5 ms·

> Him being a trump nominee makes me suspicious, but also sad that that is the effect and that papers need to list who nominated a judge. They don't, they just

> Him being a trump nominee makes me suspicious, but also sad that that is the effect and that papers need to list who nominated a judge. They don't, they just choose to do so. It's the same way pundits, authors, and broadcasters often get labeled "right-wing" or "conservative" while similarly left-wing ones don't get labeled. It's an editorial choice to call the reader's attention to it and imply relevance. Beyond that, I think this is unique relative to the normal "bully pulpit" pressure in that: * It's being used in order to suppress speech and opposition to the administration's policies, and * It was being done in secret, not exposed until later, and has otherwise shown no signs of stopping That makes it a bit different from, say, publicly pressuring lawmakers to reduce tariffs on sugar.

hgsgm 3y ago
After the Senate ran a party-line unpresidented and unconstitutional multi-year campaign to block Obama's nominations from entering office without even a hearing, and then packed the courts with their own judges, it absolutely is relevant who appointed a judge.
- moduspol 3y ago
  "unprecedented", and you're right, up until the point of relevance. It's only relevant to this story to imply that its causal, i.e., an impartial judge might not have made the ruling. Or to your point, "this wouldn't have happened if Obama's appointee were there." It's openly questioning the judge's ability to be neutral. Regardless, though, I'm OK with it as long as it's labeled every time a Clinton, Obama, or Biden-appointed judge makes a decision that could be framed as political. That doesn't happen, though.
- edgyquant 3y ago
  In what way was that unconstitutional? It was democrats who changed the rules so they could block judges with a simple majority, not republicans. They did so assuming they’d be the ones in power.
- quickthrowman 3y ago
  How is it unconstitutional? Article II Section 2 of the Constitution says that the President shall nominate, with the advice and consent of the Senate […] judges. The Senate did not consent, so Merrick Garland was not given a confirmation hearing. https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleii https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleii
  - tzs 3y ago
    It's pretty hard to argue that the Senate gave advice if they didn't even hold a hearing to consider the matter.
  - hayst4ck 3y ago
    Just because you perform the rituals of democracy doesn't mean you get democracy. If voting doesn't result in representation, then the act of voting is just a ritual and not an exertion of political power. You're saying because we performed a ritual around judges, we should be getting the result we want, or judges that represent America at large. You're so focused on rituals you are missing the bigger picture. That is cargo cult democracy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_science > In the South Seas there is a cargo cult of people. During the war they saw airplanes land with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they've arranged to imitate things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head like headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas—he's the controller—and they wait for the airplanes to land. They're doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn't work. No airplanes land. So I call these things cargo cult science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they're missing something essential, because the planes don't land.
    - quickthrowman 3y ago
      The US isn’t an abstract ‘democracy’, it’s a functioning democracy with a specific set of rules. I don’t agree with Mitch McConnell’s decision to refuse to have a hearing for Merrick Garland. I’m just saying it’s not against the Constitution as it is written. If the Obama Administration thought they had a legal right to force a hearing on Merrick Garland in the Senate, they would’ve filed a lawsuit to force the issue. The fact that they didn’t tells me that what McConnell and the GOP did wasn't illegal. It may have arguably been immoral and unethical, but it wasn’t illegal, and that was the point of my post that you responded to.
Pxtl 3y ago
The Trump administration lost any benefit of the doubt with their judicial appointments when they outraged the legal establishment (eg American Bar Association) by frequently ignoring the most qualified candidates for judicial appointments in favor of ideologically Republican ones.
- edgyquant 3y ago
  Neither you or are the Bar Association have any right to tell the president who is most qualified for a role he appoints. Maybe you don’t like it or it’s “wrong,” but the Bar Association is a bunch bureaucrats not an arbiter of platonic truth or good.
  - Pxtl 3y ago
    Obviously it's his prerogative to choose who he and the Senate want, but then nobody should be outraged when the impartiality of his appointed judges is questioned. edit: I'm rate-limited so can't reply, so here's my reply below: It's a matter of degrees. For example, when Biden made it clear that he was hiring Ketanji Brown Jackson in part because she was a progressive black woman, she still had a massive amount of relevant experience and professional reputation. There's the understanding that while she obviously has a political bias, she's still a good judge. She had worked in district court, appeals court, she'd even worked as a public defender. She had an exceptionally long list of cases and legal opinions she could point to for her experience. Meanwhile, contrast to Amy Coney Barrett, who had never been a judge before Trump appointed her into the Court of Appeals as a fast-track to the Supreme Court. She'd never tried a case all the way to verdict. She'd never argued an appeal. Her background was purely in academia.
    - Clubber 3y ago
      All judges are picked for their political bias, that's how it works. Democrats pick judges who are more left leaning, conservatives pick justices that are more right leaning. To pretend it's just one way is incorrect.
nemo44x 3y ago
> They don't, they just choose to do so. It's the same way pundits, authors, and broadcasters often get labeled "right-wing" or "conservative" while similarly left-wing ones don't get labeled. Which is even weirder when we consider that being "right wing" is considered bad but "left wing" is not. When in reality during the 20th century, far left wing political organizations have been responsible for the deaths of 10's of millions more than far right parties. Being a Nazi is bad but being a Communist is far worse if history is any indicator. But you'd never know it by how much of the media frames things.
- ModernMech 3y ago
  The left wing individuals responsible for the 10s of millions of deaths you're citing here sound more like Donald Trump in their rhetoric than any "leftist" rhetoric you'll find today in the USA. After all, it was Stalin who, like Trump, called the media the "enemy of the people" “Stalin originated the concept ‘enemy of the people’. This term automatically made it unnecessary that the ideological errors of a man be proven,” Khrushchev said in his secret address to the Communist party’s inner circle. “It made possible the use of the cruellest repression, against anyone who in any way disagreed with Stalin, against those who were only suspected of hostile intent, against those who had bad reputations.” https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/aug/03/trump-enemy-of-the-people-meaning-history https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/aug/03/trump-enemy-... That's how the right behaves today, which is why the right is dangerous. Communism vs. capitalism doesn't mean a thing if the person in charge is a deranged, power-hungry, narcissistic dictator.

hgsgm 3y ago

After the Senate ran a party-line unpresidented and unconstitutional multi-year campaign to block Obama's nominations from entering office without even a hearing, and then packed the courts with their own judges, it absolutely is relevant who appointed a judge.

moduspol 3y ago
"unprecedented", and you're right, up until the point of relevance. It's only relevant to this story to imply that its causal, i.e., an impartial judge might not have made the ruling. Or to your point, "this wouldn't have happened if Obama's appointee were there." It's openly questioning the judge's ability to be neutral. Regardless, though, I'm OK with it as long as it's labeled every time a Clinton, Obama, or Biden-appointed judge makes a decision that could be framed as political. That doesn't happen, though.
edgyquant 3y ago
In what way was that unconstitutional? It was democrats who changed the rules so they could block judges with a simple majority, not republicans. They did so assuming they’d be the ones in power.
quickthrowman 3y ago
How is it unconstitutional? Article II Section 2 of the Constitution says that the President shall nominate, with the advice and consent of the Senate […] judges. The Senate did not consent, so Merrick Garland was not given a confirmation hearing. https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleii https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleii
- tzs 3y ago
  It's pretty hard to argue that the Senate gave advice if they didn't even hold a hearing to consider the matter.
- hayst4ck 3y ago
  Just because you perform the rituals of democracy doesn't mean you get democracy. If voting doesn't result in representation, then the act of voting is just a ritual and not an exertion of political power. You're saying because we performed a ritual around judges, we should be getting the result we want, or judges that represent America at large. You're so focused on rituals you are missing the bigger picture. That is cargo cult democracy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_science > In the South Seas there is a cargo cult of people. During the war they saw airplanes land with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they've arranged to imitate things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head like headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas—he's the controller—and they wait for the airplanes to land. They're doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn't work. No airplanes land. So I call these things cargo cult science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they're missing something essential, because the planes don't land.
  - quickthrowman 3y ago
    The US isn’t an abstract ‘democracy’, it’s a functioning democracy with a specific set of rules. I don’t agree with Mitch McConnell’s decision to refuse to have a hearing for Merrick Garland. I’m just saying it’s not against the Constitution as it is written. If the Obama Administration thought they had a legal right to force a hearing on Merrick Garland in the Senate, they would’ve filed a lawsuit to force the issue. The fact that they didn’t tells me that what McConnell and the GOP did wasn't illegal. It may have arguably been immoral and unethical, but it wasn’t illegal, and that was the point of my post that you responded to.

Pxtl 3y ago

The Trump administration lost any benefit of the doubt with their judicial appointments when they outraged the legal establishment (eg American Bar Association) by frequently ignoring the most qualified candidates for judicial appointments in favor of ideologically Republican ones.

edgyquant 3y ago
Neither you or are the Bar Association have any right to tell the president who is most qualified for a role he appoints. Maybe you don’t like it or it’s “wrong,” but the Bar Association is a bunch bureaucrats not an arbiter of platonic truth or good.
- Pxtl 3y ago
  Obviously it's his prerogative to choose who he and the Senate want, but then nobody should be outraged when the impartiality of his appointed judges is questioned. edit: I'm rate-limited so can't reply, so here's my reply below: It's a matter of degrees. For example, when Biden made it clear that he was hiring Ketanji Brown Jackson in part because she was a progressive black woman, she still had a massive amount of relevant experience and professional reputation. There's the understanding that while she obviously has a political bias, she's still a good judge. She had worked in district court, appeals court, she'd even worked as a public defender. She had an exceptionally long list of cases and legal opinions she could point to for her experience. Meanwhile, contrast to Amy Coney Barrett, who had never been a judge before Trump appointed her into the Court of Appeals as a fast-track to the Supreme Court. She'd never tried a case all the way to verdict. She'd never argued an appeal. Her background was purely in academia.
  - Clubber 3y ago
    All judges are picked for their political bias, that's how it works. Democrats pick judges who are more left leaning, conservatives pick justices that are more right leaning. To pretend it's just one way is incorrect.

nemo44x 3y ago

> They don't, they just choose to do so. It's the same way pundits, authors, and broadcasters often get labeled "right-wing" or "conservative" while similarly left-wing ones don't get labeled. Which is even weirder when we consider that being "right wing" is considered bad but "left wing" is not. When in reality during the 20th century, far left wing political organizations have been responsible for the deaths of 10's of millions more than far right parties. Being a Nazi is bad but being a Communist is far worse if history is any indicator. But you'd never know it by how much of the media frames things.

ModernMech 3y ago
The left wing individuals responsible for the 10s of millions of deaths you're citing here sound more like Donald Trump in their rhetoric than any "leftist" rhetoric you'll find today in the USA. After all, it was Stalin who, like Trump, called the media the "enemy of the people" “Stalin originated the concept ‘enemy of the people’. This term automatically made it unnecessary that the ideological errors of a man be proven,” Khrushchev said in his secret address to the Communist party’s inner circle. “It made possible the use of the cruellest repression, against anyone who in any way disagreed with Stalin, against those who were only suspected of hostile intent, against those who had bad reputations.” https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/aug/03/trump-enemy-of-the-people-meaning-history https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/aug/03/trump-enemy-... That's how the right behaves today, which is why the right is dangerous. Communism vs. capitalism doesn't mean a thing if the person in charge is a deranged, power-hungry, narcissistic dictator.