Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/06/26/supreme-court-gives-corrupt-officials-a-license-to-grift.html
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Gratuitous Gratuities? We’ve been saying for a while now that tipping culture is out of control.
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13 Court Justices NOW! (please…?!)
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Vote Blue for Congress in November if you want that. I mean a lot of Blue. We will need supermajorities in both Houses to push something like that through, because some Democrats will oppose it. Realistically, we would need 2/3 majorities in both Houses. I say this because we need 60 votes in the Senate to break a filibuster, and, again, some Democrats will oppose this. So we need a comfortable margin. The House only needs a simple majority, but we need a margin to account for some Democrats opposing this.
I’m not trying to be negative, but the reality is that enlarging the size of the Supreme Court is extremely unlikely anytime soon. Right now, the best way through this is to keep Democrats in the White House and in the Senate so the GOP can be blocked from any new appointments. Democrats need to swallow their idealism and get better about judicial appointments. Since Nixon was elected in 1968, Republicans have held the White House for 8 terms (32 years) to 6 terms (almost 24 years) for the Democrats. In that time, 21 Justices have been appointed to SCOTUS. If the ratio were proportional, Republican Presidents should have appointed about 12 of those Justices, give or take 1 or 2. Instead, they have appointed 16 to the Democrats’ 5! Some of this has just been bad luck, but some of it has been intentional and strategic on the part of the GOP. Thurgood Marshall could have retired when Carter was President, but he didn’t. Instead, he hung on until poor health forced him to retire in 1991 during the first Bush’s administration. Who replaced him? Clarence Thomas. Hugo Black, appointed by FDR, stayed on the bench for over 34 years! Nixon replaced him with Lewis “the Powell Memo” Powell. RBG, of course, died in office during Trump’s term, to be replaced by Barrett. Meanwhile, middle of the road swing voter Anthony Kennedy, even though he certainly didn’t seem partisan during his time on the bench, was a good little conservative soldier and retired while Trump was in office. And, of course, when Scalia died in office, Republicans controlled the Senate and made up a bullshit rule to block Obama from nominating his replacement, and then said “what rule?” a few years later when RBG died. Democrats have been trying to operate in good faith under the assumption that, as long as they do the right thing, everything will balance out in the end. Republicans have long said, “nah, fuck that” and have worked strategically to dominate the entire federal judiciary, and they’ve succeeded spectacularly. We have to change our approach. If Biden wins in November, Sotomayor needs to retire as soon as is practical. I’m sure she has plenty of good years left, but we need to make sure that seat is protected for the foreseeable future. And then maybe Kagan, too, a couple of years later. If Democrats can hold the White House another term after that, they will almost certainly get to replace Thomas and Alito, and that would swing things back to the left.
I would love to increase the size of the Court, but it’s just not realistic. Not yet. Also, we need a progressive version of the Federalist Society, and we need it yesterday.
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These should be animated.
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It’s almost like the 6 in the majority are normalizing corruption so that they can continue accepting “tokens of appreciation” without so much scrutiny.
edit: note that if I were a more cynical person, I would suspect they were making this up to suit their personal interests instead of ruling based on the merits of the case (/s)
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No, I wouldn’t call it cynicism. In light of the whole SCOTUS receiving “gifts” issue, the timing not only looks suspicious, it stinks to high heaven.
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