You’re calling them naive? Isn’t that self evident? They set up (more or less) the first modern democratic government. Of course they were naive. They also worried about the rise of political parties, but left it to the Senate to decide split presidential elections, virtually ensuring a two party system. Hindsight is 20/20, but I think it’s fair to cut them just a little slack for not foreseeing every pitfall, and exaggerating the risk of others.
It’s also worth remembering the conditions at the time this was codified. No one was likely to receive an appointment to the SC until their late 40’s, at the earliest - and few people lived very far into their 60’s, and few of those would have been physically capable of of remaining on the court.
That meant that “lifetime service” would virtually never exceed 15-20 years… and considering that term limits under consideration are mostly within that range, it’s not as big an oversight as it first appears.
I didn’t call them naive, but thanks for putting words in my mouth, I guess? I assume when you say “them,” you mean the founding fathers, but I never mentioned the original framers by name or otherwise. The “no one” I mentioned includes anybody between the original framers and present day. I don’t know who you’re arguing with, but it’s not me.
I disagree that it is a mild admission and think it is an admission that ought to make him unfit for his role
I disagree that having it on tape is not an important development and that it is not a good way to demonstrate just how prolapsed this court is to what needs to be an ever widening audience.
Also…Things are not important because they are new or not new or more emotionally impactful or less emotionally impactful. NEW does not always > important. I’m not sure how emotionally impactful the information is has any relevance on how much of an actual bombshell it is to people who are actually impacted by it which is most of us living here actually. You know, given the recent coup and all.
If you don’t have such a strong opinion on this than why does the strong opinion of others seem like the thing you have to fight here? It’s normal for people to be on edge when people like Alito are busy undermining our rights. We have already been ignoring this for too long.
If someone said “I don’t think LGBTQ people deserve any rights, they should be eliminated, don’t you?” then a supreme court justice agreeing would still be terrible news. And most people here are smart enough to recognize that as part of what he’s actually agreeing to.
" Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
When this one goes… EVERYTHING ELSE GOES WITH IT.
This is the one they want to get rid of ultimately because it is the one that is keeping them from establishing a Christian Theocracy.
Every last little bit of it has to go for that to happen.
Once that one is gone you only get to keep the super special sacred second one for so long as it takes them to shoot you.
This is a wolf at the cradle of democracy and people need to see it for what it is.
And to stop downplaying it, FFS… All that’s doing is making it more possible, by pretending like it’s not an actual threat or has not already transformed people’s lives in real material ways (Dobbs, all the anti-trans laws, etc).
What if someone said “I don’t think black people or brown people should have any rights” or “Women should not have any rights” and a supreme court justice agreed with them?
One should instantly see how fucked up and deeply problematic that is.
The same goes for our trans sisters and brothers; it’s all an effort to strip other human beings of their humanity and their agency.
It’s not just religion. Alito’s BBF (billionaire best friend) is part of the Koch network. Every time they lost a labor case, Alito would give them a paint-by-numbers in his opinion for the next try.
