Obama has announced his nominee for the open Supreme Court slot, and I am unimpressed. Apparently, he’s a compromise: a centrist (which in America, means leaning rightward) who won’t get the Republicans in congress too upset. There’s also one weird comment in that report:
Supreme Court nominees tend to be in their early 50s. In choosing Judge Garland, Mr. Obama very likely gave away the possibility of a justice who would serve on the Supreme Court perhaps three decades. Instead, he imposed a sort of actuarial term limit on the nomination and thus his legacy, offering Senate Republicans a compromise not only on ideology, but also on tenure.
Compromise, compromise, compromise. We always compromise. The other side never does.
Obama noted some good things about Garland.
The president said Judge Garland is “widely recognized not only as one of America’s sharpest legal minds, but someone who brings to his work a spirit of decency, modesty, integrity, even-handedness and excellence. These qualities and his long commitment to public service have earned him the respect and admiration from leaders from both sides of the aisle.”
You know, I could believe all that — conservatives can be decent people, of course. But what I’m concerned about is the issues. What’s his position on women’s reproductive rights? Are we going to see more creeping religion in government? What about campaign finance reform and the excessive influence of billionaires on elections?
Not a word about any of that in the article. He’s a total cipher as far as I know. But there’s lots of stuff about all the Republicans who love him, and how Orrin Hatch has been promoting him for years, which just screams at me that I can’t trust him.
As far as I’m concerned, the last vestiges of my circa-2008 “Obama is really cool and progressive” enthusiasm just died.
I recall one thing promised by Scalia in Citizen’s United, SCOTUS review if there are problems. Alas, none have attempted to bring the problems before the court – a costly process that is fraught with peril as it is.
Now, Scalia surprised us by dying, although, sharing some of the same genetic flaws that he had in regards to weight, cholesterolemia and heart disease, for me, not unexpected.
So, before I go off condemning a choice, a bit of research is in order. I’ll see what I can find after lunch and between work issues.
Even money, if he’s not hard right, he’ll be called “liberal” by the maniacs hijacking Congress.
But, do thank the tea party, they drove myself and many of my peers away from the GOP, as not a damned thing that they proposed was something that we supported.
As an aside, imagine my surprise that, after two e-mails from political causes mentioning the candidate, I checked mail an hour later and had 30 e-mails about the candidate.
The only one that won’t be back burnered is this blog, as the rest are political candidates and causes. They can wait until I get home.
I think this means Obama truly believes the Republicans are going to stand firm; he picked the nominee that will most damage their credibility. If he were to get through, he’s a damn sight better than Scalia, but the court could really use someone with a background other than “Federal Proecutor.”
ProSecutor, dammit. Edit functions for all! :)
According to Wikipedia (the font of all knowledge), Garland’s faith is Judaism.
“Merrick Garland would take no chances that someone who murdered innocent Americans might go free on a technicality.” – The white house just tweeted this.
Now I don’t know about you, but that statement terrifies me.
I think this is a very good chess move by Obama. If Garland does not even get a hearing, as McConnell has promised, he goes back to being chief judge on the DC circuit court where he has to make close judgments in favour of one side over the other… one of which denied him a hearing.
Yes, it absolutely terrifies me. If anything, I want to know whether he would take chances murdering an innocent American.
A total cipher? He’s been on the federal bench for decades. He’s been on the SCOTUS short-list before.
@6 and 8, I’ve served in counterterrorism, met and conversed with real honest to Betsy Ross’ house terrorists. You know, the people who want to get their way by blowing up occupied markets and schools?
Many were extremely articulate, bright people, while still holding dear the drive to exterminate anyone who they disagreed with . Others, were more conversational and could be swayed unto a less harmful path.
For the latter, we kept encouraging them to speak out on what they were concerned about.
For the former, a JDAM corrected their behavior. Nothing else would work and it was a last option before letting innocent people be harmed.
Violence is the first refuge of the incompetent, however, violence can never be ruled out to protect all from the harm that a single person could inflict.
That said, before I’d ever consider having someone strapped down with a needle in their arm, I want to be damned sure. As sure as I am that gravity will keep on working when I walk down the stairwell.
Because, I can’t make someone undead – that is the stuff of lousy horror films. I can release someone from prison and apologize, with a nice check to get their lives back together, I can’t do that for dead.
An aside, PFAW likes the choice and Conservapedia loathes him. I’m certain they’ll have a proper hack job on him as soon as they can hear from the Birchers and “improve” upon it.
The resolve of the Republicans in Congress to hold no hearings, etc., will last exactly as long as their presidential nominee polls competitively with the Democrats’. If the Republicans’ guy tanks for any length of time, it’ll be amazing how fast they’ll come up with cover stories to vote to confirm Garland.
I remain unconvinced that lethal injection – or any other form of execution on a prisoner who is already safely contained in jail – is every justified, no matter what crime the person committed.
You know how Anders Breivik, the Oslo shooter, is only serving 21 years and has the potential to be released at the end of that time if he somehow proves to be no danger to others? I consider that vastly more moral than our system. Killing prisoners does nothing but satisfy our lizard-brain taste for vengeance.
PZ, I think you’re missing the point, which is that he will not end up on the Supreme Court. The whole idea is to embarrass the Republicans by making them not confirm somebody who they have no excuse not to confirm except that Obama nominated him.
@13, I’ll give the singular point that with the death penalty, recidivism rates are precisely zero.
That said, I want at least six sigma certainty.
Can you give me six sigma certainty on anything whatsoever involving humans? ;)
According to the New York Times, Garland sits near Kagan politically, so not too bad, and certainly better than Scalia by a very long way. But Orrin Hatch some time back said Garland was a great jurist that Obama would never appoint because the President would pander to his base. So Obama is calling the Republican bluff. If they back down and approve him, the Court is better than it was and is; if they don’t, and Clinton is elected, we’ll get someone better; and the next President will likely have other opportunities as well.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/03/16/us/politics/garland-supreme-court-nomination.html
It’s my understanding that Obama really like this guys record on gun control. That has been one of the big issues for the President over the last year and something he has pledged to work hard on. If we consider that the GOP is going to block any nominee anyways, that is perhaps the signal he wants to send with the Garland nomination.
Also, there is a case to be made that whoever was nominated here is going to spend the next 6 months getting shredded by the GOP, not get the spot on the Supreme Court this year, then be asked to step back so that the new President can make their own pick in January of 2017. It is quite possible that none of the candidates that we as liberals would prefer were willing to go through that crucible.
Also, I think it’s a historic choice to nominate the first Arrow Villain to the Supreme Court.
Just think of the political hay that will be made on the Sunday morning talk shows, when the democrats show the footage of Ronald Reagan explaining why a vote should be made under similar circumstances (Anthony Kennedy), and then all the accolades from the republicans from his prior confirmations.
There is no way that the rethugs won’t be seen as anything other than totally obstructionist, with a personal animosity toward Obama. It will help the democrats and the democratic candidates.
@15: Paul Knoepfler recently pointed out that he could not say with 100% certainty that he would not spill a drop of his lemonade.
You know, it strikes me as odd that we even need to convince others that the Republicans are being a completely dysfunctional party by showing that they are going to grandstand about a compromise choice. Like, they’ve tried to repeal the ACA several dozen times (while knowing that the law will be vetoed), shut down the government for a month, and have threatened to stop paying the US’s debt because Reasons. Not to mention all the other nonsense that has happened in Congress over the last six years. A compromise nominee might show that they are continuing to put ‘Stop Obama at All Costs’ over ‘keep the country running’, but… at this point, are there people who don’t know they do this?
I think he’s playing a long game here. As has been pointed out, nominating a centrist who enjoyed bi-partisan appointment to a prominent pre-SCOTUS court puts the Senate in a bind, one that risks them losing the Senate no matter what they do. Stonewalling makes them look terrible going into a crucial election, but caving risks having their base revolt and kick them out. If they stonewall too long, they risk leaving the appointment to both Hillary and a Dem Senate. If they cave, it’s still an improvement (for the left) over Scalia. Strategically it’s the best move. Nominating someone more liberal would mean more popular support for the Senate’s obstruction. This isn’t about the SCOTUS as much as it is about the Senate.
I don’t know, I guess I’m just kind of tired of the whole “The republicans won’t let me do the thing I want and said that they will block literally everything I do, so what if I keep watering it down?” deal.
I’m really disappointed. Saw this article on NBC News:
http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/who-merrick-garland-meet-president-obama-s-nominee-supreme-court-n539841
In particular, there’s this part:
This guy is a supporter of imprisonment without cause or evidence, basically. Maybe I’m not reading that fairly, but that’s what it sounds like. That’s a problem in itself and also another slap in the face of the people who supported Obama because they wanted to see that injustice stopped.
Then there’s also the bit about judges not having commissions to “solve societal issues”. Yeah, it doesn’t sound good.
We’re all tired of it. Hell, some of the Republicans are tired of it too. But the GOP have locked themselves in this death spiral, and sadly the rest of us as well, and it’s not stopping until the GOP crashes and burns. And they know it, too. Their panic over Trump and Cruz makes that abundantly clear.
@15 wzrd1
I don’t know if recidivism counts when we kill innocent people. I’m talking about extra-judicial killings as well as the death penalty though.
“Getting off on a technicality” often means upholding our civil rights. A Supreme Court Justice that does not value that is very scary.
Obama’s being entirely sincere with his nomination of Garland, and is clearly showing he’s willing to compromise with the Senate on naming a nominee that’s acceptable to the Republicans. The ridiculous assertion that it’s somehow too late for Obama to nominate Scalia’s replacement has already been exposed by Senator Ron Johnson’s (R-WI) admission that if it was a conservative nominee instead he’d be fine with appointing one now. So it’s not “too late” at all for Garland to have a hearing.
Or we could do something REALLY crazy like, you know, put people on the court based on their ability as legal scholars who can frame a ruling based on legal principles instead of a desired ideological slant. No, I don’t give a rat’s ass about his position on reproductive rights or church-state issues or campaign finance (or same-sex rights or any other issue). Why? Because justices are NOT supposed to have a position on ANYTHING. They are supposed to interpret the law fairly based on what it says, not on what they want it to say (that, for those of you who failed elementary school civics class, is the job of the legislature). The courts should be a branch free of ideologues, both right-wing and left-wing.
Fuck that, bring on the liberal justices. I care a lot more about getting good – ie liberal – rulings than I do about ~interpreting the law fairly~
Thanks, Doubleread, I knew I was missing adding something to fill out my concept.
Denial of rights should never be accepted, as that turns rights from a fundamental thing, inalienable rights into privileges.
I’ve repeatedly used that argument against “giving terrorists guns” bullshit, as we’re denying an enumerated right based upon mere suspicion.
As an example of how excellent our terrorism watch list is, around 30% of US CENTCOM are on the list by name, but not by identity. That results in a hell of a lot of telephone calls and e-mails from commander, US CENTCOM, to get the names off of the no fly list to deploy and redeploy home.
We’re coming full circle from making fundamental rights privileges, straight back to McCarthy.
Why are any of us surprised that a centre-right President is nominating a centre-right Supreme Court justice?
Case in point: I’d consider Obergefell and Roe v Wade good rulings, even if there was literally zero constitutional backing for the decision.
“Fuck that, bring on the liberal justices. I care a lot more about getting good – ie liberal – rulings than I do about ~interpreting the law fairly~”
Thank you for identifying so clearly everything wrong with the more extreme progressives. You don’t care about equal rights, free speech, social justice or any of the other claims you make. You care about them for individuals who have demonstrated ideological purity. You are totalitarian thugs and no different than the Tea Partiers. Its people like you that make me ashamed to call myself a progressive.
The problem with that is that only liberal judges are declared to have an “ideological slant.” No one said this about Scalia.
OK, how might one interpret this law fairly based on what it says?
No worries. Believe me, I’m just as embarrassed by people like you that would support a ruling that allows people to come to harm if it had constitutional backing.
Concern troll is concerned.
@34, the case you presented in closing is one of the very first amendment, free speech, free expression and finally, free press.
“printing, publishing or circulating printed, typewritten or written matter”
The last time I checked, all three are exercised in the above forms and hence, eradicating the first amendment rights of anyone who writes on the above.
“OK, how might one interpret this law fairly based on what it says?”
Oh, something about not being able to abridge the freedom of speech or of the press (I’m pretty sure I’ve read those words somewhere in the Constitution), thus making said law null and void.
“people like you that would support a ruling that allows people to come to harm if it had constitutional backing”
You are playing around with hypotheticals. Show me something in the Constitution that directly supports the abridgement of the rights of others (twisted historical interpretations used to support slavery, Native American resettlement, etc do not count).
@38
Did I say “directly supports the abridgement of the rights of others?” No, I said comes to harm.
Case in point, I oppose the second ammendment. No one needs to own a gun. If people made a bunch of unconstitutional gun laws banning guns, and this hypothetical supreme court declared that constitutional, I would throw a goddamn party.
Vivec @ 39:
And I’ll bring the Scotch and some party favors.
I’m sorry, but I think that there is constitutional basis for Obergfell and Roe v Wade. I believe in the constitution that broadly protects people’s rights, like the ACLU does. I believe interpreting a law fairly requires a liberal understanding of the constitution and precedents.
The protections of the constitution should be strengthened over time and precedent, not weakened. I don’t care about theoretical rights in mind-space. I care about realizing people’s actual rights in real life. That, apparently, makes me a liberal.
@38, whenever a right of one extinguishes the right of another, there is conflict and someone loses a right.
An example is where a religious right, if exercised, resulted in the death of another. Several religious have a requirement to kill someone guilty of apostasy, but we prohibit that, as that interferes with the apostate’s right to life and due process.
There is absolutely nothing hypothetical about that.
You have the right to be free from injury from someone causing a false panic in a crowded theater by calling out ‘fire’. You have the right to be safe from a riot incited by another. You have the right to retain your government from someone committing sedition to remove that government.
All, limits upon the very first amendment.
@39, it’d be hard for me to win a fair amount of my earnings in marksmanship competition without a firearm. I’d also not be free from harm to self and property from feral pigs attacking myself, my family and my property. That said, we should and do restrict our most dangerous weapons to those who prove to be sane, stable and pillars of the community via the National Firearms Act. That act, along with the Gun Control Act of 1968 (NRA approved), restrict a great number of firearms from the citizenry, save if they can pass a stringent background check (the last time I checked, it was an SSBI, for those who hold security clearances).
My home is heavily defended – by extremely expensive locks. Likely, the cat would play into home defense as well, coming up to the intruder and overcoming him or her with cuteness and prodding to be petted.
Firearms? Not so much, they’re locked, as they should be. They’d otherwise be at risk for theft and a risk to visiting children, especially our grandchildren.
While I do know people who compete with Barrett types of .50 BMG systems, I’ll not inflame my osteoarthritis with one. That’s a whale of a shove from that thing and I’m not interested in firing anything that requires ear plugs under the headset to preserve hearing.
I’ll stick with 7.62×51, aka .308, 5.56 mm and .45 ACP. For hunting, when I bother to load the rifle, my 30-30 or 45-70 if it’s brown bear or polar bear region.
Of course, all hunters know, deer have calendars and when deer season approaches, they get onto their deer airplanes and go to the deer Bahamas. ;)
@41
I agree, but I was saying ~even if~ they didn’t have any constitutional backing, I’d still conider them good rulings.
@42
I don’t really care? I oppose all gun ownership.
@Vivec
It actually is a bit disappointing that I hear this kind of talk from liberals a lot. That conservatives are actually correct on the law and the constitution, and liberals rip up the rule of law to be kind and good.
No, it’s the opposite. Conservatives constantly weaken the protections of the constitution using ridiculous technicalities and constantly try to abridge people’s rights with bizarre justifications. Liberals are ones that take a realistic and broad view of people’s rights so that the law can be upheld in our civil society.
@Vivec
Oh I see. Nevermind then.
The compromise is wasted, of course. The conservatives are freaking out anyway.
Okay, on second thought, I am okay with gun ownership for collection/historical purposes, as long as the gun has been rendered wholly inoperable. Like, spike it, pour metal down the barrel, whatever. If the gun isn’t ever firing bullets again, I’m fine with you owning it.
Also I generally agree with you @44, but I don’t think the consitution is some unquestionable amazing document that can never be wrong. I care a lot more about how a law/ruling affects people than how constitutionally supported it is.
it’d be hard for me to win a fair amount of my earnings in marksmanship competition without a firearm.
I don’t really care? I oppose all gun ownership.
OK, should I champion against your entire income?
Obviously not, but you’d deprive me of my income, despite that income being legal and earnings acquired peacefully and lawfully.
If it’s progressive to deny others a fair part of their income because you disapprove of the tools utilized to earn that income, I want absolutely no part of it!
That’s denial of property and income without due process, because “I don’t like it”. That is anarchy, not progress of any sort, doing whatever the hell you want to.
I dealt enough with that with tea party assholes in government that did indeed try to “do whatever the hell we want”, denying me of real property in the process. My attorneys are working on that one.
Discussion about Merrick Garland on the Moments of Political Madness thread.
Excerpt that includes more head-desking news regarding Supreme Court nominee Judge Merrick Garland:
Link.
Some senators have said they would be glad to consider Garland if he is nominated next year. WTF?
Relevant comment numbers on the Moments of Political Madness thread: 270, 271, 272, 276, 277, 282.
If your job needs guns, I think you should find a different job. I don’t support paid killers either. Isn’t that ~depriving them of their income~?
I am all in favor of this nomination, because it means that when Democratic tribalists tell me I absolutely must vote for Hillary Clinton “because SCOTUS!!!!1!1oneoneone” I can laugh in their faces instead of having to argue with them. Saves a lot of time.
@#15, wzrd1
In that case, we should exterminate everyone right away — if killing people who might be innocent is an acceptable practice, then obviously the elimination of all crime is far more beneficial than that pesky “benefit of the doubt” stuff. Best to just get it all over with now.
@#22, themadtapper
The Republican base seems happy to reward its candidates when they obstruct business — or, at least, Republican turnout does not appear to have been altered very much over the last 7 years, so even if they aren’t happy about it, they prefer a Republican who obstructs to a Democrat. The only visible reaction on the Republican side has been the selection of ever-more-obstructionist Tea Party candidates. So this won’t harm the Republicans one bit.
On the other hand, Democrats are getting pissed that Obama once again went down the “give the Republicans everything they could ask for” route. (A couple of other notable examples were when he loaded the “Democratic” side of the austerity “supercommittee” — which was supposed to decide whether we would pursue austerity policies, something which an overwhelming majority of Democrats are against — with people who were known in advance to be pro-austerity, and the times he offered to cut Social Security and Medicare as incentives to balance the budget.) What do you think is killing Democratic turnout at the polls? Bird flu? Unreadable maps to polling places? The Democrats would have the executive and legislative branches more or less permanently in their control if they could get people to turn out to vote, and they keep supporting bills which kick the public in the teeth and then wonder why they’re losing ground. “We don’t consider policies which benefit young voters because they easily give up voting for us” is not as true as “Young voters easily give up voting for us because we don’t consider policies which benefit them”.
It’s just astounding. And Hillary Clinton is promising at least 4 more years of this nonsense, with a heaping helping of increased military intervention as well — I think it’s more than possible that the Democrats are in for a big surprise when the November elections roll around; nobody but the party faithful (and not even all of them) wants Clinton in the White House, and elections these days are won by pulling in Independents, who now outnumber the membership of both parties. Trump (or whichever crook the Republicans run in his place) will win not by inspiring a huge turnout but because the Democrats haven’t learned, yet, that nobody wants this “centrist” crap, so it’s entirely possible that very few people will turn out to vote in favor of it no matter how scary the Republicans get.
@#25, themadtapper
You missed the point of what was said. Vivec in #23 (and I as well) am sick to death of the reaction the Democrats have had to the Republicans. Instead of saying “the Republicans refuse to do any sort of negotiation or even discussion, so we might as well push for the most extreme things we want in hopes some fragment might make it through”, the Democrats have said “well, if we keep watering down what we’re asking for, over and over and over again, to the point where what we’re asking for is identical to what the Republicans want, then maybe we can get some tiny fragment through and claim it was a victory even though it really wasn’t”. That has been Obama’s strategy — if you can call it that — since before the Republicans took over Congress. The ACA is Mitt Romney’s healthcare plan, but slightly more regressive, because Obama kept preemptively removing things to try and get Republicans on board. (And that’s ignoring the fact that he had already promised the for-profit hospital industry that he would make sure there was no public option, thus guaranteeing the whole exercise was a gift to corporations at taxpayer expensive right from the start. Schumer admitted as much after the ACA passed.)
Vivec@43 (who my mac desperately wants to convert to “vice” — talk about bias in computing!):
I don’t really see why marksmanship and hunting need to be banned for the goal of keeping guns out of public hands. You can have a shitload fewer guns in society (and thus reduce gun death dramatically) without curtailing those activities.
@Vivec, OK, I want all radio, television transmitters, all internet routers, all microphones and all larynxes spiked and inoperative in return. On second thought, I want the entire first amendment repealed, as you’ve rendered the second inoperable without any form of due process.
Since we’re doing whatever the fuck we want to, without due process or amendments.
I believe that the Constitution is a living document only in that we can amend it to reflect the current realities of cultural change and challenges.
That the populace has always had the same weaponry as the military, since this nation’s inception and when it still was colonies is a thing to recall.
Benjamin Franklin commanded a militia. A militia a far cry from the goon squads calling themselves a militia. A militia only able to be called up by its government and originally, equipped by its membership, with specific items required.
The militia exists in a very real way today, with every able bodied male between 18 and 45, plus females in the National Guard and veterans to age 61 as unorganized militia. Thankfully, I’ll get my issued (the Constitution requires the government to equip the militia) M4 and whatever else if we reinstate the draft, as the legal fiction behind that is the mobilization of the unorganized militia.
Hell, statutory training is even provided via the civilian marksmanship program.
There is a great deal of history behind that amendment and we do need some “tweaks”, as we’ve major problems.
But, firearm related deaths that aren’t suicide are crimes that are symptoms of larger problems in our society.
After all, how many people are going to be armed robbers if they have adequate income? How many will conduct mass shootings, triggered by rare forms of mental illness, if they’re treated?
You address a symptom and permit the cancer to be ignored.
Address firearm related violence, ignore a culture in love with all forms of violence.
Next, we’ll have a Bath School House disaster and we’ll do away with fingers or something.
Rather than doing what we did, which worked, restricting access to explosives and keeping an eye on the mentally unstable.
@52
You know what? I can agree. If said people whose living revolves around guns are heavily monitored and regulated, and face life-ruining fines for misuse, I could see letting them keep them.
@numerobis, at least you still have a mac. Mine was thirsty one evening after dinner, so I gave it a glass of sangria.
OK, I was enjoying such a glass after dinner, was reading something avidly, reached for a glass and things got really humorous and expensive.
Sangria dripping out of the vents and ports, it hasn’t booted since.
BTW, I really don’t like the new MacBook Pro models, I like 17 inch screens, as I’m in my mid-50’s and I love at least a gig of HD space as a primary drive. I keep multiple OS’s and VM’s on the drive.
I really do have to get around to getting that machine fixed.
@53 My opposition to the second ammendment and unquestioning support for the first has nothing to do with them being in the constitution and everything to do with them being bad/good things respectively.
I also don’t know how you have the idea that I’m treating the symptom but ignoring the cause, as if gun control is the only issue I support. I support severe gun bans in addition to policies that address other societal problems.
Vivec@54: basically, the Canadian or nordic model.
Then wzrd1 can be a professional sharpshooter, rural (often indigenous) people can feed themselves, people working in certain wilderness areas can defend themselves against wild animals. But you don’t have guns all over the fucking place and stupid shit like toddlers killing their mothers on a regular basis.
Canada would do better if the US didn’t have its ridiculous 2nd amendment next door.
wzrd1@53: I think you should lay off the sangria before it kills another computer. I don’t see any chain of sense in that post of yours.
@#55, wzrd1
Don’t forget that you aren’t permitted to get a 15-inch screen, which is now their largest size, unless you get a Retina one… which costs a whole lot more than a normal one and probably won’t help you very much if your eyesight was what caused you to want a bigger screen in the first place. And none of the components are user-replaceable any more. And you no longer get a built-in optical drive. The Macbook line is getting harder and harder to defend.
Vivec, I am even for mandatory secure storage liability laws. Irresponsible storage that results in an “accident” of another being harmed should pay dear costs, be it prison or permanent poverty from large fines.
I’ll go one better, semiautomatic firearms derived from selective fire military service rifles should go under a new, slightly less stringent part of a revamped National Firearms Act, along with their magazines and components.
As an SSBI is used for both NFA firearms ownership (save suppressors, which are closer to NACLC), let’s put the firearms with the suppressors in proof that one can be trusted with these, our more hazardous of firearms.
An SSBI is a Single Scope Background Investigation, it’s used to acquire a top secret security clearance, as well as a special compartment information (that’s where it’s a bit more sensitive than just plain top secret and special compartments can only access the information)and N access. The NACLC is National Agency with law and credit (local agencies and credit check) is used for confidential, secret and L access clearances.
@57
While I still hold that gun ownership is a bad thing as a personal belief, I do think the nordic model is as close as is realistically going to exist.
Regardless, it’s not like I’m a lobbiest or a politician. My belief that no one should owna gun has a fat chance in affecting one, any more than my opinion on various fantasy novels.
@58, at work right now, split attention and even money, dyslexia is creating communication problems.
There’s a fundamental problem here with making rights optional and destroying the ability to utilize those rights. I also have major heartburn over “free speech areas”, as a fundamental right is placed away from where it can be effective. One might as well say that one only has free speech on the bathroom of one’s own home.
Rights never should be optional. At all. Ever. Restrict the ability to utilize a right, restrict the right to utilize all rights. We’ve turned enumerated rights into the Bill of Optionals. It’d make an interesting Miranda reading. ;)
Restricting a firearm into specialized classes, as the NFA has done, has been effective, just as we’ve controlled access to explosives.
For the Bath Schoolhouse disaster, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster
Most of our societies ills come down to spectacular income disparity, with the poor left with no way out and degenerating conditions. That results in increased hopelessness, mental illness, stress and violence. It also results in crime becoming necessary in order to acquire the necessities of life, especially if there’s no work one can find that is with a survivable wage.
To add to that, we have a society that is addicted and in love with violence as the solution to everything.
Or, as I say it, John Wayne really fucked this country up.
Have a problem? No need to talk, when hitting, stabbing or shooting can fix it.
Mix in lousy education, we get people that can spell tyranny, but can’t define it. People who can speak of communism and socialism, but are utterly incapable of defining the two differing systems.
You have, with a bit more added income disparity, declining middle class conditions and divisive politics, a bomb, with a fuse sitting in a gasoline fueled room and everyone striking sparks.
With a bull in a china shop right outside the door and everyone either hoping he breaks in or hoping he misses that explosive back room.
Anyway, back to this candidate: seems to be trying to triangulate to make the GOP look bad. If this guy gets in, it’s not horrible, could be better. If he doesn’t, the appointment dies on the vine.
Would Clinton renominate the same person as her predecessor? I suspect not.
wzrd1@61: consilient streams of evidence support the claim that gun ownership *causes* gun deaths, all else equal. Reduce gun ownership, reduce deaths.
Also reduce income inequality and racial disparities and other injustices, sure. Improve education, sure. But why limit yourself to those approaches when you know that there’s also a problem that there are too many guns? We can do more than one thing.
I guess the thing is that I don’t see that the right to own guns is super great and becessary just because sone white dudes in the 18th century wrote it down. The degree of gun controll is a thing that can be argued – and i’ve already relaxed my opinion on it – but “because its in the constitution” alone is a shaky justification.
Hold up, why should we have government officials with lifetime appointments anyway? Isn’t it a good thing to try to limit their “tenure,” if we’re not going to do anything to fix the ridiculous system we’ve inherited, instead of exploiting it to maximize the time a person gets to sit in their comfy chair? Especially if you’re doubtful about how good or competent or progressive the person is, it’s not like you should be happy that you’d have to deal with them for an even longer period of time. Or if you’re the sort of person who’s going to be complaining about Obama’s long-term legacy anyway, how could you also want that extended even more? Or if you’re worried about Republicans appointing 20-something Ayn Rand clones whenever they get the chance, then exactly what sort of precedent are Democrats supposed to set? Could we just have one complaint at a time, which will actually make some sense?
@47 Vivec
Well obviously the constitution can be wrong. We’ve had like 27 Amendments.
Although the Second Amendment has never upheld individual ownership of guns until 2008. You’re putting a really strong point about what has traditionally been seen as a rather obsolete amendment. It’s only very recently that the Second Amendment has been viewed as so absolutist.
@66
I will fully admit that I’m a product of my schooling and upbringing, which usually held that “gubmint cant take my sniper rifle i have a right to bear arms”
@51, The Vicar: Feel free to go hang out in Galt’s Gulch with the libertarians. Oh, and dont use the Internet or the Interstate or any of the other public goods. The patina of plausibility over your ignorant emotionalism badly needs another coat.
ACLU position on the Second Amendment. There’s also interesting reading about the NRA hijacked the whole conversation in the 70s.
petesh@68: how in the heck is The Vicar libertarian?
@#70, numerobis
I think it goes something like this: to a tribal Democrat, all criticism of Democrats must be right-wing. The alternative — that the Democratic Party has moved so far to the right in the last 3 decades that it has long since left most leftists behind — is not just metaphorically but literally unthinkable. But since I don’t approve of the Republicans either, I must be some other form of right-winger, therefore I must be Libertarian.
Well, that or else possibly petesh misidentified me for someone else, such as wzrd1.
Funny, it’s exactly what I expected Obama to do. It’s a strategic move that could win the Senate for the Democrats.
The Vicar: I certainly know rather a number of self-described Republicans who detail what policies they’d like and are sad that “nobody” represents their views. Except, I tend to point out, Clinton (his and hers), Obama, Kerry, etc. But they’ll never vote for a Democrat (at least, not after Carter, if they’re old enough), because they’re pinko commie socialists.
I haven’t seen that level of tribalism from Democrats I know, but I don’t discount the possibility they exist.
numerobis @73: I’ve had the same sort of conversations. It’s enough to drive you up the wall, innit?
“whenever a right of one extinguishes the right of another, there is conflict and someone loses a right. An example is where a religious right, if exercised, resulted in the death of another. Several religious have a requirement to kill someone guilty of apostasy, but we prohibit that, as that interferes with the apostate’s right to life and due process.”
Thus, the great unspoken principle that person A’s rights end as soon as they violate the rights of person B. This is why we have courts… to interpret the Constitution and hash out the balance when things conflict or are unclear. But again, the argument was over the judiciary’s ability to say “There is zero basis for this but we are going to do it anyway”. That is totalitarianism and should be opposed by anyone happy about living in a free society, regardless of whether you personally like the outcome. Of the two great examples offered here (abortion and same sex marriage), there was more than enough Constitutional basis to support both. The ruling on Roe v. Wade did not use it (and has been constantly attacked since by some of the most sincere proponents of reproductive rights) while the ruling on SSM did, for the most part. If someone can offer a part of the Constitution that specifically harms others, I’ll eat my words. But as there has never been any endorsement of slavery or of denying certain individuals the right to vote, the argument is moot. A refutation of either of those can be easily made by reading the Constitution and applying simple legal principles. It doesn’t take some magic wave of the hand to do so.
“I don’t really care? I oppose all gun ownership”
Yes, we’ve already established that your notion of rights is shallow, self-serving, and hypocritical in the extreme. So for you I’ll just settle for saying that I don’t care what you think; your opinion has zero chance of influencing the law. For everyone else, I’ll mention that no right is absolute. Much as the First does not allow us to shout fire in a theater, the Second can be interpreted as allowing for background checks, restricting ownership of certain classes of weapons, not letting people shoot guns in the air while intoxicated, etc.
@48 wzrd1,
“I dealt enough with that with tea party assholes in government that did indeed try to “do whatever the hell we want”, denying me of real property in the process. My attorneys are working on that one.”
Thank you for summarizing in a nutshell my problem with the far Left, which is identical to that of the far Right: “Rights and freedoms are only for me and those who thinks like me and everyone else is the enemy”. No idea how they’re crapping up your day but here’s hoping the lawyers fix it for you soon.
@69 doublereed,
Not to get into an argument on the Second Amendment and the NRA (idiots) in particular, but the notion it refers to a collective right doesn’t hold up to Constitutional history. The reason why the Bill of Rights exists at all was because the anti-federalists worried that a strong federal government would be a threat to individual rights. Thus, a guarantee of certain individual rights was put into the Constitution as the Bill of Rights. The Second Amendment must then be considered an inherently individual right. Still doesn’t restrict government from regulating it though.
This election cycle is far from over, and it has been exceedingly weird. I expect it to continue in a similar manner.
Obama’s opening move is the sacrificial knight. A very safe opening gambit. R Senators are currently raising some arghhle-barrghle up the media flagpole, to see if anyone salutes. Some other people are very quietly noting who is saluting, and reporting back to their bosses.
I am hoping for some spectacular implosion/s in the coming few weeks.
freemage@74: you should try having a conversation with a leftist anglophone in Quebec. They vote for the provincial Liberals every time. A party that runs on austerity, cutting help for the poor, students, small businesses. A party mired in a huge corruption scandal that was costing 30% of the infrastructure budget. A party that privatizes everything it can get away with privatizing. A party that cuts taxes on the rich, offers huge subsidies to big business, and doesn’t hold them up to their obligations under those subsidy programs (here’s a billion to build a new factory. Oh, you’d like to move production elsewhere? no problem!)
But, the Liberals aren’t separatist so they get the young leftist anglo vote every time.
Really? You’ve explained why you think the Bill of Rights exists, but even if that’s the case, the parts don’t need to be like the whole. So your logic doesn’t follow that it “must” be considered that way. Now look at this, from a cursory examination of wikipedia’s entry:
And it goes on like that, with several more revisions. This was actually conceived before other items made their way to the table, if we’re being historically accurate, so that eventually all of it got lumped together into the Bill of Rights. Unless backward causation exists, I don’t know how your claim makes sense.
Now for the actual content. The way I read this, there was a consideration of individual rights: specifically, this version carved out a religious exception for individuals who don’t want to join the military. Those individuals weren’t going to be compelled to comply with what this amendment set out to do. But that means this was about forming a military, which makes sense of the justification offered for the amendment: it is the right of a state to defend itself with a military or a militia. The state has the right to arm certain people in the military, to regulate those arms and to regulate the militia which is created to use them, in order to carry out the task of providing security. Individual people have the right to be secure, of course (but of course security isn’t identical to guns), and the state is given the right by means of forming an effective military to do that for them. That’s a legitimate function of the government, not a statement about what kinds of weapons all human beings should be able to access, which fits right in with a document that is supposed to create a fair and functioning government.
If it were conceived of all along as applying to every individual inside or outside of the military, there would be no sense in providing an exception for certain people (what we’d call “conscientious objectors” if not “religiously scrupulous”) to be under no compulsion to render military service. Exercising my individual right to carry a firearm would simply have nothing to do with whether or not there needs to be an army (necessary for securing the state as it says in plain English), nor would there be any reason to describe who is or isn’t compelled to serve in that army for any reason whatever. If you think the authors just didn’t know how to think, that they gave us pointless and irrelevant justifications for the things they established into Constitutional law, then sure I guess it might seem “obvious” what it’s supposed to establish. Or really you could make up anything you want about it, because you’re playing tennis without a net.
But if we can give them a little fucking credit, and we don’t just talk about vague generalities like the basic agendas of parties like the anti-federalists, and we read what the thing itself literally says, including previous versions of how this particular sausage actually got made historically, then I don’t think your interpretation is at all obvious anymore. I certainly don’t see how your version of it is supposed to be the more historically informed one.
Glad to see that, while Penny L is gone, their special kind of rhetorical stench still has a mouthpiece here.
So, uh, about Garland’s views: anything?
Vicar @51 and @71:
I agree with you completely, on all points.
The policies the Democrats and the Republicans agree on are hardly “centrist”—they’re well to the right of what most people, even substantial numbers of Republicans, would agree with, if handed a slate of positions and asked to agree or disagree with them. They’re neoliberal policies, pure and simple, which have contributed to 30 years of growing inequality under both Republican and Democratic administrations. Little wonder that Bernie Sanders on the left and Donald Trump on the right—both anti-neoliberal candidates (despite their enormous differences)—have done far better than expected this campaign season.
Indeed, I think this nonsense is enough to align me with Vicar as well. I’m tired of getting burned by democrats I’ve been told – and honestly believed – were better than republicans.
They are. Those who claim there is no difference in parties, based on my history of political bull sessions, are either way out on the left, either Marxist or really heavy socialist on the left, or right wingers/liberturds so far out there that Reagan was a socialist. The extremes cannot/will not discern the differences of those in the middle. Their rhetorical depends upon them being victims, and lone voices of “reason” in the spectrum of political thought. A pox on their houses.
I’m a self admitted far-left extremist, and while I wouldn’t identify as a marxist or a socialist, I’m definitely in favor in a lot of socialist policies. So, yeah. Not a fan of centrists.
The problem is that in a blatantly corrupt government like the one we have, centrists have a general oligarchy philosophy. The one thing people in power can actually agree on is enhancing their own power and wealth. If our government wasn’t as corrupt, there was honest debate happening, and representatives actually represented the people’s interests (rather than corporate interests), then I think centrism would be a lot more appealing a position. But of course, taking out the corruption would make our politics a lot more leftist in general.
@77 treefrogdundee
Even under an anti-federalist interpretation, that would not imply it as an individual right. The states and districts could still regulate weapons as they see fit, and, for instance, ban all firearms not associated with a militia. That would still retain the collective right of the people to bear arms. At least that’s my understanding of things. Feel free to disagree, of course.
Whast Saganite said in post 24.
Anyone who is in favor of allowed confinement of civilians, captured outside of an officially declared war, without charge or trial, is someone I want nowhere near SCOTUS. Of course, I’m not surprised, because Obama hasn’t actually done about Gitmo as far as I can tell. If I were president, I would go to bat for that, because this is one of the most abhorrent things that I know that the government is doing, and it might be political suicide, but I would have fixed it by now. (Namely: Threatening to issue a blanket pardon to every inmate in Gitmo, and personally sponsering their US residency and US citizenship if they had nowhere else to go. Obama could do that unilaterally, and IMHO he is morally compelled to do so.)
…
Quoting Vivec
If and when a majority get into power who want to suppress a minority, and if you are a member of that minority where will you turn, having already torn down all of the courts and constitution?
You are a fool. You advocate making a metaphorical noose that fits your own neck. Rule of law is one of the differences between our constitutional democratic republic, and majority-mob rule.
IMHO, they both have clear constitutional basis, i.e. the ninth amendment. Unfortunately, for whatever historical and modern reasons, SCOTUS has always been too chicken-shit to do their constitutionally mandated duties as required by the ninth amendment.
And of course, one can make an interesting and compelling argument based on the fourteenth amendment.
…
To wzrd1
Why? Why are you in favor of banning guns based on mere cosmetic features instead of doing something actually productive with your time and political capital? Further, why are you helping out gun manufacturers by putting in place cosmetic bans which will drive up gun sales induced by increased fears and by people who need to buy new guns to work around the bans?
Firearm “silencers” aka suppressors do not work like they do in Hollywood. A suppressed firearm is still ridiculously loud. In several other countries, it’s considered to be rude and impolite to fire a gun without a suppressor because guns at that f’ing loud without one. It’s still very, very loud with a suppressor. This ridiculous notion that suppressors will allow assassins to go unnoticed is a Hollywood myth.
Fully agreed. Quoting for emphasis.
…
To consciousness razor
You have some rather incomplete context there.
Regarding this:
I think you’re reading way too far into the meaning of dropping of the wording about the religious exemption to keep and bear arms. For example, the first amendment is a long list of relatively unrelated rights that was grouped together for – as far as I can tell – mostly aesthetic reasons. Similarly, they felt it would be nice to have an amendment talking about the militia. There would be the right for every individual to keep and bear arms, and there would be the right for every individual to refuse military service via a religious exemption.
You’re also making some anachronistic mistakes regarding the terms “army”, “military”, and “militia”. To the founders, there are two kinds of military – the militia, and armies. Notice how historical documents rarely / never use the plural of the word “militia”. That’s because the word “militia” meant, by definition, the whole population in the context of a military fighting force. (By “whole”, I mean white male adults between the ages fo 17 and 45.) The militia was simple the population as citizen-soldiers who have a day job outside the militiary, as contrasted with a standing army which is composed of professional soldiers.
At the time, in many / most states before the articles of confederation, during the articles of confederation, and under the new federal constitution, service in the militia was not optional. It was mandatory for all white male adults. For example, the new federal congress passed the second federal militia act of 1792 which required all white male able-bodied adults between 17 and 45 to personally obtain a firearm and a laundry list of military equipment, and to personally guarantee its availability, quality, and accessibility (including using co-operative storage).
Of course, it should be noted that the phrase “well regulated” simply meant “well operating”, “in proper working order”, “properly adjusted”. For example, common usage at the time might be “that person’s taste in music is well regulated”.
The so-called collective right interpretation of the second amendment is bullshit. In fact, all so-called collective rights are bullshit under the modern western legal framework. When someone writes a law and enacts a law, they do so for a reason. They do so with the intent and understanding that the law will have an effect. The only way that a law can have a legal effect is if it can be invoked in a court case in order to help decide the outcome of the case. So-called collective rights cannot be invoked in court, and therefore they are legal bullshit. It’s a fantasy. There are individual rights which individuals can go to court to seek court enforcement of those rights against governments, and there are powers of the government where the government can go to court to seek compliance by individuals or by other governments with the powers of the (former) government.
treefrogdundee in post 77 is entirely right. The second amendment was passed as part of the package of the bill of rights. It was passed as a compromise to the anti-federalists. No – it was more like throwing a bone to the anti-federalists. The federalists, especially James Madison, the father of the constitution, all believed that the bill of rights was superfluous because of the limited powers doctrine of the new federal government. The federal government could not violate any of those rights because none of its enumerated powers would allow it to do so. However, James Madison and the other federalists saw little harm in passing a bill of rights, and so they did. (James Madison did see some harm in passing a bill of rights, which he tried to rectify with the ninth amendment, but that’s a discussion for another time.) Given that context, without a bunch of counteracting evidence and argument, it’s ridiculous to argue that the second amendment is giving additional powers to the federal government.
It’s also quite unreasonable to argue that the second amendment guarantees powers to the several states, when it doesn’t mention “states”, “powers”, etc. What it does mention is “right of the People”.
The father of the bill of rights is a little known person named George Mason. George Mason is one of the IIRC 3 attendees of the constitutional convention who refused to sign the convention before it was distributed to the states for ratification. George Mason’s major complaint was the lack of a bill of rights. Later, George Mason wrote a draft bill of rights and gave it to James Madison to introduce in the new congress. George Mason’s draft bill of rights survived largely intact to become the ratified bill of rights.
As recorded during the Virginia debates over ratification of the new federal constitution (not the bill of rights), George Mason was quite critical of the new constitution for this perceived deficiency. He argued with James Madison over this frequently. I have one excerpt where George Mason discusses in particular the militia, and the potential for the federal government to disarm the militia.
Again, the following quotes are from the debate notes from the convention for the ratification of the new federal constitution (our current federal constitution) for the commonwealth of Virginia, for Saturday, June 1788. This is available from Elliot’s Debates >> https://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/lwed.html <<. (A direct link to the particular page is sadly unavailable.) The following quotes George Mason, father of the bill of rights, responding to James Madison, father of the constitution (remarks omitted, available in source). (Bolding in original.)
So, here is the father of the bill of rights, arguing with the father of the constitution, saying that the new constitution might produce tyranny by “disarming the people” !
Quoting consciousness razor
Then let’s look at what it actually says.
The actual text of the second amendment verbatim is this:
A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
If we translate that into today’s English, and apply the concepts just explained (see the google doc link below), and adjust the grammar to be less awkward to today’s audiences, we arrive at this:
The right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, in order to allow / create / enable / foster a population that is well armed and well trained in the art of war, in order to defend / maintain / secure a society that is free from tyranny and oppression.
With the proper translation / interpretation, there is nothing about hunting rights. There is nothing about self defense rights. There is nothing about “collective rights”. There is nothing about powers of the government at any level – federal, states, or city – to operate police or other “security forces”. There is nothing about powers of the government at any level – federal, states, or city – to call forth or otherwise control the militia (which does appear in the constitution itself and not in this amendment). What the text does say is that the people should be legally allowed to be armed, in order to foster the creation of an armed population, in order to prevent or counteract tyranny. Full stop.
It’s easy to cherry pick evidence. It’s hard to hold onto a fiction when confronted with someone knowledgeable, honest, and determined (IMAO me).
For additional information and citations on my not-so-humble views the second amendment, see here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ak6bx8jyDxIlsLuFHHevw-4RQ7R5vJb15RtTNG5d79w/edit
OK, been doing other things, like catching up on mail, conversing elsewhere and eating dinner.
So, we have arguments against the second amendment’s meaning. I suggest reading the decision and history lesson in Heller v D.C.. It’s historically accurate and illuminating on why the men who penned the Constitution were so paranoid.
That said, the only tyranny my firearms defend me against is the tyranny of an unperforated paper target. When hunting, that 593 point buck goes free, studies show that the older bucks have greater success with their herd, I’ll stick with the younger ones – if I actually ever get around to loading my rifle.
The reason that the SCOTUS is for life is Article III of the Constitution. Can’t do what isn’t in the Constitution and can’t do something it doesn’t say. We’d need an amendment and this Congress couldn’t agree on lunch if they would starve to death on simply agreeing on when to go to lunch.
We’ve had quite a few amendments, many were never ratified, some sunset due to a sunset on ratification and some will never be ratified. Crazy, but true.
The second amendment was taken as a tradition, true, as a sizable part of the nation had firearms of a military type. That was largely because the military used what was fairly common for civilians to hunt with. Things got really interesting in a bad way when they figured out how to make a machine gun! As a result of a wave of violent crime, the National Firearms Act was enacted. By my last count, precisely three crimes have been committed with an NFA firearm. Since the NFA was enacted in 1934. That’s one hell of a good track record and expanding it to military automatic derived service rifles semiautomatic cousins makes sense.
Oh, the barrel shroud was asked about elsewhere, some time ago. It prevents burns when you fire the firearm. Barrels get HOT! As in third degree burns.
To those objecting to a bayonet lug, I’ve never heard of a crime committed with a fixed bayonet (bayonet attached to the rifle). That said, reenactors do use it.
It’s also useful to illustrate how insane some military things, such as a bayonet charge against a machine gun.
Sniper rifle, hunting rifle, six of one, half dozen of the other. They’re largely the same beast, save that a modern sniper rifle is closer to a tight tolerance competition rifle to impart greater precision.
US v Miller was about a criminal with a short barreled shotgun, aka “sawed off”, which is the primary way to become a felon. Barrels under 16 inches are NFA firearms and one must pay for a $200 tax stamp and go through the intrusive background check to acquire one.
Want to saw that barrel off and pay for the tax stamp? Felony. You need to pay a special occupation tax to become a maker of NFA weapons, $1000/year. $200 making tax. Track that serial number closely!
Long and short, Miller made an NFA shotgun (sawed the barrel down illegally), used it in the commission of a felony and objected to the sentence due from violating the NFA.
You have no Constitutional right to possess a short barreled shotgun, especially if you’re a felon.
Personally, I have no use for such a weapon, it’s not accurate and I’m big on millimeter accuracy.
@Vicar, a Libertarian I am not. I was a Republican until the tea party made the party lose its ever loving mind and even before, I disagreed with many policies. Hell, Reagan primed us for an R&D economy, Bush the Elder went for a service economy. Service economies are degenerative, as we’re all servicing ourselves, whereas R&D is regenerative. Discover something, license it for a profit, rinse and repeat. That all said, I’m really big on regulation of businesses, too many driving off of the cliff since the 18th multiple depressions. Homeopathy, that shit should be illegal, it’s a scam.
This is getting long, hard to track. I’ll have to put monikers in to lower confusion and scrolling for all.
treefrogdundee, technically, when one person’s rights disparage the rights of another, either law is created to protect the disparaged one or a court of law has to mediate. Occasionally, they get it right, considering the Dred Scott and more recently, the Citizens United decision. Don’t get me started on the Hobby Lobby decision…
That said, the judiciary has done precisely what you complain about now, it was complained about in the 1790’s, it’s been complained about since.
Even something about yelling fire in a crowded movie theater wasn’t a case, but it’s case law.
Originally, the Constitution protected slavery, that harmed others tremendously and eventually, resulted in a horrific civil war (all civil wars are horrific). States can and do prohibit felons from voting, some for a time after being released from prison, other states, for life.
Your final point, I agree with without reservation. I’d even go with a database with model and serial numbers.
That said, far right, far left, go far enough around and they meet face to face. They’re extremists, not as bad as extremists that use violence to accomplish their goals, they’re not that far around yet. I fought a war against extremists, so I have an intense dislike of any form of extremism and lack of the ability to compromise.
As for resolving the issues with lawyers, it’s that or sitting a nuke on their laps. As I’m out of nukes, don’t believe in using them for anything beyond a *really* heavy paperweight and I loathe the things, I’ll stick with the lawyer. Less chance of legal trouble or a hernia. ;)
Tethys, hoping here for some severe implosions, although those might impact the election rightward.
consciousness razor, the journals are in the national archives, the amendments to the Constitution were created to limit federal power. Some even go so insanely far as to suggest the possibility of unseating a scofflaw federal government.
As I said to “Im fighting tyranny” (sic) types, let’s see how that dinky little AR or AK does against MLRS, artillery, mortars, AC130 gunships, AH64 gunships, AH1 gunships, bombers, fighters, bombs, cluster bombs, napalm bombs, guided bombs, guided missiles, drones, infantry, Marines, SEAL teams, SF teams and all are pissed off at you.
Yeah, that’d really go well.
Still, wingnuts are lose and swing their wings around. :/
Still, history is cool, ain’t it?
The founders also were against a standing army, which we have today. Largely because their precious militias got their asses handed to them in every single conflict that they tried to fight in. The Norris City Rifles was and remains a militia unit, the non-military version performs re-enactments of revolutionary war and civil war battles, but part was retained after WWI and turned into National Guard as the 111 infantry regiment, of which there were two battalions, now only one and elements of the 56th brigade. The 56th brigade actually performed reasonably well in Iraq, a change of pace in its entire history.
But then, Big Army finally has the Guard properly trained to standard. That includes riot and crowd control, no more Kent State debacles.
You have literally described the situation I am currently in, on several different axes.
Having all these courts and constitution is really doing a shitty job of helping things.
Right, I know they do. What my post says is that I would consider both rulings good, even if there was no constitutional backing for them.
Well, Nerd isn’t expressing the point clearly, as it has nothing to do with “extremes” in the political spectrum.
It’s one thing to be tired or fed up or so fucking frustrated with it all that you’re beginning to seriously consider other planets to colonize…. I know the feeling. It’s a very different story if you’re really going to claim that in fact Democratic politicians are no better than Republican politicians, that there is no reason why you should have a preference, that actually you should do something other than vote for the Democrat.
Presumably, you shouldn’t be evaluating it like so: I feel ecstatic about this particular person who I want to employ in this government position. And if I’m not ecstatic about one of them, all is lost. The game is rigged. There’s no point. Fuck everything and everybody. They’re all phonies, and they’re all the same.
That’s just bullshit. Instead, voting for one of them is the better choice because doing so is reasonably likely to give you a better result. That obviously doesn’t mean you must be satisfied with everything they’re likely to do (or actually did in the past), but that you’re increasing the amount of good shit and/or decreasing the amount of bad shit relative to the alternatives. Perhaps it’s not much of an increase in the good shit, but it’s something. Maybe that means you won’t vote for the Democrat sometimes, because doing that really is likely to be better. That would be better either because your nice progressive third party candidate has a reasonable chance of winning and doing this good stuff with the position they actually won. Or it’s because the Democrat is somehow worse than the Republican, so not voting for the Dem (whatever you do instead) amounts to the same thing as wanting the Republican to win. Not fucking likely, but wacky things happen sometimes.
But waving your hands and saying they’re all the same is just a load of garbage. It doesn’t really make sense, if you think about it: many, many, many billions of dollars are spent over the decades, fighting over what happens to the country. So even at your most cynical, you have to realize that there is a difference for numerous people to have something to fight about. If it were Coke who owns one candidate and Pepsi who owns the other, and you think those taste the same, then fucking say that. In fact, I don’t give a shit what your tastebuds are like. But don’t tell me those two companies themselves also do exactly the same thing, along with the puppet candidates they’ve each chosen, so that supporting either has exactly the same consequences socially/economically/environmentally/etc. The whole fucking world would be an incredible fucking conspiracy if anything like that were true. You might as well tell yourself the external world doesn’t exist at all, because an evil demon has been tricking you this whole time. Maybe that would be better. You could save yourself the trouble of having to explain to any real person how that could possibly be the case.
But I never get a straight answer about how Democratic candidate X is actually worse than, or every bit as bad as, Republican Y. It’s only ever a long-winded rant about all of the bad things X did, which isn’t even formulated in terms of a comparison. Or it’s about how they really wish, in their wildest dreams, that perfect candidate Q would have some chance of winning. So even though they won’t win, Q will get their vote because they’re perfect, and never mind that worse candidate Y is likely to win if people followed this kind of reasoning. Fuck that noise.
Yeah, I mean, I don’t think I agree with the “democrats and republicans are literally the same and if bernie doesnt win I’m going green” standpoint, I’m just fairly disillusioned with democrats at the moment, as one of the people that got really worked up in the 2008 election, and then hopefully, reservedly worked up in the 2012 election.
Say that to all the gay people getting married in Alabama and elsewhere.
Say that to all the gay people who can be openly gay and not prosecuted for Sodomy in Texas.
Say that to half the US which isn’t living in a Christian theocracy, despite the majority of people there who would want one.
Etc etc.
@#73, numerobis
The key is “what combination of action and policy would cause me to abandon this candidate or party?” Once the cutoff becomes “nothing which would not land them in jail”, as it clearly has for an awful lot of Democrats, it’s just tribalism.
@#85, Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
There — to coin a phrase — you go again. There’s a discernible difference between the Democrats and the Republicans, but it’s not a meaningful one.
The myth of centrism is the idea that all issues have a whole spectrum of reasonable positions, like — metaphorically — a credit card with no minimum monthly payment. Any payment in the range of zero to the whole debt is acceptable, it’s just a matter of deciding how much you want to pay off now, versus how much you want to pay later, and any value is okay.
Many issues — I would even argue most issues — aren’t like that. They are more akin to a life-threatening injury; insufficient treatment may make the doctor feel as though they did their best, but the patient is still going to die.
Republicans, almost across the board, want to do nothing about these serious issues. Fair enough, we might as well have a party which stands for “let our problems destroy us”. But we only need one such party. Unfortunately, the Democrats have become the party of “don’t take enough action to prevent our problems from destroying us”. Sure, there’s a difference: one of them will let everything go bang, the other will waste a lot of time and effort and still let everything go bang.
What is the point of supporting a party whose stated goal is to do less than what would be necessary to solve a problem? And yet that is what “centrists” ask us to support when they work on behalf of candidates like Hillary Clinton. (And, for that matter, Barack Obama, John Kerry, Al Gore, and Bill Clinton. The problem did not originate with her, although she is, so far, the candidate who comes closest to being a direct personification of it.)
Gladly. I’m glad I have the ability to get married now, but I care a lot more about things like the fact that only like a fifth of our states explicitly ban conversion torture.
Anyone who wants to claim that we’re doing so well now because we can get married now has really fucking low standards for “doing great”.
Sorry, a tenth. Over-estimated our country.
Yes and no. The history is a little more complicated. AFAICT, most of the founders were very in favor of having only a well armed and well trained militia, and not having a standing army. However, after the relative failure of the militia in the war of independence, several of the founders, like James Madison, became disillusioned by the militia-only creed. These people later became federalists, aka people in favor of the new federal constitution, which among other things, granted the power to the federal congress to raise a (professional) army, albeit with a 2 year limit on funding bills.
Still, several other founders, like George Mason, clung to the militia-only creed, and feared federal tyranny more than foreign invasion.
Further still, for several of the federalists who were in favor of the federal congress having the power to raise a professional army, they still repeated the militia-is-good creed, in the ratification debates and publicly.
For examples of this, see my quote upthread by George Mason to James Madison, and click the link to see the further context.
The Federalist Papers spend a great deal of time on this topic. IIRC, it’s #29 or #46 that discusses this issue at length.
I didn’t say that. I said that the current system is preferrable to majority-rule, aka mob rule, aka pure democracy with no constitution, i.e. what you advocated earlier.
Then do something productive, like getting part of an organization that is trying to amend the federal constitution to change the election process to instant runoff, or preferential voting, etc., and in the meantime also voting for the lesser evil rather than not voting.
I don’t think that’s my position. I’m fine with constitutions, I just don’t think ours is some magical document that every human right should be compared against. I’m not in the law = moral camp, so there are things that I think are good without being in the US constitution. Thus my standpoint that Roe v Wade or Obergefell would be good rulings even if there was no viable constitutional support.
To Vivec
What you wrote makes no sense. Either you believe that sometimes courts should purposefully make ruling contrary to their estimations of the best outcome because a constitutional protection says so, or you believe that there shouldn’t be a constitution. What other reasonable options are there? In other words, what’s the point of a constitution if you want the legislature and the courts to ignore the constitution when they think it’s wrong? What’s the difference between that and mob-rule? That there are judges? Why couldn’t the legislature just change the rules and replace the judges?
It’s pretty evident that you haven’t thought this out too clearly, IMAO.
A…better constitution? I’m referring specifically to this constitution. I think that, in real life, as long as we’re working with a flawed document where oppressed minorities have to scrape for every right they have, I don’t have a problem with courts doing rulings that increase our rights, even if the constitution doesn’t support their ruling. In some hypothetical world where the constitution covered every possible right that I consider good, I’d be fine with them sticking to the wording.
As I said earlier, what you said makes no sense. Again, serious question: Am I right that your position is the following?
“I want the courts to ignore the constitution when following the constitution will produce bad outcomes, and I want this no matter which constitution we’re talking about (except the hypothetical perfect one).”
That seems to be what you’re saying. If that’s not what you saying, then you or I fail at English – maybe both.
That pretty much sums up my stance. If they’re not going to play fair when it comes to oppressing us and denying us rights, I don’t really care to play fair when it comes to getting them.
Preemptively:
What about personal gun ownership rights? As you said elsethread, you are against personal gun ownership rights (generally speaking). Thus, I’m pretty sure you’re going to abandon the “I want the courts to increase our rights” rhetoric pretty fast, and/or you’re going to add on some new qualifiers / conditions.
I’m pretty sure you don’t have a logically consistent and explainable principle, except “the judges should do the right thing, even if it contradicts what the constitution requires”, which then leads to my obvious question: why even have a constitution?
Otherwise, you need to start getting very specific, and no offense – but I doubt you’re capable of that at this time. Maybe get back to me later.
EL:
I didn’t claim there were collective rights. Individuals have a right to be secure, in their life and health and property and so forth. They create governments to ensure things like that. This doesn’t in any sense expand the powers of a minimal government which is legitimate and has any use in modern society, because it’s a legitimate individual need which must be addressed by any legitimate government. I don’t think merely saying that simple fact has expanded the government one bit, which is all I claimed. Notice that this doesn’t imply that every individual must therefore have guns — we simply need systems that can provide that kind of security. (Their imagination only went as far as firearms, but of course even things like computers help these days. Where is the individual right for everyone to have a supercomputer to hack with, in order to create a free society?) That system is composed of government employees who are hired by the people who consent to that work, which is being done on their behalf. We haven’t signed a contract at birth, or at the beginning of civilization, but if things are especially bad people do revolt from their specific forms of government.
What would you call that? Historical trivia about the word “militia” doesn’t really concern me (should it?), because if the amendment was ever intended to have an application beyond the circumstances they found themselves in during the late 18th century, we need to be able to interpret it that way, a way that we can actually use now. Or we should get rid of it and replace it with something that will last, that’ll be relevant for longer than a generation. Anyway, we don’t have a “militia” in that sense, so what good is that supposed to do for us?
You’d like it to have a very expansive meaning, having to do with all humans everywhere. (I suppose you’re just saying all adults, not white adult male property owners, should have this right. And American citizens aren’t the only individuals with human rights.) I don’t see the problem with a less expansive meaning, which is only about public security forces. (Whatever you call those things in certain cases is up to you: various kinds of police forces for a city/county/state/etc., militaries, national guard, armies, mercenaries, goon squads, the horrifying death machines of the evil tyrant gubmint that your hunting rifle and box of ammo is about to overthrow. Anything that floats your boat.) Maybe I missed it, but you didn’t explain what the problem is supposed to be with this reading. You apparently just gave an alternative account, but I’m happy to admit that there are other conceivable ways of thinking about it. That doesn’t help me understand why I’m wrong, if that’s what you’re claiming.
@#100, EnlightenmentLiberal
Okay:
1. Instant Runoff Voting is not an improvement over First-Past-The-Post.
2. Hillary Clinton explicitly says, on her campaign website, that she wants to “confront China”, and she has said she wants a No-Fly Zone in Syria, which will have American troops firing on Russian planes. And then she has plans for “confronting” (read: bombing) Iran as well. The minute you directly propose to start World War III, you cease to have any claim to being the “lesser of two evils”. Since most Democrats are apparently utterly unaware that Clinton’s foreign policy “experience” consists entirely of ginning up wars (and then, when the wars predictably turn into disasters, disavowing her former support), we’re apparently headed that way. And that’s right now, when she’s still under pressure to stay at least somewhat left-ish; what she’ll be saying once she formally has the nomination doesn’t bear thinking about.
Specifically – the concern is: What happens in your world when the judges on the court disagree with you about what is the right thing? What happens when the judges decide that the right thing is to put gays in jail? What happens when the judges decide that religious rehab, i.e. AA, is the proper court-ordered remedy for a drunk driver? You’re not in the charge of the world. You are not the judge. Other people are the judge.
In general – what happens when the government is not made of people you like? In other words, what happens when the majority of people do not agree with you?
You said that you were gay, right? A lot of people believe that you should be imprisoned or killed, because that’s the right thing to do, and that’s the morally obligatory thing to do. That’s what mob rule looks like. That’s what it, a government without courts to enforce the rule of law, looks like.
You are grossly naive. As I said at the start, you’re making a metaphorical noose that will be used to metaphorically hang you later.
The purpose of a constitutional government is an exercise of sociology. It’s to try to ensure that the best people are put into the best social, cultural, and political arrangements to produce the best outcomes, limited by the real world facts of human goodness and evilness and the other facts of human sociology. Like any science, like sociology, there are right and wrong answers as to what will produce the best results. You are simply factually wrong.
Fair enough, I can’t say that my stance on this particular matter maps into a wider political philosophy. It’d probably be for the best that courts follow their respective constitutions.
That being said? If every justice bit the dust next year and the Democrat in charge stacked the supreme court with 8 liberal judges, I can’t say I’d complain.
I think it would be.
Aside: Remember, it’s been mathematically proved that it’s impossible to have a fair election system (within a certain, but expansive, criteria for what constitutes “an election system” and “a fair election system”).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow’s_impossibility_theorem
Also, I merely meant to give it as an example. I’m not wed to it being the best idea. I am wed to moving away from the current system of: vote for a single candidate, largest plurarity winner takes all.
I actually am rather fond of party list voting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party-list_proportional_representation
I admit that I’m still rather ignorant of which system is “best” for our particular circumstances, culture, politics, etc.
That’s just foolish. And wrong. Obviously so.
On that wording, I wholeheartedly agree.
Well, that’s kind of where this all started? Like, @28 was all “How about justices that have no ideological bend? I don’t care about how they voted because justices shouldn’t have an ideology”, and I disagreed by saying “Fuck that, bring on the liberal judges”, cue rest of this thread.
Although I guess I do see the contentious part in that post. I’m kind of confusing the “I’d be happy for any additional rights, even if they weren’t in the constitution” gut feeling, with an actual viable political philosophy.
So yeah, my bad, mea culpa and all that.
@#111, EnlightenmentLiberal
In what way, precisely? As my link shows, it not only doesn’t solve the “second-guessing” problem, which is the thing most people complain about in the current system (because that’s what keeps third parties marginalized), and simultaneously it would make the vote-counting process extremely convoluted and open to accusations of fraud which are beyond the dreams of Breitbart.
Dunno if you’ve been paying attention to the news, but Clinton as Secretary of State is in a very direct and real sense responsible for the destruction of Libya. The Pentagon — you know, the guys who are professionally vested in death and destruction? — actually wanted a diplomatic solution, but it would have had to go through the State department, and Clinton specifically and deliberately refused it. The entire mess in Libya, with the major cities turned into rubble and ISIS running around killing people at random? That’s entirely the fault of Clinton. A bunch of interviews have surfaced in the past few weeks in which various people — including Obama — say that Clinton was by far the most militaristic person in the administration.
So… obviously wrong? No. Maybe you believe it’s not obviously right, but when you have someone with a long history of being stupidly optimistic about military “solutions” — remember Clinton on Iraq, perchance? — and they say outright that they want to employ military “solutions” now, I for one think it’s wise to take them at their word.
“I don’t think that’s my position. I’m fine with constitutions, I just don’t think ours is some magical document that every human right should be compared against”
That is horseshit. You stated very clearly that you would wish for a given outcome that was clearly unsupported in any sort of law just because you liked said outcome. That is a perfect definition of anarchy and as far from a constitutional system (or any coherent system) as you can get. Ours is by no means perfect which is why it is capable of being amended.
“Thus my standpoint that Roe v Wade or Obergefell would be good rulings even if there was no viable constitutional support”
No, the outcomes would be good. The means of getting them – and the precedent it would set for others who wish to shoehorn their own views into law – would be horrific. As it happens, both have more than enough Constitutional muster to back them so you are arguing from a false premise.
“If every justice bit the dust next year and the Democrat in charge stacked the supreme court with 8 liberal judges, I can’t say I’d complain”
If he stacked the court with 8 justices who moved this country in a progressive direction based on a reading of the law (which, in most situations, should be fairly obvious to anyone who can read) I’d be thrilled. If he stacked it with 8 justices who snapped their fingers and issued the same ruling because “We say so”, I’d be horrified and frightened. Why? Because as EnlightenmentLiberal mentioned, all of this goes both ways. You are really, really, REALLY stupid if you believe that all politics will always flow in a progressive curve. How justices act does shape how future justices act, what the national mood will allow them to do, etc. Having a majority that acts as progressive dictators may give you favorable results in the short-term. But sooner or later, that pendulum is going to swing and some far-right wackjob will get the opportunity to make THEIR mark on the court. And next thing you know, its back to forced conversion therapy.
@116 see @113-114
I disagree with the stated risk and severity of vote rigging.
I am partially sympathetic to the claims that it’s complex, but not enough to actually consider that to be a killer concern.
Also, just as a note: Using a picture of text instead of text, and using random coloring, makes the entire thing look quite amateur and unreliable.
As for “second guessing”, as I tried to show by citing Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem, that’s a fundamental feature of all fair voting systems (within a certain expansive definitions of “voting system” and “fair voting system”). For all plausible, single outcome, ranked voting systems, you’ll always be able to conjure a hypothetical electorate that produces perverse outcomes.
However, the important questions to ask are: For real-world and plausible electorates, is there more or less incentives for perverse voting? And I say that for real-world and plausible electorates, instant run-off voting will generaly produce better results than first-past-the-post. Not “no perverse outcomes ever”. Just “less perverse outcomes”.
But yeah, in a less succinct way: I was wrong, you two are right, I was knee-jerking it and doubled down when I was disagreed with. That was shitty of me, my bad.
I read through that page and even though there are arguments to be made against IRV, that page did a terrible job at it.
FPTP is terrible because it inevitably leads to two parties, where any new party closer to one than the other actively harms the people that vote for it due to draining votes from the bigger party.
IRV does not force you to vote for everyone in order. You can stop at any time. If everyone votes only for one party, you practically have FPTP back, but if people want to vote for smaller parties, that doesn’t immediately hurt their big second choice or third choice.
Now, does IRV stop all gamings of the system? No. People can still have reason to vote differently from their actual preference. But at least new parties have a chance to grow an audience that can safely vote for it, keeping them a threat for any bigger parties that might shift a particular direction.
Any system that elects a single winner has to contend with the fact that different voters have different interpretations of first favorite, second favorite etc. With IRV you can make sure your vote will at least count for all of the people you care about winning, in the order you care about them winning in. That is a great improvement over FPTP. The fact that knowing other people’s voting behavior might mean your preferences aren’t completely accurately reflected in your voting order is a valid criticism of some of the proponents videos, but not of the system itself, because that is a defining feature about any system where you select a single winner from a pool of candidates. IRV just allows more than 2 parties to exist and gives voters ways to keep larger parties more in line with their interests, which is a HUGE improvement over FPTP.
Its positively amazing how inept and clueless people can be in the political strategy arena.