LaxPower Back-Up Stick

If you needed to know anything more about Amy Coney Barrett – I didn’t, but if you did – she made her first act last night appearing at a splashy campaign event for President Trump. Once the Senate voted to confirm her on a party line vote, she had a lifetime appointment and literally no need for anything from President Trump. Indeed, she would quite likely have marginally improved the odds that the corrupt conservative Court majority would remain in place by declining such an appearance.

She did it anyway and that was a choice.

Meanwhile, Justice Kavanaugh, himself a former Republican political operative rinsed and rebranded as a High Court Justice, issued another ruling to restrict voting access in the current election. Critically and ominously he added what amounted to a threat to use the Court to block vote counting after election day or mail-in votes altogether. Kavanaugh laundered Trump’s tweet threats into SCOTUS-ese. But the message was the same. He aped the Trump’s line about “chaos” and uncertainty if there’s no definitive result on election night even though the election night result is purely a function of election calls by media organizations. No states publish or certify election results on election night. It always takes days and usually weeks to do.

We all understand that we’re used to knowing who won on election night and we’d all like this to be done. But Kavanaugh’s gambit highlights the fact that knowing the results on election night or halting the counting of votes on election night is purely a figment of press schedules and cannot have any legal or constitutional standing. He is simply part of the greater Republican corruption and its increasingly open program to use the power and legitimacy of the Supreme Court to engineer Republican election victories even when its candidates can’t muster the most votes. It is a corrupt program; it is a corrupt Court.

There are people of good will who believe that saying such things out loud undermines the legitimacy of the Court. This is quaint and sad. Because the authors of the corruption rely on this fealty to a broken legitimacy to advance their corruption, to sustain a respect for norms, precedent and rule-following as they run roughshod over all of them. There are many critical policy priorities the current Court threatens: reproductive rights, climate action, health care provision, voting rights. But it is wrong to see the threat and challenge through any of these individual prisms. As we have discussed before, the larger, truer issue is the Republican retreat from majoritarianism, its increasing focus on rigging the constitutional system for sustained minority rule as Republicans see their ability to win majority elections come under greater and greater threat.

This is what voter suppression is about. This is what redistricting on steroids is about. This is why in states like Wisconsin Republicans now routinely retain state legislative super-majorities while getting fewer votes than their Democratic opponents. It’s not about any one of those critical policy priorities. It is about making the federal judiciary into a self-sustaining redoubt of Republican power – an entrenched veto power against Democratic election victories and policy making for decades into the future.

None of the GOP’s current policy priorities or rearchitecting of the constitutional order make sense without the assumption that winning majority elections is becoming increasingly hard and will only become harder for Republicans over time.

If Democrats win the presidency and a senate majority next week they will have a window of opportunity not just to legislate Democratic policy priorities but far more importantly to reopen the clogged channels of democratic process and action. That requires expanding the Court with at least four new Justices as well as expanding the federal judiciary as a whole – quite apart from composition the federal judiciary simply has too few judges at present.. It requires ending the Senate filibuster. It means adding Washington DC and Puerto Rico as new states of the Union. It means a lot else too. You can mix and match specific approaches. But nothing is possible without unclogging the arteries of democracy itself. Without an expanded Court we will see years and decades into the future in which the Court manufactures increasingly ornate and absurd ‘originalist’ reasonings that find quite disinterestedly that basically all Democratic policy initiatives are barred by the federal Constitution.

Republicans have a motto. Elections have consequences – when Republicans win them. Power for me, norms for thee. With power comes responsibility. Our democratic order is endangered not only by Trumpism but by the deeper Republican corruption which both created it and sustained it in power. The danger we face is not that we will lose some incremental access to health care or see the pace of climate action further slowed. It is that we will see the right of electoral majorities to make these decisions at all come to an end. If Democrats were to get the power to begin the process of reseting and entrenching the democratic order and fail to do so it would be a grand failure and indeed a betrayal.

ggait wrote: ↑Wed Oct 28, 2020 1:43 am Americans have been consistently in favor of abortion for 50 years. Really no discernable trend toward pro-life. See below.

And SCOTUS ultimately doesn't matter that much on this.

Go ahead and over-rule RvW. Abortion would continue to be legal in most U.S. states. Just like now -- more available in CA; less available in UT. Nothing really is likely to change much.

And even with ACB, RvW not likely to be over turned.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/1576/abortion.aspx

kramerica.inc wrote: ↑Tue Oct 27, 2020 10:26 pm The solution isn’t an either/or.

As I said, I’m all for education and contraception. Why is the other side so shy from eliminating the walk-in, non doctor-prescribed abortions that meet the criteria I listed?

The misconception that I don’t believe in social programs to help those people in need is way off. You can be a republican and believe in social programs. I do. Worthwhile ones that focus on the basics of life. Unemployment, feeding the hungry, and counseling/educating those in need.

Trying to paint the potential Solutions to the abortion tragedy as a binary choice Is insane. Both sides seem
To agree that there are too many abortions. Even the pro choice crowd.

People are freaking out over 230k dead in a year from a natural occurring virus. But many of those same people shrug their shoulders at 600,000+ abortions EACH AND EVERY year.

If you care about ALL lives, why not those of the aborted?

dislaxxic wrote: ↑Wed Oct 28, 2020 8:22 am One man's opinion behind the TPM paywall

If you needed to know anything more about Amy Coney Barrett – I didn’t, but if you did – she made her first act last night appearing at a splashy campaign event for President Trump. Once the Senate voted to confirm her on a party line vote, she had a lifetime appointment and literally no need for anything from President Trump. Indeed, she would quite likely have marginally improved the odds that the corrupt conservative Court majority would remain in place by declining such an appearance.

She did it anyway and that was a choice.

Meanwhile, Justice Kavanaugh, himself a former Republican political operative rinsed and rebranded as a High Court Justice, issued another ruling to restrict voting access in the current election. Critically and ominously he added what amounted to a threat to use the Court to block vote counting after election day or mail-in votes altogether. Kavanaugh laundered Trump’s tweet threats into SCOTUS-ese. But the message was the same. He aped the Trump’s line about “chaos” and uncertainty if there’s no definitive result on election night even though the election night result is purely a function of election calls by media organizations. No states publish or certify election results on election night. It always takes days and usually weeks to do.

We all understand that we’re used to knowing who won on election night and we’d all like this to be done. But Kavanaugh’s gambit highlights the fact that knowing the results on election night or halting the counting of votes on election night is purely a figment of press schedules and cannot have any legal or constitutional standing. He is simply part of the greater Republican corruption and its increasingly open program to use the power and legitimacy of the Supreme Court to engineer Republican election victories even when its candidates can’t muster the most votes. It is a corrupt program; it is a corrupt Court.

There are people of good will who believe that saying such things out loud undermines the legitimacy of the Court. This is quaint and sad. Because the authors of the corruption rely on this fealty to a broken legitimacy to advance their corruption, to sustain a respect for norms, precedent and rule-following as they run roughshod over all of them. There are many critical policy priorities the current Court threatens: reproductive rights, climate action, health care provision, voting rights. But it is wrong to see the threat and challenge through any of these individual prisms. As we have discussed before, the larger, truer issue is the Republican retreat from majoritarianism, its increasing focus on rigging the constitutional system for sustained minority rule as Republicans see their ability to win majority elections come under greater and greater threat.

This is what voter suppression is about. This is what redistricting on steroids is about. This is why in states like Wisconsin Republicans now routinely retain state legislative super-majorities while getting fewer votes than their Democratic opponents. It’s not about any one of those critical policy priorities. It is about making the federal judiciary into a self-sustaining redoubt of Republican power – an entrenched veto power against Democratic election victories and policy making for decades into the future.

None of the GOP’s current policy priorities or rearchitecting of the constitutional order make sense without the assumption that winning majority elections is becoming increasingly hard and will only become harder for Republicans over time.

If Democrats win the presidency and a senate majority next week they will have a window of opportunity not just to legislate Democratic policy priorities but far more importantly to reopen the clogged channels of democratic process and action. That requires expanding the Court with at least four new Justices as well as expanding the federal judiciary as a whole – quite apart from composition the federal judiciary simply has too few judges at present.. It requires ending the Senate filibuster. It means adding Washington DC and Puerto Rico as new states of the Union. It means a lot else too. You can mix and match specific approaches. But nothing is possible without unclogging the arteries of democracy itself. Without an expanded Court we will see years and decades into the future in which the Court manufactures increasingly ornate and absurd ‘originalist’ reasonings that find quite disinterestedly that basically all Democratic policy initiatives are barred by the federal Constitution.

Republicans have a motto. Elections have consequences – when Republicans win them. Power for me, norms for thee. With power comes responsibility. Our democratic order is endangered not only by Trumpism but by the deeper Republican corruption which both created it and sustained it in power. The danger we face is not that we will lose some incremental access to health care or see the pace of climate action further slowed. It is that we will see the right of electoral majorities to make these decisions at all come to an end. If Democrats were to get the power to begin the process of reseting and entrenching the democratic order and fail to do so it would be a grand failure and indeed a betrayal.

..

seacoaster wrote: ↑Wed Oct 28, 2020 10:27 am Finally got around to reading the Kavanaugh concurrence in the Wisconsin voting deadlines case. I actually can't believe his chambers allowed it to go out to the public with some of the statements, principally the "flip the result" comments. Sufficed to say, on that and several other issues, the smartest member of the Court simply owns Kavanaugh, not that it will make any difference. I am hopeful that the Court stays out of the election cases as much as possible; these are and have long been state law issues, and the Court has yet to fully recover from the blow to the its institutional integrity and respect from the 2000 election. If it were to issue an opinion based on the reasoning of Kavanaugh and Gorsuch, there is little doubt that most readers, lawyer and non-lawyer alike -- would conclude that the Court was just picking the winner it likes.

youthathletics wrote: ↑Wed Oct 28, 2020 9:42 am

kramerica.inc wrote: ↑Tue Oct 27, 2020 10:26 pm The solution isn’t an either/or.

As I said, I’m all for education and contraception. Why is the other side so shy from eliminating the walk-in, non doctor-prescribed abortions that meet the criteria I listed?

The misconception that I don’t believe in social programs to help those people in need is way off. You can be a republican and believe in social programs. I do. Worthwhile ones that focus on the basics of life. Unemployment, feeding the hungry, and counseling/educating those in need.

Trying to paint the potential Solutions to the abortion tragedy as a binary choice Is insane. Both sides seem
To agree that there are too many abortions. Even the pro choice crowd.

People are freaking out over 230k dead in a year from a natural occurring virus. But many of those same people shrug their shoulders at 600,000+ abortions EACH AND EVERY year.

If you care about ALL lives, why not those of the aborted?

Agreed.

My wife volunteered for a few years at our local Birthright center. The sad part of all this discussion is that many of these women are repeat offenders, who are also struggling with addiction, broken homes, hard times, abusive relationship, etc. The common denominator my wife and her associates witnessed was how the young women were emotionally detached. When they would sit and chat with this women, they would often put on a strong front and within a visit or two would break down in tears.

As men, trying to discuss this very topic is really stupid, we really do not know turd about women like we think we do.... and to be frank, we are the problem when you really think about it.

njbill wrote: ↑Wed Oct 28, 2020 10:28 am Repeat offenders?

You are part of the problem. Not as big a part as those who call 18-year-old girls who decide to have an abortion murderers, but part nonetheless.

MDlaxfan76 wrote: ↑Wed Oct 28, 2020 10:54 am

youthathletics wrote: ↑Wed Oct 28, 2020 9:42 am

kramerica.inc wrote: ↑Tue Oct 27, 2020 10:26 pm The solution isn’t an either/or.

As I said, I’m all for education and contraception. Why is the other side so shy from eliminating the walk-in, non doctor-prescribed abortions that meet the criteria I listed?

The misconception that I don’t believe in social programs to help those people in need is way off. You can be a republican and believe in social programs. I do. Worthwhile ones that focus on the basics of life. Unemployment, feeding the hungry, and counseling/educating those in need.

Trying to paint the potential Solutions to the abortion tragedy as a binary choice Is insane. Both sides seem
To agree that there are too many abortions. Even the pro choice crowd.

People are freaking out over 230k dead in a year from a natural occurring virus. But many of those same people shrug their shoulders at 600,000+ abortions EACH AND EVERY year.

If you care about ALL lives, why not those of the aborted?

Agreed.

My wife volunteered for a few years at our local Birthright center. The sad part of all this discussion is that many of these women are repeat offenders, who are also struggling with addiction, broken homes, hard times, abusive relationship, etc. The common denominator my wife and her associates witnessed was how the young women were emotionally detached. When they would sit and chat with this women, they would often put on a strong front and within a visit or two would break down in tears.

As men, trying to discuss this very topic is really stupid, we really do not know turd about women like we think we do.... and to be frank, we are the problem when you really think about it.

And yet a lot of men, including several on here, want to outlaw a woman being able to make this choice for herself. Exactly, b/c it does break down mental and physical health. We should not be condoning poor behavior with an easy out, that has rippling consequences.

Abortions, both total number and especially rate per 1,000 pop have been falling steadily for years. Not because of restricted access, but as contraception and sex education have become more prevalent and accessible.

Rates are much higher in populations with lower economic status, black and brown, unmarried, younger. (And yet they always know they can just run down and have another baby sucked out..remember, rippling consequences)

Want to reduce abortions faster?
Help these economically disadvantaged girls and women have much easier access to free contraception, strong sex education, and more access to free child care enabling them to support their family. (agreed, and aprt of that education is abortions aint gonna be easy so keep those pants pulled up)

The latter is hugely important to moving more of the men in these communities to productive lives outside the trade, with far less incarceration and longer life expectancies. More men, productively employed, provide for better social dynamics, intact two earner families, etc.(fortunately, we are seeing progress in this arena)

Of course, there will always be some persistent poverty and anti-social behavior, and there will be some continued situations in which abortions happen, mistakes made, but the total incidence will decline even faster than it is now. (fingers crossed)

youthathletics wrote: ↑Wed Oct 28, 2020 11:35 am have another baby sucked out

youthathletics wrote: ↑Wed Oct 28, 2020 9:42 am

kramerica.inc wrote: ↑Tue Oct 27, 2020 10:26 pm The solution isn’t an either/or.

As I said, I’m all for education and contraception. Why is the other side so shy from eliminating the walk-in, non doctor-prescribed abortions that meet the criteria I listed?

The misconception that I don’t believe in social programs to help those people in need is way off. You can be a republican and believe in social programs. I do. Worthwhile ones that focus on the basics of life. Unemployment, feeding the hungry, and counseling/educating those in need.

Trying to paint the potential Solutions to the abortion tragedy as a binary choice Is insane. Both sides seem
To agree that there are too many abortions. Even the pro choice crowd.

People are freaking out over 230k dead in a year from a natural occurring virus. But many of those same people shrug their shoulders at 600,000+ abortions EACH AND EVERY year.

If you care about ALL lives, why not those of the aborted?

Agreed.

My wife volunteered for a few years at our local Birthright center. The sad part of all this discussion is that many of these women are repeat offenders, who are also struggling with addiction, broken homes, hard times, abusive relationship, etc. The common denominator my wife and her associates witnessed was how the young women were emotionally detached. When they would sit and chat with this women, they would often put on a strong front and within a visit or two would break down in tears.

As men, trying to discuss this very topic is really stupid, we really do not know turd about women like we think we do.... and to be frank, we are the problem when you really think about it.

njbill wrote: ↑Wed Oct 28, 2020 11:40 am

youthathletics wrote: ↑Wed Oct 28, 2020 11:35 am have another baby sucked out

This is a revolting, disgusting comment.

They aren’t babies. You know that yet you continue on and on to perpetuate this fiction.

As I said yesterday, I have had it with this crapola.

MDlaxfan76 wrote: ↑Wed Oct 28, 2020 10:54 am

youthathletics wrote: ↑Wed Oct 28, 2020 9:42 am

kramerica.inc wrote: ↑Tue Oct 27, 2020 10:26 pm The solution isn’t an either/or.

As I said, I’m all for education and contraception. Why is the other side so shy from eliminating the walk-in, non doctor-prescribed abortions that meet the criteria I listed?

The misconception that I don’t believe in social programs to help those people in need is way off. You can be a republican and believe in social programs. I do. Worthwhile ones that focus on the basics of life. Unemployment, feeding the hungry, and counseling/educating those in need.

Trying to paint the potential Solutions to the abortion tragedy as a binary choice Is insane. Both sides seem
To agree that there are too many abortions. Even the pro choice crowd.

People are freaking out over 230k dead in a year from a natural occurring virus. But many of those same people shrug their shoulders at 600,000+ abortions EACH AND EVERY year.

If you care about ALL lives, why not those of the aborted?

Agreed.

My wife volunteered for a few years at our local Birthright center. The sad part of all this discussion is that many of these women are repeat offenders, who are also struggling with addiction, broken homes, hard times, abusive relationship, etc. The common denominator my wife and her associates witnessed was how the young women were emotionally detached. When they would sit and chat with this women, they would often put on a strong front and within a visit or two would break down in tears.

As men, trying to discuss this very topic is really stupid, we really do not know turd about women like we think we do.... and to be frank, we are the problem when you really think about it.

And yet a lot of men, including several on here, want to outlaw a woman being able to make this choice for herself.

Abortions, both total number and especially rate per 1,000 pop have been falling steadily for years. Not because of restricted access, but as contraception and sex education have become more prevalent and accessible.

Rates are much higher in populations with lower economic status, black and brown, unmarried, younger.

Want to reduce abortions faster?
Help these economically disadvantaged girls and women have much easier access to free contraception, strong sex education, and more access to free child care enabling them to support their family.

Want to go even further? Address poverty drivers in black and brown communities, eliminate de facto redlining, and break the violence cycle of the drug trade. (Topic previously discussed).

The latter is hugely important to moving more of the men in these communities to productive lives outside the trade, with far less incarceration and longer life expectancies. More men, productively employed, provide for better social dynamics, intact two earner families, etc.

Of course, there will always be some persistent poverty and anti-social behavior, and there will be some continued situations in which abortions happen, mistakes made, but the total incidence will decline even faster than it is now.

njbill wrote: ↑Wed Oct 28, 2020 10:28 am Repeat offenders?

You are part of the problem. Not as big a part as those who call 18-year-old girls who decide to have an abortion murderers, but part nonetheless.

njbill wrote: ↑Wed Oct 28, 2020 11:40 am

youthathletics wrote: ↑Wed Oct 28, 2020 11:35 am have another baby sucked out

This is a revolting, disgusting comment.

They aren’t babies. You know that yet you continue on and on to perpetuate this fiction.

As I said yesterday, I have had it with this crapola.

kramerica.inc wrote: ↑Wed Oct 28, 2020 12:45 pm Unfortunately, he's right. Its easier (and cheaper) to use abortion as birth control for many women, including the drug addicts, uneducated etc., rather than fix the real problem of drug addiction or edicating them.

a fan wrote: ↑Wed Oct 28, 2020 12:57 pm

kramerica.inc wrote: ↑Wed Oct 28, 2020 12:45 pm Unfortunately, he's right. Its easier (and cheaper) to use abortion as birth control for many women, including the drug addicts, uneducated etc., rather than fix the real problem of drug addiction or edicating them.

Right. And again, pro-lifers are actively stifling efforts to fix that....and has been for decades. I don't get it.

And none of you can explain why pro-lifers are doing that. This tells me that they're all that interested in fixing the problem.

Libs would jump for joy if you signed on, and blew a billion per year to end unwanted pregnancies......they're sitting by the phone. All you have to do is call them, and give them the green light.