JGR is Heading to One First Street:
Congratulations to John G. Roberts, Jr., who was just confimed to the position of Chief Justice of the United States by a Senate vote of 78-22.
JGR is Heading to One First Street:
Congratulations to John G. Roberts, Jr., who was just confimed to the position of Chief Justice of the United States by a Senate vote of 78-22.
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I still think they drew straws.
(My point, which probably isn't clear, is that I think that terms such as FOO-wing-extremist are neither meaningfully descriptive nor useful.)
I think it means he is roughly within one standard deviation of the middle.
Is there any reason Bush would not use a nationally televised address for the next announcement? I'm not politically savvy enough to calculate if Friday night or Monday night, or Thursday night for that matter, would better serve the next announcement.
(again, I note I'm a Repulican, so this isn't born of partisanship, but rather, frustration at the party of late).
One thing I'd say is that I don't much care for the nominee being "in the mainstream". As George Carlin noted, the reason the mainstream is referred to as a stream is because it's very shallow. Is original intent "mainstream"? I don't much care that it isn't.
Cross your fingers!
Was Roberts qualified? Yes
Did he have suitable character? Yes
Did he have sufficient "stature" to serve on the highest court in the land? Yes
We learn a lot about the 22 knuckleheads who voted against him -- partisan hacks the lot of 'em.
What I can't understand are the "Nay" votes of Evan Bayh, Barack Obama, and Debbie Stabenow. Bayh's vote is particularly weird, given his introduction of Roberts at the committee hearings. Maybe he has no choice but to appease the left if he's running for president in 2008. But I would have expected more from Barack Obama. He should know better than to vote against someone so qualified and such a mainstream conversative. Stabenow's vote seems weird. I guess she figures she'll have to run to the left in Michigan when she's up for reelection next year.
On Bob Flynn's comment, I would say that being a "partisan hack" is part of the job description when one works in the legislative branch.
Why don't we wait until he actually starts writing opinions before we define his judicial philosophy? He couldn't possibly have gone before that committee and trumpeted the "I'm an originalist" line. He's being as discreet as possible now; we ought to wait until he's on the court before we determine his views.
I disagree with that assessment actually. I had predicted originally that Roberts would get between 65 and 75 votes total and I always figured that Dodd, Levin, and Lieberman (despite being Blue State Democrats) would be three of the votes for him.
There are still senior statesmen in the two parties who know how to play hardball when they have to, but can balance it with bipartisan comity when needed.
Who though? Well, I don't recall Roberts being on anyone's radar, so I'd bet it's a more obscure name once again.
I didn’t find Obama’s vote to be that surprising. He always struck me as someone who won a rather easy victory in a deep Blue State against a fringe candidate who ran after the endorsed candidate imploded. Obama specifically rejected the endorsement of the DLC which I took as an indication that despite the hype about him being “mainstream” or “reasonable” he’s a pretty hard left kind of guy.
Believe me, if I turn out to be wrong about Roberts - if he really does turn out to be a cross between Scalia and Thomas, if the bleatings of the anti-Roberts left turn out to have any truth in them - then I will never have been so delighted to be wrong about something in my life. But it seems to me that we were promised a Scalia, we were given a Kennedy, and Democrats and Republicans in the Senate alike mistook him for a lone ranger-era Rehnquist. Again, maybe I'm wrong. I hope I'm wrong. But by the time we find out what Roberts really thinks, he will be on the bench for life.
Ah, so the biggest problem facing America is the literacy rates of United States Senators? Interesting. I wonder if the 48% of the United States voting population that voted for Kerry also knows how to read? And the median voter is supposed to be significantly more educated than the median nonvoter, too. God, we're a dumb country. [end sarcasm].
when I say they can't read the constitution, what I mean is that they don't comprehend the role of the judiciary in our system of government. Since it's pretty obvious what that role is from reading the text, it strikes me as being unlikely that this is a comprehension problem, which leads the only possibilities as being that have read the text, and are deliberately trying to subvert the constitutional role of the judiciary, or that they just can't read the constitution. Given that I prefer to ascribe benevolent motivations wherever possible, I am left with the latter conclusion.
But that's more a criticism of the system than it is of Roberts. The same would be true for any nominee. I wonder how the '86 version of Scalia or the '91 version of Thomas would have looked under such close scrutiny. I just think we should wait before we write the guy off. Sure, it'll be too late to do anything about it, but that's going to be the case regardless.
when I say they can't read the constitution, what I mean is that they don't comprehend the role of the judiciary in our system of government. Since it's pretty obvious what that role is from reading the text, it strikes me as being unlikely that this is a comprehension problem, which leads the only possibilities as being that have read the text, and are deliberately trying to subvert the constitutional role of the judiciary, or that they just can't read the constitution. Given that I prefer to ascribe benevolent motivations wherever possible, I am left with the latter conclusion."
No, I get you. You're calling them dumber than you. You consider them more liberal because they just "don't get" something that's so obvious to you. I'm just enjoying the irony.
Maybe I just miss the day when I was young and naive enough to believe that there was any dignity left in politics.
restated:
The more power you give state legislatures, the more attention people will pay to getting good ones.
::giggle::
PS Does anyone have gerrymandering statistics for state legislatures. In New York, they're worse than Congress. In DC (where I now live), the question is, err, moot.
I have no problem with the notion of debating whether abortion should or should not be legal in a state legislature. But the legal argument about whether abortion is unconstitutional is absurd - it isn't, it never was. There are perfectly sensible, intelligent rational liberal reasons to be pro choice, with which I respectfully disagree. But to pretend that the constitution demands the debate be resolved through the courts - or that the court is a vehicle for social change - is absurd. Since that is the positiono taken by today's minority, we are left with the questions about motive presented in my previous posts.
I have no problem with the notion of debating whether abortion should or should not be legal in a state legislature. But the legal argument about whether abortion is unconstitutional is absurd - it isn't, it never was. There are perfectly sensible, intelligent rational liberal reasons to be pro choice, with which I respectfully disagree. But to pretend that the constitution demands the debate be resolved through the courts - or that the court is a vehicle for social change - is absurd. Since that is the positiono taken by today's minority, we are left with the questions about motive presented in my previous posts."
::sigh::. You keep proving my point. Incidentally, what do you think about Kelo? Against that, oh? Some might call you willfully blind to the text and meaning of the takings clause. Not me, though. You're more brilliant than at least 8 former supreme court justices, not to mention Kermit Roosevelt, Jack Balkin, Michael Dorf, and a ton of other law professors and other lawyers who finished at the top of their classes at the best schools in the country, all without ever ONCE reading the text of the constitution.
Is it really "absurd"? Is it truly so lacking in any sense as to be patently illogical and fly in the face of any potential interpretation of the Constitution which has some basis in reality? That is a pretty strong statement, given the 9th Amendment. Which, even if you completely disagree as to whether it DOES mean what it says, or whether it SHOULD apply to the states, there is certainly an argument to be made that it does, and should, and would apply to something like Abortion. I will not reference the farcical notion of substantive due process.
Or is it just that you think it is the "wrong" interpretation? I would understand that position.
I recognize that there are some pretty strong arguments made that the ninth amendment creates unenumerated yet justiciable priveleges &immunities. J.R. Droddy and Randy Barnett have both made interesting and compelling cases for this idea. But I do not buy into either theory, and one thing that's particularly interesting about Droddy's essay is that he applies his "ninth amendment as haven of rights" theory to Griswold and Roe, and finds that even within his rubric, Roe was wrongly decided.
While I recognize, respectfully, the arguments that the ninth amendment protects unenumerated rights, I disagree, and I think the argument that it protects abortion is so wrong, so unfounded in any legitimating authority, that it does qualify as absurd.
Of course, some people will continue not to vote in any elections, and I feel confident that we can ignore those people just as ably if they are not voting in state elections as if they are not voting in federal elections.
What I mean is, I would have found that the taking was, per se, not for public use, and therefore a violation of Kelo's priveleges and immunities as a U.S. citizen. Specifically, the fifth amendemnt's guarantee that a citizen may not have their land taken by government without compensation and that if it is taken, it must be for public use not simply to be given to another private entity as was the case in Kelo.
Saying that another private owner of the land will (may!) generate more tax revenues is not a public use - the money accrued from said taxation may well be put to a public use, but the taking itself is not a public use. Such a tenuous standard of abstracted-but-quasi-connected public use would essentially void the public use subclause, by leaving it without intelligble content, because virtually ANYTHING could then be deemed public use. What would the standard exclude?
I flat-out reject substantive due process, and I read the Balkin article that I think you're referencing. I didn't agree with it. ;)
I'm sorry, I could have been clearer and more complete; you'd have had to have been a mind-reader to determine the following expansion on the thought:
Their audience is still fairly large; I meant the "such as it is" in relation to the likely small percentage of that audience that relies solely on the MSM for breaking news at the old prescribed times -- their captive audience. Thus, a Friday night timing of the announcement precludes the MSM from getting the first bite at the apple of casting the demeanor of the nominee -- except to a relatively small number of people 3 days later.
That some subset of the population and their audience, still chooses to rely only on the MSM broadcast media for news, I don't think is reflective of any particular ideology over another on the part of that audience.
I suspect that her position is in line with that of the majority of the voters in her state; it is certainly in line with the position of the majority of voters in her partisan primary.
I agree that it's very unlikely, particularly as the Federal judiciary becomes more and more conservative, and conservatives discover that actually, judicial fiat is kinda neat when its on their side rather than arrayed against them. See the kerfuffle over Ex rel Schaivo - it's fairly clear that conservatives are fairweather friends to the original understanding, and, uh, "fairweather enemies" of judicial activism.
By contrast, as liberal justices and liberal members of Congress become more and more an endangered species, I suspect they will be more and more inclined to demand a return to the original understanding, and to castigate judicial activism. Such a reversal of the magnetic poles has happened before, and I see no reason why it might not again.
In any instance, I think it a worthwhile enterprise, even if an exceedingly difficult one.
If you want 100% agreement, move to Iran. You'd fit in there or in Sadaam's Iraq, or in Hitler's Germany. Why not run the adjective all together: "partisan knucklehead hacks." How refreshing &enlightening it is to hear ad hominems from the partisan out-of-touch extreme right-wing knucklehead hacks on this blog.
I disagreed with him too, but pray tell - are you familiar with Godwin's Law?
Well thank you for introducing me to Godwin's Law. I try to avoid hyperbole except when I get really ticked off. But, Hilter did demand complete conformity and obedience from all the members of the Reichstag, or else. So, if the shoe fits ...
I'm going to have to agree with Puberty....that I'm glad you introduced me to Godwin's Law, that is too funny. (And sadly, true.)