Hunter and Joe and the MSM

The New Neo Posted on by

For any situation to become a big story and inspire outrage against the actual perpetrators, enough people in the media (MSM or social) have to be behind framing the story in that particular way. The facts matter, but only to a certain extent, and they can be twisted to mean the opposite of what they actually indicate, if that’s the goal.

Just to take one example of thousands, the whole Russiagate story – what the Obama administration and the federal agencies such as the FBI did to try to frame Obama’s successor and/or his associates – is a shocking one, much bigger than Watergate. But it was covered by the press, and amplified on social media, in a way that attempted to exonerate the culprits and perpetuate the frameup. And for many many consumers of news, it did so successfully, despite an enormity of evidence that proved that those agencies acted mendaciously.

The same with so many of the cases of supposed racist murder at the hands of police officers, the cases BLM and others use to stir up racial hatred and riots. The fact are almost always other than the left says, but if enough people pick it up, then their lies are believed. With the help of the MSM and social media, that has helped fuel the current crisis. And this is by design – the design of the left, which also supplies the money to fund much of the non-spontaneous and wholly-planned rioting.

And so it is with the exploits of Hunter Biden, whose father Joe is of course the current Democratic nominee for the presidency. This – and this and this and the information in all the links here – would be vastly important if the media deemed it so. But the media is uninterested:

A passive observer might take this all in and think that Hunter Biden’s foreign adventures are a worthy topic of discussion while his father runs for president.

That passive observer would be wrong, according to the press. Hunter Biden strikes Cockburn as a very interesting figure, yet news operations are suddenly competing to see who can find his exploits least interesting. CNN, the AP, Politico, and CBS all variously dismissed the report as old news, politically charged, or ‘controversial’. The finest headline of all belongs to The New York Times, though: ‘Republican Inquiry Finds No Evidence of Wrongdoing by Biden.’

No evidence? Hunter Biden was paid millions of dollars by Ukrainian, Russian and Chinese oligarchs. In fact, he was paid a lot more than Russia ever spent on the Facebook ads liberals think swung the 2016 election. That’s plenty of evidence. What the Times and others mean is that there is no proof of wrongdoing by Biden. But so what? There was never one shred of proof for the Russia collusion conspiracy theory, but the Times accepted a Pulitzer for hundreds of articles obsessively chronicling that story. They’re still at it to this day.

But don’t expect any months-long investigation into Hunter Biden, now or ever. He’s only a Democrat.

I had noticed that jaw-dropping NY Times headline, as well. But why be surprised? This is the way it is, across the board, and has been for a long time:

In other words:

Let’s be honest. If this were one of Trump’s kids, there’d be wall to wall coverage right and Pelosi would already be drawing up the articles of impeachment. Further, there would be widespread demands for the DOJ to investigate for criminal behavior.

I suspect that’s where this is headed, and it’s another reason Joe Biden may be more desperate to win that some think. The only way he can protect his corrupt family is to gain power over the DOJ. There’s simply noway everything that went on here was above board. The wives of Putin stooges do not wire millions of dollars to the VP’s son for no reason. Don’t forget that this all was happening while Joe Biden was heading up the Russia-Ukraine policy front for the Obama administration. Was Russia attempting to buy influence? That certainly seems to be the most likely explanation.

Forget it, voters. It’s Bidentown.

Andrew C. McCarthy explains the Breonna Taylor case,…

The New Neo Posted on by

…which he calls “tragic.” It is, but it’s nowhere near murder – not that the mob cares. But for those who’d like to know:

Police will be relieved that no charges were brought against Sergeant Jon Mattingly and Detective Myles Cosgrove, whose shots in the dark chaos struck Ms. Taylor only after the officers were fired upon by her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker — who himself may have been justified, in the confusion, in shooting at what he says he believed was an intruder. The cops were doing their job in executing a lawful search warrant at a location that was quite justifiably tied to a notorious criminal — Ms. Taylor’s former boyfriend, Jamarcus Glover.

Please read the whole thing.

Two police officers shot in Louisville

The New Neo Posted on by

Today the grand jury handed down a ruling in the Breonna Taylor case that the mob didn’t like. What has followed are the sort of riots we’ve grown used to, and tonight that included the shooting of two police officers. Fortunately, the officers are expected to survive.

The facts of the Taylor killing, which occurred last March, have been hard to ascertain. I haven’t written about it before because I’ve read so many contradictory things – for example, did the police enter the apartment on a no-knock warrant, as many have alleged? Apparently not; the police announced themselves, although witnesses differ. They were met with gunfire and returned gunfire, which is how Taylor was killed.

A grand jury hears testimony for the prosecution, not the defense, and decides whether there’s enough to bring charges. The mob would prefer to be the ones to make that decision, on the “evidence” produced by demagogues and the MSM. That would be the mob veto:

When a state court acquitted the white officers charged in the post-arrest beating of Rodney King, widespread riots successfully prompted a second trial at the federal level and determined its outcome. The jury at that second trial were fully aware of the new rules: “no justice, no peace.” “The outcome,” I wrote in 1995, “was a foregone conclusion. What juror would want to be responsible for provoking a new round of deadly riots?” The officers were duly convicted of violating the civil rights of Rodney King under a federal statute…

Maxine Waters, Congresswoman from Los Angeles and now a prominent supporter of BLM and Antifa, referred to the Rodney King riots at the time as a “rebellion,” implying that they were a justified reaction of the black community against the endemic injustice of white supremacy that dominates American society…

Even before the Rodney King riots, a prominent law professor had made elaborate arguments that rioting is a form of expression protected by the First Amendment—a simple matter of “matching one’s rhetoric to his outrage.” Think of it—one of the most advanced and respected legal minds arguing that rioting is rhetoric!

And yet that is exactly what today’s progressive rioters believe…

…Riots are not only being justified: they are being made into a staple of our judicial system and our public life, the threat of them used to install routine fear and racial supremacy in our homes and cities.

The Rodney King riots occurred in 1992, nearly thirty years ago.

The source of Democrat/leftist rage is the demand for power

The New Neo Posted on by

Yes, they hate Trump. But it’s hardly just that. It’s that the left thinks it is entitled to run things and that any impediment to that goal is illegitimate.

And after all, if they look at American history, there really has been a slow steady march to the left. The same is true in many other countries. If that march goes too quickly and seems too vicious, it has been somewhat reversed in some places such as the USSR and its satellites, and China. But in terms of Western Europe and the US, what was once unthinkably leftist for most people (since the 30s, anyway) has now become quite popular.

If you look at the course of 20th Century American history, you can see some back and forth but also a general overall movement ever leftward. FDR was a real turning point, although there were glimmers prior to that. Since then, the Republican presidents have been Eisenhower, Nixon/Ford, Reagan, the two Bushes, and now Trump. Only Reagan and Trump can be characterized as conservatives who fought strongly against that leftward drift. Also, for most of the time, Republican presidents were dealing with Democratic congresses, which helped tie their hands. Not so for Democratic presidents, who often had Democratic congresses – and therefore much more power – and were willing to use it.

I chronicled these changes in this 2017 post, some of which I’ll now quote:

If you study Congressional history in terms of party control (see this important chart), you will note that, ever since Coolidge and Hoover, Republicans have only had that “offense” opportunity (control of the presidency and both houses) twice. The first time (and then they barely had control) was in 1953-1955 under Eisenhower. That was a long long time ago, I think you would agree, and Eisenhower wasn’t exactly a conservative. Also, the reason I wrote “barely” is that the GOP’s “control” of the Senate balanced on a razor’s edge, with 48 Republicans to 47 Democrats plus one Independent (the Independent being Wayne Morse, who basically was no Republican).

The second time was much more recently, and it’s the one most present-day readers remember: under George W. Bush, and in particular the years 2005-2007. He also had majorities in 2003-2005, but a much weaker one (especially in the Senate), so weak it could be undermined by just a couple of senatorial RINOs. Those Bush years were also dominated by the war in Iraq, and unfortunately Republicans did not capitalize on their very rare moment of being in control and thus able to play “offense.”

…[I]t’s actually the Democrats who’ve been in control of both [the presidency and Congress] far far more often ever since FDR, and therefore able to play real “offense” in the sense I’m talking about.

In addition, many times that the Democrats have held presidency and Congress, their majorities in both houses have been overwhelming, featuring numbers that Republicans haven’t rivaled since before FDR and have not come close to rivaling after (even during the Bush II presidency when they did have control for a few years). All of the presidents in my lifetime [written in 2017] whose party has held both houses at any time during their presidency (other than the aforementioned George W. Bush and briefly and weakly Eisenhower) were Democrats. All the ones who had very strong majorities for much of the time were Democrats as well. Besides FDR, we have Truman, JFK, LBJ, Carter, and early Clinton,. Actually, Clinton was the only post-FDR Democratic president who had to face a divided Congress for a substantial (at least half) portion of his presidency…

Check out the numbers; it’s quite astounding how large the Democratic margins in Congress were during the last two-thirds of the 20th Century. As an example, from 1935-1937 the Senate was about 72% Democratic and the House 74% under FDR, and those margins increased in 1937-1939 to 78% and 76%. Hard to see what Republicans could have done against that. During 1945-1947, Truman’s Congress was very close to 60% Democrat in the Senate and about 56% Democrat in the House (for the next two years he had to deal with a Republican Congress, however). JFK? 64% of the Senate was Democratic during his first two years, and that margin increased to 67% for the next two years (some of which, of course, became the LBJ years). At the same time, the House was 60% and 59% Democratic. The margins increased still again during LBJ’s first elected term, 1965-1967, to about 68% in both branches of Congress.

In contrast, Nixon (and then Ford) had to deal with an enormous Democratic majority of around 58% for both branches (although the margins reduced somewhat during the later years of his/their terms) the whole time he was in office. Carter was initially given a 61% lead in the Senate and almost 67% of the House, later reduced to a still-strong 57%/64%…

Study it all you want, but you won’t find margins anything like that—not even remotely like that—for any Republican president since the days of Teddy Roosevelt, Taft, Harding, and Coolidge. And Coolidge only had 53% of the Senate and approximately 52% of the House at first, which went up a bit in the next election before it went down in the subsequent one, with the Senate Republican lead in the Senate fading to one vote. With Hoover, the Senate went back up to 58% GOP (then down again to a one-vote margin during the last two years of his term), while the House was 61% Republican and then down to a tie during those last two years.

So, that was the situation for Republicans controlling the presidency and Congress during the 20th Century, except for the aforementioned brief times during the Eisenhower years when they barely controlled Congress. And then in the 21st Century, more slight control for the GOP under Bush.

What a contrast! For nearly a hundred years Congress has mostly been in control of Democrats, often very strongly in control, and that’s also been when there’s a Democratic president. Republican control has been weak and extremely sporadic, and therefore most Republican presidents have faced an oppositional Congress.

SCOTUS has also marched leftward, with some exceptions. The idea that Trump could get a second term and would have the opportunity to appoint three SCOTUS justices, a third of the Court, rankles the left very deeply. How dare he? That’s Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat!

Now we have quite a few Democrats/leftists not only saying that they’ll pack the Court if they get the opportunity, but also that, if the Court issues judgments they don’t like, they’ll just ignore those judgments. Oh, and perhaps they’ll impeach Trump if he tries to appoint a SCOTUS justice now, as is his right.

They are having tantrums if they don’t get their way, but these are not ordinary tantrums. These are highly dangerous tantrums that are just another sign of the breakdown of the old Democratic Party, which was a fusion of far left and moderate, and its almost total replacement by the activist far left.

If the American people don’t see this for what it is, the far left just may succeed in getting the power it so desires. And once they get it, they will do everything they can to keep it.

The Ruth Bader Ginsburg hagiography: “Grant her dying wish!”

The New Neo Posted on by

Almost undoubtedly you’ve seen the Democrats’ arguments that Republicans should desist from approving a new SCOTUS justice to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg because it was her dying wish that they refrain. It’s a bizarre thing for Democrats to say, but of course that doesn’t stop them.

There are various excuses they give. One is offered here, for example:

Women such as today’s sitting Republican senators Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Joni Ernst, Martha McSally, and others, whose careers were made possible by Ginsburg, and who now have in their power to grant her that dying wish by blocking their party’s leadership from ramming through her replacement.

So out of gratitude to RBG – without whom there would be no GOP women in the Senate (I wasn’t aware of any decision she ever rendered that impacted on that) – the GOP women should stop the crass GOP men from “ramming through” (that is, having a vote on, as is their prerogative) a replacement.

It doesn’t take much thought to understand that the author would be saying nothing of the sort if the situation was reversed. This is politics, and niceties such as respecting a person’s wishes are simply not part of the game unless it’s politically expedient. It’s politically expedient for the left to talk about Bader’s wishes, but Bader had a chance to make those wishes come true by retiring when a liberal replacement would have been assured. She chose not to do so.

In a larger sense, though, I think this approach is emblematic of the Democrats’ approach to politics these days. Emotion and heartstrings when needed and especially when out of power, appeals to identity politics, and absolute toughness and ruthlessness when in power. This particular gambit is designed to appeal to liberal women, of course, as did the entire last ten or so years of adulation of Ginsburg as some sort of liberal popstar and/or saint.

My own opinion of Ginsburg is that she was very very smart – as are nearly all the SCOTUS justices – and very very liberal. She had a long and interesting life and showed courage when young when there really was quite a bit of discrimination against women lawyers. If I’d been a liberal I would have admired her but I can practically guarantee I would have been puzzled by all the worship.

Ginsburg was a SCOTUS justice, not a queen choosing a successor. But the Democrats have calculated that pretending she was the latter appeals to their base and energizes it. And they probably are correct.

Susan Collins has decided what hill she’s going to die on…

The New Neo Posted on by

…and it’s the hill of betraying the right.

I suppose she thinks this might get her re-elected. I doubt it. I think it seals her fate with Republicans in Maine, whom she needs in order to win. I could be wrong, but that’s what I think.

So I think what she has done in saying she won’t vote for a Trump nominee is to stab the right in the back while not helping herself at all, and therefore perhaps helping them lose the majority in the Senate as well.

Collins held firm during the Kavanaugh hearings, but unless she changes her mind again (which I don’t think she will) she’s folding on this. Maybe she’s tired of politics. Maybe she wants to retire and continue to live in Maine, and she doesn’t want any more death threats.

I have contempt for her. And her reasoning doesn’t even make sense, because there’s no rule about not taking a vote so close to the election. The rule is that the party controlling the Senate can vote or not vote, as it wishes. She knows that, and she knows that the Democrats would seize the opportunity to do whatever it took, if that opportunity ever came their way. With Garland, Democrats lacked that opportunity for the simple reason that they did not control the Senate, and the Republicans did control it. And yet what she’s doing now makes it more likely that Democrats will control the Senate come next January.

It’s not totally clear how all the other RINOs will vote, but I am very concerned that they will follow Collins. It’s up to McConnell to do his best to make sure they don’t. The situation is complicated by the fact that there are two votes on this. The first is whether to bring the nominee up for a vote, and the second is the vote on confirming the nominee. I believe that Collins is the only one of the RINOs who has already said she will vote “no” on both.

[ADDENDUM: I will add that I think Republicans in Maine should vote for Collins nevertheless. This is absolutely not the time to take some sort of vengeful/purist stand. It’s Collins or the Democrat, and this is the Senate. I will add that, if Collins does win and chooses to run again and some other Republican to the right of her decides to primary her and gets the nomination, that Republican will lose to the Democrat.

Maine is a very purple or even blue state, and conservatism is not popular there. Convservative LePage won the governorship by a fluke, because of a five-party race for his first term and a three-party race for his second. He never had a majority and he was quite unpopular. See this. I believe that Collins is the most conservative Republican that Maine would be willing to elect to the Senate, and she may lose this time anyway.]

They’ve arrested someone for sending the ricin letter to Trump

The New Neo Posted on by

Lots of info at Ace’s:

She was found because her Twitter account listed “techno-creative nomad” and she called herself a “techno-creative Nomad” in her threatening letter to Trump.

She also called Trump an “ugly tyrant clown” in both her ricin letter and in a response to someone else on-line.

What a genius.

Even more information can be found here, including this:

Ferrier was carrying a gun when she was arrested, CNN reported. She was trying to cross the border from Fort Erie, Ontario, into Buffalo, New York, via the Peace Bridge when Customs and Border Protection agents took her into custody, NBC News reported.

The Peace Bridge.

Biden admits the election is only about Trump and that Biden’s plans simply do not (or should not) matter to voters

The New Neo Posted on by

Just because Joe Biden has cognitive challenges and is often very foggy, that doesn’t mean he isn’t sometimes coherent. It’s a big error to think he’s in the late stages of cognitive decline; he’s not.

And I think that he’s sometimes telling the voters what is actually true of the left’s 2020 election strategy, which is that he and the Democratic Party have been trying to make it a referendum on Trump alone and that therefore voters don’t have to think too much about Biden himself. The only salient facts are what his opponent thinks and does – or, rather, the distorted version of it that Democrats have been projecting the entire time Trump has been in political life.

So when asked if he would release a list of his potential nominees for SCOTUS justices, here’s the way Biden responded:

Biden…said his 1st choice is to select an African-American woman, but outlined his reasoning for not releasing a list of nominees…

“Should voters know?” the reporter asked. “Should voters know who you’re going to appoint?”

“No, they don’t, but they will if I’m elected. They’ll have plenty of time,” Biden answered.

He claimed he would not share the names, in part, because doing so would give critics too much time to scrutinize them.

Isn’t that the point? Not just to give critics time to scrutinize them, but to give voters time to scrutinize them? Biden and company obviously don’t think so. The entire campaign is about Trump and only Trump, and Biden is the not-Trump.

Then there’s this, when Biden was asked for his opinion on court-packing:

Asking Biden what he thinks is changing the subject, you see, because the subject is Trump.

Now, it’s also obvious that Biden and/or his handlers think it’s a question they don’t want Biden to answer because his answer is certain to displease one wing or other of his party. Besides, how he thinks on the subject depends not only on what he’s told to think but on what’s politically expedient at the time it comes up. But he can’t say that. All he can do is talk about how it’s only about Trump and not about what Biden thinks.

Kim Klacik goes for another walk

The New Neo Posted on by

I love Kim Klacik and I love her ad. She’s also gaining fame from her appearance on “The View,” which ended abruptly when the show decided they’d had enough of her feisty challenges.

However, Klacik has a very tough hill to climb, running as a Republican in her district:

A co-host, Sunny Hostin, chimed in Friday to rebut the claim of Klacik, who is Black, of having Black support.

“The Black community has your back? The Black community does not vote for you. What planet are you living on?”

“Wowww,” Hostin continued, stretching out the word.

Klacik then sought to explain the results of last April’s special election in which Democrat Kweisi Mfume defeated her by a 3-to-1 margin in the heavily Democratic 7th Congressional District, which includes parts of Baltimore City, Baltimore County and Howard County.

“It was during a special election while we were still under [coronavirus] lockdown and I could not talk to people,” Klacik said.

Klacik is running in Elijah Cummings’ old district, and he consistently won by similar 3 to 1 margins. I hate to be a downer, but although Klacik may do better in November than she did in April’s special election, I find it hard to believe she can make up a gap like that in a district in which voting for the Democrat is practically automatic.

I wish her well, though. If logic ruled elections, most of the voters there ought to try a Republican for a change. But elections don’t run on logic.

Joe Biden: these are not gaffes

The New Neo Posted on by

I’m going to assume the MSM didn’t show this, except for outlets on the right such as Fox and the NY Post. I certainly couldn’t find any other coverage of it than on the right.

So I guess this just isn’t news. It’s a tree falling silently in the right-wing forest:

Very very disturbing. And this is far from an isolated incident, as you probably are well aware. What’s especially alarming about it – aside from the media silence, of course – is that Biden doesn’t seem to recognize that he’s said anything wrong with the 200 million figure. Even if he’s reading off a teleprompter that’s hard for him to see (and I’m going to assume that’s the case), at some point his mind should kick in and he should catch himself.

But that doesn’t happen here, and it doesn’t happen often with him. It’s as though the words on the screen are totally disconnected from thought. It’s just the habit of reading, a skill he developed as a youngster, that persists.

Also notice how he walks forward alone – a rather lengthy walk – in a mask, which he immediately takes off to speak. Why wear a mask on the walk when there’s no one around? My guess is that it’s become a virtue-signaling trademark and a way to distinguish himself from Trump, as well as something that gives him a secure feeling. And yet, just a moment into the speech, he coughs and covers his mouth with his bare hand.

The Supreme Court system is broken

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve thought for a long time that the Supreme Court is far too supreme. The “living constitution” doctrine of the left has been used not just to update and apply constitutional principles to modern times but to lay down law that should instead have been addressed by either legislation or an amendment. The Court has become a shortcut to get the result the left desires but which the nation’s citizens do not support in sufficient numbers to enact such laws in any other manner at the time.

I don’t know when this began, but I know that Roe is an example of it. Prior to that famous SCOTUS decision, many states had already allowed and regulated legal abortion:

Prior to Roe v. Wade, 30 states prohibited abortion without exception, 16 states banned abortion except in certain special circumstances (e.g., rape, incest, health threat to mother), 3 states allowed residents to obtain abortions, and New York allowed abortions generally.

My sense is that over time this trend would have continued. Another way to legalize abortion in the entire United States would have been a constitutional amendment, but I’m less sure that would have gotten enough support to pass in enough states. At any rate, what actually happened was that SCOTUS used a supposed right of “privacy” to prohibit the banning of abortion, under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. You can agree or disagree with the result (and that’s the understatement of the year), but the method and reasoning SCOTUS used to arrive at it has been widely criticized on the right and even by some on the left:

Liberal and feminist legal scholars have had various reactions to Roe, not always giving the decision unqualified support. One argument is that Justice Blackmun reached the correct result but went about it the wrong way. Another is that the end achieved by Roe does not justify its means of judicial fiat.

Justice John Paul Stevens, while agreeing with the decision, has suggested that it should have been more narrowly focused on the issue of privacy. According to Stevens, if the decision had avoided the trimester framework and simply stated that the right to privacy included a right to choose abortion, “it might have been much more acceptable” from a legal standpoint. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had, before joining the Court, criticized the decision for ending a nascent movement to liberalize abortion law through legislation. Ginsburg has also faulted the Court’s approach for being “about a doctor’s freedom to practice his profession as he thinks best…. It wasn’t woman-centered. It was physician-centered.” Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox wrote: “[Roe’s] failure to confront the issue in principled terms leaves the opinion to read like a set of hospital rules and regulations…. Neither historian, nor layman, nor lawyer will be persuaded that all the prescriptions of Justice Blackmun are part of the Constitution.”

In a highly cited Yale Law Journal article published in the months after the decision, the American legal scholar John Hart Ely strongly criticized Roe as a decision that was disconnected from American constitutional law.

“What is frightening about Roe is that this super-protected right is not inferable from the language of the Constitution, the framers’ thinking respecting the specific problem in issue, any general value derivable from the provisions they included, or the nation’s governmental structure. … The problem with Roe is not so much that it bungles the question it sets itself, but rather that it sets itself a question the Constitution has not made the Court’s business. … [Roe] is bad because it is bad constitutional law, or rather because it is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be.”

Roe was a bad legal decision with a result that has caused fierce battles ever since, and some of those battles have involved SCOTUS candidates. The incredibly bitter battle over the nomination of Judge Bork involved many accusations by the left, but one of the main points of contention was the fear that he would somehow manage to overrule Roe, a case that is shaky in the legal sense but was already firmly ensconced in modern society. The abortion question is still behind some of the bitterness in present-day battles over SCOTUS, including the one we’re engaged in now – although of course it is hardly the only such issue.

The fear on the right – a very reasonable one, I believe – is that if the left ever gets a majority again the Court will impose a leftist agenda on the entire country. The fear on the left is that the right will be able to halt that agenda, at least temporarily.

What is there to be done? The left has an answer if the right starts to predominate: pack the Court. Of course. The right’s answer is not at all clear, except that so far it has involved trying to get a Republican president and a Senate where there is a majority of Republicans and not enough RINOs to throw a monkey wrench into the proceedings, and wait for the opportunity to make an appointment.

Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit has an idea:

When Congress decides an issue by passing a law, democratic politics can change that decision by electing a new Congress. When the Court decides an issue by making a constitutional ruling, there’s no real democratic remedy…

…All the hysteria about a Ginsburg replacement stems from the fact that our political system is dominated by an allegedly nonpolitical Court that actually decides many political issues. And that Court is small (enough so that a single retirement can throw things into disarray) and unrepresentative of America at large.

In an earlier article, responding to Democrats’ plans to “pack” the Court with several additional justices whenever they get control back, I suggested going a step further, and add fifty new justices, one each to be appointed by every states’ governor. My proposal wasn’t entirely serious, being meant to point up the consequences of opening the door on this topic. But on reflection, maybe it was a better idea than I realized.

Under my proposal, the death or retirement of a single justice wouldn’t be much more than a blip in the news, instead of something serious enough that there are people talking about violence in the streets. A Supreme Court composed of 59 justices wouldn’t have the mystique of the current Court — you might believe in 9 Platonic Guardians, but the notion of 59 such is absurd. And since governors would presumably select people from their own states, it would bring a substantial increase in diversity to the Court.

It’s hard to even imagine how that would work or whether it would have the desired affect, but I doubt that such a law could ever be passed by Congress in order to set it up. And why would it stop
at 59?

Congress also has the ability – at least, on paper – to limit the Court’s jurisdiction in appeals cases by taking certain topics off the table. But again, I doubt that Congress would ever pass a law taking away really important areas of contention from the Court’s jurisdiction. The Court and its increased power are too tempting a way to circumvent the legislature and even the president, and since appointments continue for life, it seems that every appointment from now on is going to start a war, either metaphorical or actual.

[NOTE: Regarding Bork’s hearing, Joe Biden played a role:

Bork also contended in his best-selling book, The Tempting of America, that the brief prepared for Sen. Joe Biden, head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, “so thoroughly misrepresented a plain record that it easily qualifies as world class in the category of scurrility.”

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.]