Court-packing, though, may lead to escalating politicization of the judicial branch.
Escalating? How much more can it escalate?
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Y not both? With a constitution that is so vague and outdated Democrats can’t rely on just one thing and hope that works as intended.
But all that isn’t going to help much Democrats don‘t address the problem that votes don’t carry equal weight. Once that is remedied, Republicans will have a hard time making a difference anywhere.
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“Mission accomplished”, huh? I guess this must be when the GOP throws trump under the bus and starts trying to distance themselves from him.
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Not necessarily – in doing this, they’ve already given right-wing “values” voters the only thing they had left to offer. And in the process of doing it, they’ve demonstrated yet again why you’d have to hold your nose to vote for them. I don’t see any way this gets out more Republican votes.
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My top “poison pill” idea relies on congress controlling the court budgets. They could theoretically replace the justices federal health care with vouchers so that they have to buy insurance on the open market they so revere.
Then if the ACA goes, well “good luck with your Covid-19 pre-existing condition Justice Barrett”
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An idea I’m increasingly growing to love is to replace the Reapportionment Act of 1929. If it were, for example, to define the size of a district as equal to the population of the least populous state, we would end up with more districts in blue states and fewer in red ones (and the House would grow by about 30 members). And previous versions of the act gave instructions as to how districts were to be drawn, preventing gerrymandering to a degree – and using recently developed, mathematically objective ways of defining gerrymandering could make it less prone to litigation. And doing it immediately in the next legislative session could put it into effect before new districts are drawn up next year.
It would almost certainly require full Democratic control of the House, Senate, and Presidency, and probably also the elimination of the filibuster in the Senate. Once passed, Republicans would have little hope of ever regaining the House without a shift in ideology that accounts for more than uneducated white people and the wealthy. I opposed ending the filibuster before McConnell changed his mind on confirming Supreme Court justices in an election year and basically said, “we can do whatever we have the votes to do,” but now I just want to see the Democrats show what they can do just because they have the votes.
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Yeah. I didn’t understand the whole “circuits” thing but given that the reason the Court was expanded to 9 members was because the number of appeal circuits had grown to 9, then it’s hardly a radical proposition that, now there are 13 circuits, there should be 13 Supreme Court justices.
(But there also needs to be some changes in how cases are taken as well. As I understand it, the Justices get to decide which cases to take, which seems somewhat perverse. Especially if cases can effectively be “resubmitted” if the ‘wrong’ result comes out (and even more so if the judgements are specifically couched in terms that, ahem, imply how they should be resubmitted.) It feels as though this is pointing at the concept of “double jeopardy” and laughing.)
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The third grader republicants in the house had this to say…
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LG’s most endearing characteristic; master of the obvious cliche.
“Those states want to avoid the chaos and suspicions of impropriety that can ensue if thousands of absentee ballots flow in after election day and potentially flip the results of an election.” Ignoring the assumption of the “can ensue”, Kavanaugh fails to explain why ballots “flowing in” after election day are more chaotic and suspicious than those coming in before election day. And now he establishes two types of ballots; those that “flip” an election and those that…(decide an election?) The remainder of the paragraph is equally poorly reasoned.
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Rightwing codebook:
Rule of Law means sticking to the letter of laws as they are written without considering if they apply equally and fairly to everyone.
Originalist means interpreting laws from the viewpoint of dead elitist old white men, some slave owners, while ignoring the principles that they aspired to.
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Justice Natty Light says:
Those States want to avoid the chaos and suspicions of impropriety that can occur if thousands of absentee ballots flow in after election date and potentially flip the results of an election.
So disenfranchising voters is OK as long as we put our horse blinders on and pretend that the people alleging impropriety have nothing to do with the people who:
- created the circumstances that necessitate increased absentee voting by failing to even try to contain a pandemic.
- created obstacles to timely delivery of absentee ballots by deliberately sabotaging the postal service during the same pandemic.
- used every trick in the book to skew the balance in the Supreme Court to 6-3.
Yeah, that totally makes sense. After all, the highest law of the land is rules for thee but not for me…
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there’s water on the moon, so he has options.
Coney Barrett will forever have an asterisk beside her name (the Barry Bonds/Sammy Sosa of the SCOTUS) in my eyes.
In case that needs clarification, see the controversy in baseball about steroid use and the records for home runs in a single season.
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Indeed.
Based on the 2010 census, the House would grow by about 100 seats. Not sure where all the needed office space would be found, but it’s a change that’s been a long time coming.
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Not to worry: Trump has ensured that any earlier wispy notion of virtual attendance in the House, is now fully acceptable and — unfortunately — necessary.
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Redistricting belongs entirely to the states, which is why down-ballot races are so important - a lesson the right wing learned long ago. Their strategy of controlling state legislatures has paid incredible dividends, in some instances allowing incredible state-wide vote losses to nonetheless keep a majority of statehouse seats and send more reps to Congress than would be expected if things were closer to fair. See Wisconsin.
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If you used the original recommendations from the 18th century then it would grow by about 8,000 seats, most of them Democratic.
The number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand…
Article 1, section 2, clause 3 of the United States Constitution
There’s no constitutional reason it has to be 1 for every 700,000+. If the Republicans want to play stupid games, then let them find out what happens when the Democrats play by the same rules.
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