The Supreme Court nomination is a distraction. It
does not matter if he is qualified: he is nominated by a man unfit to be President, who has proven he has no concern for the rule of law. This President ought to be impeached and his rulings overturned.
Not sure I follow that one. This might be the first not-imcompetant nomination the president has made...And you're saying it shouldn't count?
ReplyDeleteThere are way way worse condidates he could have come up with.
Liberals should be breathing a sigh of relief over this guy and confirm him in record time.
I mean, we all knew a Hillary win was required to get a liberal judge. That didn't happen, so we knew we were going to get a conservative judge...No way around that.
This guy is at least legit. I'm not at all fond of many of his positions but within the subset of "if you have to get stuck with a conservative judge" this guy is about the best there is.
I mean, if we block this guy and impeach Trump...I don't even want to see what kind of vile turd Pence would nominate.
Ralph, if you don't follow then why not reread until you do?
ReplyDeleteLiberals should be 'breathing a sigh of relief' over a guy who holds the same position on most things as the late, unlamented Scalia?
ReplyDeleteReally?
That's ... a remarkable viewpoint. And the viewpoint of a person who isn't looking at having half a century of civil rights gains in terms of reproductive freedom or LGBT rights taken away from them.
Because the big battle is coming and the first front is FADA. If that survives a Supreme Court challenge, then the above mentioned progress is literally undone.
The BBC did a very thorough look thru of the important cases this specific judge has sat in on and although he is more competent than Trump's cabinet choices he has a number of problematic viewpoints he's weighed in on. He is too heavily connected to the Religious Right in Colorado (there is a BIG Christian Religious Right Community there that moved into the state in the 1980s to influence certain elections and propositions in that state at the time and never left).
ReplyDeletebbc.com - Supreme Court Neil Gorsuch: Who is Trump's nominee? - BBC News
But he's also a stealth candidate which hearings will reveal as he has never weighed in on certain issues as they never came up before him on the bench so he appears safer than others (no abortion related rulings for example).
I kinda sorta have to agree with Ralph. We lost. A year ago, Republicans declared that henceforth only Republicans can nominate SCOTUS judges, and voters decided that that wasn't a deal-breaker and kept the Senate's ideological balance.
ReplyDeleteIt's over and we lost. The Democrats won't hold all SCOTUS nominations open for four years, because they think they can still do well playing by the old rules.
About the best thing we can do now is be thankful to President Pussygrabber that he didn't go full Mike Pence and nominate some dickhead like Roy Moore. It sucks being on the losing side of history, but we are.
Curt Thompson Joseph Teller I hear ya. I do. But, again, the candidate is a distraction. This makes Trump look legitimate, and suddenly we're not focused on the real issue: removal.
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols
ReplyDeleteRespectfully, I disagree. Trump will be with us four years. This guy is 49, as I recall. Which means we're looking at having a guy who believes that things should be the way they were envisioned in 1780 forever on the court for decades to come.
There is no mechanism for a 'do-over' here. Calling the real world effects of a Trump presidency a 'distraction' is ... well, it's certainly a point of view.
I assure you, removal or at least blocking of as much of the Trump agenda remains on the radar. There were protests in Boston yesterday just as there was all weekend.
ReplyDeleteBUT there is also the problem that the media is not covering the protests and lawsuits etc effectively after the initial ones. The Press is failing as usual to be more than a Mayfly in the ointment, it forgets and refuses to stay focused.
Curt Thompson And reasonable people can disagree!
ReplyDeleteI disagree that we're stuck with him for four years. Every thing before this has directly advanced the agency of evil, and also made him less popular. The reaction to this is almost normal, which makes him seem legitimate and almost normal.
Removal remains necessary. The Senate needs to do their job.
The problem that no one us saying is that this Supreme Court choice is TOO YOUNG. He's less than 50, younger than me, and that means he will sit on the court for up to 4 decades if he gets in.
ReplyDeleteI'll say it: He's too young.
ReplyDeleteHe's also being appointed far too early in a Presidency. By a President whose unpopularity is now the majority, and who needs to simply be removed from office.
William Nichols
ReplyDeleteGood luck on that one. The Republicans are getting everything they wanted out of him. While they control Congress, he's bulletproof until they are convinced that he's done dismantling anything remotely progressive or liberal.
Congress isn't going to save us.
Joseph Teller
ReplyDeleteI did say that above. :p
Of course while we're paying attention to a three month process, the day after Trump met with Big Pharma, the price of naloxone is going up.
ReplyDeleteYeah, he folded like Superman on laundry day when it came to drug prices. Now he claims that his amazing tax-cut and regulation-removal will make drugs cheaper. Which it won't.
ReplyDeleteCurt Thompson I know... looks like I was writing that at the same time you were posting. I tend to be a lot slower on the new Googleplus at doing everything. The new interface is NOT good for the sight impaired or the arthritic.
ReplyDeleteJohn Hattan Yes, he found out drug companies have money, a lot, and that a lot of Republicans have campaign warchests coming from them.
ReplyDeleteI think it does matter if he's qualified. I'm hanging fire on that question, waiting for more evidence to come out.
ReplyDeleteI think it matters because we're a nation of laws, not men. Whatever I think of the president's legitimacy, I'm on the side of shoring up our norms and values. They appear to be the major underdog this year.
So congress-critters should be carefully weighing what they individually think of Gorsuch, not because theirs will be the deciding vote, but because it matters that we retain the aspiration and ability to vote conscientiously rather than merely strategically. I often fail at making that important in my own thoughts, so I'm in a heck of a glass house ... no throwing stones, just a humble insistence on principles being worth aspiring to.
Joseph Teller First, I'm sorry the new G+ is bad for you. One virtue in hosting my own threads is it comes to my gmail, which I find far more satisfying than a tiny window up top or whatever.
ReplyDeleteSecond, are you suggesting the President was bribed?
I'm not. He's not the President, and seems pretty easy to bribe.
William Nichols what is it you want me to reread.
ReplyDeleteYou are saying let's not get distracted by the supreme Court nomination let's keep focusing on removing Trump.
Why? So that president Pence can nominate a guy 100 times worse than this guy? What I'm not following is how that makes any sense at all.
Unless you have a plan for removing Pence at the same time as Trump, what you OUGHT to be focused on is that Trump served you up a softball...A legitimate legal mind...Conservative to be sure but not a crazy far right loony toon...Make sure he gets confirmed quickly and THEN remove Trump.
Because if you remove Trump first, I guarantee Pences guy will be so much worse.
So yeah, Curt. You should be breathing a sigh of relief that this guy is the second coming of Scalia. Because if you're not, that just shows that a) you have no idea how much worse than Scalia the nomination could have been and b) somehow think you'd have any chance of stopping it.
Getting a 49 year old Scalia is the price you pay for failing to find a candidate capable of motivating the left to actually show up at the polls.
You should be thankful it's not so much more worse.
Ralph Mazza I'm not going to read all that. Learn some brevity.
ReplyDeleteYou started by saying you didn't understand. I told you to reread. Now, it seems that you maybe do but disagree?
That's fine, but I deplore the tactic of claiming not to understand while you actually disagree. Choose one, and either reread until you understand, or respond with a couple of sentences that summarize your disagreement.
Ralph Mazza
ReplyDeleteYou should be glad this guy will only stab you. The hypothetical other dude? He'd have a gun.
Forgive me if I don't consider that a compelling argument.
Honestly, I don't think it matters. If they're willing to hold up a SCOTUS nomination for a year, changing filibuster rules is child's play.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of changing rules:
ReplyDeletehttp://thehill.com/homenews/senate/317302-gop-changes-rules-to-push-through-nominees-after-dem-boycott
I don't think we should be relieved that the nutbar rich guy is a constitutional literalist instead of Trump having found someone else in the Justice Thomas school of "Everything after 1800 is illegitimate fan fiction." Those are both not things that should be given a lifetime appointment. Like I'm not going be happy getting killed by either of their court precedents.
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols yep. At this point Trump could nominate Meat Loaf to SCOTUS and it'd go through.
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols no, I didn't say I didn't understand. If I didn't understand I would say "I don't understand". I said "I don't follow" as in your logical train of thought doesn't make sense. It's not going to suddenly make sense by rereading.
ReplyDeleteAs for brevity, its 11 lines? You're trying to have a political discussion but 11 lines of text is too much to read? Are you kidding me? If you don't want to read it because I wrote it, just have the courage to say that. Don't pretend it has something to do with brevity.
As to Curt and Vivians point, you're absolutely right. Except you don't have any other choice. There is no "Hold out for another Ginsberg" option. Your choices are quite literally, the guy with a knife, or the guy with a gun. The time to create a different option was November. That's done.
Ralph Mazza Its brevity. Learn about it. You respond to two sentences with several paragraphs. That's, in my book, an undue burden on the reader. If you don't follow the logic, then clearly don't understand it -- as it is clear as glass.
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols I'm not saying he was bribed, I'm saying that he was influenced by his staff/handlers and the Republican leadership to back off and let Pharma do as it pleases.
ReplyDeleteThe man has obvious signs of Alzheimer's and is easy to manipulate. I know what that and Dementia can directly do to a person's faculties from first hand experience with relatives and family members of friends.
His kids do the same thing, if you watch them when they are in interviews etc you can see them carrying out the classic support and manipulation actions to keep him on track.