Israel natural gas
Software, not sonatas
Consumer agency and videos
Russians in Staten Island
Biden predicts victory
Brooklynite gunned down and more stories on him
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Stories
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gMi5B2USfJStXxfqgWWr2xjRYpOgD9HMAJ8O0
Mexican mayor killed
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703649004575438243433457782.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
Facebook location service
Alberto Gonzalez on 14th Amendment
TV shows for smart people: http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-08-18/breaking-bad-creator-vince-gilligan-the-smartest-tv/?cid=hp:mainpromo7
Mexican mayor killed
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703649004575438243433457782.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
Facebook location service
Alberto Gonzalez on 14th Amendment
TV shows for smart people: http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-08-18/breaking-bad-creator-vince-gilligan-the-smartest-tv/?cid=hp:mainpromo7
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Judging
In a thoughtful article appearing in the August 19, 2010 issue of the New York Review of Books, Ronald Dworkin writes about Elena Kagan and the hearing of her confirmation as the newest Justice to the United States Supreme Court.
As a law professor back in 1995 she wrote of such hearings as taking "on an air of vacuity and farce, and the Senate becomes incapable of either properly evaluating nominees or appropriately educating the public." Dworkin writes that her own hearings became just that, as she avoided answering any question with much specificity or substance. Since the Bork confirmation hearing in 1987 when said nominee was skewered, nominees have hewed to the same script: avoid controversy, answer generally, flatter opposing Senators, smile a lot, and play it safe.
Justices Roberts and Alito played that same game: smile, say little. After climbing toi the bench, they joined Justices Scalia and Thomas as a solid right-wing bloc, often getting Justice Kennedy's vote and deciding 5-4 to pursue a conservative agenda.
It is crucial to the role Supreme Court justices play in our constitutional system that they be free and able to reject popular opinion—to overrule the wishes of the majority in order to protect individual rights.
The Court is supposed to rule based on constitutional interpretation, not on individual philosophy. But what is proper constitutional interpretation?
the right-wing phalanx of the Court has used its power to overrule the will of the majority in what strikes many of us as an indefensible and dangerous way: not to protect a vulnerable minority from majority indifference or hatred but to protect conservative interests and privilege from progressive legislation.
Dworkin's politics and worldview are quite clear; I happen to agree with his judgment.
Richard Posner, himself a conservative judge, recently wrote that four of the five most conservative justices since 1937 are together on the Court now: Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia, and Samuel Alito. Many lawyers believe it would have been better had Roberts and Alito been forced to disclose their real substantive intentions in their hearings because they would not have been confirmed if they had.
Richard Posner is a judge, and a prolific author.
Posner said of Roberts: “The tension between what he said at his confirmation hearing and what he is doing as a Justice is a blow to Roberts’s reputation for candor and further debasement of the already debased currency of the testimony of nominees at judicial confirmation hearings.”
That tension is, in fact, that he lied at his hearings, not admitting he went in with the agenda he has pursued as a Justice and as Chief Justice. It has been an agenda of overturning precedent conservatives disagree with, an activist agenda, indeed.
Pressed to address precedent, Kagan spoke of using pragmatism and not overarching philosophical view.
Her answer was almost identical to what Roberts and Alito said about precedent and once they were confirmed they joined the other conservative justices in an overruling spree unparalleled in Court history.
Justice Roberts, overruling a recent decision, said that that decision “actually impedes the stable and orderly adjudication of future cases.” He cited the fact that the conservative justices who dissented in the earlier case had continued to declare their opposition to it. If that is enough to justify overruling, no important precedent would be safe.
Pragmatism? or pursuit of an agenda?
Abortion rights continue to be denounced by Scalia and Thomas and continue to be hated by many millions of Americans. Does that make Roe v. Wade “unworkable”? Many of the Court’s recent abortion decisions—in overruling a recent decision in order to permit a ban on “partial-birth” abortion, for instance—might well be thought to “erode” Roe‘s “doctrinal foundations.” Does that make Roe itself ripe for overruling? (Much of the Roberts Court’s jurisprudence might be preparing for the day it does that.)
Who can doubt that overturning Roe v. Wade is a priority for the right wing?
As a law professor back in 1995 she wrote of such hearings as taking "on an air of vacuity and farce, and the Senate becomes incapable of either properly evaluating nominees or appropriately educating the public." Dworkin writes that her own hearings became just that, as she avoided answering any question with much specificity or substance. Since the Bork confirmation hearing in 1987 when said nominee was skewered, nominees have hewed to the same script: avoid controversy, answer generally, flatter opposing Senators, smile a lot, and play it safe.
Justices Roberts and Alito played that same game: smile, say little. After climbing toi the bench, they joined Justices Scalia and Thomas as a solid right-wing bloc, often getting Justice Kennedy's vote and deciding 5-4 to pursue a conservative agenda.
It is crucial to the role Supreme Court justices play in our constitutional system that they be free and able to reject popular opinion—to overrule the wishes of the majority in order to protect individual rights.
The Court is supposed to rule based on constitutional interpretation, not on individual philosophy. But what is proper constitutional interpretation?
the right-wing phalanx of the Court has used its power to overrule the will of the majority in what strikes many of us as an indefensible and dangerous way: not to protect a vulnerable minority from majority indifference or hatred but to protect conservative interests and privilege from progressive legislation.
Dworkin's politics and worldview are quite clear; I happen to agree with his judgment.
Richard Posner, himself a conservative judge, recently wrote that four of the five most conservative justices since 1937 are together on the Court now: Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia, and Samuel Alito. Many lawyers believe it would have been better had Roberts and Alito been forced to disclose their real substantive intentions in their hearings because they would not have been confirmed if they had.
Richard Posner is a judge, and a prolific author.
Posner said of Roberts: “The tension between what he said at his confirmation hearing and what he is doing as a Justice is a blow to Roberts’s reputation for candor and further debasement of the already debased currency of the testimony of nominees at judicial confirmation hearings.”
That tension is, in fact, that he lied at his hearings, not admitting he went in with the agenda he has pursued as a Justice and as Chief Justice. It has been an agenda of overturning precedent conservatives disagree with, an activist agenda, indeed.
Pressed to address precedent, Kagan spoke of using pragmatism and not overarching philosophical view.
Her answer was almost identical to what Roberts and Alito said about precedent and once they were confirmed they joined the other conservative justices in an overruling spree unparalleled in Court history.
Justice Roberts, overruling a recent decision, said that that decision “actually impedes the stable and orderly adjudication of future cases.” He cited the fact that the conservative justices who dissented in the earlier case had continued to declare their opposition to it. If that is enough to justify overruling, no important precedent would be safe.
Pragmatism? or pursuit of an agenda?
Abortion rights continue to be denounced by Scalia and Thomas and continue to be hated by many millions of Americans. Does that make Roe v. Wade “unworkable”? Many of the Court’s recent abortion decisions—in overruling a recent decision in order to permit a ban on “partial-birth” abortion, for instance—might well be thought to “erode” Roe‘s “doctrinal foundations.” Does that make Roe itself ripe for overruling? (Much of the Roberts Court’s jurisprudence might be preparing for the day it does that.)
Who can doubt that overturning Roe v. Wade is a priority for the right wing?
Greenspan Calls for Repeal of All the Bush Tax Cuts
Does anyone still actually listen to this man and take him seriously?
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/08/magazine/08fob-q4-t.html?ref=us
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/07/us/07lemonade.html?ref=us
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/07/us/politics/07fourteenth.html?ref=us
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/07/us/07spill.html?ref=us
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/07/business/07aig.html?ref=business
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/07/business/07muffin.html?hp
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/07/us/politics/07nixon.html?hp
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/08/magazine/08fob-q4-t.html?ref=us
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/07/us/07lemonade.html?ref=us
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/07/us/politics/07fourteenth.html?ref=us
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/07/us/07spill.html?ref=us
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/07/business/07aig.html?ref=business
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/07/business/07muffin.html?hp
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/07/us/politics/07nixon.html?hp
Thursday, August 5, 2010
The Supreme Court Confirmation Process Isn't Broken
Delivering on predictions, the Senate has confirmed Elena Kagan by a vote of 63-37 to become the fourth woman ever to serve on the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, UCLA constitutional law professor Adam Winkler defends the Kagan hearings.
With Elena Kagan’s nomination to the Supreme Court going to the full Senate for a vote Thursday, once again we’re bombarded by moaning about how the confirmation process is “broken.” Kagan, despite her own characterization of the confirmation process as “a vapid and hollow charade” years ago, made it through her hearings without engaging in a profound, substantive debate about her jurisprudential philosophy or giving us any real sense about how she’d vote on the controversial issues of the day. The result of the over-politicized hearings was that we witnessed little more than kabuki theater and everyone from conservatives to liberals insists the process needs to be radically changed. They are all wrong. Senators don’t truly want to know about Kagan’s approach to judging. They want to know how she’ll rule on the controversial issues of the day.
When John Roberts and Samuel Alito went thorough hearing, conservatives didn't complain about the reticence of those candidates offering substantive answers.
When people say that the confirmation hearings should lead the senators and the nominee to join together in a serious, thought-provoking discussion about the nature of judicial review and the proper way for judges to decide cases, I am struck by a question: what planet do these people live on? When do we ever see elected officials engage in that sort of careful, thoughtful dialogue in an edifying way?
Consider Chief Justice John Roberts’ confirmation hearings, when he wowed the senators by analogizing a Supreme Court Justice’s job to an umpire calling balls and strikes. Such simplistic notions diminish rather than enhance the public’s understanding of how Justices make difficult decisions. Figuring out what ambiguous constitutional phrases like “equal protection” and “due process” mean is a lot more complicated than determining if a thrown ball crosses the plate above the batter’s knees.
Republicans love that line, and praise Justice Roberts for it.
My skepticism of the senators was only enhanced in the Kagan hearings by their dismissive and disrespectful portrayal of the late Thurgood Marshall, who was derided for his “activist” views. Excuse me, but Marshall will go down in history as one of the most important and influential people in American constitutional history. Without his “activism,” we might still be living with Jim Crow. If this is how one of America’s constitutional legends will be mischaracterized, I’d prefer if the senators keep their politically grubby hands off questions of judicial philosophy.
Amen, and right on.
Even the politicization of the process is salutary. Every nominee’s record is closely examined for controversial statements or ideas, meaning some qualified people are excluded. But the consequence is that anyone who does make it through the process is likely to have more or less mainstream views. Radicals whose jurisprudence would likely take us too far left or too far right need not apply. This is a net positive: the Court should stay within the broad mainstream of American political thought.
But Thurgood Marhsall didn't, nor did John Marshall; they broke new ground.
With Elena Kagan’s nomination to the Supreme Court going to the full Senate for a vote Thursday, once again we’re bombarded by moaning about how the confirmation process is “broken.” Kagan, despite her own characterization of the confirmation process as “a vapid and hollow charade” years ago, made it through her hearings without engaging in a profound, substantive debate about her jurisprudential philosophy or giving us any real sense about how she’d vote on the controversial issues of the day. The result of the over-politicized hearings was that we witnessed little more than kabuki theater and everyone from conservatives to liberals insists the process needs to be radically changed. They are all wrong. Senators don’t truly want to know about Kagan’s approach to judging. They want to know how she’ll rule on the controversial issues of the day.
When John Roberts and Samuel Alito went thorough hearing, conservatives didn't complain about the reticence of those candidates offering substantive answers.
When people say that the confirmation hearings should lead the senators and the nominee to join together in a serious, thought-provoking discussion about the nature of judicial review and the proper way for judges to decide cases, I am struck by a question: what planet do these people live on? When do we ever see elected officials engage in that sort of careful, thoughtful dialogue in an edifying way?
Consider Chief Justice John Roberts’ confirmation hearings, when he wowed the senators by analogizing a Supreme Court Justice’s job to an umpire calling balls and strikes. Such simplistic notions diminish rather than enhance the public’s understanding of how Justices make difficult decisions. Figuring out what ambiguous constitutional phrases like “equal protection” and “due process” mean is a lot more complicated than determining if a thrown ball crosses the plate above the batter’s knees.
Republicans love that line, and praise Justice Roberts for it.
My skepticism of the senators was only enhanced in the Kagan hearings by their dismissive and disrespectful portrayal of the late Thurgood Marshall, who was derided for his “activist” views. Excuse me, but Marshall will go down in history as one of the most important and influential people in American constitutional history. Without his “activism,” we might still be living with Jim Crow. If this is how one of America’s constitutional legends will be mischaracterized, I’d prefer if the senators keep their politically grubby hands off questions of judicial philosophy.
Amen, and right on.
Even the politicization of the process is salutary. Every nominee’s record is closely examined for controversial statements or ideas, meaning some qualified people are excluded. But the consequence is that anyone who does make it through the process is likely to have more or less mainstream views. Radicals whose jurisprudence would likely take us too far left or too far right need not apply. This is a net positive: the Court should stay within the broad mainstream of American political thought.
But Thurgood Marhsall didn't, nor did John Marshall; they broke new ground.
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