Reagan/iran-contra, and now Trump, too many scandals to mention, but the big one, the attempt to overthrow the government in 2020.

 

You might want to add this famous H L Mencken quote to your sig:

As democracy is perfected, the office of the President represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

 

Shrub was a moron. Trump is a conniving, thieving, amoral, conman without a patriotic bone in his body.

 

Sadly no that is just leftist gobbledy gook and amounts to slander as you have no idea why she chose them and you haven't asked her. You are in short guessing.

 

As it is at this moment.

 

Jeez, your comments are stuffing my 'wishful thinking' file.

 

As do yours mine. The decision will be reversed on appeal the only question will be how far up the judicial food chain we have to go to find enough jurists with the balls to slap this crap out of the park.

 

The leftist on the bench are every bit if not more so political animals than are the conservatives.

 

All justices have a 'judicial philosophy' which is influenced by ideological aspects.

That wasn't my point.

Arrogance was my point.

That would not be the liberals on the court, nor would it be Barrett.

the really arrogant individuals on the court are Alito and Thomas.

Kavanaugh and Gorsuch? Not as clear cut.

 

Nonsense. Arrogance is asking people to recuse themself because you're afraid they don't agree with your opinion on a particular case.

 

Speaking of shattering norms, we don't even know what Object Crime the jury convicted him of.

"I think, as I said before, that this case was legally unfounded. When they were reading those guilty verdicts, the one thing that we didn't know is really what he was found guilty of. Because if you remember, the judge allowed the jury to find guilt on any one of the three secondary crimes," Turley said. That meant the jury didn't have to determine what crime was committed.'

"We weren't told whether the jury found any one of those crimes, whether they found all three of those crimes. I'm not too sure we will know that. That's one of the many issues that I think presents reversible problems in this case," Turley assessed.