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Amy Coney Barrett: Who is Trump's Supreme Court pick?:
Amy Coney Barrett's nomination to the US Supreme Court comes as little surprise.
[...] Donald Trump - who as sitting president gets to select nominees - reportedly once said he was "saving her" for this moment: when elderly Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and a vacancy on the nine-member court arose.
It took the president just over a week to fast-track the 48-year-old conservative intellectual into the wings. This is his chance to tip the court make-up even further to the right ahead of the presidential election, when he could lose power.
Barrett's record on gun rights and immigration cases imply she would be as reliable a vote on the right of the court, as Ginsburg was on the left, according to Jonathan Turley, a professor of law at George Washington University.
"Ginsburg maintained one of the most consistent liberal voting records in the history of the court. Barrett has the same consistency and commitment," he adds. "She is not a work-in-progress like some nominees. She is the ultimate 'deliverable' for conservative votes."
And her vote, alongside a conservative majority, could make the difference for decades ahead, especially on divisive issues such as abortion rights and the Affordable Care Act (the Obama-era health insurance provider).
Barrett's legal opinions and remarks on abortion and gay marriage have made her popular with the religious right, but earned vehement opposition from liberals.
But as a devout Catholic, she has repeatedly insisted her faith does not compromise her work.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) is facing considerable controversy about his plans to move the nomination forward quickly:
"President Trump could not have made a better decision," Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the majority leader, said in a statement. "Judge Amy Coney Barrett is an exceptionally impressive jurist and an exceedingly well-qualified nominee to the Supreme Court of the United States."
He added: "First, Judge Barrett built a reputation as a brilliant scholar at the forefront of the legal academy. Then she answered the call to public service. For three years on the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, she has demonstrated exactly the independence, impartiality, and fidelity to our laws and Constitution that Americans need and deserve on their highest Court... As I have stated, this nomination will receive a vote on the Senate floor in the weeks ahead, following the work of the Judiciary Committee supervised by Chairman Graham."
This is in sharp contrast to McConnell's actions following US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's passing away on February 13, 2016. McConnell waited less than 2 hours to make the first of 5 statements to urging delay in nominating a new Supreme Court justice:
The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president
That statement was made with 342 days (over 11 months) remaining in Obama's term as President. There are 124 days (just over 4 months) remaining before the end of Trump's term.
President Obama nominated Judge Merrick Garland to fill the vacancy. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) followed McConnell's lead and never allowed the confirmation process to begin. Thus, no nomination was ever brought to the Senate floor and thereby leaving the vacancy open.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 27 2020, @10:56PM (4 children)
Oh sure she's competent, it's her ability to remain impartial and follow the law that's at question. Her writings and her record as a judge suggest she can't, which is exactly why the right loves her so much. The last thing they want is someone who is both impartial and competent.
If this goes through, the only remedy will be to take the senate, presidency, and keep the house. Once all three are in Democratic hands, it's time to go beyond nuclear into antimatter-warhead territory: nuke the filibuster, add 4 seats to the supreme court, admit DC as a state and possibly Puerto Rico. Hell, if Guam leans left, offer them statehood too. Consider expanding the size of the house just enough that tiny conservative states like Wyoming and the Dakotas still only have one rep while California and New York gain a lot more.
The whole problem is right now the Republican Party is a tyranny of the minority. They are not at all representative of the portion of the demographic who votes for them, they have far too much power than they should have. The reason for this is all the large states with tiny populations that tend to vote for them. Because of how the electoral collage works, voters in those states have a higher proportion of political power than the large states when it comes to picking the president and controlling the senate. Everyone is supposed to be equal, and the constitutions was designed to defend AGAINST a tyranny of the majority, not ENABLE a tyranny of the minority. The measures I mentioned will also overbalance things to a point where depending on democratic cohesion and if they get pulled as far to the left as republicans have to the right, we MIGHT end up with a tyranny of the majority. What I think will happen tho is once these measures are in place, democrats will lose that cohesion because they just don't have the same inherent aptitude for unity that the republicans do. Right now Democrats are pissed off and rightly so. There have been multiple elections in recent memory where their candidate won the popular vote but lost the electoral vote, and the same is true in the senate.
Republicans are god at exactly one thing: holding themselves in power. They are incompetent when it comes to governing. They say they want a government that's small but they want to control the reproductive freedoms of women, tell gays they cant be together in marriage, force trans people to live against their own identity, and keep racial disparity going. They say they want fiscal responsibility, but then they add tons and tons more to the defense budget while cutting things that the future of the country depends on like education and health care. What they really want is a government that's small.... if you're rich as hell. Their tax policies going back decades evidence this. Ever seen the hockey stick graph? Take the incomes of average people vs rich people and graph them. From the mid 20th century until Reagan's term, both were going up proportionally. Everyone was getting richer. After that? The line for average people flattens, while the line for the rich curves sharply upwards like a hockey stick. The relative income of average people has remained the same since the 80s while prices keep going up. And it's thanks to bullshit economics that Republicans parrot because they serve the rich exclusively.
None of this is to say Democrats are going to be very good for this country either. Some of the far lefts policies are needed, such as education and healthcare being treated as rights instead of things only the rich can properly afford. Other things that could have very dramatic consequences they don't seem to concerned about. The China problem for instance. That one is, in fact, better addressed by China Hawks on the right and is a growing threat to democracy in general. It's worrying, but I have to believe that EVENTUALLY the Democrats will pay attention to it...right?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday September 27 2020, @11:16PM (2 children)
If that's so, I'd like to hear about it instead of more talk about how you don't like the Electoral College.
She seems to have some libertarian cheerleaders (I lean that way). For example, Reason.com has posted several mostly favorable stories on her (here [reason.com], here [reason.com], here [reason.com], and here. The TL;DR is that she's voiced concern about due process in college sexual assault cases, shot down a pretty bogus claim to qualified immunity by a police detective framing a suspect, and opposes blanket firearm bans for felons (though not a qualified ban, if I understand correctly). The last article voices concern that she'll continue to support deference to some iffy law (here, assuming in law and regulation of commercial transactions that the legislature and Executive Branch knowledgeably passed it in good faith, when they wouldn't do the same for laws or regulation that challenge higher priority rights like speech or due process).
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 28 2020, @12:27AM (1 child)
Different AC here, but if she were competent, the GOP wouldn't have her on the list of potential nominees. A competent judge on the court would rule time and time against the projects that the GOP has been engaged in. They'd rule against the gerrymandering and the repeal of voter's rights as well as against corporate personhood. Sadly, the Democrats aren't much better in terms of their nominees these days.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 28 2020, @03:04AM
Why the hell is this partisan wishlist redefinition as competence being marked as insightful?
Let's just wrap this up: Parent poster thinks that judges aren't supposed to have opinions that make the parent poster cry in evening time milk.
Thank you for clarifying your position, now go back to the little table while the grown-ups chat.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 28 2020, @09:05PM
It isn't an RNC v. DNC thing.
From the very beginning the southern states said "well, that whole people thing, doesn't really mean certain people". We fought a war over it. Then ten years later they passed the dictionary act, which essentially said that all people weren't really people, they were just one player in a system split between corporations and biological persons.
The thing is, in 1789 the founders would have been acutely aware of corporate corruption. They had just fought a war over it. The revolutionary war wasn't about "taxation without representation", it was about corrupt trade regulations. John Hancock tarred an exchequer (starting the whole thing) not because they strolled up and levied a a tax. He tarred the guy because he was siezing cargo on behalf of a private international corporation with the kings blessing.
The current problems dates back to the late 1800s, just like the problems in the middle 1800's dated back to well before 1776. First because the dictionary act is an undeniably bizarre interpretation of the preamble. Second because the weight of bench law behind that one line of code, has become so onerous that is as powerful as a constitutional amendment. And because only congress can pass an amendment, that bench law is therefore extra-jurisdictional. So SCOTUS's house has been out of order for a long long time.
This should have been corrected by congress, but the American people haven't given them an adequate reason to rat on each other yet. Nore will they anytime soon, if you consider that BLM was a state managed controlled-release. The one thing you can say about racism, is that it generally isn't blamed on congressmen. Well at least not in states above the mason dixon. So who gained from those riots? Well of course the people who would have otherwise been targets of public ire! Racism isn't the biggest civil rights issue in the U.S. anymore. We've got bigger fish to fry. Oh, you thought that whole thing was genuine?
I think the other big question is whether SCOTUS has been doing due dilligence in vetting its own cases. If they had been checking for collusion they should have caught somebody by now, and locked them up. So there is some question as to whether SCOTUS is a rubber stamp mill for corporate enterprise at this point.
The movement towards fascism in this country derives from the judiciary. I'd like to blame it on congress, but SCOTUS has been covering their butts for a long long time.
In short, the judiciary ignores its own rules. Which means there are no rules. If you think the debate here is RNC v. DNC, you're wrong. DNC v. RNC is a question that never escaped the matrix.
The only people voting in a two party system in this country, are those voting for third parties.