I know what will proceed whatever it is fate has for us, at least as far as the United States Senate is concerned: monologuing.
Yes, the self-styled “World’s Greatest Deliberative Body” had the full attention of the political world today and spent the better part of 6 hours monologuing. You know monologuing, the habit of someone to go on, in detail, whether you want them too or not, about their plans and motivations for doing whatever it is they are about to do. The worst part of monologuing is that you already know everything the monologuer is going to say, but are compelled to sit through it anyway. Which is why it was a plot device/send up back when the original Incredibles movie came out.
Thus, we come to today’s senatorial festivities, mistakenly titled The Senate Judiciary Committee Confirmation Hearings for Amy Coney Barrett’s Nomination for the Supreme Court. What it actually should have been called is Banality of the Damned.
I wondered if a learned person, with more letters of achievement after their name than I, could gussy up the phrase “We’re screwed” into something more mellifluous to describe how we are currently governed. What a rogues’ gallery sits on the Judiciary Committee dais. I question whether some of these folks should be unsupervised, at least should be required to be attended by a responsible adult, let alone sitting in inscrutable seats of power. Amy Coney Barrett, whose confirmation hearing this is supposed to be, mostly sat staring straight ahead while senator after senator orated their “opening statements”, a criminally tortured bit of nomenclature for the wholly predictable monologues the senators gave. At Length. Whether we needed them or not.
And most of it had nothing to do with Amy Coney Barrett.
The memos for both sides had clearly gone out. The Democrats steered far away from faith, while almost every single Republican senator managed to work it into what seemed like every other sentence. Republicans had several answers, but not a single overarching one, for the Democrats’ slew of reasons to not have the hearings… except for the most important one: the majority of the Senate and the White House. If you didn’t know it was a confirmation hearing for a Supreme Court Justice from the screen graphics, you could have mistakenly thunk it was a hearing on healthcare, since it was the only other thing most of the Democratic lawmakers talked about, other than the legitimacy of the process. Covid-19 was everywhere in the hearing, whether mentioned or not, from the odd layout to meet social distancing requirements, to the video-only participation of several of the senators.
And if you follow politics at all, you could have predicted with a high degree of success what each and every one of them said in their statements.
These opening statements are a colossal waste of the American people’s time. Over five hours of pointless, repetitive monologuing for the sole purpose of making the monologuer look great, get soundbites out, and further their own political goals. Appointment to this committee is valued for that very thing. It is not by accident someone like Senator Kamala Harris, who appeared during the last SCOTUS confirmation hearings as a prospective presidential candidate, is now asking questions as the nominated vice presidential candidate for her party. The lights shine brightest for the senators during these events, and the unusual occurence of three Supreme Court vacancies in one presidential term has really brought the process to the fore. Add in President Trump being the partisan lightning rod that he is, and the changing balance of the Supreme Court, and you have a political singularity that swallows up nearly everything else going on in Washington.
Which is why these televised hearings have turned into such a circus. Our representative form of government has labored to produce one of, if not THE, most worthless congresses in the history of our country. While the judiciary and executive rightly deserve plenty of blame, there are threads of congressional failure in almost every strand of problem currently afflicting our American endeavors in governing. What’s worse, in the modern information age, the attention of public hearings on such an important issue has become the ultimate high for senators otherwise forced to settle for talking head shows to get the adoration of the broadcasting lights. Thus, they shuffle onto the dais, looking to tap into that exhilaration of showing the world their brilliance, of going viral with their rhetorical might, of using their position above all others in the room to lord over the issue of the day. They take all their political self-righteousness, twist their talking points into a tight roll, wrap it around their arm, hold it in place with their teeth, and shoot up a hot load of self-importance. The lights and cameras wash over them like a great high, and for that moment they are no longer just one of 100 senators; they are the center of the political universe. Where forth art thou, Copernicus, when we need you to explain to these gaseous orbital bodies that they are not, in fact, the center of the universe.
It is a gag inducing spectacle of dull. The greatest experiment in the history of mankind of a free people self-governing is crumbling from within because we can’t be bothered to elect functional adults to the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body. Folks who are content to do the job they were elected to do. If they would do that we would still tolerate most of their par for the course corruption, incompetence, and ambition to higher office that they almost certainly will never achieve. We aren’t asking for a miracle here, just to turn the monologuing from a 9 down to about a 6 or so.
But, with yet another of the “MOST IMPORTANT ELECTIONS OF OUR LIFETIME!!!!” looming in three weeks, that isn’t going to happen. The bandwidth sponge that is President Trump will dominate everything done here. Since the outcome is not in doubt, Amy Coney Barrett could be a scarecrow for the first day of hearings, seeing as her only purpose there after her appreciatedly brief opening statement was the couple hundred cut-shots to show that she was, in fact, present. Half the dais is convinced they will be the president come 2024. The other half that have let go of that dream think they are super duper special in their own ways.
So we will not get a detailed discussion on judicial philosophy except in small and mostly accidental bursts. We will not be getting a detailed summary of how someone who could potentially be on the Supreme Court for decades processes the Constitution and precedent. We will get days and days of more monologuing, except they will put a slight effort into making it sound like a question this time around. Hopefully we won’t get any soliloquies on playing devil’s triangle or Olivet Discourse-like defenses of beer drinking that occurred last time. We will get days and days of the same old, highly predictable, utterly self-serving preening from the senators of the Judiciary Committee.
But we deserve it. We’ve tolerated it, elected those who do it, failed to correct their behavior, and now have to live with it. In allowing a dysfunctional congress, one of the root causes of the Supreme Court’s outsized and frankly dangerous level of importance in the first place, we’ve already sown the seeds for all sorts of future trouble. And the future is now. You can hear all about it; our betters in the senate are chomping at the bit to tell you all about it. If you can stand all the monologuing.
I think Bernstein (and Biden) encapsulated it best:
“Back in 2016, when Republicans claimed that nominating and confirming a Supreme Court justice during an election year was a violation of the electorate’s right to choose, they were fond of citing something they called the “Biden rule.” In fact, what Joe Biden said when he was Judiciary Committee chair in the summer of 1992 was that if a vacancy were to arise after his June 25 speech, he would urge President George H.W. Bush to wait to nominate a new justice until after the election, and at any rate he would not hold hearings until afterward.
Why? Because “where the nation should be treated to a consideration of constitutional philosophy, all it will get in such circumstances is a partisan bickering and political posturing from both parties and from both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.”
Well, judging from the opening statements in these confirmation hearings, Biden knew what he was talking about.”Report
Excellent diatribe. Can’t help but agree.Report
The Supreme Court (or Federal Judiciary in general) whether people want to admit or not is political. Yes most decisions are unanimous or near unanimous. But those are often to deal with circuit splits on things like Federal Martime Law or to clarify an ambiguity in the Code of Civil Procedure or Evidence. But the contentious decisions, the ones with 5-4 decisions or plurality decisions are often over issues which deeply affect the lives of tens millions of Americans in all sorts of ways from access to justice to enforcement of civil rights, etc.
It feels a bit cheap to turn this into a pox on both their houses argument. I think Michelle Goldberg is correct, it is too late for Republicans to start crying about civic norms: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/12/opinion/republicans-supreme-court-barrett.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
ABC will probably get her seat on the bench in a party line vote. This is not a mandate for decades of reactionary politics.Report
One has to wonder if the Constitution is naught but a dead letter at this point.Report
With a new justice that will have to think carefully about whether the president can cancel the election? Yup.Report
This is the least shocking turn of events but guess who are a bunch of pompous douchcanoes and suggested now is the perfect time to pass a constitutional amendment limiting the number of justices to nine: https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/10/pass-the-28th-amendment-the-case-for-codifying-a-nine-justice-supreme-court/Report
A constitutional amendment would be a *GOOD* thing.
Get 38 states to agree. This follows the process and would be a great thing to have established before the fact. Heck, put some language in there about up or down votes and refusals to hold a vote will result in a timely fashion (defined as 3-4 months, say) will result in the justice being automatically move to the SCOTUS.
Heck, include some language about what happens if the election takes place within the aforementioned 3-4 months.
This is an unqualified good thing.
And if it can’t be done, if they can’t get 38 states to agree that it’d be a good thing, then it doesn’t happen.
Which is also a good thing.
Write down the rule you want.
If, in the future, we don’t like the rule, we can repeal it.Report
That is, make the process “fair” now that the GOP majority is locked in for a generation.Report
It’s certainly a damn sight better than “we don’t have an official rule… we have a collection of sentiments”.Report
How about the D’s add 6 new justices, and *then* we’ll fix the rules.Report
This goes back to the Rawlsian “Veil of Ignorance”.
Just phrase it as “Let’s agree that whomever wins in November gets to add six more justices!” and rest assured that your candidate is going to hit it out of the park.Report
I think the problem is that the veil of ignorance isn’t supposed to *fix* problems, it’s supposed to prevent them.
Oh well.
Personally speaking, I have no problem with the Democrats radically expanding the court if POTUS, Sen, House all go Democratic. The downside (other than tongue flapping about legitimacy) is that the GOP will escalate if they hold all three and pack the courts even more. I say let ’em. Let ’em both escalate to their heart’s – well, their political will’s – content. It won’t be – cannot be – worse than what’s *already* happened.Report
I saw what was going on with ACB as “legal but illegitimate” and I think… eh. Yeah. I can see that.
Biden packing the court would also be legal but illegitimate.
It’s a good thing we’ve got so much legitimacy going around that we have this much to spare.Report
JB, you’re inclined to stop the illegitimacy here, at this point an not farther., right now, because it favors your views (you’re a conservative in heart). Lots – like LOTS – of people view McConnell’s obstruction of Garland as theft and they want some justice.
What I’m saying is that the legitimacy of the court (if Barrett gets appointed) is already shot to hell. Given that – that is, given your primary consideration for not acting isn’t operative anymore – why not find a new equilibrium in the SC as well as the lower courts which makes sense according to natural processes?
Btw, I say that as someone who isn’t an *advocate* of Dems expanding the court. I’m pretty neutral on the topic. And because I’m neutral I’m not at all attached to preserving the current court size.Report
I saw McConnell’s obstruction of Garland as a grey area.
I think that Garland ought to have had an up/down vote. I would have seen him getting a down vote as a bit of a shame but it would have been within the whole “advise/consent” thing.
So, with that said, I don’t see Garland not getting on the court as shooting the legitimacy of the court to hell.
The Senate Judiciary Committee? Yeah, that legitimacy got shot. Again.
Ironically, I’m not sure that ACB getting on the court will necessarily taint the court itself. She is qualified, I guess, as these things go. She’s got a perspective that we’ve seen before and is hypocritical in ways that we’ve seen before.
I think that it would set the Senate on fire but the SCOTUS would be okay. It’s not their job to figure out who sits with them.
Now, I *DO* think that packing the court is one of those things that could taint it, depending on how it was done.
For example, if someone said “in 2037 there will be two additional justices added and in 2057 there will be another two justices added”, that’s a rule that would strike me as being fair enough. Sure. 11 justices? 13 justices? Okay. Ask them to say something about the 9th Amendment.
But the attitude that says, let me copy and paste this, “How about the D’s add 6 new justices, and *then* we’ll fix the rules” would end up tainting the Supreme Court.
This is not me saying that I think that what’s going on with ACB is *GOOD* or even *NEUTRAL*. It’s that I think that the SCOTUS is shielded from it.
If we want to make it so that all three branches of the government are pretty much held in contempt, there’s no better way that I could think of to do it than to (obviously) pack the court.Report
All this talk of setting “fair” rules, assumes facts not in evidence.
That is, it assumes that both sides are committed to the premise of democracy and the rule of law.
They aren’t.
The purpose of a Constitution in a republic is to set rules which facilitate democracy and the consent of the governed.
There isn’t any reason to be fair to any group that refuses to accept this.Report
Moderator help!Report
Divorce or War, then, I guess.
I’ve been saying that for a while, though.
(To be honest, if I wanted to re-establish “fairness”, I’d create a Veil of Ignorance and set up a Divide and Choose method. If you had some ham, we could have ham sandwiches if I had some bread.)Report
“There isn’t any reason to be fair to any group that refuses to accept this.”
Over the last decade plus the GOP (as a party, not every individual of course) has demonstrated that they don’t believe in democracy. From Wisconsin to North Carolina to Georgia and hell even out to California we’re seeing that the GOP is the anti-Democracy party. It’s now the party of raw power.Report
“I saw McConnell’s obstruction of Garland as a grey area.”
No, you absolutely did not. What you did was see a shocking abuse of power – one which literally shocked your conscience – and then *excused* it because there is no law specifically preventing what he did. So you called it a wash, despite understanding that he rat-fucked the process by doing so.Report
I’m pretty sure I saw it as at the edge of “advise/consent”.
I’m a big fan of separation of powers. Sometimes this means that the legislative branch wins fights against the executive.
That’s a good thing.
“There is no law specifically preventing what he did”, nope, no law. But there’s a part of the constitution we could point to.Report
“the edge”
As long as everyone keeps pushing the edges without going over them we’re OK right?
(This is where you say the Dems started it right? 🙂 And where you say that Dems legislating their way to a bigger SC is Over The Edge!)Report
Add: Recall of course that the argument for holding the nomination process wasn’t advice and consent of the *Seante*, but that the election was impending. I say that to elicit some shame on your part since it’s pretty impossible to believe that you think McConnell’s shenanigans were about Advice and Consent lol.Report
it’s pretty impossible to believe that you think McConnell’s shenanigans were about Advice and Consent
It honestly strikes me as quite possible to see McConnell’s shenanigans as a manifestation of him not consenting.Report
“It honestly strikes me as quite possible to see McConnell’s shenanigans as a manifestation of him not consenting.”
Exactly, Thank you. The constitution makes no reference to “McConnell”, nor his personal inclinations to grant or withhold consent.Report
Eh, I’ve complained about the Louisiana Purchase before. Wait, what party was he in?
“Democratic-Republican Party”. Well, that sounds about right. Both of them.
Dems legislating their way to a bigger SC? Wait, that is something I might be okay with.
Are we talking about a law passed in the House, passed in the Senate, then sent up to the White House?
I’d be down with that.
Honestly.
When I hear “Court-Packing”, I’m assuming that it’s something that the Executive does by himself.
Or herself, I guess. Themself.Report
If they’re going to pack the court, I think it would be more efficient for them to nominate tranches of judges and let the Senate vote them up or down as a group.
“All in favor of the Supreme Court class of 2021, say ‘Aye’.”
If would be like passing omnibus spending bills.Report
Now, personally, I’m not going to *LIKE* it.
I’m going to see it as fundamentally changing something good. But, at least!, it’s following *A* process that is recognizable.
(I’d prefer a Constitutional Amendment but a law is the next best thing and easier to amend/repeal.)Report
“I’d be down with that.”
No, you wouldn’t, though. Your dislike of Democrats would emerge. You’d view that move as even worse than McConnell stealing an SC seat. Everything in your past indicates that you would. 🙂
That’s the problem Democrats face, even when they’re trying to implement policies which the majority of Americans – even including conservatives! – support. Part of *that* problem is that they suck at retail politics, but whatever.
We’ll see, though. If Biden wins, I’m100% sure* he won’t expand the court even though he probably should. It’ll take veto proof level support for him to concede to it.
*Because he’s said so repeatedly with nothing on the line.Report
I don’t think anything is going to be up to Biden. He thinks he’s running for the Senate, again, and can’t remember the name of that Mormon senator from Utah that he and Obama ran against.
So the question would be what the Kamala Harris Administration would do.Report
Did you say something, George? Sorry, I was watching baseball.Report
Houston is up over the Rays, but it’s early and Press Secretary Kaleigh McEnany’s husband still has a chance to take the mound, though I doubt he will. He’s only played about four innings this year.Report
ERA of 8.31? Beats last year’s 19.29.
We can see what they have in common.Report
Hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue, so there’s some small good in the GOP pretending to care about faith and judicial philosophy, and not just saying outright “She’ll kill the ACA, overturn Roe and Obergefell, and let us impose election rules that mean we win every time except maybe in case of disasters as big as Trump:”.Report
I just watched Kamala Harris’s questioning of ACB. That’s a wasted hunk of my life that I’ll never get back.Report
Yeah, ACB just keeps deflecting. I feel ya.Report
Kamala went on seemingly forever and barely came up with any questions at all, much less relevant ones that a nominee can answer.
For example, Kamala went on endlessly about how the repeal of the ACA would affect millions of people with pre-existing conditions, blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans, a little girl with cancer wrapped around her optic nerve, and… Well, it was freakin’ endless. Then finally, after what seems like a lifetime, she got to her question, which was essentially “In ruling on the ACA, would you consider what effect of your rulings would have on all these people who would be effected by it?” *drumroll*
ACB simply replied “Yes. That’s what judges do in ALL cases that are before them.”
My Democrat housemate, a seasoned trial lawyer, said “I can’t believe Kamala asked that. She knows what judges do. She just wanted to try and make herself look good to some of the people sitting at home. She doesn’t care about this nomination at all.”Report
I didn’t read you comment, George. Was it good? I hope so. Thanx.Report
Yes it was.
I said “I finally figured out where her parents got the name “Kamala.” Turns out they went with Finnish, where “kamala” means “horrible, terrible, awful, ghastly, dreadful, abysmal” 🙂Report
Em must be disappointed than Amy is so adamant about not telling us what she’s gonna do.Report
So, we don’t hear much about Barrett’s husband. Here’s hoping he’s not anti-Semitic slime.
Report
I wonder what Ginni’s husband, a self-styled originalist, thinks of Loving v. Virginia?Report
It’s invalid by the arguments “originalists” use to declare Obergefell invalid. But maybe that’s fine with him, since presumably interracial marriage would be legalized by now via political processes. In most states, anyway, and so what if they can’t travel to Mississippi without his being arrested for miscegenation?Report
Where’s the anti-Semitism? Please be specific.Report
Don’t be coy.Report
You’re the one being coy, not quite calling Ginni or Clarence, or ACB’s spouse anti-Semitic. And I don’t know everything, so if there is a real anti-Semitic connection, then you should bring it out. But if you don’t, I’m forced to conclude that you don’t have one, and that you may well consider a false slur to be permissible if it helps your political side.
Soros is a rich Jew. He spends a lot of money to promote his political ideology. It’s difficult to see how he’d profit from that spending, and a lot of members of his faith want nothing to do with his plans. It’s not anti-Semitic to criticize Soros without demonstrating some direct connection in the writings of the accused.Report
Soros is evil. His family is evil. And they’re hiding in the shadows, but really running things
It’s classic.Report
Broke: George Soros is an evil puppetmaster controlling the government from the shadows.
Woke: Charles Koch is an evil puppetmaster controlling the government from the shadows.
I know that Democrats really want this to be about antisemitism, but the reality is that the animosity towards Soros is driven by the exact same factors that drive left-wing animosity towards Koch: They’re wealthy donors who have given a tremendous amount of support to the other side.Report
Bespoke: A chaotic good puppetmaster whose ways are unknowable to us all is controlling both George Soros and Charles Koch from the shadows.Report
So, you don’t have anything, and you’re comfortable with unsubstantiated allegations.
‘Cause here’s the thing. Jerry Falwell Jr. is a Christian hypocrite. Michael Brown was a black thug. George Soros is a Jew who moves behind the scenes to influence international politics. It happens. Such people aren’t immune from criticism.Report
https://www.jta.org/2020/09/08/united-states/george-soros-is-a-leading-target-of-anti-semitism-these-jews-openly-criticize-him-anyway
https://www.forbes.com/sites/sethcohen/2020/09/12/the-troubling-truth-about-the-obsession-with-george-soros/#503d330b4e2e
https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/what-you-need-to-know-about-george-soros-center-of-conspiracy-theories-641553
Start there. If you really want to explore this you can, all by yourself.Report
I just read the first article. It covers the subject well, and I’m in agreement with it. “If A then B” doesn’t prove “if B then A”. Anti-Semites hate Soros, but hating Soros doesn’t make a person anti-Semitic.
“Jewish people who wield influence, like Soros, shouldn’t be immune from criticism by virtue of their Jewishness, said Josh Pasek, a University of Michigan professor who studies new media and political communication. But Soros’ status as a target of anti-Semitism, he said, means that Soros critics should know their comments will likely be used by those who hate Jews, especially in a climate where conspiracy theories spread quickly on social media.”Report
The second article is an opinion piece without many facts.
The third article is more factual, and covers the “if A then B” point that anti-Semites hate Soros. Again, it doesn’t demonstrate “if B then A”.
I don’t follow QAnon, nor do I pay attention to the kind of person who does. Maybe they’ve been talking up Soros. in the mainstream right, AOC, the media, and BLM are the most common leftist reference points. I don’t see any sign that an anti-Soros anti-Semitism is making inroads, except for an occasional disgusting retweet.Report
Louis Farrakhan.
AOC.
That will do for starts.Report
Toady the Court failed 4-4 to issue a stay against a Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court ruling to expand the counting of mail-in votes, Roberts and the remaining liberals against Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh, The conservatives cited Bush v. Gore as a precedent. There’s no doubt where Barrett would have voted.
This Court needs the shit packed out of it.Report