Comments on: SCOTUS now leaks like a sieve

By: Barry Meislin

Barry Meislin — Wed, 18 Sep 2024 12:40:39 +0000

What? The Democrats are trying to destroy SCOTUS?

Who’da thunk it?

(Just another scalp in their belt, I guess…)

By: Kate

Kate — Tue, 17 Sep 2024 17:18:30 +0000

I should have said “with consenting adults, not resulting in serious bodily injury or death.”

By: Art Deco

Art Deco — Tue, 17 Sep 2024 17:05:39 +0000

“Liberals” used to be people who favored free speech and a live-and-let-live attitude about people’s personal choices so long as those were not actively harmful to others.
==
The effective definition of ‘actively harmful’ presumed their own tastes and sensibilities.

By: Kate

Kate — Tue, 17 Sep 2024 15:45:19 +0000

I think the word “liberal” should be removed from current use in American politics. “Liberals” used to be people who favored free speech and a live-and-let-live attitude about people’s personal choices so long as those were not actively harmful to others. In the twentieth century, most of those also favored government programs to some degree. The numbers of these left among Democrats are vanishingly small.

By: Nonapod

Nonapod — Tue, 17 Sep 2024 15:34:03 +0000

Of course the modern usage of the term “liberal” is essentially an oxymoron. The Left is ever advocating for less personal freedoms in favor of more centralized control of individuals (unless you count abortion as a personal freedom anyway). Most modern “liberals” seem to have a deep mistrust and even antipathy towards their fellow humans as well as an irrational belief in the wisdom, incorruptability, and goodness of a select few; those being the elites and technocrats who went to correct schools and associate with the correct groups and employ the correct language. It’s a very retrograde, medival way of looking at the world. They not at all “liberal”. They not at all “progressive”. They’re regressive and totalitarian.

By: Miguel cervantes

Miguel cervantes — Tue, 17 Sep 2024 14:39:46 +0000

Not that kavanaugh or barrett proved themselves any more rigorous this term

By: IrishOtter49

IrishOtter49 — Tue, 17 Sep 2024 14:19:35 +0000

Art Deco:

I know the etymology of “liberal.” I stand by what I said. In America, liberal is left. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. But . . . it is left. But I’m not going to write a long post explaining how and why this is so, how it came to be. It would bore everyone, myself included. I’m just making a statement. Discuss at your leisure.

By: I Callahan

I Callahan — Tue, 17 Sep 2024 14:18:47 +0000

The left sees the left as the only legitimate holder of power in all branches of government and all institutions.

Rush used to make this very point. It’s the conceit of the left: “We’re more intelligent and even better people than the rubes, so we should be in power. Anything done in service to that justifies the means.”

By: Miguel cervantes

Miguel cervantes — Tue, 17 Sep 2024 14:02:03 +0000

Roberts has proved to be an unrigorous thinker on too many occassions to count too easily swayed by the latest fad so he did rule the right way on a few cases why not all of them

By: Bauxite

Bauxite — Tue, 17 Sep 2024 13:10:21 +0000

Steve (retired/recovering lawyer) – I’ve never considered Kagan stupid. Not at all. I think she’s the most intelligent and effective progressive on the Court.

She’s been a very smooth operator on the Court, albeit while stretching language and existing norms. I was very much less than impressed with her stating that there was no right to same-sex marriage during her confirmation and then consistently voting the opposite way. (So “no” actually meant “not yet” or “not until we get 5 votes.”) I was also much less than impressed with her sitting in the Obamacare case after participating in the case as an attorney. (Useful context for the current leftist freak out about recusal.)

Evidence of effectiveness – she played the long game on the Obamacare case – giving Roberts a mostly Pyrrhic victory on Medicaid/coercive grants in order to pull him from Alito’s failed majority. I also think she influenced Gorsuch on Bostock. His Bostock opinion almost makes sense based on the language of the statute if you squint at it hard enough, and ignore the fact that the statute was drafted by people who were not at all anticipating the current trans issue. I’ve always contrasted Kagan with the rhetorical bomb-throwing of Sotomayor and Jackson. Sotomayor and Jackson get the love in the progressive fever swamps, but Kagan is the progressive who actually gets results, albeit based on what is possible rather than what the left really, really wants.

Given all that, I think it is an ill omen if Kagan is responsible for these leaks. It means that she believes Court packing is possible and she’s doing what she can to bring it about – and what she can do is probably considerable. (The only potential silver lining is that she may be destroying her credibility with her conservative colleagues so that, if Court packing fails, she may be much less effective in the future.)