what was the vote like? did any republicans dissent?
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You know, maybe we should all be our own representatives… make it an actual democracy where we all vote on all the issues, rather than sending some rat fucker to represent us… The whole system (here and in your country) is just broken, maybe beyond repair, at this point. Why not try it Athenian style, but without the slavery and bigotry and misogyny, etc.
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Hell of a lot harder to capture, too.
I dunno how well that would work. I think more than half the people can be whipped up into a fervor to vote in any fool idea. >.> Looking at you, Brexit. Maybe fi it required a super majority of 70%?
Also, we would still have the bigotry and misogyny, but maybe (hopefully) to a lesser extent.
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Since his mission is finally accomplished to pack the court with conservatives, I’m sure Graham will finally go back to calling Trump a “race-baiting xenophobic.”
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Oh, we’re nowhere near the worst of it.
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If memory serves, in 2016 the Reps managed to control the upper houses of enough state legislatures that they were within a couple of states of being able to slam-dunk constitutional amendments.
Consider the effect of “clarifying” the First Amendment to indicate that the freedoms of speech and the press do not extend to lèse majesté or seditious libel, that the freedom of religion extends only to real religions (that is, fundamentalist Protestantism, not weird cults like Islam, Judaism or Catholicism!), that the freedom to peaceably assemble is limited by the fact that an assembly is peaceable only if the government has authorized it in advance, and that the freedom of petition extends only to petitions couched in polite language made by persons who graciously accept summary dismissal of their requests.
Imagine similar interpretations of the rest of the Bill of Rights.
That’s where we’d be - pretty much immediately - if people don’t pay attention to down-ballot races.
I can remember a time when my local elections for state legislators were relatively non-partisan. Sure, there was pro forma party endorsement, but candidates tended to run on their record and on the local issues. Now it’s too risky to vote that way, because the party will, when push comes to shove, compel stuff like that. I find myself voting to unseat at least one legislator whom I know personally, and who has been responsive to communications from me, simply because it’s too risky to allow his party to gain a majority.
Redistricting? Small potatoes!
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If there’s no law against adding more justices then Biden and a Democratically controlled legislature can do it. It doesn’t say in the US constitution how many justices there have to be.
There doesn’t appear to be any law against a GOP-controlled Senate and White House doing everything they can to force through their picks for Supreme Court while previously denying a sitting Democrat that pick.
Basically, if the GOP wants to play hardball then we should play hardball. They started it, we finish it.
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[Laughs in European!]
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The problem with that is that it ignores the issue of informed choice. And all the evidence says that it is the control of the information that’s the main difficulty here. In a world of FB, Twitter and so on, there’s no “reality” any more. And, related, consider how much money Uber and Lyft have been throwing at the plebiscite in California.
I mean, yes, one advantage would be that there is only so much money to go around, and the lobbyists couldn’t possibly affect everything. I think they’d give it a damn good try though.
To me “originalism” seems more like finding a convenient word or phrase in the Constitution that can be contorted into a justification of the ruling the justices were hired to produce. This excuse is then decorated with selective references to the Founding Old White Guys to give it a nice conservative luster. Mission accomplished!
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Just the one allowed one, IIRC. All Democrats and Independents voted Nay.
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With all the handwringing about the Supreme Court, I am finding some solace in the possibility of the voice of the people heard through bot houses of Congress and via the White House.
Susan Collins voted “no”. she was allowed this, as her vote was not necessary to carry the confirmation, in order to attempt to shore up her reelection bid in Maine. no other repub voted “no”.
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We can’t keep pretending like the current oligarchy is workable. It’s done real damage to people’s lives, to our environment, to the world. Maybe it’s time to try something new and stop putting power in the hands of people who do not give a shit what happens to any of the rest of us.
If you think the current representatives are “informed” just because they are in power, then you have a funny definiton of informed.
Yeah. No shit. Did I ever say that corporate controlled media isn’t part of the problem?
There is, even if people pretend like it’s not. We won’t dismantle that by doing what we’ve been doing, which is empowering the elite class against our own interests.
Get as much money out of politics as possible. Just get it out. And also, if no one is running for office, there is no one to be bribed. That doesn’t mean media campaigns wouldn’t be an issue, but we need to stop acting like there are no solutions to these issues. Of course there is.
[ETA] Also, you seem to be under the impression that I’m just talking about some sort of free-for-all democratic system, with no basic rights enshrined that can’t be violated. There is plenty of room for setting some sort of basic document of rights that can’t be violated by popular dictate. We have that now, in fact. You can’t vote through your elected official for a system of enslavement or to make the government a theocratic one, or to ban political speech. There are plenty of things you can’t pass into law, because they are unconstitutional. Though deep with flaws, it’s a workable system. What is broken beyond repair is how we’re represented in our government. The fact that two parties have a deep strangle hold on electoral government outside of the most local of elections shows us that. I think we’re in agreement that it’s failed almost all of us at this point. Money is a problem and the desire to hoard power is a problem. A more direct form of democratic processes might help alleviate that problem, provided there is a constitutional floor that protects our basic rights.
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They’re so focused on “owning the libs” that they’ll take the poison and die with the rest of us. But they’ll die smiling.
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If I were writing a dystopian drama the next two plot shifts would be Trump loses the election but the court overturns the vote count, followed by a mysterious death before his second term. Too much of this really does look like the backstory for a dystopian novel.
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Call the Legislation “The McConnell-Graham Deception Response Bill”
If nothing else it would be amusing to see how they pack an additional 8,000 reps into the capitol building. Maybe only hire reps if they are strong enough to have 4 other reps stacked on their shoulders?
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