Brett Kavanaugh has been confirmed as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. The vote was 50-48 in favor of Kavanaugh.
Senators Collins, Flake, and Manchin had already announced their intentions to confirm Kavanaugh before the vote was held. Senator Lisa Murkowski, who was previously ready to vote "no", agreed to vote "present" instead so that Senator Steve Daines could attend his daughter's wedding instead of being present in the Senate to support Kavanaugh.
SCOTUSBlog: Kavanaugh confirmed as 114th justice
Nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court
Previously: SCOTUS's Justice Anthony Kennedy to Retire
President Trump Nominates Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the US Supreme Court
Trump's Supreme Court Pick: ISPs Have 1st Amendment Right to Block Websites
Related Stories
Covered pretty much everywhere (front page of CNN/FOX/younameit).
With the main swing vote in the U.S. Supreme Court leaving, and a replacement nominated by President Trump, the right wing of the court should become clearly dominant, allowing Roe v. Wade opponents, and other right-wing causes, a new chance at victory.
takyon: SCOTUSblog has a round-up of coverage:
Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement today, effective July 31, 2018. Amy Howe covered the news for this blog; her coverage first appeared at Howe on the Court. Other early coverage comes from Richard Wolf of USA Today, Michael D. Shear of The New York Times; Bill Mears of Fox News; Robert Barnes of The Washington Post; Jessica Mason Pieklo of Rewire.News; Nina Totenberg of NPR; Lawrence Hurley of Reuters; Greg Stohr of Bloomberg; and Pete Williams of NBC News. Analysis of Justice Kennedy's legacy comes from Noah Feldman of Bloomberg; Wolf of USA Today; Mears of Fox News; and Reuters staff. Coverage of the reaction from Congress and the President comes from Carl Hulse of The New York Times; Alex Pappas and Mears of Fox News; Seung Min Kim and Josh Dawsey of The Washington Post; and Alex Seitz-Wald and Rebecca Shabad of NBC News. Patrick Gregory of Bloomberg has a piece looking at potential replacements for Kennedy.
Early commentary comes from Jill Lawrence for USA Today; Bill Blum in The Progressive; Emily Bazelon for The New York Times; Elizabeth Slattery for The Daily Signal; Garrett Epps for The Atlantic; Richard Hasen for Slate; Ian Millhiser of Think Progress; and Joshua Matz for The Washington Post. Another piece in the Post comes from Philip Bump, who focuses on control of the Senate. More commentary comes from Scott Lemieux for NBC News and Matt Ford for The New Republic. Andrew Cohen writes for TNR, and he also has a piece in Rolling Stone. Commentary from Vox comes from Dylan Matthews, Andrew Prokop and Matt Yglesias. Pieklo and Imani Gandy released an emergency podcast reacting to the news. Various law professors give their analysis for Stanford Law School Blog.
Anthony Kennedy was sworn in on February 18, 1988.
Judge Brett Kavanaugh named Trump's second Supreme Court justice - live updates
President Trump announced his selection of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to be his second Supreme Court justice Monday night. Speaking in the East Room of the White House, the president said that what mattered to him was "not a judge's political views, but whether they can set aside those views to do what the law and the Constitution require."
"I am pleased to say that I have found, without a doubt, such a person," he said in announcing Kavanaugh's nomination. "There is no one in America more qualified for this position and no one more deserving," the president also said. The D.C. Circuit Appeals Court judge "has impeccable credentials, unsurpassed qualifications, and aproven commitment to equal justice under the law," the president continued. He's "a judge's judge, a true thought leader among his peers. He's a brilliant jurist with a clear and effective writing style, universally regarded as one of the finest and sharpest legal minds of our time."
Kavanaugh thanked the president for the nomination, and in anticipating his coming meetings with senators on Capitol hill tomorrow, said, "I believe that an independent judiciary is the crown jewel of our constitutional republic." He promised, "If confirmed by the Senate, I will keep an open mind in every case and I will always strive to preserve the Constitution of the United States and the American rule of law."
Within a few days of Justice Anthony Kennedy's announcement that he would retire from the court this summer, Mr. Trump had narrowed the field to four: Judges Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, Thomas Hardiman and Raymond Kethledge -- all young and all viewed as conservative. Ultimately, the president settled on Kavanaugh, the establishment favorite.
On the issue everyone wants to know about:
Kavanaugh has stated that he considers Roe v. Wade binding under the principle of stare decisis and would seek to uphold it, but has also ruled in favor of some restrictions for abortion.
In May 2006, Kavanaugh stated he "would follow Roe v. Wade faithfully and fully" and that the issue of the legality of abortion has already "been decided by the Supreme Court". During the hearing, he stated that a right to an abortion has been found "many times", citing Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
In October 2017, Kavanaugh joined an unsigned divided panel opinion which found that the Office of Refugee Resettlement could prevent an unaccompanied minor in its custody from obtaining an abortion. Days later, the en banc D.C. Circuit reversed that judgment, with Kavanaugh now dissenting. The D.C. Circuit's opinion was then itself vacated by the U.S. Supreme Court in Garza v. Hargan (2018).
See also:
- SCOTUSblog + Round-up + Reactions
- Brett Kavanaugh's track record
- What Brett Kavanaugh could mean for the future of abortion, marriage equality and much more
- Can the Supreme Court confirmation process ever be repaired?
- Press: Democrats must hang tough on high court pick
Previously: SCOTUS's Justice Anthony Kennedy to Retire
Submitted via IRC for Fnord666
President Trump's Supreme Court nominee argued last year that net neutrality rules violate the First Amendment rights of Internet service providers by preventing them from "exercising editorial control" over Internet content.
Trump's pick is Brett Kavanaugh, a judge on the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The DC Circuit twice upheld the net neutrality rules passed by the Federal Communications Commission under former Chairman Tom Wheeler, despite Kavanaugh's dissent. (In another tech-related case, Kavanaugh ruled that the National Security Agency's bulk collection of telephone metadata is legal.)
While current FCC Chairman Ajit Pai eliminated the net neutrality rules, Kavanaugh could help restrict the FCC's authority to regulate Internet providers as a member of the Supreme Court. Broadband industry lobby groups have continued to seek Supreme Court review of the legality of Wheeler's net neutrality rules even after Pai's repeal.
[...] Consumers generally expect ISPs to deliver Internet content in un-altered form. But Kavanaugh argued that ISPs are like cable TV operators—since cable TV companies can choose not to carry certain channels, Internet providers should be able to choose not to allow access to a certain website, he wrote.
"Internet service providers may not necessarily generate much content of their own, but they may decide what content they will transmit, just as cable operators decide what content they will transmit," Kavanaugh wrote. "Deciding whether and how to transmit ESPN and deciding whether and how to transmit ESPN.com are not meaningfully different for First Amendment purposes."
Kavanaugh's argument did not address the business differences between cable TV and Internet service.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 06 2018, @08:19PM (1 child)
What a beautiful day. The man, Winkelham, who was merely an observer, truly thought this to be so. Yes, Winkelham was but an observer; since he was a mere perspective, he could not affect anything with his actions. And so, he continued to observe his surroundings. Then, Winkelham spotted a small girl, and moved closer so that he could observe her in more detail.
Intense. Winkelham's gaze was truly intense. The man observed the little girl with every fiber of his being, and then observed her some more. More. More. More! Winkelham couldn't get enough of it, so he used True Observation to observe every aspect of her being. That did it.
Winkelham, who had finished observing the little girl, returned to his former spot in the park to continue watching his surroundings. The man's gaze did not once return to the naked, violated corpse of the little girl, since she was no longer worthy of it...
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 06 2018, @08:28PM
FTFY
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 06 2018, @08:31PM (33 children)
Well, that wraps it up for the Republican Party. How disgusting. And I'm not talking about events 30 years ago that likely cannot ever be proven. There is so much else wrong with this.
If only the Democratic Party hadn't also wrapped it up for themselves with the way they chose to handle this.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 06 2018, @08:41PM (13 children)
Sooo much wrong, that, like, I can't even think of one specific thing to point out. Schumer, is that you?
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 06 2018, @08:47PM
Yes. We shouldn't look for solutions outside of the uniparty. Instead we should just hope for change. Staying home and not voting is probably the best strategy to effect that change. I'm sure that will cause them to see the error of their ways.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 06 2018, @09:33PM (11 children)
We'll have to wait until Monday to get WSWS' reporting of the confirmation. In the meantime, Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh clears crucial hurdle to confirmation [wsws.org]:
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Snotnose on Sunday October 07 2018, @12:51AM (9 children)
I'm so fucking sick of this shit spewed by assholes who don't understand the system. We have an electoral college. Candidates know this and base their entire campaign on getting electoral votes, not popular votes.
Guess what? If you change it so the popular vote wins then candidates will change their strategy. Then you'll hear people whining that the cities are taking over the country, ignoring the rural voters.
If you don't like it then work on changing the system. But for $diety's sake quit bitching when the system works like it was designed to.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @01:22AM (5 children)
No, you won't. That already happens*, and you don't hear people whining about it. Not necessarily because rural people don't whine+, but because the voices that get heard are all urban, even the ones that claim to identify with rural values in order to exploit rural people (e.g. Republican party, Fox News).
*Consider the state laws the rural people of southern Illinois or upstate New York suffer under. Even states without a megapolis are often politically dominated by their two or three largest cities, and rural people often have to put up with (or ignore) laws that could only make sense to a city slicker.
+We don't whine; we air our well-justified grievances. Only a city slicker would accuse us of whining.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Sunday October 07 2018, @02:56AM
And you completely miss my point. With or without the electoral college, and I'm not gonna argue either way, there will be winners and losers. As it is you can win the election without the majority of the popular vote. Don't like it? Work to change it.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Snotnose on Sunday October 07 2018, @03:01AM (2 children)
You completely miss my point. With or without the electoral college, and I'm not gonna argue that one either way, there will be winners and losers. Don't like it? Change it. But quit bitching that more people voted for the other guy, cuz it's irrelevant.
Me? I think unless you have the money to "donate" tens or hundreds of thousands of $$$ then your voice really doesn't matter. The 1%ers have figured out how to slice and dice the voters, and they screw the average person over in every election.
IMHO, more effective than changing the electoral college is getting the big money out of politics. I'm more likely to vote for a candidate that gets a thousand $10 donations than I am one who gets 10 $1000 donations. I don't care where they stand on the issues, it means they haven't yet drunk the kool aid.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Sunday October 07 2018, @03:20AM
That's odd. I was composing my post and got email. Read it and went back to my post. Now I see my half formed post got posted a few minutes before my final draft.
Whatever, I've been sick for a couple days and I probably fucked up somewhere.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @03:23AM
Wolf-PAC [wikipedia.org] is still a thing [wolf-pac.com].
(Score: 2) by termigator on Sunday October 07 2018, @06:21PM
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/upshot/as-american-as-apple-pie-the-rural-votes-disproportionate-slice-of-power.html [nytimes.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @03:33PM (1 child)
Cities should take over that's where most of the people live these days.
I hear the same whining currently here in WA about how their votes don't count for state races. Their votes do count, it's just that they keep supporting GOP candidates that can't possibly win.
The electoral college is inherently anti-democratic. As it stands, you basically don't see Presidential candidates coming to states like California or Washington very often, if ever, because they don't feel the need to earn our votes. They do show up in armpit states like Florida and Ohio regularly because the margin is much tighter.
Fuck you for trying to pretend like this is a good thing. We shouldn't have a system where a small number of votes in specific areas can decide the entire election. Especially since certain states like Ohio have notoriously unreliable systems in place where in a single election they had hundreds of thousands of votes get weird.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @04:08PM
The way I see it, the problem as concerns the electoral college is that the federal government has become very powerful. Whether that's a problem in general is beyond the scope of this comment. The electoral college is meant to elect the president of a limited federal government in a system where states' rights matter.
It wasn't set up envisioning, for example, that an income tax would be passed and then a federal government would play games with DOT funding (note: the creation of post roads, at least, is one of the enumerated powers of congress) and welfare funding (we really should have had an amendment for this... personally I think we need it but the proper process should have been followed). In general, congress has grown far beyond its enumerated powers, and the Ninth and Tenth Amendments are all but forgotten. For example, the Ninth Amendment came up for Roe v. Wade, but the decision was ultimately based on a right to privacy affirmed by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Then there are other abuses such as the interstate commerce clause being used to justify federal prohibitions such as the Controlled Substance Act, in spite of the fact that there was already precedent with the prohibition of alcohol requiring an amendment. I suppose we shall see if the interstate commerce clause can be used to violate the will of voters in states that have legalized cannabis, and it's likely that with Kavanaugh's confirmation that SCOTUS could very well rule that the sale of cannabis products produced entirely within a state where it is legal somehow constitutes interstate commerce.
My point is that if we are to have a strong federal government and if the Ninth and Tenth Amendments are to be completely ignored, then we should do away with the electoral college. If the federal government has a powerful influence on the lives on the people, then the people must have a more direct say. On the other hand, if we were to somehow reign in the federal government, then it would make sense to keep the college and also repeal the Seventeenth Amendment. In that scenario, the federal government could go back to concerning itself only with diplomatic matters and matters concerning the several states.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 08 2018, @07:30AM
The Democrats and their supporters are just sore losers and are still trying to blame everyone for their losses.
They didn't complain when a BLACK guy WON TWICE with about the same crappy electoral college and about the same racist voters.
They want to change stuff so they don't have to provide much better candidates and instead can win with candidates that couldn't even beat Trump!
They're still blaming Facebook for their loss when the FACT was most of Facebook was against Trump. https://gizmodo.com/facebook-employees-asked-mark-zuckerberg-if-they-should-1771012990 [gizmodo.com]
If Facebook helped it's more like Facebook was a neutral (or even anti Trump biased) tool and the Republicans used/abused Facebook better than the Democrats.
It's likely that many voters wanted a change - and the problem was Clinton wouldn't have delivered change but just "more of the same" (a slow suffocation for them). Trump would have been something different. And has proven to be different so far. Different bad, but different nonetheless. And he's even delivering some of what they want (just because we don't want the same things as those voters doesn't mean Trump will lose and not get reelected).
In contrast what are the Democrats bringing to the table to win the next election? More fingerpointing and whining?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 08 2018, @12:50PM
And here it is, for anybody reading the archived discussion (or still watching the row between two of our more passionate regulars down there). US Senate elevates right-wing judge Brett Kavanaugh to Supreme Court [wsws.org]. First we begin with a summary of the status of the court, which I will place in a spoiler section:
So anyway, on with the Trotskyist analysis, which shares many of the themes that came out in the discussion below, including the spectre of civil war:
(Score: 5, Insightful) by jdavidb on Saturday October 06 2018, @08:47PM
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 06 2018, @09:40PM (2 children)
You democrats are such sore losers! But don't worry, you'll have a chance to practice accepting defeat more gracefully as Supreme Court rulings go against your homo lifestyles for the next 40 years or so.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @03:27AM (1 child)
Bart, have you boofed yet?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @05:41PM
Not yet. He'll boof all over us once he gets some cases in front of him.
(Score: 5, Informative) by hemocyanin on Saturday October 06 2018, @10:23PM (14 children)
The Democrats are fine with Kavanaugh's positions (he and Merrick Garland voted together well over 90% of the time) -- they just wanted to create some hot-button issue to camouflage that fact the Democrats and Republicans share similar views in advance of the next election: http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/10/06/kava-o06.html [wsws.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 06 2018, @11:46PM (1 child)
Garland was nominated to be a palatable choice for the Republican Senate. However, Republicans were too cowardly and conniving to even hold Garland's confirmation hearings. By making it an election issue, they may have gotten more evangelical turnout in 2016. Either way, the bet paid off. Now they get to live with the consequences: total war over every nomination. Eventually, Democrats will regain the Senate and possibly get their revenge.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday October 07 2018, @02:47PM
Yes, eventually. But, what does "eventual" mean, exactly? Two years? Ten years? Twenty? It's not outside the realms of possibility that the D's don't control the senate for fifty years. Unlikely, but possible.
Meanwhile, the Dems have introduced the idea that a SC nominee (or any other appointee who needs confirmation) can be blocked with rumors and/or false accusations regarding his conduct as a youth.
I'm reminded of a schoolmate. Big, strapping young man, borderline bashful, but a helluva fullback. Fairly smart guy, managed to keep high C and low B grades in all his classes without studying. He was called "Wheee" by everyone. It seems that when he was being potty trained, he stood in the commode, pulled the handle, and hollered "Wheeee" as the water sloshed around his feet.
Do you reckon that might put the stops to his confirmation, if he should be nominated to some position? Surely playing in the toilet is a sign of mental illness, and/or conservatism.
As someone has already noted, you guys are sore losers.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Whoever on Saturday October 06 2018, @11:58PM (3 children)
Lets turn that around shall we? If Kavanaugh and Garland would issue the same decisions, why didn't the Republicans confirm him?
Clearly, the Republicans' move was pure partisan politics. They did not confirm Garland simply because Obama nominated him, not because of any perceived ideological position.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Sunday October 07 2018, @02:38AM (2 children)
Of course it works that way. We have two right wing pro-war pro-bankster parties who do their best to come up with bullshit issues to say there's some difference between them.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Phoenix666 on Sunday October 07 2018, @12:39PM (1 child)
Yes, that is so. They pretend to have differences to give the illusion of choice to the public while there is no real choice at all. That is designed to keep the public fighting each other instead of fighting the material agenda of the elites.
I would point out that those parties are not really right wing. They're not left wing, either, as those on the self-identified right assert. Rather, they're about power first, last, and always. It's the only value they hold. That we on the outside characterize them as "left" or "right" is entirely according to their design; it incites people on the "other" side, who indignantly stand up and say no no no you guys are the ones who are the baddies--you are responsible for all this.
I keep waiting for the mike to drop, for both sides to pause, comprehension dawning on their faces as they slowly turn and regard the figures in the shadowy alcoves who have been sipping champagne, eating caviar, and petting their white cats while watching the fireworks. It never happens, though.
I want a party that can represent regular people, with big, sensible ideas, like the Progressive Party of 1912, which introduced child labor laws, the FDA, the 40-hr work week, social security, worker's comp, and much, much more. Read their party platform [teachingamericanhistory.org]. We could almost adopt it word for word now, because the same conditions they were fighting then obtain now.
Just read what they had to say about the Democratic and Republican parties, and decide if was really written in 1912 or was ripped from yesterday's headlines:
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @01:48PM
It sounds like you want the Socialist Equality Party [socialequality.com]. It looks like Niles Niemuth over in Ann Arbor, MI and western Detroit is their only candidate. It'll be interesting to see where that party goes.
The Green Party [gp.org] is another good choice.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @01:20AM (7 children)
> they just wanted to create some hot-button issue to camouflage
Have you considered maybe they truly believed he is not trustworthy, based on evidence?
I know, Occam's in politics, but still.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @02:02AM
Then why did they not pursue proving perjury with the fervor they had for the alleged and likely unprovable sexual crimes?
Sexual crimes got a day-long hearing. Perjury did not.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Sunday October 07 2018, @02:40AM (5 children)
Yes and I reject the assertion. Democrats didn't bitch about his hard-right positions -- they dredged up some unprovable/undisprovable allegation to dominate the airways and deflect from issues.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by bussdriver on Sunday October 07 2018, @06:28AM (4 children)
Yes they did! The MEDIA didn't give much coverage over the serious complaints; and the GOP kept everything they could secret and shortened the time to make the whole thing a sham. They had time to do it properly and they didn't at every turn. So LITTLE time to point out major problems and cite anything was given! Only when this minor problem exploding into a political nightmare got media/public traction did things have to slow down a little bit ONLY to deal with that issue.
Yes, I'm saying it is a minor issue because it's not provable and a political shit storm which might have been averted if the process worked the way it was supposed to in the first place. Now we can expect that Trump would have quietly had the guy withdraw to avoid it had the thing been known; but how can anybody reasonably expect Trump to let the man withdraw or that he even would respect the system/process like many patriots do when they resign from things rather than fight them. (not all are guilty when they do it. cabinet members for example.) If you actually investigated it maybe it would become something beyond a minor problem. He should have been rejected BEFORE the dirty issues became public.
I'm not one to hold somebody's stupid youth against them but this guy didn't show any signs of growing up. Hell, he didn't even show signs of average mental health under pressure.
The USA is dying. All this stuff is just symptoms; expect worse as democracy goes full circle. (Despotism is how all democracy ends; Franklin was right.)
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @01:47PM
The only policy issue I saw complaints about were "OMG, he's going to overturn Roe v Wade!", which certainly got plenty of MSM airtime.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @01:52PM
They got a whole day-long hearing for allegations of a 36-year old sexual assault that did not even investigate his position on Roe v. Wade. The content in the New York Times and Washington Post in particular is controlled by the same elites that control the Democratic Party. There is no amount of apologetics that can save them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @06:19PM (1 child)
Franklin? Plato! And who's Franklin?
(Score: 1) by bussdriver on Sunday October 14 2018, @06:49PM
Ben Franklin. The most famous and significant founder of the USA; he was even offered the 1st presidency. Look at this full speech which ended the constitutional convention.
(Score: 2) by jasassin on Saturday October 06 2018, @08:36PM (8 children)
I hope I don't have to listen to anymore of this BULLSHIT!
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 5, Touché) by Runaway1956 on Saturday October 06 2018, @08:43PM (2 children)
The good news is, this load of bullshit has been used up, consumed, processed, and turned into human waste.
The bad news is, there will be a new load of bullshit arriving within the week.
(Score: 2) by Pslytely Psycho on Sunday October 07 2018, @05:11AM (1 child)
A WEEK?
MY but you're an optimist. I figure Monday.
Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Sunday October 07 2018, @03:30PM
Nah, Monday is a holiday and Congress will be out campaigning. The major media figures will be using the opportunity to take a day off after working Saturday. Trump of course never rests so who knows what he might do on Monday along with another rally or two. Tuesday is when the news cycle will crank up with some new manufactured outrage. The midterm elections approach and the media need to try seize control of The Narrative.
With luck we finally get disclosures of documents Trump ordered released weeks ago.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday October 06 2018, @08:58PM (4 children)
Yeah you will...Ruth Bader Ginsburg is gonna die any moment now. Too bad Lester Maddox isn't alive, he'd make a great Democratic pick for Supreme court.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 06 2018, @09:57PM (2 children)
When Notorious RBG kicks the bucket, look for running gun battles in the streets of DC. Well, okay, the seedier parts of DC already have those, but I mean in the main touristy areas now, too.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 06 2018, @10:04PM
D.C. is rapidly gentrifying right now. I would look elsewhere, like Chiraq.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 08 2018, @07:56AM
You turn a corner: one turns into the other.
(Score: 3, Touché) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday October 06 2018, @11:25PM
If you're going to go nominating a Maddox, pick the right one [xmission.com].
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Funny) by shortscreen on Saturday October 06 2018, @08:41PM (1 child)
The senate voted 54-45 to confirm Bloody Gina. Although it looks like several dems who were OK with overseeing systematic torture of prisoners were willing to draw the line at possibly assaulting someone as a drunken teenager.
Dems need to study some game theory. As of now they are heavily prone to making themselves look bad while fighting battles that produce no gains, while forfeiting battles that could have gained something for the stated reason of not being made to look bad.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Saturday October 06 2018, @10:27PM
Silly rabbit, you presume democrats oppose militarism, torture, and police-state practices.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 06 2018, @08:48PM
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/oct/4/andrew-breitbart-clarence-thomas-and-kavanaugh-eff/ [washingtontimes.com]
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 06 2018, @08:50PM (21 children)
With a conservative Supreme Court, it now becomes possible for the Trumpster to declare the 2020 elections process to be suspended, and to appoint himself Leader for Life! Women will be confined to the bedroom, and the kitchen. Blacks will be deported to Africa. Jews will be processed for dog food. Muslims will be processed for pig food. Abortions will be history. MAGA motherfuckers!!! Oh happy day!
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 06 2018, @08:57PM
Meanwhile, here in the real world; Black and Hispanic unemployment figures are at record lows, ISIS (The Obama JV team) is defeated and Trump moved the US embassy to Jerusalem.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 06 2018, @09:34PM (2 children)
And this is the kind of crazy that gets Kavanaugh confirmed. Avanatti's gang rape allegations put the thumb on the scales for anyone on the fence. The imbeciles who actually believe this madness are just as bad if not moreso than the retards that believe pizzagate. The fact that some idiot actually modded this insightful demonstrates it's not just trolls spouting this shit. There are way too many irrational partisans on the left for anyone to feel comfortable. These people are way more numerous and dangerous than the so-called Nazis that the left loves to hold up for ridicule.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @03:35AM
The fact that some idiot actually modded this insightful demonstrates it's not just trolls spouting this shit.
It proves that a troll has mod points.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 08 2018, @07:59AM
Avanatti is a bro. And yes, he knew what he was doing (being Italian)
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 06 2018, @09:43PM (1 child)
Don't forget sending all the Mexicans back to Mexico, including the ones who were born here.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 06 2018, @10:22PM
And send Yoko back to the Japs!
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 06 2018, @10:00PM (14 children)
In the last year of the Obama administration, many on the right claimed that Obama would suspend the Presidential election and take over as dictator. They were both wrong and loony. Making the claim that Trump will do it, shows that you are also wrong and loony.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday October 06 2018, @10:11PM (1 child)
You may be shocked to know that GP is trolling.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday October 07 2018, @02:27PM
Actually, it's kinda funny. GP modded "troll" makes him invisible to people who browse at 0 or +1 or higher. Someone modded him back up, which makes him visible to people who browse at 0. So, a lot of readers can't see his comment. BUT - there are several posts below that make no sense without the GP's post. Ehhhh - it's amusing in a warped kind of way.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 06 2018, @10:57PM (3 children)
Don't forget Bush Jr. before that, and Clinton before that.
Bush Sr. was before I started paying attention to politics, so I don't know whether Dems of the time claimed he would declare martial law or not.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Sunday October 07 2018, @04:50AM (2 children)
First time I heard it, the prospective despot was Reagan.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Sunday October 07 2018, @03:39PM (1 child)
You must be too young for Nixon, why do ya think the FBI took him out? They didn't dare insult Ike like that because they were too afraid he was a Communist who just might take em up on the offer but if he wasn't he would have em shot or something for insulting him. Ike was before my time but I gather he was like Trump in that he had sufficient popularity he could have capped a mofo on 5th Ave and got away with it.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Sunday October 07 2018, @03:47PM
Nixon came along while I was at university, so I bow to your superior age and experience :) But yeah, it seems to be a standard tactic that repeats with every election cycle. I recall reading something (which even you didn't see firsthand, unless you've found a fountain the rest of us should know about) to the effect that the great fear of 1860 was that if elected, Lincoln would declare martial law... well, for once the doomsayers were close.
Come to mention fargone history, such doomsaying happened with the ancient Romans, too.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 06 2018, @11:14PM (7 children)
The difference is that that was based on racism, at no point did Obama do anything that could reasonably suggest he'd break that norm.
If anything, he was far too generous offering to cut social security for a grand bargain on the budget that was only averted when the GOP got greedy and demanded a compromise that was more than 90% in their favor.
Personally, I blame the voters for continually supporting candidates that are all too happy to let democracy fail as long as they get some of the spoils. Up until the last minute t his could have gone the other way had the Democrats not allowed Manchin to continually get away with his ridiculous pro-GOP votes at critical times. Or if Collins and Flake not flaked on the matter.
People out there that are oh so ignorant about what just happened seem to think this is a good thing. But it appears we may now have an actual sexual predator on the Supreme Court and we definitely know that he has even less integrity than justice Thomas which is astonishing. But, Kavanaugh perjured himself time after time after time on the stand with impunity and will likely be the most partisan court justice we've ever had.
The GOP and the various people supporting this farce ought to be ashamed of themselves. On no level is this an individual who should be allowed on a court, let alone our highest court. At absolute bare minimum we should be able to expect that a judge will be able to avoid perjuring himself. If a Supreme Court justice can perjure himself, then why can't anybody else?
The court itself has no enforcement mechanism of it's own, it depends upon the rest of us going along with whatever they rule. The GOP seems to have no issue endangering that respect as long as they can use the court as a tool to take away people's constitutional rights and empower their donors.
Disgusting.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 06 2018, @11:30PM (1 child)
Really? [wikipedia.org] Nothing? [thehill.com]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @12:31AM
Yes, nothing. Neither of those two links support the idea that he was planning on setting himself up as President for life. Bush enjoyed much better press coverage than he did, even when he was doing things that were known to be illegal. And that bit about the IRS is rather ridiculous. That's part of the job of the IRS to investigate nonprofits that appear to be engaged in political speech.
This is why we got Trump a bunch of racists that keep making up lies to justify the fact that they dislike a black man.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @12:52AM (4 children)
Clinton didn't do anything that could reasonably suggest he'd break that norm, and loonies on the right said he'd declare a state of emergency and postpone elections indefinitely, or (after the elections) that he'd declare martial law and refuse to allow Dubya's inauguration. (Was this motivated by racism, or just partisanship and looniness?)
Dubya didn't do anything that could reasonably suggest he'd break that norm, and loonies on the left said he'd declare a state of emergency and postpone elections indefinitely, or (after the elections) that he'd declare martial law and refuse to allow Obama's inauguration. (Was this motivated by racism, or just partisanship and looniness?)
Obama didn't do anything that could reasonably suggest he'd break that norm, and loonies on the right said he'd declare a state of emergency and postpone elections indefinitely, or (after the elections) that he'd declare martial law and refuse to allow Obama's inauguration. RACIST! RACIST! RACIST!
Please.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @12:54AM (1 child)
Well, fuck.
Looks like I got a little carried away with the copy-paste. But I trust you understand my meaning.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @02:02AM
Well, with some politicians it would be credible that he was talking about his re-election.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @03:37PM
You mean other than when Dubya took the office of President despite winning neither the popular vote nor the electoral college in either of his two campaigns?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 11 2018, @03:52AM
I do see one problem with your argument
X
Being outrageous and breaking the norm does seem to be Trump's thing. It would seem to be a stronger argument that Trump is more at risk of trying to stay in office permanently. (Although, I agree with your point and while I think it's possible Trump would try do something like that, I think the chance of that is unlikely and the possibility is blown far out of proportion for the standard emotional/political reasons)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 06 2018, @08:52PM (4 children)
Texas Longhorns beat Oklahoma.
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday October 06 2018, @09:03PM
You don't need to post anon, it's okay to admit to being a sports fan here. But lord help you if you criticize vaccination in any way...
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday October 06 2018, @11:29PM (2 children)
Yeah, we like to let them win one now and again so they have hope coming into the game. Victory's so much sweeter when you can snatch that hope away and wipe your ass with it.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 06 2018, @11:43PM (1 child)
Oklahoma belongs in MW conference. Even Pac12 laugh at your ass.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday October 07 2018, @02:33AM
That's not laughter, that's weeping. I know the shaking shoulders can confuse. It probably stems from the fact that they have more than three times the Big12 conference titles than the next closest contender, Texas.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2, Troll) by jmorris on Saturday October 06 2018, @08:59PM (76 children)
So much was wrong with this nomination process it is hard to know where to start.
1. #DiFiChiSpy Feinstein should be punished for a) sitting on Dr. Ford's letter until after the hearings were completed and b) leaking its existence.
2. Dr. Ford should have never been allowed to testify, certainly not in a public hearing. It isn't even important whether her charges are true, they aren't, but arguing that point concedes the more important question of whether a thirty six year old high school clumsy grope matters. It does not. If the high school yearbook photographer had taken candid shots of Kavanaugh drunkenly groping Ford it still should not matter. If we are going to revisit every person's high school and even college antics for behavior short of outright criminal our civilization is toast. This is a premise which must be rejected.
3. Allowing the Democrats to call for yet another pointless FBI investigation is a failure that will haunt the Republicans. It showed weakness in the face of an enemy that is implacable, highly chaotic evil and will not stop.
4. Who decided it was a good idea to allow protesters into the halls of Congress itself? That should be brought to a swift end in these days of increasingly violent leftists. If the Capital Police are corrupt, replace them, replace the mayor, end home rule, do whatever it requires to restore order. Muster a few companies of U.S. Marines if it takes it.
5. Nobody gets into the Senate gallery without a ticket from a Senator. Outbursts from protesters have become a commonplace event now, that should be ended. Identify the Senator who issued the ticket to a protester when they are ejected and apply a three strikes and they are out rule. Three protesters in a twelve month period revokes the right to issue tickets from that Senator for some period of time sufficient to end the practice.
But now that this fiasco is over, time for Trump to get back to declassifying and releasing documents.
Time for the Truth to be set free.
Time for the pain.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 06 2018, @09:03PM (13 children)
What documents? Kavanaugh? Russia investigation? UFO? QAnon?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday October 06 2018, @09:08PM
The Balfour Declaration good enough?
(Score: 2, Funny) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday October 06 2018, @09:11PM (2 children)
I believe QAnon was High Level Insider. My psychoanalysis of High Level Insider is that he is a mid-twenties Catholic male with a private educational background of philosophy, maybe even theology. Then, when known as High Level Insider, he became bored with people actually believing his LARPS and not offering real creative challenges. Then he started making ever-increasingly idiotic comments such as "Obama is Osama."
Qanon tells tales like Tori Amos writes lyrics -- vague word-salads that compel others to interpret them how they see fit, and since the directions are so vague, anybody can correlate the information to anything given only a few degrees of separation. In short, it's the same shit that fortune tellers do.
Don't get me wrong, I love conspiracy shit. But sometimes LARPS can get out of hand. Look at organized religion, for example.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday October 06 2018, @09:17PM (1 child)
Wait, wait, WAIT!
Fortune tellers? You have a problem with Gypsies? You don't like the Romany? Dude, I thought you were "woke". It's the Jews who have spread all the propaganda against the Romany. Romany are real, and Jews are fake. Fortune tellers know the truth, and Jews lie. What are you, racist?
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday October 06 2018, @09:40PM
Even Thomas Harris hates the Roma, he (is an American expat who feel in love with living in Italy) doesn't call them "Gypsies" in his book but he goes to great lengths to discuss how scummy the Roma are:
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 06 2018, @09:17PM (1 child)
>> What documents?
The ones detailing how the patriarchy is oppressing half of the world population.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 06 2018, @09:25PM
Don't count on Trump to release those. Senator Hirono from Hawaii will tell us exactly how this is the fault of all men, and how Murkowski and the other 53% of white women who voted for Trump were just being mind controlled.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by jmorris on Saturday October 06 2018, @09:31PM (6 children)
Start with the documents he already ordered declassified and released and the Deep State simply ignored the order for. If needed he should walk his ass over to the DoJ / FBI and demand the documents and fire on the spot anyone in his way who refuses his direct order to produce them. Not only will a full exposure of those docs end the Russia! Russia! Russia! nonsense it should put handcuffs on hundreds of bad actors. If the Truth is as bad as I expect it to be it will probably produce a public demand to shutter both the FBI and CIA and start over. Why do you think they dare risk defying a direct order? They are out of options.
Then lets get the FBI files on this Kavanaugh mess and find out who attempted to suborn perjury and arrest them. Then find out who created a Deep State windup toy out of Dr. Ford. hint: We now think she wrote her letter with the help of the ex-FBI bestie who worked for Preet Bharara... who wait for it, worked for Sen. Schumer. Three degrees of separation between the shock last minute witness and the Senate stretches credulity too much to let pass without some investigating. If crime is never punished it flourishes into the lawlessness we see here. Just like "broken windows policing" it really matters when you punish the smaller crimes.
Then lets dump the full extent of the Clinton Foundation's criminality. From money laundering, stealing the donations intended for Haiti, being a conduit for illegal foreign contributions to HRCs campaign, etc. Then Trump can keep another campaign promise by LOCKING HER UP.
And after this fiasco if Trump "accidentally" let a flash drive fall out of his pocket with the full background checks of every Democratic Senator as payback, I'd giggle my ass off. But nah, he won't go there.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 06 2018, @09:53PM (2 children)
Maybe he could hide it in a piece of toilet paper stuck to his shoe.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 06 2018, @10:18PM (1 child)
That was a signal, the "toilet paper" (48 in chaldean numerology) represented the Democrats shitting themselves and taking an ass kicking. The toilet paper was stuck to Trumps "shoe" (20 in numerology), a clear reference to the 20 million viewers who watched the Ford hearing. The rumors are true, Trump is communicating using his back channel... ThanQ!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @01:23AM
Goddamn tripfag [urbandictionary.com].
Though come to think of it, UID 6614 is getting old. Why not register your code as a username, tripfag?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Pslytely Psycho on Sunday October 07 2018, @06:50AM (2 children)
"If Trump "accidentally" let a flash drive fall out of his pocket with the full background checks of every Democratic Senator as payback"
But, of course, you wouldn't want any Republican background checks in there would you now?
If Clinton (Whom I hate as much as anyone) was really guilty of anything big, then all of those investigations into her by the Republicans can only mean the R's, the FBI, CIA, NSA and whatever other alphabet agencies are completely and totally incompetent. They would of jumped at anything, but found nothing (at least nothing big).
Just love all you partisan hacks. Standing in the shit of your own party whilst throwing that shit at the other and screaming 'Look, they're covered in shit!"
You must be Alex Jone's love child.
**note** Since you are such a hack, you will look at my sig and yell Trump Derangement Syndrome! However, before the election it was "It's the Pantsuited Enabler vs. The Creamsicle Charlatan. This should be on WWE, not our ballots."
Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Sunday October 07 2018, @03:54PM (1 child)
Except of course the Clintons DID do that. You are probably too young to remember them being caught with stacks of records on political opponents that they had zero official business for having. It got the catchy name of Filegate [infogalactic.com]. Of course since it was the Clintons nothing happened. The only thing they didn't do was a public dump but then back then there wasn't much of an Internet or a Wikileaks.
(Score: 2) by Pslytely Psycho on Monday October 08 2018, @09:45AM
I lived through that. (59) I never said they weren't criminals. Just that the congressional hearings that I don't recall the exact number or cost and don't feel like looking up the details to, never found anything to hang her with, and they were the most adversarial panel that possibly could of been assembled. With all the conspiracies floating around at the time and since, you would of thought they would of found something. Hence, there either was nothing important enough, or they are all incompetent or compromised. They would of taken anything they could of found regardless of the relevance to what they were investigating. Yeah, maybe they are such masterminds that they eluded detection of anything major, but they never struck me as that smart. And a conspiracy big enough to compromise that many people without leaks I don't find credible. Nor do I find mass incompetence credible. Therefor, she is either clean (as in rich don't get charged with offenses we would hang for and they found nothing big enough to hang a powerful politician with, or the hanging of her would expose corruption on their side, not out of the question) or she should be the star adversary of the next 007 film.
I voted Green.
Only because Cthulhu/Dagon nor Collosus/Guardian were running.....why vote for the lesser of two evils?
Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 06 2018, @09:19PM (19 children)
It was a delaying tactic that backfired on the Democrats. The party that spent the past 6 months claiming the FBI was above reproach was left screaming the FBI was involved in some Republican conspiracy. It's the seventh background investigation into Kavanaugh and when no corroborating evidence was found for any of the allegations, the obstructionist tactics were laid bare for all to see. Not a good look for the Democrats going into the midterms.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 06 2018, @09:59PM (18 children)
Fake news.
Democrats repeatedly asked for an FBI investigation, asked Kavanaugh to support an FBI investigation, and following the conclusion of the investigation, have blamed the White House for artificially limiting who the FBI could talk to.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 06 2018, @10:40PM (16 children)
You are fake news! [twitter.com]
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 06 2018, @11:20PM (15 children)
That just supports my conclusion. The FBI could have interviewed more people, and could have investigated new information about Bart O'Kavanaugh's past. Youthful indiscretions are fine, perjury is not.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 06 2018, @11:36PM (4 children)
That the FBI are involved in a Republican conspiracy to "cover up" or "whitewash" allegations that supposed witnesses have already publicly stated are bullshit?
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 06 2018, @11:51PM (3 children)
The tweet says nothing about FBI involvement in a conspiracy. The White House dictated who the FBI could or could not talk to. [nytimes.com] People were already worried about that the day before the investigation began.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @12:07AM (2 children)
Is it your reading comprehension or your grasp on reality failing you?
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @12:17AM (1 child)
Again, the White House decided who the FBI could interview. They were in charge of the whitewash.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @04:16PM
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday October 07 2018, @02:22AM (3 children)
And what would the Fourth Amendment compatible reason for that be?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday October 07 2018, @02:36AM (2 children)
More importantly, what would the tenth amendment justification for that be?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @04:35PM (1 child)
I'm confused by this post. How does the Tenth Amendment come into play here? (Assuming we live in a better, parallel universe where the Ninth and Tenth matter, of course.)
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday October 08 2018, @11:44PM
Simple, there is nothing in the constitution giving the federal government the authority to investigate any old crime they care to; their powers are intentionally supposed to be specific and limited. Thus it is a right reserved for the states or the people.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @01:54PM (5 children)
I can't tell if the Democrats bemoaning this truly don't understand the purpose of the FBI (hint: this isn't the kind of crime they're supposed to investigate), or if it's all just posturing.
Both parties are well beyond the point where you can tell if it's incompetence or malice.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @03:41PM (4 children)
They're performing a background investigation. Now we've got a possibly sexual predator and definite perjurer on the high court who is likely to be subject to blackmail and extortion attempts because there wasn't a proper investigation.
That should scared the shit out of anybody who thinks the court has even the slightest amount of credibility at this point. As somebody has already stated elsewhere, 4 of 9 justices were appointed by Presidents that didn't win the popular vote and if RBG dies this term, that would mean a majority of the justices would be seated by Presidents that most voters did not support.
That's crazy. Almost as crazy as the fact that we now have somebody who brazenly committed felony perjury on live TV getting one of those seats.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday October 07 2018, @10:55PM (3 children)
The SCOTUS is a glaring weakness in the US government, a place the founding fathers made the mistake of assuming inviolability and absolute neutrality. The way around this is term limits, anywhere from 4-10 years. As it is, lifetime appointments means 1) stuffing the court is any partisan's goal and 2) the SCOTUS can inflict suppurating, infected wounds on the body politic that take 50-100 years to heal.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 08 2018, @12:59AM
We know. We all saw what Roe v. Wade did.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 08 2018, @08:02AM (1 child)
(Don't) Fuck you bitch.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday October 08 2018, @04:24PM
What a coherent, nuanced, and wonderfully-reasoned argument! Sorry, but no matter how thirsty you are, only my girlfriend gets to fuck me :) I'm sure you have a sock somewhere you can use or something.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday October 07 2018, @03:02PM
Well, Trump probably didn't artificially limit ALL SEVEN investigations, did he?
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 06 2018, @09:40PM (3 children)
The Capital is a public building. Anyone can walk in (after scanning to make sure you're not hiding a gun or knife or other weapons). I don't know if any of the protesters inside the building were carrying signs or just screaming, but if signs aren't on the list of prohibited items, oh well. There are areas that only Senators and Representatives (and their staff) can enter, of course, but the building supposedly belongs to the American citizens, so we should be able to enter it.
If you ever get the chance to go see it, I suggest you do so. I had the chance about 25 years ago, and while the tour at the time was just so-so, wandering around the building by myself after the tour was well worth it to see all the wonderful architecture, statues, and paintings. I got to sit in the gallery of the House side for a bit; the chamber is a lot smaller than it looks on the CSPAN cameras.
I remember thinking how sad it was that it was almost sure to be all burned to the ground some day. At the time, I thought I was referring to probable events long after my lifetime; these days I'm not so sure about that part anymore...
(Score: 1, Troll) by jmorris on Sunday October 07 2018, @04:05PM (2 children)
So what lets them stand around for hours yelling at people? If they were promptly arrested and charged on a disorderly conduct and in many of these cases assault would be appropriate, and locked in the D.C. jail for a month and then put on a year parole, barred from entering any major public building (except for official business such as their parole officer) while on parole and given a hefty fine big enough George Soros would notice it in his operating budget for these organizations, it would stop. Then after a few dozen arrests roll up the organizations with RICO. In short stop playing this game.
We know it only works one way, if the Right tried anything approximating these tactics they would find themselves in prison for years. The Left gets away with it because they control the D.C. mayor and police force. Congress should threaten to end home rule unless the local police start doing their damned job.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @11:45PM (1 child)
The Congress has its own police force. [wikipedia.org] Next time, do your own damn homework before spouting off (again!) like that.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Monday October 08 2018, @07:07PM
Ok, you are correct. Cue the South Parks clip of the kids saying "This part is pretty f*cked up right here."
So Congress has exclusive jurisdiction over the District. (The U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 8, Clause 17) but they delegated most of it to a local government with "home rule" but then to keep their own asses safe from the incompetent crackheads the local diversity would be permitted to live under they kept the already existing entirely different police force that has "concurrent jurisdiction" with the D.C. P.D. Then it looks like the Park Service also has concurrent jurisdiction over other parts (most of the tourist attractions) of the District. Bet the jurisdiction arguments get fun.
So why the Hell do they put up with shouting morons in their own halls? It makes no sense.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by vux984 on Saturday October 06 2018, @10:07PM (6 children)
points 1/2/3 yup was despicable partisan gamesmanship; but so was the republican's documents withholding; releasing hundreds of thousands of pages and then demanding a vote the next day, and the breakneck speed they pushed. They had no trouble leaving the supreme court seat open for a year when.
Sure, blame the left for the bullshit they pulled, but don't pretend the other team wasn't covered in their own shit. This whole spectacle was disgusting.
points 4/5 - disagree. let people protest. Why should money be heard but people be silenced?
As for Kavanaugh,
(Score: 4, Interesting) by vux984 on Saturday October 06 2018, @10:17PM (1 child)
Ugh... As for Kavanaugh,
I don't have a lot of opinion on him either way. I'd have preferred a less contentious candidate. Sounds like if nothing else, he was a dick frat boy and I have no real problem with that by itself being disqualifying for the supreme court if it comes to that. But more importantly he was too far embedded into the GOP for my tastes; in this current climate especially, they should put forth credible independents.
The process for selection itself is wrong. Same flaws as first past the post voting; and gerry-mandering. A better process would result in less contentious candidates. Some sort of ranked / proportional voting system on multiple candidates. And the executive shouldn't be involved in selecting them. Who is president when a supreme spot opens up shouldn't matter.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @09:39PM
An addition, not an original fundamental pillar of the Founding Father's vision.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday October 07 2018, @03:06PM (3 children)
That was partisanship, plain and simple. It was "payback" for the Dem's attempt at the very same game. No, it wasn't right, but the Dem's invented the game, and forced it on the R's. Just as the D's have just now created a new game, and forced it on the R's. Expect the next Dem candidate to face congressional hearings on some fake charges about his youthful explorations of sexuality - even if it didn't happen.
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Monday October 08 2018, @01:12PM (2 children)
'It was "payback" for the Dem's attempt at the very same game.'
Give it a rest. Both parties are playing the same games. Taking sides on the partisanship on display... either side, is just pathetic. Both sides behaved indefensibly poorly. And the 'payback' argument will goes bakcwards decades with every action being payback for some prior action the other side did for as far back as you care to go.
"Expect the next Dem candidate to face congressional hearings on some fake charges about his youthful explorations of sexuality..."
a) "youthful explorations of sexuality" ?? Fuck that. I don't pretend to know if Kavanaugh raped anyone, or even whether he sexually assaulted anyone, but its pretty damned clear he was a hard drinking belligerent frat boy who attended the sort of parties hard drinking frat boys attend. Frankly, I'm inclined to believe both Ford's and Kavanaugh's testimony, that she remembers it happening, and that he has no recollection of ever doing something like that. (And not because he blacked out, but just because that's not how he remembers it; if he remembers it at all. If in his head at the time he was just 'fooling around' and 'nothing happened' then maybe its long gone from his memory, as completely forgotten as what he had for lunch that day, or what shirt he was wearing.
b) Not likely, i expect the dems will head that off at the pass by nominating a woman.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday October 08 2018, @01:28PM (1 child)
Oh, I remember her! She was my babysitter when I was little! Let me show you on the doll what she did to me!! And, she always told me that if I told my parents, she would turn the electrical current up to 12!
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Tuesday October 09 2018, @12:31AM
Sure, they might trot someone out who will make that claim, but it's going to have a much tougher time getting credibility.
Hard partying frat boys not respecting 'no' is an earned stereotype. The female baby sitter molesting pre-teen boys... not so much.
Hell, my babysitter wouldn't give me the time of day despite my best efforts and was far more interested in her older boyfriend. (And THAT is the stereotype...)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 06 2018, @10:29PM
Time for jmorris to finally bring his case to the Supreme Court, proving the SJW convergence! Popcorn futures are hot!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 06 2018, @11:19PM (8 children)
Ah, jmorris one of our resident jackasses posting more bullshit.
We don't know that Dr. Ford's allegations are false, nobody looked into it. There were dozens of people who were willing to be interviewed by the FBI with regards to the various allegations against Kavanaugh and none of them were interviewed. Even Ford and Kavanaugh who were at the center of this weren't interviewed by the FBI.
This is not in dispute, sacks of shit like you that are claiming that we know that the allegations were false are liars. We don't know that they're false, we just know that the powers that be refused to take the allegations seriously.
Additionally, we know that Kavanaugh perjured himself multiple times during his testimony to congress. We know this because his own calendars and his own drinking buddies have specifically stated that he lied about getting blackout drunk.
As far as protesting in congress, it's their 1st amendment right to do so. But, given that you're supporting a known felon for supreme court, I'm not really surprised. And yes, I mean known felon, perjury is a felony and we have definitive proof that he perjured himself multiples times. Not just about not getting blackout drunk, but also about the meaning of "boofed."
There's a special place in hell for people like you that trip over yourselves to bend over to take it up the ass when your corporate masters desire it. Truly, you are a horrible human being.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 06 2018, @11:41PM (1 child)
No? [realclearpolitics.com] A bullshit story concocted to cover for a zoning violation?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @12:34AM
And that has absolutely nothing to do with her claims that she was sexually assaulted by soon to be Justice Kavanaugh. OK, not technically absolutely nothing, it was the reason for her going to therapy, but that's a rather ridiculous basis for concluding that she was lying when Kavanaugh was telling such whoppers. Boofed means farted, seriously.
I'm an MRA and it's really hard to justify taking his side on the merits of what we know and in light of the complete lack of any sort of real investigation.
(Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Sunday October 07 2018, @02:25AM (2 children)
Aside from the Democrat party and every major news organization in the US. If there was something there, you'd have more to complain about.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @03:45PM (1 child)
And that's not true. Her allegations were never looked into seriously, they let her have the mic for a few hours just to pretend that they were taking it seriously. Then they let him perjure himself for a few hours and had a sham investigation where the FBI wasn't allowed to talk with anybody that had knowledge of the situation that might have been able to get to the bottom of it.
Idiots like you are why our system is broken. Kavanaugh was perfectly happy to try and overthrow democracy over a relatively minor lie by Clinton that may not even have been a lie. There are people out there that don't consider oral sex to be sex after all. But, somehow the numerous times he was caught on camera during the hearings perjuring himself isn't a big deal.
Given the number of times he blatantly perjured himself and the lack of any substantive investigation into the allegations, you cannot conclude that there weren't anything to them. Especially in light of the other people making similar claims about his inappropriate conduct.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday October 07 2018, @07:37PM
Again, the Democrat Party and those media giants weren't similarly constrained. Nobody prevented them from doing that.
It was a lie that cost Clinton his law license.
We've discussed those times here, but have yet to hear why they're perjury.
Which is a strong indication of how weak your accusations are. If there was actual blatant perjury, you'd be talking about it rather than the number of times it happened.
(Score: 2, Troll) by Runaway1956 on Sunday October 07 2018, @03:10PM
You're a very special kind of stupid, aren't you? Everyone in the country was waiting for some kind of verification. Everyone, including the R's. If ANYONE had stepped up, and confirmed Ford's story, Kav would have been out. But Ford's best friends couldn't confirm her story. Her worst enemies couldn't confirm her story. The bitch dreamed this shit one night, as a horny teen, and Kav starred in her dream. That's as close as her story gets to reality.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Sunday October 07 2018, @04:26PM (1 child)
So much bullshit and parroting of the legacy media, easy to see why this was an AC post.
Nobody COULD look into it very far, that was the entire goal of constructing her story the way they did, it couldn't be investigated. She couldn't say what year it happened in, she had no place. The only other people she named were all interviewed and they all said it either didn't happen at all, the suspect wasn't there, etc. So no witnesses. She can't even say how she got there or made it back home. What is there to investigate?
They were interviewed extensively on live television. What more was the FBI expected to learn?
Point to a fact in dispute. One would do.
And it is neither my duty or even Justice Kavanaugh's to prove the allegations are false, especially since she carefully crafted them to be impossible to 100% refute. Innocent until proven guilty is the standard of evidence in the United States, this is not France. Even a preponderance of the evidence standard clears the Justice, because she has zero in her favor and the failure of every witness to confirm a single aspect of her tale stands as a rebuke. The lack of a contemporaneous police report says that if something happened thirty six years ago she didn't consider it a crime.
This shit is why nobody takes you guys seriously anymore. Because it isn't just ACs, CNN does it too. The central act in dispute, according to the local police, would, in the absolute worst possible interpretation by a DA out for blood, be chargeable as a misdemeanor had the Statute of Limitations not expires decades ago. So in a case with all the facts pointing to no crime, and had it occurred it would not have been a felony and the term "known felon" implying not only guilty but conviction in a court, you think you can just say that shit and make it at least truthy by mindless repetition.
And no, your attempt to goal shift to perjury is also rejected. It assumes he is lying, therefore perjury. So just FYDITM. You lost, suck it.
The only good thing to come from this is that now 22% of the Supreme Court are victims of false allegations of sexual misconduct. So this important issue should get a more fair hearing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @07:54PM
Good thing there's plenty of other incidents over his career where he appears to have perjured himself based on released documents. Suck it, dumbass.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday October 06 2018, @11:35PM (4 children)
Fuck that. I want the shitstains on the hill to be afraid of those they govern. Left, right, I don't give a damn. They all need to be quaking in their boots so maybe they'll remember why oppressing Americans was a bad idea back in the 1700s and is still a bad idea now.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Pslytely Psycho on Sunday October 07 2018, @06:23AM (3 children)
Unfortunately, it will likely take heads on pikes to get the shitstains to fear us. After all, they are comforted because they control the big guns.
Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday October 07 2018, @02:41PM (2 children)
Big guns are mostly good for blowing up structures and vehicles. Small arms are what you primarily need for killing humans and the citizenry has a hell of a lot more of those.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday October 07 2018, @03:15PM (1 child)
Two things. First, this is a generation (the third?) that has grown up on television. A .50 cal MG seems a peashooter to the television and movies bunch.
Second, Pslytely Psycho only says that the powers that be are comforted by their control of big guns. He makes no claim that the big guns have any special value, or powers.
But, yeah, a .22 is adequate for an assassination, if the shooter is competent. I prefer larger rounds, like .270, but the .22 will do the job.
(Score: 2) by Pslytely Psycho on Monday October 08 2018, @10:29AM
Thank you. I perhaps should of expressed myself more clearly. Seems you got it squarely.
Peace out!
Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Sunday October 07 2018, @12:00AM (15 children)
> question of whether a thirty six year old high school clumsy grope matters.
If he was 18 or older at the time, it matters, so say the laws of the United States, which a Supreme Court nominee should know better than most. Also, a crime is universal in that it doesn't matter what age the perp is, a crime is a crime regardless. We are more lenient with minors, but we don't let them off scot-free.
> If we are going to revisit every person's high school and even college antics for behavior short of outright criminal our civilization is toast.
Attempted rape is outright criminal. So is battery. What kind of high school and college did you attend, to think attempted rape is just high jinks and no big deal? And to suggest it's more civilized to keep looking the other way?? You sure have that one upside down. Is it that you're not with the times? Rape is taken just a teensy bit more seriously these days. Indeed, civilization may well depend upon empowering women, who will then use that power to say "no", thus preventing overpopulation.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @01:33AM (10 children)
You missed anther critical point: the judge is misleading the public and gaslighting a victim. If instead he said "yeah, I'm really very sorry, and I'm so glad to have learned how wrong some of our actions were. It's past the statue of limitations, and I'm not the dumb teenager I was. I hope we can educate our youth to behave better than that. It was wrong, and I spend my life in service of justice now." then cool, cool.
But, lying to the public, and furthering damage to a victim? That's not in the public good, that's in the client's good. That's lawyer work, not judge work.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @01:44AM (8 children)
Ironically, if he did do it, admitting so would have tanked his nomination.
He said that no job was worth what he and his family were put through. But is doing the right thing worth losing the job and being tarnished forever?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @02:14AM (5 children)
As it stands, his reputation is in tatters and he's likely to be impeached and removed from office the first chance the Dems get at it. He's a bit lucky in that the Dems will have to pick up like 20 seats in the Senate as well as win the house in order to make it happen, but any decisions that he makes are going to be suspect and the cost to the court's credibility is staggering.
The only way in which this makes any sense is either as an f you to Democrats or as a way of delegitimizing the Supreme Court as it continually slaps Trumps plans down for violating various constitutional rights.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday October 07 2018, @02:40AM (4 children)
Thankfully, SCOTUS doesn't have to give a flying fuck about credibility. They are damned near utterly unaccountable and damned near the final word on any given subject; congress would have to amend the constitution to overturn one of their decisions.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @04:58AM (1 child)
really? seems luke there was a SC decision. a certain Justice Scalia gave the losers advice for how to argue it. ans said if Congress passed a law...
Well those things happened. the losers got another similar case back to the SC, and, lo and behold, Congress had passed a law, and... Citizens United vs US.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday October 07 2018, @02:44PM
That wasn't exactly overturning then, was it? There's a significant difference between "you can't do this" and "you can't do this that way".
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @03:49PM (1 child)
The SCOTUS does not have it's own enforcement army. Literally, the only power they have comes from our agreement to follow whatever their rulings are.
If enough of us decided to say, just fuck it, we don't have to listen to those partisan hacks any more, there's nothing they could do to stop it.
This is an extremely dangerous game that the GOP has been playing the last few decades where they nominate jurists that aren't competent to be on any courts to life time appointments while cock blocking the much more qualified picks that the Democrats have been nominating.
This puts us in dangerous water as the court increasingly wades into things like settling Presidential elections and voting rights.
If our vote doesn't count, then on what basis should anybody expect change without a bloody insurrection?
(Score: 2) by BK on Monday October 08 2018, @01:27AM
Over the last few decades.... for at least a half century, SCOTUS has increasingly become involved in areas that are as much (or more) policy as law. Left, Right, or Other, this has been a dangerous game.
The problem with the approach of 'winning' your issue through the courts is that your counter-parties have no investment in the solution. Generally, when the same things are done legislatively, the 'losing' party wrings some concession or whatever so that, even in defeat, all of the stakeholders win a bit. Winning in the court leaves the losers plotting to do the same back to the winner.
The GOP aren't alone in selecting activist judges to the court(s). It has taken at least two to manage this particular tango.
...but you HAVE heard of me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 08 2018, @01:08AM (1 child)
You may find this incredible but there are some for whom retaining a modicum of integrity is far more important than getting a hold of the levers of power. Yeah, I know such people are few and far between, but they do exist. Just sayin'.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 08 2018, @01:26AM
Too bad somebody like that could never get appointed to SCOTUS in this political climate.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday October 07 2018, @03:15AM
Unless, of course, that didn't happen.
"Cool" because that would mean he wouldn't get the nomination? One should consider whether a nomination process that tends to reward your alleged gaslighting is a good idea.
(Score: 3, Troll) by jmorris on Sunday October 07 2018, @03:06AM (3 children)
Where to start with your errors. The media harassed local law enforcement about why they weren't investigating this shocking crime. Their response? Based on what she claimed it was at worst a misdemeanor with a one year Statute pf Limitations. Worst case. Assuming it happened and assuming she identified the right target. Both of those assumptions are highly improbable.
Listen to her claim again. At some point in the 1980s, she isn't even sure of the year, she was at a party. She isn't sure how she got there, she isn't sure how she left, she isn't sure where it was at. She said she was there with varying numbers of people in different versions but all of them are either certain the party didn't happen at all, uncertain of the events and / or certain they never met Kavanaugh before. She does admit to screwing sixty plus people in high school and college, her yearbooks say she was a party girl. But because of one half remembered grope she is scarred for life? But despite the trauma, "she was almost killed!" ya know, she never told anyone, never filed a police report, nothing.
Now lets consider that she paid to have per online trail professionally scrubbed before her name dropped in the media and /pol/ could save any of it. But from her appearing in other people's photos we can be pretty sure she was in the "Women's March" and thus a political activist. And the friend who just happens to be ex-FBI and connected to the deep state as I already mentioned. Her father is CIA, many think she is as well, grampa got an award for his own CIA service. A brother has connections to Perkins-Coie. She has a paper published on the subject of creating false memories.
And you believe that she is the victim here. Or you expect me to believe you do. Premise rejected.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @08:49AM
From what I read she did tell numerous people, even decades ago.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @03:58PM (1 child)
Liar. There's a special place in hell for partisan hacks like yourself.
Based on the situation, the police in Maryland concluded that it was potentially attempted rape which has no statute of limitations. But, they can't make a final determination without her filing a report and digging into it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 08 2018, @12:06AM
ah yes, the alt-right brigade is up in arms here. down with everything that disagrees with them! what sad politically cucked little bitches.