Scalia Dead - Supreme Court No longer has a Gun Friendly Majority

The longest it's taken to fill a Supreme Court vacancy in US history is 125 days. President Obama has 361 days left in office.

"The Constitution of the United States is at stake. Article II, Section 2 clearly provides that the President, and the President alone, nominates judges. The Senate is empowered to give advice and consent. But my Democratic colleagues want to change the rules. They want to reinterpret the Constitution to require a supermajority for confirmation. In effect, they would take away the power to nominate from the President and grant it to a minority of 41 Senators."

"The Republican conference intends to restore the principle that, regardless of party, any President's judicial nominees, after full debate, deserve a simple up-or-down vote. I know that some of our colleagues wish that restoration of this principle were not required. But it is a measured step that my friends on the other side of the aisle have unfortunately made necessary. For the first time in 214 years, they have changed the Senate's 'advise and consent' responsibilities to 'advise and obstruct."

Mitch McConnell on the floor of the United States Senate, 2005.

1) What the media are pleased to refer to as "obstruction" by the Republicans in the Senate is, according to them, an attempt to derail "the process" - what they don't seem to get is that action (or inaction) by the Senate is an essential part of "the process". The Senate has no Constitutional responsibility to rubber-stamp the President's choice. They can wait until O'bamma puts up a conservative Republican candidate, and refuse to accept anyone they don't think acceptable.

2) I note that the Vatican still maintains a majority in the Supreme Court with five of the eight remaining. Not known for adherence to "traditional American values" which are largely the result of Germanic and Scottish cultural influences mainly expressed through various non-Catholic sects, "The Church" is probably the strongest proponent of disarming the peasantry in the U.S.. They learned their lesson when the German nobles armed their peasants during the Reformation (which is why Austria is Catholic and Germany is Lutheran). I suggest that, without knocking anyone's religion, another Roman on the Supreme Court would not be an advantage to people interested in preserving their right to defend themselves, their homes and their families. For a concrete example of how this cultural difference plays out in practical politics, compare Rubio with Cruz on the status of illegal (mainly Catholic) hispanic immigrants, and consider that difference in light of the religious upbringing of each man. The fact that Rubio has a lot in common with conservatives doesn't mean he is a conservative.

3) Scalia was a great judge because he believed in implementing the law as it is, and had an intellectually honest approach to life in a civil society; he did not subordinate his approach to decisions to any "higher authority" than the law. Which used to make my Catholic dentist pretty unhappy - he'd have to harangue me about it everytime I had to sit still and listen to him (in between the grinding noises). Scalia was never argumentative about what the law ought to be (a big failing on the part of some of the members), and strongly believed in the Constitutional balance. Thank you, Ronald Reagan. I hope the next president will make as wise a decision.

DeSchaine said:

Does anyone realize that the Senate is currently in recess? The head twit can actually appoint whomever he wants anytime between now and the 22nd without Senate approval.

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They can/should hot foot it back to DC and call the senate into pro forma session and stay in session until the end of the session.

Nightmare said:

Democrats said that with 11 months left in Mr. Obama’s tenure, the Senate has enough time — and indeed an obligation — to confirm a replacement.

Mr. McConnell, though, said voters must be given a say in the matter, and that means picking a president who will nominate the replacement.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/feb/13/fight-over-antonin-scalia-replacement-heats-democr/

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If I were to separate out my personal feelings on the matter, I'd be siding with the Democrats on this one. 11 months is sufficient time, and the truth is that we currently have a President (again, regardless of my feelings about him) who was elected knowing he would nominate replacements during his term.

That said, Republicans are the ones who failed in the previous nomination processes. There were clear reasons to not confirm Kagan and Sotomayor, but they did their backroom deals and did it anyway.

user said:

SNIP 2) I note that the Vatican still maintains a majority in the Supreme Court with five of the eight remaining. Not known for adherence to "traditional American values" which are largely the result of Germanic and Scottish cultural influences mainly expressed through various non-Catholic sects, "The Church" is probably the strongest proponent of disarming the peasantry in the U.S.. They learned their lesson when the German nobles armed their peasants during the Reformation (which is why Austria is Catholic and Germany is Lutheran). I suggest that, without knocking anyone's religion, another Roman on the Supreme Court would not be an advantage to people interested in preserving their right to defend themselves, their homes and their families. For a concrete example of how this cultural difference plays out in practical politics, compare Rubio with Cruz on the status of illegal (mainly Catholic) hispanic immigrants, and consider that difference in light of the religious upbringing of each man. The fact that Rubio has a lot in common with conservatives doesn't mean he is a conservative.

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Very interesting, thank you.

Just to expand a bit by touching on another angle:

In his Pulitzer-prize winning book, Origins of the Fifth Amendment: The Right Against Self-Incrimination, history professor Leonard Levy points out that one of the reasons England ended up on a different course to the continent is because England's legal system included lawyers using the common law. Thus, the common law lawyers were in a position to fight back against Catholic Church in England. Where did that common law tradition come from? Those pesky Germanic immigrants who came along after the Romans gave up Britain, and those dang Picts (Latin for painted people) who lived in the northern part of the island (Scotland).

Now that LGBT marriage equality is the law of the land, I have no real care or concern for SCOTUS, but I can say good riddance to scalia, and hope the next SC judge is a democrat, solely because it'd peeve off republicans, and the staunchly conservative members of this board. And as we all know, in the U.S., the name of the political game is how much each party can urinate in the other side's corn flakes.

DrakeZ07 said:

Now that LGBT marriage equality is the law of the land, I have no real care or concern for SCOTUS, but I can say good riddance to scalia, and hope the next SC judge is a democrat, solely because it'd peeve off republicans, and the staunchly conservative members of this board. And as we all know, in the U.S., the name of the political game is how much each party can urinate in the other side's corn flakes.

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Freedom lovers love freedom for all people, not just for themselves. Sorry to hear you aren't one. That said, you are correct that it's a shame that the courts aren't politically neutral as was intended.

DrakeZ07 said:

Now that LGBT marriage equality is the law of the land, I have no real care or concern for SCOTUS, but I can say good riddance to scalia, and hope the next SC judge is a democrat, solely because it'd peeve off republicans, and the staunchly conservative members of this board. And as we all know, in the U.S., the name of the political game is how much each party can urinate in the other side's corn flakes.

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Repulsive.

MAC702 said:

Freedom lovers love freedom for all people, not just for themselves. Sorry to hear you aren't one. That said, you are correct that it's a shame that the courts aren't politically neutral as was intended.

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The fact that SCOTUS justices have been nominated based on political ideology disqualified the SCOTUS as an honest court a long time ago IMHO. We have been living with it for far too long.

DrakeZ07 said:

Now that LGBT marriage equality is the law of the land, I have no real care or concern for SCOTUS,[SUP]1[/SUP] but I can say good riddance to scalia, and hope the next SC judge is a democrat, solely because it'd peeve off republicans,[SUP]2[/SUP] and the staunchly conservative members of this board. And as we all know, in the U.S., the name of the political game is how much each party can urinate in the other side's corn flakes. emphasis added by Citizen

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Really? That is your level of thinking?

1. Once you got what you want, you stopped...? Really?

2. Angering anti-rights conservatives is your sole reason for hoping the next SCOTUS justice is a democrat? Really?

That is your level of rational inspection and thought? Really?

DrakeZ07 said:

Now that LGBT marriage equality is the law of the land, I have no real care or concern for SCOTUS, but I can say good riddance to scalia, and hope the next SC judge is a democrat, solely because it'd peeve off republicans, and the staunchly conservative members of this board. And as we all know, in the U.S., the name of the political game is how much each party can urinate in the other side's corn flakes.

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I'd like to point out that what the governments and legal systems in the United States decide has nothing to do with real marriage, nor can any human legal system purport to define it. All they're talking about is civil recognition of relationships, sort of the same as they can say that a corporation exists merely because the law says it does. All legal fictions made to make the government work more effectively. Has nothing to do with reality. Besides, most of the people who "fall in love" and "get married" because of their overwhelming sexual attraction and participation in a ceremony never end up actually being married, either. My divorce lawyer friends can testify to that.

Jeff Hayes said:

The fact that SCOTUS justices have been nominated based on political ideology disqualified the SCOTUS as an honest court a long time ago IMHO. We have been living with it for far too long.

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It's them derned humans! If we could just get rid of all the humans, the Earthy would be fine. All seriousness aside, as a student of the Bible and of history, I can tell you that in the past eight thousand years (since people invented written records), the only thing that's really changed with the humans is that they've learned to move bigger and heavier things farther and faster. Read the stories about Abraham and his progeny and their adversaries up through the period of the Kingdom and you'll see that humans have pretty much been the same the whole time.

user said:

It's them derned humans! If we could just get rid of all the humans, the Earthy would be fine. All seriousness aside, as a student of the Bible and of history, I can tell you that in the past eight thousand years (since people invented written records), the only thing that's really changed with the humans is that they've learned to move bigger and heavier things farther and faster. Read the stories about Abraham and his progeny and their adversaries up through the period of the Kingdom and you'll see that humans have pretty much been the same the whole time.

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+1

Human nature hasn't changed.

If it had, I would've gotten the memo.

Wolfgang1952 said:

Obongo get to nominate another left wing Supreme Court judge. We are really up a creek without a patal now

Wolf

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what's a patal?

hammer6 said:

what's a patal?

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I think it's a Bedouin version of a quesadilla?

Nightmare said:

I suspect that you are too young and poorly read to remember the Peanut Gallery of cheap seat hecklers.

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Well read is not the same as read well.

user said:

It's them derned humans! If we could just get rid of all the humans, the Earthy would be fine. All seriousness aside, as a student of the Bible and of history, I can tell you that in the past eight thousand years (since people invented written records), the only thing that's really changed with the humans is that they've learned to move bigger and heavier things farther and faster. Read the stories about Abraham and his progeny and their adversaries up through the period of the Kingdom and you'll see that humans have pretty much been the same the whole time.

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So, how would we build the pyramids today? What about the stone bodies on Easter island? And as a student of the (Christian) bible, how can you claim we have made good advances? The bible promotes racism, says nothing prohibiting slavery, prohibits paying interest on loans, and absolves debts after 7 years.

Today, we could not build buildings like the pyramids. Today, we are owned by the bankers. Etc.

The only thing that has changed is speed of travel of basic goods and communication.

Sent from my SM-G386T using Tapatalk

Freedom1Man said:

So, how would we build the pyramids today? What about the stone bodies on Easter island? And as a student of the (Christian) bible, how can you claim we have made good advances? The bible promotes racism, says nothing prohibiting slavery, prohibits paying interest on loans, and absolves debts after 7 years.

Today, we could not build buildings like the pyramids. Today, we are owned by the bankers. Etc.

The only thing that has changed is speed of travel of basic goods and communication.

Sent from my SM-G386T using Tapatalk

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This one has been solved in the last few years.

First, the stone is not volcanic basalt (hard rock), it is highly compacted volcanic debris. Meaning, it is susceptible to carving and chipping with a stone tool of a harder stone.

As to moving the moai (moh'-eye), the native islanders have an oral tradition that the statues walked into position. Researchers got serious and noticed a few things. They know where the quarry is--some moai are still in position, unfinished, in the quarry. There are also some fifty fallen moai between the quarry and the final position sites. These are called "road moai". Researchers noticed that if the slope was downhill in the direction of travel away from the quarry, a higher percentage of the fallen moai were on their faces. If the slope was uphill in the direction of travel from the quarry, a higher percentage of road moai were laying on their backs.

Researchers also noticed none of the fallen road moai were complete, meaning more carving happened at the final position. Three major points: the eye sockets were carved on the road moai, but not the eyes themselves. The moai that made it into position were put on a diet--they're slimmer than the road moai (meaning the center of gravity is lower on the road moai). And, the bottom of the road moai are sloped such that the road moai would lean forward if they were stood up. The moai in the final positions stand almost straight up.

The upshot--researchers modeled a moai using the fallen moai measurements, and cast a life-size moai in concrete. They got two teams on ropes and tried to "walk" the moai. It didn't work with the ropes tied around the neck. But, as soon as they tied the ropes around the pronounced eyebrow ridges, the leverage changed and they were able to walk the concrete moai. One of the rope pullers pointed out that they only had to heave hard to get it started. After that initial heaving, they got the statue rocking and they had only to add small tugs to keep it rocking and walking.

And, we're not talking fifty guys on each rope. More like eight or ten. Once they got their coordination worked out, they made it look easy.

So, the native islanders were telling us all along how it was done.

[video=youtube;mH0sIjAHBVY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mH0sIjAHBVY[/video]

beebobby said:

...
Mitch McConnell on the floor of the United States Senate, 2005.

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I'll see your single senator and up you the majority of the entire Senate.

In 1960, fearing that Ike might make an election year appointment to the SCOTUS before the Democrats won the Presidency back, the Democratic Majority in the Senate passed Senate Resolution 334, “Expressing the sense of the Senate that the president should not make recess appointments to the Supreme Court, except to prevent or end a breakdown in the administration of the Court’s business.”

48 Democrats voted in favor, 33 Republicans and 4 Democrats voting against. President Eisenhower had recess-appointed William Brennan to the Supreme Court in October 1956, just before the presidential election. With a winnable election coming up, Democrats obviously didn’t want a replay.

Of course, everyone is switching sides now because almost nobody in DC has any real principles. It is all about political advantage.

And sadly with so much of society and life being both politicized, legalized, and federalized, every appointment to the SCOTUS matters greatly.

With the black letter language of the 2nd amendment, and even stronger language in many State Constitutions, the individual RKBA shouldn't even be in question. Doubly so for liberals who have traditionally been those who have most strenuously guarded civil liberties and warned against excess government power. Sadly, even liberals have a hard time overcoming their racism and classism. Clayton Cramer nailed it well in his 1993 essay The Racist Roots of Gun Control.

Gun control is a lot more about control than it is about guns. And it has always been aimed at keeping certain, "undesirable" groups subservient to the power structure. Black slaves were the original target; followed by Irish, Catholics, and other recent immigrants. Post War Between the States, freed slaves were greatly feared. Inner city blacks remain a very scary demographic for many, followed by rural "redneck" types. I note how many libs were perfectly happy with unshaved, iPhone toting hippies seizing public property as part of the OWS protests who are mostly upset that more of the Bundy-types were not killed in Oregon or Nevada.

But a strict reading of the 9th and 10th amendments, along with the fairly short list of enumerated powers delegated to the federal government, means that a whole lot of cases the proper response from the federal courts should not be a ruling one way or the other but a simple, "That is not an area where the federal government has any power. It is a State matter."

This is true for marriage, drug use and other medical matters including socialized payment for medical care, management of vast tracts of land, welfare and retirement plans, elective abortion, euthanasia, virtually every method of capital punishment in use for the last 40 years, what crimes qualify as capital, and a whole lot of other issues that the federal courts seem intent to nationalize. We'd get along a whole lot better as a nation if the federal courts would respect State power and diversity a lot more than they do. If NH, Vermont, Mass, or any other States wants socialized medicine, so be it. No reason to force every State into such plans. Ditto if some States want to legalize pot or other drugs, euthanasia, or elective abortions. Gambling, prostitution, and liquor laws have all worked fine being left to the States. So too would a lot of other issues and we could then vote with our feet to live in an area where the political and social climate was acceptable, rather than the entire nation being unhappy about half of what goes on at any given moment.

Charles

user said:

1) What the media are pleased to refer to as "obstruction" by the Republicans in the Senate is, according to them, an attempt to derail "the process" - what they don't seem to get is that action (or inaction) by the Senate is an essential part of "the process". The Senate has no Constitutional responsibility to rubber-stamp the President's choice. They can wait until O'bamma puts up a conservative Republican candidate, and refuse to accept anyone they don't think acceptable.

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+1

One might surmise that by splitting the Presidency and the Senate between the two major parties, the voters were expressing their desire to have court appointments be moderates, or ideally, true constitutionalists who would put the highest law of the land ahead of any personal political views.

user said:

3) Scalia was a great judge because he believed in implementing the law as it is, and had an intellectually honest approach to life in a civil society; he did not subordinate his approach to decisions to any "higher authority" than the law. Which used to make my Catholic dentist pretty unhappy - he'd have to harangue me about it everytime I had to sit still and listen to him (in between the grinding noises). Scalia was never argumentative about what the law ought to be (a big failing on the part of some of the members), and strongly believed in the Constitutional balance. Thank you, Ronald Reagan. I hope the next president will make as wise a decision.

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And another big +1.

I read a Scalia quote in the last couple of days where he said, in effect, "A lot of people worry about whether the little old lady wins or loses. I couldn't care less whether she wins or loses as long as we get the law right."

That kind of dispassionate adherence to the law/constitution is exactly what is needed. Hard cases too easily make for bad law, and it takes what might be seen as a hard heart or hard head to prevent that.

Charles