And Kennedy decides to fuck us all

[Econoline]

[Jarlaxle]

I love it!

[Lord Jim]

BTW, if the Democrats DO try to delay the vote until after the mid-terms they should definitely NOT use McConnell's argument: they should instead use the argument (expressed in the meme I posted above) that they can't vote on such an important nomination while the pResident is under investigation for impeachable offenses.

I'm not sure that would be such a great strategy...

Il Boobce is already trying to motivate the Trumpanzees to show up to vote without him on the ballot by raising the specter that he will be impeached if the Dems retake the Congress, and what you're suggesting would seem to play right into his hands...

[Big RR]

so Jim, do you think there's any chance Trump will nominate himself to the SC to get lifte tenure and avoid impeachment?

It sounds ridiculous, but given his track record it wouldn't surprise me (and it wouldn't surprise me if the repubs in the Senate pushed the nomination through and Pence could cast the deciding vote to make himself president).

[Lord Jim]

I can't imagine Trump wanting to be a SC Justice...

Too much work...

[Big RR]

Nah, he could just sit back and sleep through arguments; and I'm sure Roberts would never ask him to write an opinion. And I could just see his tweets.

I'm sure he'd rather name himself to the ambassadorship of some cushy place like Aruba, but then he could (and would) be removed by the next president.

[wesw]

well, he is likely to get three or four more chances after this......

[rubato]

I'm disappointed but Kennedy has earned a measure of suspension of judgement. He may not want to share all of the reasons for retiring now. He has pulled at that oar for a good long time.

The quality of decision-making of the court is certainly going to shit for a long while. I would not be surprised to see Roe overturned completely and the United States devolve into states where women are treated like breeding stock again and liberal states where their rights are protected.


yrs,
rubato

[Big RR]

well, he is likely to get three or four more chances after this......

I wouldn't bet on it.

[Econoline]

If any development in the ongoing Russia/obstruction/corruption/etc. investigation leads to an appeal to the SC, any justice(s) installed by Trump should recuse themself, right? What if he/she/they don't? Who has the power to force a recusal?

[Big RR]

I doubt anyone could; perhaps the chief justice. And they could always be impeached.

[Econoline]

With a Democratic majority in the House a justice (or a POTUS for that matter) could be impeached but there is *ZERO* chance of getting 67 votes for conviction/removal in the Senate.

[Lord Jim]

If any development in the ongoing Russia/obstruction/corruption/etc. investigation leads to an appeal to the SC, any justice(s) installed by Trump should recuse themself, right? What if he/she/they don't? Who has the power to force a recusal?

I don't know that that's necessary...

Nixon appointed 4 Justices, and only one of them (Rhenquist, because he had been a political appointee in Nixon's Justice department, not because Nixon had appointed him to the Court) recused themselves in the tapes case, and the vote on that was 8-0 with all three of Nixon's other appointees voting against him...

Gorsuch has already voted against Trump in one major case:

Trump pick Gorsuch casts deciding Supreme Court vote against deporting immigrant

Justice Neil Gorsuch, President Trump's first Supreme Court appointment, cast the deciding vote in a decision released Tuesday that sided with an immigrant fighting his deportation.

Gorsuch sided with court's four liberal justices in favor of the immigrant, James Garcia Dimaya, who the government sought to deport after his second first-degree burglary conviction in California.

The Justice Department argued his first-degree burglary conviction constituted a crime of violence, which is an aggravated felony that results in deportation under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).

However, the court said Tuesday that the law’s definition of a crime of violence is too vague.

http://thehill.com/regulation/court-bat ... rtation-of

I don't think it's correct to assume that anyone Trump appoints to the SC is going to automatically be in the tank for him in litigation brought against him...

It's not like they're GOP House Judiciary Committee members...

[Econoline]

I don't think there's much point in looking at Nixon and Watergate to help analyze the current political maelstrom...Back then, after all, there was apparently a solid, bipartisan two-thirds majority of the Senate ready to remove Nixon from office.

I found this over on Talking Points Memo. Josh Marshall doesn't identify who wrote it, saying only, "Looking through my email I found this from a former federal public corruption prosecutor …" But the name of the author doesn't really matter: the points he makes are cogent, well-stated, and (IMO) absolutely correct.

• I am deeply concerned that the Kennedy retirement will put the rule of law and our democratic institutions at graver risk than ever before. The President of the United States is the subject of a serious federal criminal investigation into (1) whether he conspired with a foreign adversary to help him win a narrow electoral college victory; and (2) whether he has obstructed that very investigation by, among things, firing the FBI director in charge of the investigation. The President will now be able to choose the person who, in a very real sense, may be the ultimate arbiter of whether or not he and others are ever held accountable.
  
  Consider that the Supreme Court may be called upon to decide, for example, whether the President can pardon himself or others to protect himself, whether a sitting President can be indicted, whether a sitting President can be compelled to testify before a federal grand jury, whether the appointment of the Special Counsel somehow violated the Appointments Clause (as some conservatives absurdly assert), and whether a President can ever obstruct justice. Even beyond the Mueller investigation, the Supreme Court may be called upon to decide whether the President’s acceptance of significant foreign funds through his businesses violates the Emoluments Clause. We have no idea how Justice Kennedy would have ruled on these questions (he hasn’t exactly distinguished himself in the last two days). But we have no doubt how a Trump appointee will. Never before has the selection of a Supreme Court nominee been so thoroughly compromised by the President’s profound personal interest in appointing a judge the President can count on to protect the President. This is DEFCON 1 for the rule of law in this country.
  
  Democrats in the Senate seem to have missed this point, or are too feeble to effectively prosecute the basic conflict of interest case. Instead, they have fallen back on the “McConnell rule” as a justification to delay a vote. Make no mistake, the treatment of Judge Garland and the theft of President Obama’s nomination power was an outrage and a terrible precedent. But Democrats should not endorse it. They should not let McConnell’s mendacity become the norm. It should stand on its own in history as the flagrant abuse of power that it was. In any event, Democrats have a much stronger case to make: no vote should be taken until after the Special Counsel has submitted a report to Congress, or closed the investigation of the President. A President under federal criminal investigation for stealing an election should not be able to nominate the person who may decide his fate. There will be a cloud over the legitimacy of this nomination unless and until the cloud of the Mueller investigation has been lifted.

[RayThom]

Mueller needs to act quickly.

... Conservatives have abandoned even the pretense that the Supreme Court should be something other than an extension of the Republican Party. It’s not just blocking Garland’s nomination or invoking the nuclear option to confirm Neil Gorsuch by simple majority vote. In Justice Roberts’ famous analogy, judges should be umpires calling balls and strikes. But McConnell, ordinarily quite disciplined, can’t help but publicly gloat after every court ruling that goes in his party’s favor. When Justice Kennedy retired, he acted as though he’d just gotten first pick in the draft."

https://www.thedailybeast.com/robert-mu ... court-pick

[BoSoxGal]

Our country as we imagined it is already lost. I thought at first it was Trump, but I realize now that the GOP has been working toward these ends for decades, and we were deluding ourselves to believe in the brief illusion of progressive triumph that happened under Obama. The SCOTUS and the federal judiciary after Trump will negate most of the progress of the past 50+ years in terms of social and economic justice.

The more I think about it, the more I think none of it was ever really very true - America has always been deeply racist, and except for a relatively brief period of time following WWII, it’s never really been a place where people from the lower classes could get ahead in any meaningful fashion, nor a place with anything like income equality. Now it is abysmally unequal and rapidly declining from there. I have never been gladder for not having children, and I am full of sadness for my nieces and nephews and the children of beloved friends.

‘A Republic if you can keep it,’ said Mr. Franklin. We have fucked it up entirely and we are in the death throes.

[RayThom]

‘A Republic if you can keep it,’ said Mr. Franklin. We have fucked it up entirely and we are in the death throes.

[Econoline]

[BoSoxGal]

[Crackpot]

I’ve been seeing memes or articles of dubious veracity for a few days now. Is there any reputable sourcing for those claims?