Justice Anthony Kennedy retiring

[ToddStarnes]

McConnell really played this masterfully. Dems should not vote in favor of a Republican nominee until they have had a chance to make this one up to the GOP.

I would be amused to see abortion rights restricted because I'm growing to enjoy libs crying but it would be bad for the country to have all those extra poors running around.

[Philly]

[Philly]

[John Galt]

That makes sense to me. My only concern is the filling of actual vacancies that were unexpected. Maybe if it's less than 10 years they can continue on and be nominated again?

I guess to further insulate them they'd need to be barred from doing most business after their term as well. Have to figure something out there. Might encourage them to be older before they take the position

[JDHURF]

[Demosthenes]

Supreme Court of the bible belt’s dreams




It is time to end any debate about whether Trump will prove to be a blip. Even if he is impeached next year, his legacy will endure for years and probably a generation in the form of the Trump Supreme Court.

Neil Gorsuch, Mr Trump’s first confirmed nominee, is 50. That gives him at least a quarter of a century longer on the bench. Meanwhile, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, who account for half the court’s liberal representation, are 85 and 79 respectively. They are the oldest two justices on the court, although the conservative, Clarence Thomas, is rumoured to be the most likely to retire. I am glad I am not Ginsburg or Breyer. Liberal pressure on each of them to stick on as long as possible will now be unbearable. The future of Roe vs Wade, gay marriage equality, what remains of the Voting Rights Act, and other great milestones of the 1960s and 1970s, are now in severe doubt. Neither justice will want to be the one who makes their nadir inevitable. A five-four conservative majority is momentous enough. Six-three could take us back to the 1950s.

But let’s be frank: Trump will not be impeached next year, or the one after. With or without a Republican-controlled Congress, there is scant chance more than a handful of Republicans would risk voting for his removal from office, regardless of what Robert Mueller uncovers. Anthony Kennedy’s retirement from the bench makes that even less likely. Whoever Trump nominates to replace him will be more in the mould of Neil Gorsuch — a Samuel Alito-type conservative approved by the hardline Federalist Society.

Among the 39 judges Mr Trump has had confirmed by the Senate is a jurist who compared abortion to the stain of slavery, another who likened transgendered people to animals and …well, you get the point. These are not minimalist types. Trump has every incentive to choose an extreme figure to replace Kennedy. That way he will ensure a large evangelical turnout in November and in 2020. Indeed, it would practically guarantee they would see Trump as a biblical hero.

Few presidents get a chance as large as this to stamp their character on America’s third branch of government. Many years after he is dead — which will not be soon, inshallah, peace be upon him, etc — Trump’s ghost will inhabit the machine. It will be a socially conservative force that will plough as many decades backwards as it can. I wish this were an exaggeration. But it isn’t.

A more imminent warning: some time soon Mueller is likely to subpoena Trump to appear before a grand jury. The president has given up much pretence of agreeing voluntarily to submit himself to Mueller’s questioning. Should Trump refuse, as his lawyers will advise, the issue will go to the Supreme Court. Right now that would be a four-four split. Mitch McConnell, the man who brought all this about by blocking Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to keep the opening free for Trump, should he win (who promptly chose Gorsuch), will ensure the quickest confirmation possible. Then it will be five-four. Should the court uphold whatever argument Trump makes for executive privilege, we will have a constitutional crisis on our hands.

The great silver lining of Trump’s first 18 months has been the resilience of much of America’s system — the courts more than any part of it. Congress has not even made a pretence of asserting its independence. But until this week, the judiciary did play the role envisaged by America’s founding fathers. I suspect that chapter is now closing. The US separation of powers has rarely been in such danger.

My column this week is on Obama’s vanishing arc of history. In spite of all that has happened, the former president, and many liberals, continue to believe that Trump is indeed a blip. I imagine this week’s events will have shaken their confidence, which has always been rash. Now it just looks wrong.

The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer stumbled on a bespoke board game played at the home of the Mercers — the family that created Breitbart, Cambridge Analytica and funded Trump’s campaign.

Among the gifts the game awards to the character Robert Mercer is mass deportation …In Ludo Veritas?

The Washington Post’s Steve Pearlstein issues a bracing call to business to wake up to the Faustian bargain it has made with Trump. Business may be getting corporate tax cuts and deregulation, but as time goes on the price of these gains will rise. The cost of trade war, restrictions on immigration, and geopolitical volatility will keep rising.

My colleague Martin Wolf asks whether the rise of AI will lead to the widely distributed leisure that thinkers such as André Gorz and Keynes once imagined, or one in which a small robot-owning elite will corner the gains and employ the rest of us in increasingly humiliating roles. On balance the latter is more likely. I thought Kennedy’s retirement was alarming enough. Then I read Martin.

[John Galt]

The so called "fascist lunatic" was the only one on the court who would restore the fourth amendment to include 3rd party held personal information on so instances rather than just GPS data

[ToddStarnes]

Alito and Roberts dont bother me much. Another one of those isnt the end of the world. I am glad scalia is off the court.

Fascism and socialism appear to have lost all meaning now. I guess we just call things we dont like one or the other depending on political orientation. Kinda silly.

[Kane]

Roberts is also the reason why ACA is still alive right now too. These conservative justices won’t help out Trump if he goes full throated authoritarian - that’s literally the worst thing conceivable to conservative justices. You’ve gotta look at the merits of their arguments.

The real inflection point will be on social issues - gay marriage, transgender rights, and abortion. Outside of that maybe voting rights. All bad yes - but still correctable in time.

[Kane]

I do think Trump will get the opportunity to appoint another judge after this. Liberal justices are too damn old and I live in this strange parallel universe.