Ruth Bader Ginsberg Dead at 87



  • Well. I hope they’re more like Kavenaugh and Gorsuch than Thomas. I’m not going to hope that the Republicans won’t ram one through. McConnell has said he would, his Merritt Garland statements be damned.



  • It’s going to be Judge Barrett, and quickly. Guessing 51-49 with Collins and Murkowski voting no among Republicans.



  • Hello darkness



  • I guess that’s the end of legal abortions.



  • @approxinfinity said in Ruth Bader Ginsberg Dead at 87:

    I guess that’s the end of legal abortions.

    There’s maaaayyybe one vote to overturn Casey right now, based on the opinions in June Medical.

    And besides, even overturning Roe would return abortion to the states. New York just decriminalized all abortions a couple years ago. There’s almost no traction whatsoever to both overturn Roe AND discover a right of the federal government to ban abortions.

    Which is to say under current law, the US is a significant outlier. In Europe, elective abortions aren’t legal beyond 24 weeks. Far from some anti-feminist Sharia state ¯_(ツ)_/¯



  • Arizona’s election is important.





  • @Crimsonorblue22 said in Ruth Bader Ginsberg Dead at 87:

    Arizona’s election is important.

    Kelly is going to win. The real question is will both Collins and Murkowski, PLUS ONE, vote no on Barrett. I don’t know the answer to that, though I think it’s a stretch. Because keep in mind if the vote is 50-50, the President of the Senate (VP Pence) breaks the tie.



  • Romney, grassley



  • @Crimsonorblue22 said in Ruth Bader Ginsberg Dead at 87:

    Romney, grassley

    What about them?



  • I guess I’m the only conservative constitutionalist on this site. I hope we get another strict constitutionalist on the court. The supreme court is supposed to determine cases based on the written constitution. Their oath states they are to uphold the constitution.



  • @Hawk69 said in Ruth Bader Ginsberg Dead at 87:

    I guess I’m the only conservative constitutionalist on this site. I hope we get another strict constitutionalist on the court. The supreme court is supposed to determine cases based on the written constitution. Their oath states they are to uphold the constitution.

    I’m a libertarian or small l liberal and I’m pretty stoked for Judge Barrett to be on the Court.



  • One interesting wrinkle: Barrett is Catholic but she’s also affiliated with People of Praise, a self-described charismatic Christian community. It’s the type of group that served as an inspiration for Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel, “The Handmaid’s Tale,” according to Newsweek.

    Just want trump wants! Lil woman in the house. That and repeal Obamacare. Undo everything RBG has done for women.



  • @Crimsonorblue22 said in Ruth Bader Ginsberg Dead at 87:

    One interesting wrinkle: Barrett is Catholic but she’s also affiliated with People of Praise, a self-described charismatic Christian community. It’s the type of group that served as an inspiration for Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel, “The Handmaid’s Tale,” according to Newsweek.

    Just want trump wants! Lil woman in the house. That and repeal Obamacare. Undo everything RBG has done for women.

    “Correction: This article’s headline originally stated that People of Praise inspired ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’. The book’s author, Margaret Atwood, has never specifically mentioned the group as being the inspiration for her work. A New Yorker profile of the author from 2017 mentions a newspaper clipping as part of her research for the book of a different charismatic Catholic group, People of Hope. Newsweek regrets the error.”

    Oh.



  • "a “legal career is but a means to an end…and that end is building the Kingdom of God.”

    Amy Coney Barrett 2012 to a class at University of Notre Dame:"

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/amy-coney-barrett-supreme-court-diana-feinstein-ruth-bader-ginsburg-b512741.html?utm_source=reddit.com

    “The New York Times reported that Barrett and her husband, who are parents to seven children, are members of an obscure group called People of Praise.

    “Members of the group swear a lifelong oath of loyalty, called a covenant, to one another, and are assigned and are accountable to a personal adviser, called a ‘head’ for men and a ‘handmaid’ for women,” the report read. “The group teaches that husbands are the heads of their wives and should take authority over the family.”

    “Can job applicants sue employers whose policies have a disproportionately deleterious impact on older people? Barrett said no. Should courts halt the deportation of an immigrant who faced torture at home? Barrett said no. Should they protect refugees denied asylum on the basis of xenophobic prejudice? Barrett said no. Should they shield prisoners from unjustified violence by correctional officers? Barrett said no. Should minors be allowed to terminate a pregnancy without telling their parents if a judge has found that they’re mature enough to make the decision? Barrett said no. Should women be permitted to obtain an abortion upon discovering a severe fetal abnormality? Barrett said no.”

    Very excited for a return to the dark ages while we hear about how progressive conservatives are for putting a woman on the Supreme Court.



  • @KirkIsMyHinrich said in Ruth Bader Ginsberg Dead at 87:

    "a “legal career is but a means to an end…and that end is building the Kingdom of God.”

    Amy Coney Barrett 2012 to a class at University of Notre Dame:"

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/amy-coney-barrett-supreme-court-diana-feinstein-ruth-bader-ginsburg-b512741.html?utm_source=reddit.com

    “The New York Times reported that Barrett and her husband, who are parents to seven children, are members of an obscure group called People of Praise.

    “Members of the group swear a lifelong oath of loyalty, called a covenant, to one another, and are assigned and are accountable to a personal adviser, called a ‘head’ for men and a ‘handmaid’ for women,” the report read. “The group teaches that husbands are the heads of their wives and should take authority over the family.”

    “Can job applicants sue employers whose policies have a disproportionately deleterious impact on older people? Barrett said no. Should courts halt the deportation of an immigrant who faced torture at home? Barrett said no. Should they protect refugees denied asylum on the basis of xenophobic prejudice? Barrett said no. Should they shield prisoners from unjustified violence by correctional officers? Barrett said no. Should minors be allowed to terminate a pregnancy without telling their parents if a judge has found that they’re mature enough to make the decision? Barrett said no. Should women be permitted to obtain an abortion upon discovering a severe fetal abnormality? Barrett said no.”

    Very excited for a return to the dark ages while we hear about how progressive conservatives are for putting a woman on the Supreme Court.

    Ah yes, something totally normal Christians say all the time. That we’re put on this Earth to make it more like heaven. Sen. Feinstein’s obvious anti-Catholic bigotry was gross and she should feel very bad about it. Guess we should ban Evangelical Christians and Orthodox Jews from holding office. Or be like the French and ban Muslim women from wearing Hijab.

    Frankly, Roe is a trash precedent and should be thrown out anyway. It’s a garbage opinion with awful logic, and both progressive and conservative jurists agree with that. And for all the handwringing about it, literally 3 months ago SCOTUS had the opportunity to weigh on Roe and exactly 1 (ONE!) Justice even questioned it. JUST ONE. Yet I’m told that because Justice Ginsburg is gone that four more Justices will all the sudden change their minds and not just overturn Roe, which would only return abortion policy to the states, but would go so far to ban the procedure altogether.

    Can’t wait until she’s everyone’s hero for taking the Catholic position that capital punishment violates the 8th Amendment or that qualified immunity doesn’t protect bad cops from prosecution (something she already did).



  • @FarmerJayhawk are you married?



  • @Crimsonorblue22 said in Ruth Bader Ginsberg Dead at 87:

    @FarmerJayhawk are you married?

    Negative. I’m not even religious. But I can say my dear mother is stoked about Judge Barrett.



  • Thank you all for the information on both sides. I’m trying to keep an open mind. If politics swings to the left as much as it deservedly might, it may not be a bad thing to have a conservative court, assuming they’re reasonable, intelligent, compassionate people. I don’t know enough about her to know if she’s crazy.

    Frankly, to your point, I wouldn’t want an Evangelical on the court or holding office if that were the only criteria I had to decide on, because I consider the premise of their beliefs to be intolerant, @FarmerJayhawk. Anyone that feels they have to convince me that Jesus is the son of their God and if I don’t worship him, I’m going to hell, regardless of how I treat others, seems like someone who might have a natural disposition to put their faith before fairness. I think other denominations tend to be less “my way or the highway”. Would have similar concerns about orthodox Judaism.



  • 27% of Americans identify as not religious. 0% of the Supreme Court identifies as not religious. Nothing to see here. Moving right along.



  • @approxinfinity said in Ruth Bader Ginsberg Dead at 87:

    27% of Americans identify as not religious. 0% of the Supreme Court identifies as not religious. Nothing to see here. Moving right along.

    I wonder what those numbers were in 2018, 2017, 2010, 2011, 2006, 1994, and 1991?

    Also, Article VI, Section III: The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."



  • I have no issue with them adding someone to the Supreme Court. They were elected for four years. Dems would do the same if given the same opportunity and their candidate was down in polls.

    So far the Supreme Court, even with a conservative leaning majority, stayed pretty even keel and I don’t expect ACB to come in and change that all by herself. I know the chart below is subjective to an extent, but I think it does a good job illustrating that the court has done a good job balancing itself out overall.

    Political leaning supreme court.png



  • I don’t understand how to read this graph. Who decides what 0 is?



  • I have no problem with any evangelical Christian using their beliefs to inform their reasoning.

    The problem I have is with all the self-proclaimed Christians who never seem to have read a single word Christ is related in the Gospels to have said about: loving your neighbor, treating others as you would be treated, protecting the weak, being honest, leaving judgment about who will get to heaven to God, casting stones only if you are without sin, and, oh yeah, that camel-through-the-eye-of-a-needle analogy about a rich man not having much chance to get into heaven.



  • @approxinfinity said in Ruth Bader Ginsberg Dead at 87:

    I don’t understand how to read this graph. Who decides what 0 is?

    How do we know if a judge is liberal or conservative?





  • @KirkIsMyHinrich he’s really good! I like charts! Amy and Kamala were great too. Ted Cruz, do you play piano, do your daughters play the piano? I left after that. 🤮



  • Sen. Whitehouse was MASTERFUL in his presentation. I especially liked the bug-eyed facial expressions of Lady G (lindsey), Cornhole (cornyn) and Starkiss (meadows) as he was exposing all the senators who had ‘written’ briefs, along with ACB screaming in her expressions to STOP THE TRUTH. Noticed that more people came back in as he was making the case against dark money (thanks to citizen united). As we say in sports, he dunked on GOP like Wayne Selden @Baylor!!!



  • @KirkIsMyHinrich That was great.



  • “It’s a crime to tamper with juries. It’s standard practice to tamper with congress.” What a perfect statement.



  • Overall, I thought Judge Barrett handled herself superbly and I’m looking forward to her confirmation vote in a week or so. Ranking Member Feinstein was impressed as well. She won’t vote to confirm, but it’s quite the reversal from “the dogma lives loudly in you.” The hug with Sen. Graham at the end was nice too. Good sign we all don’t have to hate each other, even though Graham and DiFi are pretty far apart ideologically. She was rewarded by one of her colleagues anonymously going to the press and saying she has dementia.

    It did make me sad that as many people took Sheldon “will never be in the” Whitehouse seriously. Not only did he waste a half hour of everyone’s time during a judicial confirmation hearing and not ask Barrett a single question, he droned on and on and on about groups like FedSoc, which are mostly campus organizations that have to bribe people with catered dinner to listen to lawyers talk about law. Such scandal! Of course, he also fails to mention he gave a speech at the lefty and far less competent version of FedSoc over the summer and takes amicus briefs written by dark money groups and files them at SCOTUS under his name. Weird.

    His “but 80-0!!” deal was also funny. I guess it’s totally fine when his side rules unanimously in one direction, as it by definition did in those 80 cases? And it’s useful to note some BIG cases actually went their way! NFIB v. Sebelius, Obergefell (which was actually good), King v. Burwell, June Medical, just off the top of my head. Shoot, the Court didn’t grant cert on ANY Second Amendment cases last term. And even with Barrett on the Court, the ACA isn’t going anywhere. They’ll likely say the mandate is unconstitutional (yay!) but that it’s severable from the rest of the statute and leave effectively as-is.

    Of course, dark money as a phenomenon was created by Congress with the shoddy BCRA, one of the most anti-speech pieces of legislation of the last 100 years. It really weakened the parties with disastrous consequences (like the guy in the oval), but that’s a discussion for another day.

    If we really wanted a campaign finance system that rewarded transparency, we’d just let anyone give whatever to whomever as long as they disclose it. Really love Joe Biden and want to give a million to his campaign? That’s fine by me. Just disclose it within a week. Really diminishes the influence of Super PACs and 501c4’s. No reason to have multiple organs of the campaign when Super PAC donors can just give to the campaign and be assured their money is for sure going to what the campaign wants, since sometimes Super PACs can get far afield since they can’t coordinate.

    Tl;dr: Barrett is going to be a fine Justice, Whitehouse is a hypocritical loony tune, the ACA is staying, the BCRA blows, and we need a lot less regulation of campaign finance.



  • She didn’t answer any questions anyway. But just loved the one from sen. A$$hole Kennedy, who does the dishes in your house? Our rights will go back 100 yrs!



  • I thought she answered what she could. Standards of judicial ethics and the Ginsburg Rule (yes, that Ginsburg) mean she can’t answer hypotheticals about future cases or controversies that could come before the Court. Roe and Casey aren’t going anywhere. The ACA isn’t either. I get the symbolic stuff about replacing Ginsburg with someone with a different philosophy, but the Handmaid’s Tale stuff is just panic mongering.



  • @FarmerJayhawk I’m interested in how you view the Merrick Garland situation in comparison to this. It seems clear to me that republicans are doing all they can to pack the court with conservative judges, and their stated goal in doing so is to overturn the cases you say aren’t going anywhere. It doesn’t seem like panic mongering to think a shift from what should have been a 5-4 democratic appointed majority to a 6-3 republican appointed majority could have major consequences for many cases that have had close rulings in the past.

    And as for your take on Whitehouse, he may be hypocritical, but is he wrong? This, “groups like FedSoc, which are mostly campus organizations that have to bribe people with catered dinner to listen to lawyers talk about law” seems like a massive undersell from you on the power and influence of groups like this. Dark money is definitely bad for politics and it cracks me up to hear conservatives whine about “special interest groups” when they receive more funding than anyone from those special interests, and then block any attempts to do anything about it. It’s clear who WANTS the dark money to stay and who is forced to use it just to keep up.



  • @benshawks08 said in Ruth Bader Ginsberg Dead at 87:

    @FarmerJayhawk I’m interested in how you view the Merrick Garland situation in comparison to this. It seems clear to me that republicans are doing all they can to pack the court with conservative judges, and their stated goal in doing so is to overturn the cases you say aren’t going anywhere. It doesn’t seem like panic mongering to think a shift from what should have been a 5-4 democratic appointed majority to a 6-3 republican appointed majority could have major consequences for many cases that have had close rulings in the past.

    And as for your take on Whitehouse, he may be hypocritical, but is he wrong? This, “groups like FedSoc, which are mostly campus organizations that have to bribe people with catered dinner to listen to lawyers talk about law” seems like a massive undersell from you on the power and influence of groups like this. Dark money is definitely bad for politics and it cracks me up to hear conservatives whine about “special interest groups” when they receive more funding than anyone from those special interests, and then block any attempts to do anything about it. It’s clear who WANTS the dark money to stay and who is forced to use it just to keep up.

    I have a rule in politics that has served me well over the years. All process arguments are inherently insincere. I don’t believe for a second that R’s or D’s would act any differently under a scenario where they could replace a Justice. If the shoe was on the other foot and President Clinton wanted to fill the Thomas seat, there’s not a shred of doubt in my mind a D Senate would do the exact same thing.

    I really don’t think Whitehouse’s conspiracy is much of anything. FedSoc is a forum more than anything, and their recommendations largely track with the ABA, who rated Barrett as well qualified. Does national FedSoc membership recommend judges? Yep. Is there anything wrong with a group lobbying the President and the Senate to take that under consideration? Nope. They have a First Amendment right to petition the government, and I have little interest in curtailing that speech. If lefty groups want to do the same thing, more power to them. And I’ll give them credit, they’ve spun up a nice dark money network (American Constitution Society, etc.) In a sense I think they’re just salty the right has beat them like a drum on judicial politics for a generation. The right did a really good job of using the judiciary as a turnout mechanism while the left kind of ignored it.

    Democrats receive a lot more dark money than Republicans, at least recently. At least in the last cycle, c4 spending on Democratic causes was about 20 points higher than for R’s. But, I frankly don’t care about dark money. Everyone has the same rules, so don’t work the refs, so to speak. McConnell has been on this train forever about disclosure and getting rid of dark money (by allowing the donations, just to candidates and parties, not c4 groups). But D’s won’t play ball at all. They’ll just complain about Citizens United, which was absolutely correct, and look to curtail political speech contrary to the First Amendment. If we put a bill on the floor to repeal the BCRA and simplify the system, it would get near unanimous R support and Cocaine Mitch would be happier than a juniper. So I think R’s would love to get dark money out of the system and have everything be more transparent. D’s want money out of politics, which is fine, but requires a Constitutional amendment, which is not happening any time soon.



  • I have a rule too. A woman has a right to her body, it should be between her, her dr and then w/her husband. Nobody else. If not, we get to make a law to snip away at a man after age 40. I know some awful horror stories about medical reasons for abortions. If anyone thinks a late term abortion is about wanting to get rid of a live viable baby, you are sick. None were about live fetuses. It’s nobody’s business. I had a catholic friend that was carrying a dead baby, but because of Catholics beliefs she had to endure a baby shower. I’m a Christian too, but I couldn’t and wouldn’t do that.



  • Roe and Casey aren’t going anywhere.


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