Yes, BearinFW, I am constantly surprised at what the right wing will believe about President Obama. It seems they take all their hate and frustration out on him as though he is their whipping "boy" – a word I use advisedly.
I heard a former speech writer for Geo. W. Bush on TV today analyzing why the right wingers exhibit such white-hot rage and hatred. He called it repressed anger due to the failings of the Bush administration and espceially the failed Bush/Cheney/Iraq war.
Now that Donald Trump spoke the truth about the Iraq war at an official Republican event (last debate), the truth of what happened has to be faced. It is a watershed moment for the right wingers to face truth and stop denying that the administration lied to the American people, that the war was used as a way to build the GOP image as the great protectors willing to go to war over not only Iraq's invasion of Kuait (Bush Sr.) but also over the non-exisent WMD's. The next thing they will have to face is that the rise of ISIS is due to the fact that that war, as Trump said, destabilized the MidEast in a huge way.
The attached graphic is something that was said over 12 years ago and is even more true today.
The right-wing conspiracy theories are going full speed ahead. The headline on Drudge says "Scalia found with pillow over his head" and they're questioning why no autopsy was ordered. I guess Obama did it :)
@bigfootsf-- I know, there was seemingly such a mystery about his death. You could only gleefully hope that it all had some type of John Irving or Carl Hiassem ending where he was found with the remains of an 8ball and a hooker. :) They say he had a marvelous sense of humor.
I think Obama should nominate someone with impeccable judicial credentials -- a heavyweight, not like his previous appointees Sotomayor and Kagen -- and get the nomination done FAST. They're bound to have some candidates already screened from the previous searches. A nominee of this sort, someone similar to Stephen Breyer, for example, would at least put the onus on the GOP. However, in all honesty, Obama could nominate another Oliver Wendell Holmes and the nominee would not even get a hearing. The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, has already just about said as much, saying the next president, not Obama, should fill the vacancy.
BTW, the Supreme Court will continue to operate with eight justices until the vacancy is filled. In the short term, this could have a *huge* impact on cases that are due to come before the court this year. In the case of a 4-4 tie, the lower court ruling is upheld. Scalia's absence, then, could conceivably flip such important cases as a California teachers union dues case, the University of Texas affirmative action case (both already heard) and upcoming cases like the crucial Texas abortion case.
Assuming Scalia's spot stays open, that vacancy could also be another energizing factor for the right, which will fear "losing" the Supreme Court. It's going to be more important than ever THAT WE GET OUT AND VOTE, PEOPLE!!!!
As for Scalia himself, by all accounts he was a brilliant legal mind, a real cut-up and, surprisingly, a fun guy to be around.
But sadly, his Supreme Court legacy will basically be that of a right-wing gadfly/crackpot, whose caustic dissents rarely added anything of value to the court's decisions. It's telling, and scary, that Ted Cruz last night called him one of the great justices in Supreme Court history!!!! Please, Lord, don't let THAT gadfly/crackpot be elected president!!!
Since I am reluctant to speak ill of dead people, I will let Justice Scalia do it himself. Here are some quotes from an article shown at bottom.
In his dissent in Lawrence, Scalia argued that moral objections to homosexuality were sufficient justification for criminalizing gay sex. "Many Americans do not want persons who openly engage in homosexual conduct as partners in their business, as scoutmasters for their children, as teachers in their children's schools, or as boarders in their home," he wrote. "They view this as protecting themselves and their families from a lifestyle that they believe to be immoral and destructive."
Scalia decided to take the "moral disapproval" argument up a notch in his dissent in Lawrence, writing that the Texas ban on homosexual sex "undeniably seeks to further the belief of its citizens that certain forms of sexual behavior are 'immoral and unacceptable,'" like laws against "fornication, bigamy, adultery, adult incest, bestiality, and obscenity." Scalia later teed up "prostitution" and "child pornography" as other things he thinks are banned simply because people disapprove of them.
In his dissent in the 1996 case Romer v. Evans, which challenged Colorado's ban on any local jurisdictions outlawing discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, Scalia brought out an analogy that he's used to attack liberals and supporters of LGBT rights for years since. "Of course it is our moral heritage that one should not hate any human being or class of human beings," Scalia wrote, in the classic prebuttal phrasing of someone about to say something ludicrous. "But I had thought that one could consider certain conduct reprehensible—murder, for example, or polygamy, or cruelty to animals—and could exhibit even 'animus' toward such conduct. Surely that is the only sort of 'animus' at issue here: moral disapproval of homosexual conduct[.]" It's true that people generally disapprove of murder, but there's more going on in laws banning murder than mere disfavor—the rights of the person being murdered, for example.
The beauty of the obstructionist Republicans fighting to not have Obama's nominee in that seat on the Supreme Court is that they might just get their way and force our nation to go many months without a SCOTUS that can decide cases. Then, when either Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton is in office, he or she can nominate Barack Obama to fill the seat. That would be poetic justice. Hopefully, the GOP would lose their majority in both houses and take a back seat as a Constitutional scholar takes his place on the Supreme Court to balance the court in favor of intelligent decisionmaking.
Amazing. Talk about a curveball in the midst of a raucous political season.
You don't want to think ill-will of anyone; he was someone's husband, father brother, but from my own selfish perspective: what a good sense of timing. (is that gracious and tactful enough?)
I see that Cruz has chimed in that the President should wait until the election before another SCJ is selected; Obama won't, and it would be to Cruz's advantage now, while he is in the senate, to foster an outcome more favorable to his liking. He's making an assumption that it's going to be him or another Republican winning the WH, and when they don't he'll be in less of a position to bargain come 2017.
I heard a former speech writer for Geo. W. Bush on TV today analyzing why the right wingers exhibit such white-hot rage and hatred. He called it repressed anger due to the failings of the Bush administration and espceially the failed Bush/Cheney/Iraq war.
Now that Donald Trump spoke the truth about the Iraq war at an official Republican event (last debate), the truth of what happened has to be faced. It is a watershed moment for the right wingers to face truth and stop denying that the administration lied to the American people, that the war was used as a way to build the GOP image as the great protectors willing to go to war over not only Iraq's invasion of Kuait (Bush Sr.) but also over the non-exisent WMD's. The next thing they will have to face is that the rise of ISIS is due to the fact that that war, as Trump said, destabilized the MidEast in a huge way.
The attached graphic is something that was said over 12 years ago and is even more true today.
BTW, the Supreme Court will continue to operate with eight justices until the vacancy is filled. In the short term, this could have a *huge* impact on cases that are due to come before the court this year. In the case of a 4-4 tie, the lower court ruling is upheld. Scalia's absence, then, could conceivably flip such important cases as a California teachers union dues case, the University of Texas affirmative action case (both already heard) and upcoming cases like the crucial Texas abortion case.
Assuming Scalia's spot stays open, that vacancy could also be another energizing factor for the right, which will fear "losing" the Supreme Court. It's going to be more important than ever THAT WE GET OUT AND VOTE, PEOPLE!!!!
As for Scalia himself, by all accounts he was a brilliant legal mind, a real cut-up and, surprisingly, a fun guy to be around.
But sadly, his Supreme Court legacy will basically be that of a right-wing gadfly/crackpot, whose caustic dissents rarely added anything of value to the court's decisions. It's telling, and scary, that Ted Cruz last night called him one of the great justices in Supreme Court history!!!! Please, Lord, don't let THAT gadfly/crackpot be elected president!!!
In his dissent in Lawrence, Scalia argued that moral objections to homosexuality were sufficient justification for criminalizing gay sex. "Many Americans do not want persons who openly engage in homosexual conduct as partners in their business, as scoutmasters for their children, as teachers in their children's schools, or as boarders in their home," he wrote. "They view this as protecting themselves and their families from a lifestyle that they believe to be immoral and destructive."
Scalia decided to take the "moral disapproval" argument up a notch in his dissent in Lawrence, writing that the Texas ban on homosexual sex "undeniably seeks to further the belief of its citizens that certain forms of sexual behavior are 'immoral and unacceptable,'" like laws against "fornication, bigamy, adultery, adult incest, bestiality, and obscenity." Scalia later teed up "prostitution" and "child pornography" as other things he thinks are banned simply because people disapprove of them.
In his dissent in the 1996 case Romer v. Evans, which challenged Colorado's ban on any local jurisdictions outlawing discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, Scalia brought out an analogy that he's used to attack liberals and supporters of LGBT rights for years since. "Of course it is our moral heritage that one should not hate any human being or class of human beings," Scalia wrote, in the classic prebuttal phrasing of someone about to say something ludicrous. "But I had thought that one could consider certain conduct reprehensible—murder, for example, or polygamy, or cruelty to animals—and could exhibit even 'animus' toward such conduct. Surely that is the only sort of 'animus' at issue here: moral disapproval of homosexual conduct[.]" It's true that people generally disapprove of murder, but there's more going on in laws banning murder than mere disfavor—the rights of the person being murdered, for example.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/03/scali … lity-court
You don't want to think ill-will of anyone; he was someone's husband, father brother, but from my own selfish perspective: what a good sense of timing. (is that gracious and tactful enough?)
I see that Cruz has chimed in that the President should wait until the election before another SCJ is selected; Obama won't, and it would be to Cruz's advantage now, while he is in the senate, to foster an outcome more favorable to his liking. He's making an assumption that it's going to be him or another Republican winning the WH, and when they don't he'll be in less of a position to bargain come 2017.