Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia Dead

[shiny!]

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/us-...nd-6828930.php

"Associate Justice Antonin Scalia was found dead of apparent natural causes Saturday on a luxury resort in West Texas, federal officials said."

[jk]

Re: Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia Dead

ted cruz, marco rubio and mitch mcconnell have all announced that the seat should be left vacant for over a year so that the next president can appoint his successor. this should be interesting....

[santafe2]

Re: Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia Dead

ted cruz, marco rubio and mitch mcconnell have all announced that the seat should be left vacant for over a year so that the next president can appoint his successor. this should be interesting....

This is now, likely the most important election of our lifetimes. The Dems don't have the firepower in the Senate to confirm a new SCJ so this is not likely to happen until 2017. If the oligarchs can buy this election, we're screwed and they know it. Let the fight begin.

[santafe2]

Re: Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia Dead

Without Scalia the EPA's Clean Power Plan is likely no longer on hold. Put those party favors away coal lobbyists, coal may be headed to the dumpster of energy history faster than you thought a few days ago. As crazy as DC is in an election year it's about to get a lot crazier.

[jk]

Re: Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia Dead

Without Scalia the EPA's Clean Power Plan is likely no longer on hold. Put those party favors away coal lobbyists, coal may be headed to the dumpster of energy history faster than you thought a few days ago. As crazy as DC is in an election year it's about to get a lot crazier.

the clean power plan was merely enjoined from being enforced while the case wends its way through the appellate courts. by the time it gets back to the supreme court i expect there will be 9 justices.

what an interesting election issue this will be! i think everyone expected ginsberg to die or retire before any of the others, but instead we will have the mirror-image battle.

the issue of supreme court appointments was going to be a background issue, casting a deep shadow over the election only for those who were paying attention. now it will be front and center.

[santafe2]

Re: Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia Dead

the clean power plan was merely enjoined from being enforced while the case wends its way through the appellate courts. by the time it gets back to the supreme court i expect there will be 9 justices.

what an interesting election issue this will be! i think everyone expected ginsberg to die or retire before any of the others, but instead we will have the mirror-image battle.

the issue of supreme court appointments was going to be a background issue, casting a deep shadow over the election only for those who were paying attention. now it will be front and center.

The Supreme Court may have enjoined enforcement earlier this week when they had 5 conservatives but today they have four and the three judges on the DC Circuit that handled the appeal are decidedly leaning Democratic and Pro Clean Power Plan. In fact one of them is Sri Srinivasan who may be nominated by Obama. That group of three judges can now vote to uphold the administration's policies. If they do, the Supreme Court has their hands tied 4-4. Both the liberal and conservative courts will have a field day while the Supreme Court, for all intents and purposes, ceases to exist. For example, you don't want to be a woman seeking an abortion in Texas, Louisiana or Mississippi, the 5th Circuit Court will now have the final say over your decision.

I fully expect Obama to nominate someone of such impeccable credentials that the Republicans will look like fools and bullies as they block the nomination. With any luck it will undo them for a generation or two. Of course the oligarchs have had 35 years to build unimaginable wealth. It's going to be a very interesting year.

[jk]

Re: Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia Dead

I fully expect Obama to nominate someone of such impeccable credentials that the Republicans will look like fools and bullies as they block the nomination.

only to those who disagree with them in the first place.

[santafe2]

Re: Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia Dead

only to those who disagree with them in the first place.

What they think will only matter if they can vote an 1840s style nativist into office who will "build a wall", continue gutting the voting rights act, crushing women's rights, granting corporations inalienable rights and teaching of creationism. We're at a critical juncture. It's possible we'll resurrect the No Nothing Party but I suspect the majority of people will vote for a non-nativist candidate.

[jk]

Re: Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia Dead

What they think will only matter if they can vote an 1840s style nativist into office who will "build a wall", continue gutting the voting rights act, crushing women's rights, granting corporations inalienable rights and teaching of creationism. We're at a critical juncture. It's possible we'll resurrect the No Nothing Party but I suspect the majority of people will vote for a non-nativist candidate.

actually what i meant was that only those who already disagree with the republicans will [continue to] see them as fools and bullies. i expect that no nominee will be confirmed while obama is still in office. what will be most interesting is if the democrats respond in kind, and use their filibuster power to prevent another nominee from being confirmed for the following 4 to 8 years [assuming a republican is the next president]. usually the democrats pride themselves on being more "reasonable" than the republicans, but perhaps they will shift to tit-for-tat. one can picture a 9 little indians scenario in which successive supreme court justices die or retire and are not replaced until the bench is empty. we live in interesting times.

[santafe2]

Re: Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia Dead

actually what i meant was that only those who already disagree with the republicans will [continue to] see them as fools and bullies. i expect that no nominee will be confirmed while obama is still in office. what will be most interesting is if the democrats respond in kind, and use their filibuster power to prevent another nominee from being confirmed for the following 4 to 8 years [assuming a republican is the next president]. usually the democrats pride themselves on being more "reasonable" than the republicans, but perhaps they will shift to tit-for-tat. one can picture a 9 little indians scenario in which successive supreme court justices die or retire and are not replaced until the bench is empty. we live in interesting times.

Or the Dems can threaten the "full nuclear option" before the election. That is, take our reasonable, middle-of-the-road nominee today or hope we don't take the White House and the Senate in November because we'll make the nomination a simple majority and put whoever we want on the Supreme Court and that includes a younger, feistier version of RBG. These Republicans should not forget how much Hillary hates them and they'll have to deal with Chuck Schumer in the Senate. If I'm not mistaken the Republicans have to defend 24 seats in the Senate and the Democrats only 10. Those are not great odds out of the gate.

As the Presidential race moves on it may become clear that there's going to be a 2 year window where the Dems will have extraordinary power. The best way to stop them from populating the court with true liberals is to take one moderate today with a promise not to invoke the nuclear option.

[vt]

Re: Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia Dead

Both parties are controlled by their radical wings. Until they are replaced by the centrist independents (42% and rising), the two radical parties will obstruct each other forever.

[vt]

Re: Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia Dead

"Flashback: Senate Democrats in 1960 pass resolution against election-year Supreme Court recess appointments

Saved to Reading List
By David Bernstein February 13 at 9:59 PM

Thanks to a VC commenter, I discovered that in August 1960, the Democrat-controlled Senate passed a resolution, S.RES. 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.” Each of President Eisenhower’s SCOTUS appointments had initially been a recess appointment who was later confirmed by the Senate, and the Democrats were apparently concerned that Ike would try to fill any last-minute vacancy that might arise with a recess appointment. Not surprisingly, the Republicans objected, insisting that the Court should have a full complement of Justices at all times. Of course, the partisan arguments will be exactly the opposite this time. "

David Bernstein is the George Mason University Foundation Professor at the George Mason University School of Law in Arlington, VA. His latest book, Lawless: The Obama Administration's Unprecedented Assault on the Constitution and the Rule of Law, was published in November.

[jk]

Re: Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia Dead

it may well be to the democrats advantage for the presidential and senatorial elections to be centered on citizen's united and roe v wade.

[vt]

Re: Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia Dead

So if Citizen's United should be overturned then should unions also be forbidden from making political contributions? What about rich donors on both sides?

I have stated and still say that ALL money should be stopped in political contests. Get ALL special interests out.

Here is a view from the conservative side (not that I agree):


OPINION

Progressives' itch to regulate speech
Feb. 14, 2016 Updated 12:00 a.m.
"By GEORGE F. WILL / Syndicated columnist

WASHINGTON – Bernie Sanders, greedy for power to punish people he considers greedy, has occasioned 2016’s best joke (reported in Bloomberg Businessweek): “In the Bernie Sanders drinking game, every time he mentions a free government program, you drink someone else’s beer.” But neither Sanders’ nor Hillary Clinton’s hostility to the First Amendment is amusing.

Both have voted to do something never done before – make the Bill of Rights less protective. They favor amending the First Amendment to permit government regulation of political campaign speech. Hence they embrace progressivism’s logic, as it has been explained separately, and disapprovingly, by two eminent economists, Ronald Coase and Aaron Director:

There is no reason the regulatory, redistributive state should distinguish between various markets. So, government that is competent and duty-bound to regulate markets for goods and services to promote social justice is competent and duty-bound to regulate the marketplace of ideas for the same purpose.

Sanders and Clinton detest the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision, which they say their court nominees will promise to reverse. It held that unions and corporations – especially incorporated advocacy groups, from the National Rifle Association to the Sierra Club – can engage in unregulated spending on political advocacy that is not coordinated with candidates or campaigns. The decision simply recognized that Americans do not forfeit their First Amendment rights when they come together in incorporated entities to magnify their voices by speaking collectively.

Opposition to Citizens United is frequently distilled into the slogan that “corporations are not people,” to which Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., adds this example of progressive insight: “People have hearts. They have kids. They get jobs. They get sick. They cry. They dance. They live. They love. And they die.” And a few teach at Harvard Law School, as Warren was able to do only because Harvard did not die: It is descended from the first corporation chartered in Colonial America.

William Blackstone, the English jurist who richly influenced America’s founders, said corporations are “artificial persons” created to encourage socially useful cooperation among individuals and are accorded certain rights so that they can hold property and have lives, identities and missions that span multiple generations. Early in America’s history, many for-profit corporations were less important than the nonprofit educational and religious corporations that still produce America’s robust civil society of freely cooperating citizens.

If corporations had no rights of personhood, they would have no constitutional protections against, for example, the arbitrary search and seizure by government of their property without just compensation. And there would be no principled reason for denying the right of free speech to for-profit (e.g., the New York Times) or nonprofit (e.g., the NAACP) corporations.

In his attack on the Bill of Rights, Sanders voted to exempt for-profit media corporations from regulation of corporate speech. Why? Because such corporations, alone among for-profit and nonprofit corporations, are uniquely altruistic and disinterested? Please.

In 2007, in a Cato Institute lecture, federal appellate Judge Janice Rogers Brown warned us: People who are eager to weaken protection of private property in order to enable government to redistribute wealth will also want to weaken constitutional protections of free speech in order to empower government to redistribute ideas.

Since then, college campuses have been responsive to people eager to regulate what others say, hear and see. Now, in the name of campaign finance reform, progressives like Sanders and Clinton want to expand government’s regulatory reach to political speech.

Both are ardent for equality and, as Brown foresaw, the argument for economic equality easily becomes an argument for equalizing political influence. The argument is: Government regulates or seizes property in the name of equity, so why not also, for the same reason, regulate the quantity, content and timing of speech intended to “influence elections”?

Progressives, with their collectivist itch, are ever eager to break private institutions to the saddle of the state, and to fill private spaces with regulations. Do they consider government uniquely altruistic and disinterested? Please."

So do we have free speech or what?

[santafe2]

Re: Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia Dead

it may well be to the democrats advantage for the presidential and senatorial elections to be centered on citizen's united and roe v wade.

You may be correct jk. Now that one Supreme Court seat is in play and a 2nd can't be more than a few years away at most, the Dems will try to flog these issues like a stubborn mule. Unfortunately, Hillary is at least as vulnerable as anyone on the right and if she's running against Trump, he'll beat on the Wall Street money issue every time they meet.