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2016/02/17 07:33:40
Subject: The Political Junkie™ Thread - USA Edition
Breotan wrote: What is this, Sesame Street? Politics is blood sport and the long knives are out.
And what's that, Games of Thrones fan fiction?
Politics is tough, but the results it deliver also matter for something beyond cheerleaders hoping for one team or the other. The governance of the country actually fething matters.
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
2016/02/17 08:44:46
Subject: Re:The Political Junkie™ Thread - USA Edition
... or is this to ensure that you damn will clap when he finishes in future ?
Or is he releasing a hip-hop album ?
in other news :
jebbush.com redirects to donaldtrump.com
The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all
We love our superheroes because they refuse to give up on us. We can analyze them out of existence, kill them, ban them, mock them, and still they return, patiently reminding us of who we are and what we wish we could be.
"the play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king,
2016/02/17 10:11:12
Subject: Re:The Political Junkie™ Thread - USA Edition
It's what a hipster douchebag Tweets that one time they decide to go to the range, ironically of course.
d-usa wrote: "When the Internet sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're not sending you. They're not sending you. They're sending posters that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing strawmen. They're bringing spam. They're trolls. And some, I assume, are good people."
2016/02/17 11:01:24
Subject: The Political Junkie™ Thread - USA Edition
Republicans want to block Obama from appointing a new judge until after the election. This requires them to justify a ridiculous amount of ignoring or turning down suggested candidates.
They know this looks like a dick move, so they are trying to justify it by referring to the Borking case which they assert shows the Democrats being dicks and therefore justifies the Republicans being dicks.
Tannhauser42 wrote: How about this one, then: because two wrongs don't make a right?
What is this, Sesame Street? Politics is blood sport and the long knives are out.
Our politicians could certainly stand to learn some of the lessons taught by Sesame Street. They already act like a bunch of Muppets, anyway (just not the good ones).
"Through the darkness of future past, the magician longs to see.
One chants out between two worlds: Fire, walk with me." - Twin Peaks
"You listen to me. While I will admit to a certain cynicism, the fact is that I am a naysayer and hatchetman in the fight against violence. I pride myself in taking a punch and I'll gladly take another because I choose to live my life in the company of Gandhi and King. My concerns are global. I reject absolutely revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method... is love. I love you Sheriff Truman." - Twin Peaks
2016/02/17 13:59:27
Subject: The Political Junkie™ Thread - USA Edition
Kilkrazy wrote: Republicans want to block Obama from appointing a new judge until after the election. This requires them to justify a ridiculous amount of ignoring or turning down suggested candidates.
They know this looks like a dick move, so they are trying to justify it by referring to the Borking case which they assert shows the Democrats being dicks and therefore justifies the Republicans being dicks.
So just another case of them needing to lie in order to look not so bad...
2016/02/17 14:10:46
Subject: The Political Junkie™ Thread - USA Edition
In related news, Jeb Bush's gun pic has sparked a worldwide response in people posting the characteristic items they are proud of in their nation or home town. Things get sillier as you go down the thread.
whembly wrote: He can nominate anyone he damn well please.
Just like the Senate can damn well decide when/if to hold hearings.
Both entities are exercising their constitutional duties.
"When" - sure. "IF"? That's a pretty tortured (ie nonexistent) interpretation of their duty.
The clause says he SHALL nominate... etc. Not he can, or might. President Obama has a constitutional responsibility to nominate someone to fill that spot. There isn't any language in there about any of the bs reasons you guys are giving for why he shouldn't, or why there shouldn't be any hearings.
At some point, you need to stop playing partisan BS games and actually run the country.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2016/02/17 16:37:24
lord_blackfang wrote: Respect to the guy who subscribed just to post a massive ASCII dong in the chat and immediately get banned.
Flinty wrote: The benefit of slate is that its.actually a.rock with rock like properties. The downside is that it's a rock
2016/02/17 16:44:56
Subject: Re:The Political Junkie™ Thread - USA Edition
whembly wrote: He can nominate anyone he damn well please.
Just like the Senate can damn well decide when/if to hold hearings.
Both entities are exercising their constitutional duties.
"When" - sure. "IF"? That's a pretty tortured (ie nonexistent) interpretation of their duty.
The clause says he SHALL nominate... etc. Not he can, or might. President Obama has a constitutional responsibility to nominate someone to fill that spot. There isn't any language in there about any of the bs reasons you guys are giving for why he shouldn't, or why there shouldn't be any hearings.
At some point, you need to stop playing partisan BS games and actually run the country.
They're not stopping him from nominating anyone.
If you believe this Senate are big "bags of dicks" for not scheduling a hearing, because they'd rather the next President to choose... then by all means and vote accordingly in the next election.
Live Ork, Be Ork. or D'Ork!
2016/02/17 16:46:58
Subject: Re:The Political Junkie™ Thread - USA Edition
Justice Felix Frankfurter: Temporarily having an eight-justice Supreme Court is not ‘sacrificing a single interest of importance’
In 1945, Justice Robert Jackson took an extraordinary one-year leave of absence from the Supreme Court to serve as chief prosecutor at the war crimes trials in Nuremberg. He did so despite objections from Chief Justice Harlan Fiske Stone. Stone opposed the idea of war crimes trials as ex post winner’s justice, thought it unseemly for a justice to serve as a prosecutor, and, most relevant to current news, believed that Jackson’s absence put an unfair burden on his colleagues. In Jackson’s absence, the court split 4-4 on several cases, leading Jackson to consider returning to the court to break the deadlocks.
Justice Felix Frankfurter, however, encouraged him to stay, which he did. Frankfurter noted that the court often reschedules cases and told him that his absence was not “sacrificing a single interest of importance” (Bruce Allen Murphy, The Brandeis/Frankfurter Connection 305, citing Letter, FF to Jackson, January 16, 1946, FF/HLS Box 170, Folder 2).
If the court could manage with eight justices in 1945-1946, when it had a much more onerous workload than it has today, it can manage for a year or so now. There may be good arguments that the Senate should confirm an Obama nominee this year, but the notion I see circulating that it would somehow be unprecedented and dysfunctional to temporarily have only eight justices on the court isn’t one of them.
TL;DR: Courts can keep'on trucking...
Live Ork, Be Ork. or D'Ork!
2016/02/17 18:31:59
Subject: Re:The Political Junkie™ Thread - USA Edition
Against Robert Bork; His Bill of Rights Is Different
It's the first Monday in October and the Supreme Court convenes for its 197th term, but with only eight justices; the admired Lewis Powell retired in June. There could have been nine justices in place had President Reagan proposed someone like him, or another conservative in the tradition of Justices Felix Frankfurter or John Marshall Harlan. By now, even a Democratic Senate probably would have given consent.
But instead, the President chose Robert Bork and thus chose angry confrontation. For Judge Bork is not merely a conservative. He has long been a flamboyant provocateur, with a lifetime of writings to prove it. As a result, Mr. Reagan got the rancorous political battle he asked for. Appointment to the Court is a political act yet the Court's authority depends in large measure on public confidence in its fairness and aloofness from the political cockpit. There's something to lose when a nomination battle turns brutally partisan.
The President's supporters insist vehemently that, having won the 1984 election, he has every right to try to change the Court's direction. Yes, but the Democrats won the 1986 election, regaining control of the Senate, and they have every right to resist. This is not the same Senate that confirmed William Rehnquist as Chief Justice and Antonin Scalia as an associate justice last year.
The division of power thus makes moderates of both parties decisive. Against this change in political reality, for Mr. Reagan to nominate Robert Bork was to stick a thumb in moderates' eyes. The Senate need not and should not endorse views so alien to the Supreme Court's honored role as definer and defender of constitutional liberties.
Judge Bork, who now sits on the United States Court of Appeals in Washington, has patiently described his record and philosophy before the Judiciary Committee. He has reviewed and revised his views, to assure senators that he wouldn't really interpret the Constitution in the sometimes bizarre ways suggested by the written record. Yet his underlying view remains.
Robert Bork's Constitution is smaller and more closed than the living document Americans celebrate in this its bicentennial year. His is so different from the charter produced by two centuries of Supreme Court interpretation that every moderate senator should feel justified in voting against his elevation.
He is no racist, nor is he seriously so depicted. Even those who disagree with him on constitutional issues find him witty and agreeable. His integrity is not questioned, nor is his technical ability. Yet even with his five days of testimony, it has been hard for senators to know him, in part because he recanted some, though not all, of his views. Whose Liberty Would He Limit?
The test, finally, is where he stands on large constitutional issues. Four such issues stand out.
Civil Rights. In 1963 and 1964, as a 36-year-old law professor, Mr. Bork wrote impassioned attacks on legislation to desegregate lunch counters and other public accommodations. He argued that the bill, by invading the liberty of proprietors to turn away blacks, was based on ''a principle of unsurpassed ugliness.'' Not until 1973, when seeking Senate confirmation as Solicitor General, did he publicly renounce this view, stated with such unsurpassed surliness.
Even in his latest appearance he declined to revise his pinched view of civil rights. He has criticized some of the Supreme Court's landmark civil rights decisions for reasons that vary from case to case. The bottom line, however, is almost always the same - unfavorable to minorities.
Free Speech. Repeatedly over the years, Judge Bork has taken a narrow view of the rights of expression. He declared that only the ''core'' value of political speech was immune from government restraint. Not until 1984 did he allow as how art and literature might be protected, and then only because they sometimes relate to politics. His conversion, late, is also limited.
Even this limited liberty, in his view, remains utterly at the mercy of the majority when speech becomes advocacy of illegal action. The Court and the mainstream of public opinion have long tolerated strident dissent, reserving punishment for incitement to imminent lawless action. Judge Bork rejects this tradition. Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania extracted from him a ''commitment'' to apply settled law rather than his own view. But even such assurances failed to persuade the Judiciary Committee's ablest questioner, who has decided to oppose the nomination.
Sex Discrimination. Not until two weeks ago did Judge Bork accept the Supreme Court's gradual, belated extension of equal protection to women. As recently as June 10, just before his nomination, he told an interviewer that he thought the 14th Amendment, which covers all persons, ''should have been kept to things like race and ethnicity'' and not extended to women. Judge Bork's conversion on a subject of such importance came so late that it's hard to know how seriously to take it.
Liberty and Privacy. The attitude of exclusion is even more evident in his views on the right of privacy that most Americans have come to regard as secure from prying government. The Constitution does not state a right of privacy beyond freedom from unreasonable searches and the like; thus Judge Bork does not recognize its existence. Yet great judges and justices have found room for personal privacy in the concept of liberty enshrined in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.
Judges may quarrel over how far the right to privacy extends; whether it applies to married couples using contraceptives or a woman's right to decide whether to terminate her pregnancy. Judge Bork denies that any such right exists at all. The Framers' Larger Intent
Judge Bork's stringent philosophy springs from valid motives. Some justices have shamelessly warped liberty, as when the Supreme Court in 1905 upheld the ''liberty'' of New York workers to contract for substandard working conditions that the states were trying to regulate. Urgent New Deal legislation was struck down until some justices were replaced with others more willing to let Congress make the necessary social choices. Robert Bork has written and testified that judges must interpret law, not make it.
Most judges subscribe to such judicial restraint. Judge Bork carries the idea to mechanistic extremes. He has written that there is no constitutional principle by which judges can prefer, say, the right of married couples to practice birth control over the right of a utility company to pollute the air. The Constitution lives in large measure because of judges who aspire to objectivity but recognize they must make choices. Robert Bork seeks what he calls the framers' ''original intent.'' He refuses to see, or laments, their larger intent.
Americans created a Constitution, added a Bill of Rights and have amended the Constitution repeatedly to embrace persons previously excluded. By their very breadth, noble concepts like equal protection and due process of law guard against abuse by the majority and invite generosity for the underdog. That's the Constitution most Americans honor. Does Judge Bork? His earnest but inadequate answers say no. So should the Senate.
Man... what I've highlighted in yellow sounds awfully familiar... why is that?
But, go ahead and say that it's "different" this time.
Live Ork, Be Ork. or D'Ork!
2016/02/17 18:48:08
Subject: Re:The Political Junkie™ Thread - USA Edition
Mr. Bork got a hearing, and he got a full up-and-down vote. I understand you can't see why that's different than simply refusing to hold any hearings at all, but that doesn't mean they're the same.
You're not going to make fetch happen.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/02/17 18:48:58
lord_blackfang wrote: Respect to the guy who subscribed just to post a massive ASCII dong in the chat and immediately get banned.
Flinty wrote: The benefit of slate is that its.actually a.rock with rock like properties. The downside is that it's a rock
2016/02/17 18:48:38
Subject: Re:The Political Junkie™ Thread - USA Edition
