I also think that the Supreme Court choices in this era are largely overated. For the most part we've fixed a lot of the civil rights issues that plagued our country. The decisions being made now are important, but nothing that changes the entire face of the country. I still hold that abortion is the single most overated issue in our country (as overturning Roe vs Wade would not end abortion).

Supreme Court nominations are more about the show behind the show. A chance for politicians to get on their soapboxes and spout their ideologies. Most of these judges are extremely intelligent and not going to dramatically change our country.

I'm sure that's what they all say ;).

I'm sure any potential gay marriage challenges would be big.

Ugh. I hope not, but I know better.

Not dramatically big though. We're talking about some tax benefits and small legal benefits which is essentially what government sanctioned marriage is.

This isn't the era of segregation, slavery, and over half the country not being allowed to vote.

Also an acknowledgement that homosexuals are the same as everyone else. A dramatic sea change when you consider less than 10 years ago, in some states, homosexual sex was a crime.

I think most people in the younger generations feel that way. Whether a Supreme Court makes gay marriage legal is not a big issue as I believe in 10-20 years, the people will vote in favor of it.

I just think that issue is much different from other eras. We don't have near riots outside public schools because a gay kid is allowed to attend. We don't have seperate water fountains for homosexuals, nor do we take away their vote and force them to work in the cotton fields all day. I think the current stance on gay marriage is an abomination and disgrace to the country, but I also don't think it comes close in comparision to what we've seen in previous generations.

I agree.

Sincerely,
Matthew Shepard

Yeah, it was the government that killed him. Or wait, his killers were set free because the prosecutor declined to press charges. Jesus Christ you are a tool.

It was the societal view of homosexuality that did. Government acceptance will go a long way, as did the Government's action on racial civil rights when most weren't willing to accept.

So it's up to 9 unelected justices to determine what our "societal view" is? That's one serious job.

Hello, I'm the point that just went over your head.

Anyone who assumes that hatred is no longer there because it is well-hidden is underestimating the issue at hand. The hatred may take a different form, but it should not be minimized just because it's not blatently obvious as racism was in the past.

So, other than Washington, who appointed the first eight justices, the record for nominations is William Howard Taft, who got to fill six places in four years. There is an outside chance Obama will get to challenge that record, considering the ages of many of the remaining justices.

They are elected - just not directly. You elected the president that nominated them and you elected the representatives that confirm them. That's what living in a Republic is all about.

So its up to 9 indirectly-elected justices to determine what our "societal view" is?

They've got a lot of power in changing things. Brown v. Board of Education had a dramatic societal impact.

People are killed for any number of reasons. In the past, when people were in a certain group, the law would treat their killings differently, up to the point of letting the killers walk without any kind of investigation. The Civil Rights movement helped to bring equality to the treatment of those who killed racial minorities, and there has been a great deal of progress to help homosexuals prosecute those who assault and kill them. There will always be pockets of society that will hate other groups. It is up to the lawmakers and the courts to provide as much equal protection as possible. Your flippant remark ignored all of that.

* WOOSH *

And there is a big difference between people getting away with a crime like that and them being suitably punished because that is no longer an acceptable social norm like it was once.

Fair enough. Your argument is different than the one I was addressing.

I understand that point, I'm just saying that you can't compare the current situation with gay rights to that of the civil rights movement. Yes, there is gay bashing and people who have been murdered because of their sexuality. Just as we still see hate crimes against black, hispanics, and whites. The court decision did change some views, but at the time, the younger generation of Americans were becoming much more in favor of equal rights. I would argue that society pushed the courts in many instances to make those decisions.

I would also say that gays have much more rights in this era than blacks. The atrocities commited against minorities even 50 years is embarassing. Like I said, we don't have riots outside of public schools because a gay kid was allowed to attend. We don't have seperate drinking fountains or "no gays allowed" signs in restaurant windows. That's not to undermine the fact that there is bigotry and how embarassing it is to our country. Just saying that I'd rather be gay in this era than black 60 years ago.

I also think a Supreme Court ruling has less of an impact on views. Those against gay marriage are against it mostly for religious reasons. I don't see their view changing. The societal shift we are seeing toward acceptance is more a function of religion becoming less of a force on individuals.

Nonetheless, my point was simply that regardless of the Supreme Court, gay marriage will be legal in most states within the next 10 years. The issue is also about marriage, not all civil rights. Marriage is a rather trivial issue in my mind and as I said, is really just some minor tax and legal benefits.

I'll play Devil's advocate and contend that a lot of the decisions in the next 20~50 years will have equally substantial if not even more substantial impacts on this country.

A simple counterexample is that we could talk about an environmental case which would substantially affect the whole world and not just a segment of the population in one part of the world.

I think two huge issues are out there, one which is talked about and one which isn't:
1) Further consolidation of government power, particularly in the executive; hell, the fact that a bunch of stuff wasn't challenged in the last 8 years is scary and the fact that Obama isn't trying to close some of those loopholes is very disappointing to me
2) Further solidification of judicial protections for corporations; we keep putting up more and more barriers protecting the 1~5 companies that rule every industry, further damaging our economy and "free market" and giving them greater political clout because money rules governmental power

We're happily going down the road to any number of future dystopias and these decisions happen a lot in the Supreme Court, either actively or passively by not being challenged.

SI

It's kind of interesting that this would make 6 Catholics on the Supreme Court. That equals the number of Catholics in the entire history of the Supreme Court prior to the current group.

I would add a third in the taking over of corporations/industries by the government in the guise of the "common good". The idea that "TARP restrictions" are going to be set on companies that haven't taken TARP funds or that compensation ceilings are going to be set for private positions worries me a great deal.

If the government has struggled for decades to run our tax system, social security, health care, education and military spending, I fear a future of the government also running several private sectors (ie, automobiles, investment banks, ..) in a similar fashion.

If the private sector did so well running itself they wouldn't need the government to step in and run them, but I digress.

I agree the government probably won't do much better running them.

Big government can't run itself. Neither can big business. What's the correlation? Big. Anything that gets to big just turns into a clusterfuck.

And isn't the lesson that we take away from that is that we should have started taking an anti-trust bat to a lot of these companies a long time ago?

SI

Sotomayor: 'I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male'...


I love the ... at the end.

Leave off the end of the quote.

I don't call it "taking over". These companies had no choice and essentially had the option of having the government as their biggest shareholder or flat out going out of business. I don't think the government wanted to take these companies over, but realized if they didn't, we'd have seen a bigger collapse than we did. I believe it's a huge moral hazard as to what they've done, but it's sometimes tough to stand by an ideology when the alternative is 20% unemployment and the collapse of the entire economic system.

I would also take some issue that the government hasn't been succesful at running things. Social security has worked for decades. Checks have been going out like clockwork and it's actually a rather efficient system for it's size. Issues with funding are more a function of people just living longer than they ever had.

They also run a lot of areas really well. The FDA for the most part has been a success at keeping food and drugs safe for people. The CDC has helped eradicate diseases from our population. Education is a tough area to lump into the federal government as they don't really have much say in it. It's primarily local and based off of local taxes. You don't hear about issues with schools in wealthy areas.

I'm against government controlling businesses and giving bailouts. But I also know in this situation that it was necessary. My hope is that they can slowly fix the problems at these companies, sell the parts they own back to the private sector, and make regulations and rules that ensure no one institution has the power to take down our entire economic system.

I think Obama is making a mistake not going with Judge Reinhold.

I hope Judge Mathis is his next nominee.

Mike Judge's appointment is long overdue.

Great episode of Arrested Development. Well all of them are great but still.

Hopefully Republican opposition to Sotomayor drags their appeal to women and Hispanics down even further.

The problem is that the government is largely inefficient. That's why it costs double to teach a kid at a public school compared to a private school. Government run enterprises are often setup to fail and need very strong individual efforts to have a chance at success. They don't pay employees well, rarely fire for cause, have no profit accountability to shareholders and therefore lack the desire to have a self-sufficient business. It's OK for them to help industries for a small period of extreme hardship, but they will never run a private organization nearly as well over time.


I agree completely here and this is exactly what I was saying above. The poster was listing "fears" from the government and not following your logic above is a fear of mine. There are already stories in WSJ and the New York Papers about some banks with the ability to repay TARP not being allowed by Geithner and the treasury.

That's what fuels my fear and there's really no recourse for these companies if congress and the treasury decide they want to keep their interest in them for a while longer (or even add stipulations for non-TARP companies in the same industry). At the end of the day, there is recourse for creditors/shareholders in failing companies. They can fire the leadership, sue for contracts or even force a company into bankruptcy. There's no recourse outside of the Supreme Court for a company who feels trapped/bullied by the government. So, if that goes away, it's a very scary thing for business owners.

Do they really have the ability to repay, or do they just have the cash? I've got a suspicion that this is the Treasury Dept. playing things conservative rather than deciding to collectivize the nation. Everybody knows the chance of another round of TARP getting approved is nil or close to it. Meanwhile, we're certainly not in a sustained recovery yet. Paying back the TARP funds at this juncture seems like a massive unjustified gamble that the bank won't need an injection of cash in the next two to five years for the nebulous benefit of public relations. If we see strong growth a year or two from now and Geithner or his successor is still reticent to let banks pay back TARP, then we can think about crapping our pants.

That's my hope as well. Again, we were talking about "fears". IMO, this fear is just as likely as the executive abusing power and some others listed above. My hope is that none happen, but this is one of the top for my current worries.

Really? You're an intelligent, rational guy normally, but your biggest fear is that Obama is going to nationalize whole industries?

I really can't see how a rational person would believe this.

Not because I think Obama's a "crazy person", but because people are very willing to give up freedoms when they feel a crisis is at hand. It's basically the economic version of the Patriot Act and I remember many being terrified of that over the past few years. And, not to minimize that fear - there certainly was something to it, but I'm much more worried about the government running our entire banking/loan system than I am that some government agent will listen in on a phone call I have with a middle east contractor stationed in London (which I have made for my other company).

But we're nowhere close to the government running the banking sector and I can't see any scenario where that could happen. You may not agree with the modest limitations put onto TARP recipients, but it's a long, long way from the government running the banks.

I think the next year or so will be key. If the TARP hooks are still in companies next year at this time, then it will be much more of a real fear for me. I am certainly willing to take a "wait and see" approach, but I am not optimistic that we will have less government hooks in private businesses (esp the auto and banking sectors) one year from now.

Her ruling in the New Haven firefighter case is one that will come under the most scrutiny, and I expect conservatives to ironically attack her for being an activist when she upheld the lower court and previous circuit precedent.

She is clearly qualified (even if you count Thomas's SCOTUS career, he only has been a judge two years longer than she has) and it would be stupid for Republicans to attempt a strong fight on this one.

But they might anyway. Republicans are losing battles on all fronts so they might as well prolong each battle so that they don't lose quite as many of them in the end.

It's quickly becoming a situation where the liberal press and Democrats appear to be trying to convince the Republicans by making these statements that they don't need to challenge this candidate. There's no question that they'd love to have smooth sailing without any real challenge of the nominee.

So you're a fan of identity politics then?

I actually would love to see a real comprehensive examination, but then again I felt the same about Alito and Roberts. I'm of the belief that this is what goes with winning the presidency, selecting a qualified person to serve on the Supreme Court. Of course most people think it will be silly for the republicans to buck hard on this one as she seems qualified and they are garnering a reputation as the party of "no" on most things. Let's face it, unless Obama found a person who was pro-life, or something conservative in their portfolio, they will all denounce it (as the the dems would do/have done in the reverse situation).

It would be tough for Obama to criticize a challenge of his Supreme Court nominees after voting against both Roberts and Alito.

the fact that alito and roberts made it through the confirmation process still makes me sick to my stomach

What's your problem with them?

Especially Roberts, who both sides seem to agree is a brilliant guy. The only thing I remember him really being grilled about is being Catholic (like Sotomayor)

And Alito was a judge just about as long as Sotomayor (length of judge service will surely be THE hyped qualification this time around. Though if Obama had chosen someone who wasn't a career judge, we'd hear praise about that person's "diversity of experience")

To me, the comprehensive examination already exists. Especially someone with as long a record as Sotomayor, she has written thousands of opinions where her judicial expertise and overall judgment can be considered. If the hearing was mostly about that, then I wouldn't mind. But my guess is the hearing will simply be a way to get her to reveal how she will rule on hot button cases that could come before the court.

Heaven forbid qualified judges make it through :p.

The whole quote is this:
“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

To me, that's still a fairly racist/sexist statement.

Read the whole speech and it's not very controversial at all. Here's conservative Rod Dreher admitting he was wrong to get upset.


Heres the link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/15/us...pagewanted=all

my problem with them is 100% ideological TBH.

and I think we all know my politics. I'm also not sure i'm 100% sold on this Sotomayor-lady FWIW though.