Letters to the Editor
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No kidding
Bush v. Gore was the moment when I knew for sure that SCOTUS was no longer a court of law. I was a lawyer at the time (recovering nicely, thanks) and, while I was no constitutional expert, I had no doubt that the court would either refuse to take the case or come out the other way. To go completely against precedent and to have the barefaced gall to say that their ruling was itself not precedential, was just beyond belief to me. It's just as sad today, though not as surprising, given all that has happened in the intervening years.
Just to pick one nit: "wept" not "weeped"
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wept?
I think its wept.
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Grammar, yet again
"Weeped"? Really, Tim?
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Good Lord
What was Souter thinking? Who would have nominated his successor, back when the country was still crippled with a Republican Congress.
With the possible exception of the, what?, nine trillion dollar deficit that y'all's children will be wearing like Coleridge's albatross for generations, the greatest damage we will have to repair from the last quarter-century of Republican rule is the politicizing, and therefore the dumbing down, of the federal judiciary.
Souter's resignation would only have made things worse.
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Tears of a Clown
I weeped too.
Say it ain't so, Dave!
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Souter
B v G is the one stain on O'Connor's legacy, and I'm pretty sure she would have voted the other way now. If I remember right, Souter had to be physically restrained from the phone at one point after his nomination from taking himself out of the running (according to one story I read a year or two ago).
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Souter
B v G is the one stain on O'Connor's legacy, and I'm pretty sure she would have voted the other way now. If I remember right, Souter had to be physically restrained from the phone at one point after his nomination from taking himself out of the running (according to one story I read a year or two ago).
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O'Conner
It is not a stain on her legacy.
It is her legacy.
She did nothing in her career which could top that. This one decision will be all that anyone ever remembers about her.
It was a political imposition of the court to ensure that the correct decision came out of the political sphere.
It showed that O'Conner was not a jurist, but just a politician ensuring that the correct court was there.
She will be remembered only for this, regardless of her own wishes.
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No wonder...
...the right wing's rallying cry for Supreme Court nominees has been "No more Souters!"
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So Sayeth The Gospel
"Souter wept."
-John 11:35
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ἐδάκρυσεν ὁ ἰησοῦς
Weeped, wept: the point being: he was moved to tears.
Some of us still are.
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Supremely confident
I'm glad Souter was persuaded to stay on, because if he'd resigned on principle, he'd have given Bush/Cheney yet another opportunity to pack the Court still tighter with Federalist Society wingnuts.
History will ultimately vindicate Souter's tears, because few rulings will live in greater infamy than Bush v. Gore, when the Rehnquist court unquestionably revealed it was the house court of the GOP. The Supreme RATS (Roberts, Alito, Thomas, and Scalia) will ensure that it remains tainted for another generation or so, keeping the Rehnquist tradition of (in)justice alive, but barring an actual coup and shutdown of the government, I think time and politics aren't on the side of the GOP's un-American machinations, and the RATS will eventually have to leave the ship.
Then maybe the GOP's followers will secede or something, once they realize they can't take over the government.
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Who cares whom the Court chose?
I've heard that there's no difference between the Republicans and Democrats anyway. In fact, I've heard from a great many progressives, liberals, and other deep thinkers that there's no point in voting in 2008, because Clinton, Obama and Edwards are all the same, and the Democratic Congress is no different from the GOP Congress before it.
You who still care about Bush v Gore clearly need to get with the program, here.
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I Like the Idea that He's Still There
I like the idea that there is someone on the Supreme Court who is so affected by making a really bad decision that he cries (weeped, wept -- who cares) about it. Maybe its just that he sounds like a human being and not an neocon ideological automaton.
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having it both ways
Souter went the way the wind was blowing in 2000, and he's doing it again with his sob story. Sorry, Davey. You -- YOU! -- were one of a handful of people who could have prevented the descent of the United States of America into a risible banana republic, and you didn't have the spine.
I hope you leave a long line of descendants with the family name "Souter" so each generation can cringe with embarrassment and shame.
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Bush's goal was to render the SC utterly irrelevant
On that score they were a smashing success. At best there are now 1.5 branches of government including a near-neutered Congress and an Executive branch that runs like the captain of the Titanic on crack.
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re: Who cares whom the Court chose?
Amity, I’ve decided to resist the temptation to grab you by the shoulders and shake you and instead address some of your points:
1. “Clinton, Obama and Edwards are all the same.” It’s true that at this point, they’ve indicated little, if any, differences in policy among each other. We’ll see if this changes as we get closer to the primaries.
2. “The Democratic Congress is no different from the GOP Congress before it.” The Democratic Congress has brought fewer earmarks and greater fiscal balance to Congress. Which is partly by comparison to the runaway pork-fest that has been Congress during the Bush years. Democrats have not accomplished as much as some would have liked in the seven months since they’ve been in power. This is because the Senate is still closely divided and 67 votes (to override a Presidential veto) are needed to substantially charge war policy. Democrats don’t have 67 votes on their own some Republicans are gradually seeing the light. But this is an argument that we needed to elect more to Congress to affect change, not fewer.
3a. “Who cares whom the Court chose?” Do you really think a President Al Gore would have led us into a preemptive war with Iraq following 9/11? Because 4,000 dead Americans, a minimum of 76,000 dead Iraqis, and $500 Billion to date all say there’s a big difference between a Bush presidency and a Gore presidency.
3b. “Who cares whom the Court chose?” Since Bush was able to appoint Roberts and Alito to the Supreme Court, the Court has solidly shifted rightward. They gutted students’ free-speech rights in the “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” case. They limited the timeframe for filing workplace discrimination cases to 180 days, so if it takes you 6 months to find out you’re under-paid, you’re out of luck. They upheld the so-called partial-birth abortion ban on the grounds that women need to be protected from decisions they may regret. Presidents can change the Supreme Court, changing law for generations to come.
4. “I've heard from a great many progressives, liberals, and other deep thinkers that there's no point in voting in 2008.” All of the points above are just an introduction to the all-too-true sentiment: “Elections have consequences.” Anyone who doesn’t see this after the Bush presidency isn’t paying attention, no matter how deep a thinker they may claim to be. If you’re truly a progressive working for change, you don’t sit on the sidelines b-tching. You play the hand you’re dealt and you fight. Hard.