Supreme Court Nominee

[Chuck Naill]

Childs has been acknowledged as being on the short list:

CNN: White House confirms J. Michelle Childs is among 'multiple individuals' under consideration for Supreme Court nomination.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/28/polit...use/index.html

If you're in the path of the blizzard, Ted, take care.

[kazoolaw]

I'll repeat: the three possible candidates named in the WaPo article are all highly qualified.
...as they meet minimum standards of qualification. Two of which can be gender and race, whether it is stated or not.

There are no constitutional "minimum standards of qualification."
To be clear, the only qualifications you've identified are gender and race.
To claim someone is "highly qualified" without being able to articulate what those qualifications are, much less how a nominee meets those qualifications, is empty rhetoric.


Correction: I earlier said that the President "appoints" to the Supreme Court. As the SC webpage states, the President nominates, the Senate votes to confirm.

[Chuck Naill]

Being female and black does indicate a highly qualified candidate...LOL!! Much more qualified than a white dude. I am sure Ted will, as we all have come to expect we must, do you homework for you. Just sit back, have another beer, and wait.

Besides racial issues, the US is still wrangling over the 28th Amendment.

[TSherbs]

Childs has been acknowledged as being on the short list:

CNN: White House confirms J. Michelle Childs is among 'multiple individuals' under consideration for Supreme Court nomination.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/28/polit...use/index.html

If you're in the path of the blizzard, Ted, take care.

The wind and snow are howling. Hunkered down. So far we still have power (no generator). I worry about the homeless. In Portland, Maine, even in winter, they are just in tents. Subzero temps some nights.

Our friends in Boston are to get it worse.

[TSherbs]

Being female and black does indicate a highly qualified candidate...LOL!! Much more qualified than a white dude. I am sure Ted will, as we all have come to expect we must, do you homework for you. Just sit back, have another beer, and wait.

Not sure what this is about. I don't read or respond to him anymore.

I've got to go top off the oil in the Toro. The blower is gonna get a good bit of action later today. The double stage thrower will sure come in handy.

[Chuck Naill]

Being female and black does indicate a highly qualified candidate...LOL!! Much more qualified than a white dude. I am sure Ted will, as we all have come to expect we must, do you homework for you. Just sit back, have another beer, and wait.

Not sure what this is about. I don't read or respond to him anymore.

I've got to go top off the oil in the Toro. The blower is gonna get a good bit of action later today. The double stage thrower will sure come in handy.

My bad. I am not up to date on your ignored folks. You didn't miss anything. He's a stupid son of a bitch. Oh wait, someone else used that this week.

Good to know you recycle your oil, you liberal you!!

[kazoolaw]

My bad. I am not up to date on your ignored folks. You didn't miss anything. He's a stupid son of a bitch. Oh wait, someone else used that this week.

Good one: are you claiming your teleprompter made you do it? I'll await your call to clear the air.

[TSherbs]

Good to know you recycle your oil, you liberal you!!

Huh? No way, but I do have to turn it in at the dump (into barrels provided for proper recycling once they are full). Our town is very strict about trash and recycling. The state charges us more (and then our fees go up) when we don't meet recycling targets (paper, plastic, metals, glass must all be separated out).

Very different from most southern states, no?

[Chuck Naill]

I’ve recycled for decades

[TSherbs]

I meant the town and state requirements. You can't even buy styrofoam (nor use it for take out food or beverage) in my state anymore, and you can't get a bag at a grocery store unless you ask for one and pay for it.

[Chuck Naill]

I meant the town and state requirements. You can't even buy styrofoam (nor use it for take out food or beverage) in my state anymore, and you can't get a bag at a grocery store unless you ask for one and pay for it.

Okay, I get it

[welch]

I would like to believe that the nominee will be assessed as being the best for the position irrespective of their race or gender. However, as dneal points out, the fact that these characteristics are mentioned in the same breath as the nomination means that the nomination has become overtly tainted.

It has been like this for about thirty years. George HW Bush nominated Clarence Thomas, a conservative black man to replace Thurgood Marshall, a liberal black man who had, before the court, been an important civil rights attorney. Republicans pledge to nominate anti-abortion justices. Trump appointed a woman, Amy Coney Barrett, to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

It is pretty routine.

The US is a large country with many superior legal minds across state and Federal judgeships. It is easy to pick someone really good who happens to fit where a President wants the Supreme Court to go.

Clarence Thomas, in response to then-Senator Joe Biden asking if there was anything he'd like to say to the Judiciary Committee:

"And from my standpoint as a black American, as far as I'm concerned, it is a high-tech lynching for
uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves, to do for themselves, to have different
ideas, and it is a message that unless you kowtow to an old order, this is what will happen to you. You
will be lynched, destroyed, caricatured by a committee of the U.S. -- U.S. Senate, rather than hung from
a tree."

When in doubt, follow the politics. Promises to nominate are often political offers to "buy" votes used by both parties. Joe Biden is just cruder than most, promising to nominate a black person to the Supreme Court, and then making it clear that if you don't support Biden for President you're not black: "Well I tell you what, if you have a problem figuring out whether you're for me or Trump, then you ain't black."

Maybe this nomination is Joe Biden's penance for filibustering the nomination of Janice Rogers Brown.

As I remember it, Biden supported Clarence Thomas against Anita Hill. This was Biden's offer to let Thomas get a word against her.

More important: Presidents have always based nominations to the Supreme Court on how much the nominee supports the President's policy. His politics. That's what policy is about. John Adams nominated the Virginia Federalist John Marshall. Andrew Jackson nominated his former Attorney General and temporary Secretary of the Treasury, Roger B. Taney, to replace Marshall. A Supreme Court nomination is always a political nomination. The issue of "qualified" or "unqualified" has usually come up when the ABA looks into a nominee and judges them worthy or unworthy. That's about it. Remember that Nixon nominated two segregationists from the South, nominated them successively. Haynesworth was found to be a segregationist, and rejected. Nixon nominated another southerner, Carrswell, who was found to be a segregationist and unqualified. Carrswell's judgements had been overturned too many times. (That led to an exchange in the Senate, when a defender of Carrswell agreed that, yes, Carrswell was mediocre, but argued that mediocre people deserved a voice on the Supreme Court.)

(John Jay, the first Chief Justice, might be the exception, but parties had not developed much in 1789)

That's how the Supreme Court is selected, EOC. The President chooses a sharp legal thinker who fits with their politics. Bold complains that

Unfortunately this situation further substantiates that the court is political.

That's just how the American political system works. Why, do you think, the Supreme Court blocked FDR so often during the Great Depression? Who had appointed the judges, and when? Why did the Court become more liberal, seat by seat, as time passed and Roosevelt and Truman and Eisenhower got to appoint justices?

[Bold2013]

Not complaining just think most would prefer the court to be apolitical.

[Chip]

I've got to go top off the oil in the Toro. The blower is gonna get a good bit of action later today. The double stage thrower will sure come in handy.

After fighting a huge Husqvarna blower for years, I just got an electric model: SnowJoe Two-stage 24 inch, with 100v rechargeable batteries.



No more spraying ether in the sparkplug hole, no more hauling on a rope in subzero temps, no more smelly gas can. No more earplugs or stinky exhaust fumes. Just pop in the batteries and go.

Sorry for the swerve. Back to the Supreme Court.

[TSherbs]

Not complaining just think most would prefer the court to be apolitical.

It was never meant to be apolitical. I disagree. I think most people want it to have a mixture of ideologies. We just disagree on which ideology we'd like to see prevail in the mixture.

[dneal]

As I remember it, Biden supported Clarence Thomas against Anita Hill. This was Biden's offer to let Thomas get a word against her.

Holy revisionist history Batman...

[welch]

As I remember it, Biden supported Clarence Thomas against Anita Hill. This was Biden's offer to let Thomas get a word against her.

Holy revisionist history Batman...

Ha! You don't remember?

Meanwhile, Bold says,

Not complaining just think most would prefer the court to be apolitical.

The Supreme Court have never been apolitical. While I haven't checked Madison's debates, so I won't pretend to know what the Framers meant the Court to be, it is clear that, since Marshall, Supreme Court selection has been political. Presidents appoint the most competent people who agree with them, more or less. That's why Carswell was remarkable. Ordinarily, the Senate confirms whoever the President nominates. Robert Bork was an exception, except that Bork had agreed to fire Archibald Cox, the Watergate prosecutor, after the Attorney General (Richardson?) and the Assistant AG (I forget his name) had refused and had resigned. When Reagan nominated Bork, a lot of people remembered. Otherwise, that's unusual.

Best we can hope for is that a President picks someone smart who is also honest. The appointment-for-a-lifetime ensures that a Justice can be independent, but, of course, they will have political opinions.

[dneal]

I remember. Biden was the chairman of the judiciary committee. Did he vote "yea" or "nay" on Thomas' appointment to the bench?

If no, you have a tough row to hoe arguing he "supported" Thomas.

[Bold2013]

I am not denying that the court is political. I just wish it wasn’t. In the same way I wish we could have more than two major political parties.

[kazoolaw]

As I remember it, Biden supported Clarence Thomas against Anita Hill. This was Biden's offer to let Thomas get a word against her.

Holy revisionist history Batman...

https://www.senate.gov/legislative/L...02_1_00220.htm