GOP: A “Mainstream” Nominee for Supreme Court
With a perfectly straight face — they must be world champion poker players — Republican leaders have said they want a “mainstream” nominee for the upcoming Supreme Court vacancy, and they will filibuster the nominee only under “extraordinary circumstances.”
Trouble is — who is mainstream enough to suit the party of teabaggers, birthers, racists and Salem Witchhunters? There just aren’t enough Real Americans out there.
Clement Haynsworth, Harold Carswell, George Wallace, Bull Connor — Dead.
Robert Bork — too old and too bitter.
James Dobson, Sarah Palin, Fred Phelps — damn it, none of them are lawyers.
Republicans recited their usual soundbite about “judges legislating from the bench.”
Jeff Sessions (R—KKK) said: “If we have a nominee that evidences a philosophy of judges know best, that they can amend the Constitution by saying it has evolved, and effectuate agendas, then we're going to have a big fight about that because the American people don't want that.”
Two questions:
1. How the fuck does he know what “the American people” don’t want? He’s obviously projecting his own backyard onto America as a whole. This method isn't very reliable, especially in this case. Most Americans continued their schooling after the fourth grade, can find Canada and Mexico on a map, and were born of parents who weren’t cousins or siblings.
2. Where was this dildo when the Supreme Court recently made their “Bribery Is Now Completely Legal” ruling?
posted by Tom Harper @ 3:09 PM
25 Comments:
Fred Phelps isn't a lawyer, but his equally crazy daughter is.
Oh, ok, I just threw up in my mouth a little at the potential ramifications of that statement...
BA very scary thought, Yikes!
On the ruling of unions and corporations being a person,I wonder does that mean they would have to participate in the Wars they start. Serve on Juries? Get Married? Tell me a civil union,heaven forbid... Great posting! WHOC thanx.
It's that same old tired and time-worn game. The truth is that Republicans have no problem with judges legislating from the bench as long as the judges are conservative and effectuating corporate, big-money and social-conservative agendas.
Sessions, like most Republican pols, is counting on people accepting at face value what they're told. And of course he and the right-wing noise machine will do all they can to drown out facts and truth with their supposedly worthy opinions, outright lies and distortions.
This is just stupid (unsurprisingly), Obama hasn't even acknowledged Justice Stevens' announcement and both sides of the political penny are pretentiously slicing and dicing presumed candidates. Stupid, just stupid.
Fuck the Repubics.
Obama and the Senate have what it takes to appoint the most Pissed-Off Pistol-packing Progressive out there - preferably a Reservation First American activist atheist lesbian who practices (or not, as it may be) Zen (or not-zen...) and a highly aggressive discipline of KungFu, rides a Yamaha and likes to drink beer and smoke weed.
There's only one party, The Christian Fascist Party, speaking out of both sides of its mouth.
Beauregard was deemed too racist for a Federal bench appointment, and he's been burning crosses in the SCOTUS parking lot ever since.
He's hardly representative of American opinion, or even of humanity.
Ten Bears
Ha! they would just pop a vessel and stroke out. What a wonderful way to get rid of them..
Actually, Fred Phelps is a lawyer.. and a democrat to boot... He used to be a very strong Civil Rights attorney... and tried many cases and won most of them, even though he hated the clients he had to represent.
All his kids are attorneys and that's how they make the money to travel all over.. Sickening isn't it..
Jesus H. Christ. If it weren't there in black and white, I'd not believe these guys were serious.
Wow....Now they're interested in middle ground? Really? Really!?
For the GOP, "extroardinary circumstances" means anything Obama says or proposes. The nominee could be right of center, and they would still fight it, just on general principle (or maybe it would be more like lack of principle).
As for saying what the American people want and don't want, that's just another GOP fallacy. They know that in most cases a majority of Americans don't want much of what they propose, but if they say it long enough and loud enough that "America wants such-and-such" or "America doesn't want such-and-such"... then more people will think such nonsense as "NOBODY wants a health care overhaul, and now Obama is making it so we can't even get in to SEE a doctor anymore, let alone the doctor we have been seeing for years", etc.
As this tactic tends to "poison the well" on a number of issues, opinion polls reflect that this tactic works over a period of time. Because they have as much power in the media as they do, their "message" has ways of worming its way into the minds of millions, who then become minions!
He should float Sarah Palin's name just to call their bluff and watch them choke on their coffee
Erik
Makes me wonder if they'll let any choice pass. I'm almost sure that even if the rethugs hand picked the candidate that they'd vote against it if Obama said he'd be for that candidate.
Ya know, I was going to try and give some opposing viewpoints on the rants contained herein, but I can tell from the rabid subjectivity of the comments that I would be wasting my time.
I do find it amusing that most everyone commenting here accuses the feckless and often stupid GOP aparatus of the very same charges of which the Democrats are at least equally guilty, and often times even more guilty thereof.
To get a nominee who is 'mainstream' enough to suit the GOP, I see two choices: Beck and Limbaugh. It doesn't matter that they are not lawyers. Roberts, Scalia, Scalito and Thomas might as well not be either.
Technically you do not have to be a lawyer to be on the Supreme Court. There are actually some justices that served accordingly that were not lawyers, although admittedly this was long ago.
As for Limbaugh and Beck, although I would not want either of them on the Supreme Court, I KNOW they each would do a far more faithful job to the law and the Constitution than Stevens, Ginsburg, Breyer, Souter, or Kennedy have.
Bee: Thanks for the info. I had no idea anybody in that gang of inbreds even finished grade school, let alone law school.
Tim: Scary thought indeed. And I agree that if corporations are people, they can serve on juries, in the military, get married...
SW: I don't know why Republicans keep spouting the same drivel about "legislating from the bench." It's so transparent and so contradictory to everything they actually do, I can't believe even their most dimwitted followers would believe it.
Ten Bears: "preferably a Reservation First American activist atheist lesbian who practices (or not, as it may be) Zen (or not-zen...) and a highly aggressive discipline of KungFu, rides a Yamaha and likes to drink beer and smoke weed."
She has to be disabled too, or it's no go.
JR: Sorry but I don't know who Beauregard is.
Annette: Now that you mention it, I think I actually read that a long time ago. I must have either forgotten it, or repressed it because it was so contradictory to everything else I knew about him. I wonder what caused him to mutate like that. Sickening is right.
Carlos: Yes, the GOP really does want the middle ground. Not quite as far to the right as Hitler, and not quite as liberal as Mussolini.
Snave: Yup, there have been a lot of "extraordinary circumstances" since Obama got elected. Socialized medicine, that nukular treaty that leaves America defenseless to the onslaught of her enemies, some Mexican broad on the Supreme Court, that commie fascist clean energy legislation that Obama is pushing for -- decent Americans want their country back.
Not to mention, of course, that Obama was born in Kenya and our socialist congress is engaging in a massive coverup.
Erik: He should call them on their bluff, if nothing else just to see them choking on their coffee.
Demeur: I have no doubt they'll automatically filibuster anybody that Obama nominates.
T. Paine: So you decided not to leave a comment, then? OK :)
TomCat: If Obama were to nominate Beck or Limbaugh, the wingtards would still filibuster.
T. Paine: I didn't know that, that a Supreme Court justice doesn't have to be a lawyer.
As far as "upholding the Constitution" goes, even George Will recently called out his fellow conservatives for their hypocrisy over "activist judges." He specifically mentioned Citizens United, which had conservatives whooping and hollering because a 100-year trend got overturned; and Kelo, where conservatives were furious because the Supreme Court DIDN'T overturn the New London, CT eminent domain ruling. (I also thought that decision sucked; I've never met anybody who's in favor of letting a private company seize somebody else's property.)
The constitution makes virtually no prescription regarding who can be a supreme court justice.
While all nine currently sitting Justices were judges before their appointments, more than thirty previous Justices were not. Though virtually all Justices have been trained lawyers, this is not constitutionally mandated, though I don't see congress approving a non-attorney for the job.
Even if Obama were to fall and hit his head, or if something were to happen to cause him to have an overnight conversion to far-right conservatism (enough so that he would nominate an extreme conservative, or even Beck or Limbaugh for the Court)... the Republicans would still filibuster the nominee because they would suspect Obama of having ulterior motives.
When groupthink generates paranoia, amazingly dissonant things like that can actually happen. Thus, because the right is running on fear and displays some dissonances, Obama needs to propose appointees (and he and the Democrats need to propose legislation) that will not only suit the left, but that will also make the GOP look silly for opposing.
The dissonance needs to be exposed. The more this is done, the sillier the Republicans will look in the public eye. And the more the Republicans cry "NOBODY wants this," the more America will realize that the GOP's claims are not necessarily true. The GOP is definitely not stupid, but if things are done right, it can sure be made to look that way (and to the left's advantage).
I would imagine that virtually nobody who listens to Beck, Limbaugh or FOX agrees to anything that Obama wants for the country. They are being coached well. But there is one fact that many of those listeners won't admit to (or don't like to admit, because it is inconvenient to do so), and that is this: not everyone in America listens to those "news"/informational outlets, and not everyone in America is conservative.
And for that, we can be thankful. 8-)
The new appointment will run and run for months, to try and force the White House to take their eye off the ball. The ball being jobs, jobs, jobs.
Thomas: Thanks for the info. I had no idea. But I can't imagine anyone today getting appointed to the Supreme Court who isn't already a judge.
Snave: "When groupthink generates paranoia," -- that sure describes the rightwing phenomenon. Think tanks and demagogues come up with these wacky fear-based soundbites, which are recited endlessly by millions of parrots who have no idea what they're saying.
I hope there's a way for Obama to show the Republican leadership for what it is. Unfortunately, Republican spin doctors are good at what they do, and millions of gullible voters seem to share this image of heroic Republican senators singlehandedly saving America from the onslaught of ObamaCare and Fascism/Communism.
Holte: Yup, that's their plan. If a jobs bill gets passed it'll be another Waterloo for Republicans.
PLEASE, please, please put up even a Constitutionally sound centrist for SCOTUS associate justice, if not a conservative!
Of course this is not going to be the case. I have heard horror story trial balloons being tested from self-avowed Communist Cass Sunstein, to Hillary Clinton, to Janet Napalitono as possible candidates.
Obama is way too much of a militant left-winger to not take advantage of this oppurtunity to put forth someone as left-wing as possible to fill Justice Stevens' seat. Such is Obama's right, but don't kid yourselves that he would nominate a conservative to the bench in order to make a point against the GOP.
Further, as stupid as the GOP is, don't think for a moment they wouldn't give positive advice and consent on a conservative nominee.
Tom, Sessions is Beauregard :)
As for "T. Paine," I'll assume his assumed last name is a descriptive term, because he knows not what the f he speaks of.
Obama is way too much of a militant left-winger to not take advantage of this oppurtunity to put forth someone as left-wing as possible to fill Justice Stevens' seat.
Stupidest thing I've seen all day. You need to take your lips off Beck's sphincter, read a little history, and then listen to Ron Paul. Paul knows what the President is; the prattle about him being a "militant left winger" just makes the prattler look like a complete moron.
Tom, you couldn't be more right! I'm not going to get into one of my rants.However,I must say very well said and I like your blog.
Please elaborate Mr. Jolly, what Obama can be classified as other than a thoroughly unqualified-for-president community organizer that seemingly wants to enact every progressive ideal as quickly as possible to further destroy America.
Yes, I understand that he doesn't THINK he is destroying America, but rather is ushering in some leftwing Marxist Utopia.
If not a militant left-winger, I don't know what else to call him, sir.
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