What's the point of Democrats Obstructing Neil Gorsuch confirmations?

originally posted by: butcherguy
It seems that Democrats have become the 'Party of No'.
Remember a few short months ago they called the Republicans by that name?

That was the name they chose for themselves. Republicans chose that name and were proud of it.

a reply to: Gothmog

I don't understand what it is your saying.

a reply to: ketsuko

I don't think it has anything to do with who is closer to an amendment. Amendments are pretty hard to pass, it's virtually impossible to get one though without everyone being on board. The problem is, being an originalist is fundamentally saying that there's no need for amendments, because we need to adhere to the founders intent and their intent is already written out.

This is how Scalia viewed things

The Constitution that I interpret and apply is not living but dead, or as I prefer to call it, enduring. It means today not what current society, much less the court, thinks it ought to mean, but what it meant when it was adopted.

According to that view, there would be no womens sufferage, one would need to own property in order to vote, and that digital data isn't worthy of constitutional protections.

When he was alive Scalia was strongly disliked by the court, and most saw him as a radical, even the conservatives (Limbaugh for example used to incessantly attack him). It's only in death where he has started to gain popularity. His ideas simply aren't practical.

As far as the balance argument goes, that holds no weight. Whoever is in power gets to make their pick. There's 3 other justices who are going to run out their appointments soon, and Trump stands a good chance of getting at least 2 more during just a first term. All of those justices happen to be from the courts more liberal, or atleast moderate side. Do you really think that Trump (or any President) could or would pick replacements of similar ideologies out of some sense of balance? If Ginsburg were to retire, would you campaign for a leftist judge to replace her? The Supreme Court isn't about balance.

Whats the point... basically the point is congress has become the third grade.. that is who we have put in office a bunch of pre-adolescents that must play the tit for tat game..

It has been that way for the better part of 20 years probably longer and people keep falling for the vote against X.

a reply to: mOjOm

Obamacare helped the middle class? I'm not too sure about that.

They're buying their time before roe v wade gets challenged and immigration reform happens. The real issue is that if trump wins again in 4 years he'll have 2 maybe three SCOTUS nominees.

a reply to: mOjOm

What Muslim ban?

a reply to: Aazadan

No.

It means that it was written out to work as the Founders wrote it out to work. The Founders wrote in the Amendment process which allowed it to change and allowed for Women's Suffrage.

The Founders did not write it out to have "emanations and penumbras" to discover mysterious rights and privileges where there has been no Amendments process to allow them.

Because you are completely right -- the thing was meant to be really hard to amend because it wasn't supposed to be done on a whim. It absolutely was only supposed to be done when a near majority of the country was on board with it.

a reply to: mOjOm

Democrats did not fight for this nomination, back then. They could have at least put up a fight by filing a motion to discharge...even if losing was almost a certainty.

They didn't. And so I am not impressed by any fight they put up now.

Was the vacancy worth fighting for then? Well, yes, if it's worth fighting for now.

I find the entire vacancy to be strange...from the pillow over Scalia's head to the nominee considerations....

originally posted by: ketsuko
a reply to: Aazadan

No.

It means that it was written out to work as the Founders wrote it out to work. The Founders wrote in the Amendment process which allowed it to change and allowed for Women's Suffrage.

The Founders did not write it out to have "emanations and penumbras" to discover mysterious rights and privileges where there has been no Amendments process to allow them.

Because you are completely right -- the thing was meant to be really hard to amend because it wasn't supposed to be done on a whim. It absolutely was only supposed to be done when a near majority of the country was on board with it.

There's nothing wrong with a process that makes amendments difficult. There are however many laws which need to be interpreted or reinterpreted without the amendment process. An originalist viewpoint makes that very, very difficult.

For example, lets take the debt limit issue. This is something that comes up every couple years, and no one is going to propose an amendment for because they like the current system. On this issue, the Constitution is fundamentally broken. Original intent was that the peoples representatives would decide what the federal government should and shouldn't purchase. However, this system scales very poorly. As you add more people and more territory to the system you increase the number of spending items while also increasing the number of people that need to get on board to make that spending happen. Back in the year 1800 when the US population was 5.3 million and we only had 16 states this was relatively easy to do. But through the 19th century and into the 20th century the amount of time Congress had to spend on line item approvals slowly grew more and more.

When WW1 hit, there was a massive purchase of goods by the government and even with Congress devoting 100% of it's time to approving purchase orders it couldn't keep up, and out of bureaucratic necessity, they created the debt limit to authorize purchases in bulk, and then delegate the actual purchasing to various groups.

The debt limit was never intended to be used as a political tool, and it's not supposed to be an instrument by which Congress can shut down all federal spending due to a single item. A true shutdown due to hitting the limit is supposed to require Congress to veto each and every item on it's own merits. That doesn't work when you're covering the purchases of a government that has to manage 317 million people though.

Original intent propagates a broken system. A blanket shutdown was never intended to happen, and the advent of it goes entirely against what the founders wanted. We need to eliminate the concept of a debt ceiling (something no other nation has) and find another way to manage federal spending, and that's not something that should require an amendment to do because not only will an amendment doing away with the debt ceiling never be passed, but the courts could force Congress to comply and make a procedural change.

a reply to: avgguy

When did I say that obamacare helped the middle class??? I didn't.

I said Trumpcare is hurting the poor and middle class.

a reply to: avgguy

The one that you ignore because you'd rather play word games and deal in BS.

a reply to: MotherMayEye

That's because Dems are often weak.

So oh well.

Progressive Liberals are obstructionists by definition (or thats what they believe)

There is no point. Its toddlers throwing a temper tantrum.

I don't remember the dates and I am too tired to go look them up...but, when the Republicans delayed a SC vote there was only a couple of months before the next election and it was reasonable to think the next administration should be tasked with finding the new SC nominee. When the democrats did it to Bush it was around two years before the next election. That is a long time to go without an SC nominee just to favor the assumed winner of the next election.

a reply to: Aazadan

Originalist justices need to determine how laws fit against the framework of the COTUS. It's a different philosophy than what legislators work with. Legislators are passing laws that are supposed to be constitutional and the judiciary, particularly at COTUS, should keep original intent front and center rather than suddenly discovering "penumbras and emanations" that were never written there.

It's basically writing new law from the bench. If new law or new bits of the COTUS are needed, then that's what Amendments are for.

If the Federal law can't be made to fit the framework, then that's what the federalist system and the separate states were for and the law can be passed there. The powers not given to the Fed that don't directly violate the COTUS are given the states and the people. Just because the Fed may not do a thing (and remember it's powers are expressly laid out), does not mean the states cannot do that thing.

The smaller and more localized laws are kept, the less damage the bad ones can end up doing.

a reply to: Stevemagegod


March 30, 2017

One by one, Democrats who want what's best for America, are choosing to vote "Yes" for Gorsuch as the next Supreme Court judge on April 7, 2017

Full Story: thehill.com...

Thursday, April 6, 2017

The Neil Gorsuch confirmation voting process started this morning and Senate Republicans are about to go "Nuclear".

Live Blog: www.foxnews.com...

Do Democrats blocking the Gorsuch nomination hurt their image even further in the eyes of most Americans? Chuckee Schumer seems to think that it will HELP Democrats in 2018.

When Harry Reid invoked this Nuclear Option in 2013, it apparently didn't permanently change the rules?