Shot in the Dark

Apex

If Donald Trump never does another single good thing in office, or if he falls down an elevator shaft tomorrow (heaven forfend), he will have accomplished the one solitary hope I, and a lot of conservatives, had for a Trump adminsitration:  appointed a worthy successor to Antonin Scalia. in Neil Gorsuch:

As Gorsuch put it (in Cordova v. City of Albuquerque), the Constitution “isn’t some inkblot on which litigants may project their hopes and dreams . . . , but a carefully drafted text judges are charged with applying according to its original public meaning” (emphasis added). In his one foray as a National Review Online contributor, in 2005 (before he took the bench), Gorsuch lamented that “American liberals have become addicted to the courtroom, relying on judges and lawyers rather than elected leaders and the ballot box, as the primary means of effecting their social agenda on everything from gay marriage to assisted suicide to the use of vouchers for private-school education.”

Music to my ears.

Senate Republicans:  Screw this up at your peril.

Who else thinks Gorsuch is a good, “mainstream” choice?  This conservative talking head.

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Mitch Berg

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31 responses to “Apex”

  1. Chuck Avatar
    Chuck

    Gorsuch is for the separation of powers. If a case involving Trump comes before the Supreme Court, its very possible Gorsuch will rule against Trump (just as liberal justices ruled against Obama on a few issues).

    Also, look at how he ruled on various cases. He has made some very common sense rulings that even liberals can appreciate. This man is a victory for conservatives, but not because he will rule from the right, but he will make decisions from the correct constitutional center.
    Example….everyone talks about abortion. A Hillary judge will rule on the side of the abortion lobby no matter what the facts of the case are. Gorsuch will actually review the case, the law, the constitution, listen to the arguments presented before the bench, then make the correct decision, even if does come down on the side of the pro-choicers.

  2. Seflores Avatar
    Seflores

    Run out of content warning stickers?
    Here are the Democrat Senators who voted for Gorsuch in 2006: (part of a 96-0 voice vote): Cantwell, Carper, Durbin, Feinstein, Leahy, Menendez, Murray, Nelson, Reed, Schumer, Stabenow, Wyden.
    But the Democrat ‘grassroots’ (complete with pre-printed signs) are in Klan mode and require he be labeled an extremist. So buckle in, it’s going to be a bumpy ride unless you are one of those freeway commuters unlucky enough to work in the Cities – better get a tablet with a good data plan so you can catch up on “your shows” while you sit on 35W or 94.

  3. Emery Incognito Avatar
    Emery Incognito

    So another Ivy-Leaguer – Columbia, Harvard, Oxford, with separately earned dual-doctorate degrees, one in a Humanities subject – not a romp but an indepth inquiry into the Ethics of Assisted Suicide – a PhD on it from Oxford . A Dickens and Shakespeare quoter, a Keith-Richard listener. A person who thinks with discipline and nuance, culled from learned interdisciplinary skills and sophisticated polymath perspective. Good.

    My only reservation is some Trump supporters would call him a “Hyper-educated Elite with a Mental Illness”. You know, the loathsome lot they love to hate. More troubling is the question of whether a group of Ivy League graduates has the breadth of experience to rule fairly on all of the issues that come before it.

  4. Mitch Berg Avatar
    Mitch Berg

    EI,

    some Trump supporters would call him a “Hyper-educated Elite with a Mental Illness”. You know, the loathsome lot they love to hate.

    Perhaps. I can’t play “the politics of those who say ‘some people…’” very long.

    More troubling is the question of whether a group of Ivy League graduates has the breadth of experience to rule fairly on all of the issues that come before it.

    I don’t disagree one little bit.

  5. Emery Incognito Avatar
    Emery Incognito

    On the other hand, Trump has less than 48 months left in his term. For this reason, the Senate should not consider his nominee to the Supreme Court. That nomination should be left to Trump’s successor. /s

  6. J. Ewing Avatar
    J. Ewing

    That’s OK, as soon as one of the octagenarian liberals kicks the bucket, the court will be 4-3 anyway.

  7. justplainangry Avatar
    justplainangry

    Judging from eTASS ramblings, I think it is save to conclude his head exploded. Joe the Plumber for SCOTUS! And while you are at it, why don’t you let Lady Gaga perform your routine lobotomy for you as well. She has the breadth of experience to do it fairly, no?

  8. Scott Hughes Avatar
    Scott Hughes

    Gorsuch WILL be the next Assoc. Justice, no ifs, ands, or buts! If the Dims are so ignorant to force McConnell to “go nuclear” they’re toast for the next (probable) justice replacements not just this one.

  9. Emery Incognito Avatar
    Emery Incognito

    I agree with Scott, he will be confirmed.

    As I commented earlier, Increasingly, all of the judges on the Supreme Court have very similar life stories. They have not lived in poverty, and have not had jobs outside of the upper heights of the legal profession or academia. These judges are called upon to make judgment calls that impact how the lives of ordinary Americans are lived, how they interact with the government and with law enforcement. The value of having an Earl Warren (former governor) or a Sandra Day O’Conner (former representative I believe) on the court is to inject some first hand knowledge of life outside of the Ivy League and top law firms.

  10. Scott Hughes Avatar
    Scott Hughes

    Emery, Both Warren and O’Connor came from quite modest means, both had been practicing attorneys earlier in their careers.

  11. justplainangry Avatar
    justplainangry

    These judges are called upon to make judgment calls that impact how the lives of ordinary Americans are lived

    Are you flipping insane? SCOTUS is called upon to do NOTHING of the sort! If you truly believe that, you are not just a moron, you are an exceedingly uninformed, stupid and dense moron. Ok, I take back the uninformed part – you are informed by the facts you find in your Marxist libturd talking points, or is it alternate facts?

  12. bikebubba Avatar
    bikebubba

    EI’s comment reminds me of the comments of Senator Roman Hruska, who will be known for a good long time for his comments about Judge Carswell, who was nominated for a Supreme Court position despite a “mediocre” record. Hruska noted that mediocre people deserve representation on the court, too, and for this was lampooned in the immortal classic “Dead Puppies.”

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ak0_fa1DDpc

  13. nerdbert Avatar
    nerdbert

    On the other hand, Trump has less than 48 months left in his term.[…]

    Ah, so the Demonrats suggest moving the goalposts again? May I trouble you as to who originally proposed the no-nominee vote deadline of one year? I’m curious if you remember the set of Senators who originally demanded that. I’ll give you a hint: they’re of the party of that has consistently weakened the Senate filibuster as their grip on power has weakened.

  14. nerdbert Avatar
    nerdbert

    These judges are called upon to make judgment calls that impact how the lives of ordinary Americans are lived, how they interact with the government and with law enforcement.

    I really hope not. What those judges are supposed to be called upon is to make the judgment if the laws and actions in question are permissible under the Constitution. Anything else is legislating from the bench and calls the judiciary to act in the political sphere. Having unelected, unrepresentative people with lifetime appointments making such legislative determinations is terribly undemocratic and tyrannical.

    That being said, the expansion of Federal power that begin when Roosevelt forced the Supreme Court to expand Federal power via the rather questionable Commerce Clause mechanism inherently made the Court a political body. If, as seems likely, Gorsuch is an originalist who is willing to restrain the powers of the Federal government into something closer to their enumerated powers such that it matters less in the lives of US citizens than does the government of the state in which live, I’ll be much happier.

    And his dissent in which he decried the majority that ruled that cops could walk onto someone’s porch and peer into the windows without a warrant and despite “No Trespassing” signs gives me hope that he actually respects limitations on the power of government.

  15. Night Writer Avatar
    Night Writer

    Nerd – you beat me to it.

  16. Seflores Avatar
    Seflores

    “They have not lived in poverty…”
    Clarence Thomas and Sonia Sotomayor might beg to differ although I would imagine they didn’t know they were living in poverty (Sotomayor’s widowed mother was nurse in a methadone clinic in NYC in the 60′-70’s, can’t imagine a less glamorous way to make a living) at the time.
    While ranking on the Ivy League is well-established past time, if the Justice whose vote decided the next major abortion case or gun control measure received their law degree from South Dakota State (touchdown! Jackrabbits!) there would be plenty of commentary on their legal education.

  17. gl whisler Avatar
    gl whisler

    Judgment calls are supposed to be made by the lege – and then we get to validate their decisions every two years. Or 6. You know, rule by the consent of the governed?

    Judges are supposed to rule on the unclear statutes and the constitutionality.

  18. Alt-Good Swiftee Avatar
    Alt-Good Swiftee

    Neil Gorsuch.

    Mic drop

    Everything after this is sausage gravy.

  19. Chuck Avatar
    Chuck

    Mitch….I see NoDak’s own Heidi Heitkamp is doing her best Republican impression in preparation for her 2018 re-election bid. Same with Manchin from West Virginia.

  20. The Big Stink Avatar
    The Big Stink

    Isn’t it fun to watch democrats when there are no rocks to hide behind?

  21. Emery Incognito Avatar
    Emery Incognito

    nerdbert: To have followed the path of Neil Gorsuch, who attended Columbia, Harvard Law, and Oxford for a PhD, you need to not only be very clever, but also to have lived a life free of blemishes. Statistics for Ivy entering classes indicate that you almost certainly had to have been born into the upper middle class or the wealthy.

    There are very clever lawyers and judges who did not attend an Ivy school, because there was some blemish on their childhood resume, or simply because they weren’t in the small subset of the population that applies and is accepted to the Ivies. Because they did not attend an Ivy law school, they are not going to clerk for a Supreme Court judge, because those judges only accept resumes from 3-4 schools.

    I can attest that there is a wide range of ability amongst doctorate holders I have experienced, and I have met equally capable engineers without those golden credentials, often people who led more complicated lives. Some of my peers are very narrow, focused, people, brilliant in their own little field, yet surprisingly out of their depth in many other parts of life. I suspect the same is true of those who have golden credentials in the field of law.

  22. nerdbert Avatar
    nerdbert

    I can attest that there is a wide range of ability amongst doctorate holders I have experienced, and I have met equally capable engineers without those golden credentials, often people who led more complicated lives.

    Ahhh… yeah. I know. I’m a Ph.D. engineer and I know damn well that for some things I’m not as qualified as other folks. Hell, technically because I’m an electrical engineer I can wire a house without inspection and insurance will be happy, but in practice to me high voltage is 2V so I hire an electrician to do it right when the house needs to be rewired for a bypass switch. I don’t do that stuff all that often, so I’m not as capable as someone with far fewer credentials but much more experience. (Not that I don’t check the electrician’s work and his calculations. I’ve had them run thicker gauge wire than they wanted on some runs.)

    But none of this has anything to do with Gorsuch. You write, quite curiously:

    To have followed the path of Neil Gorsuch, who attended Columbia, Harvard Law, and Oxford for a PhD, you need to not only be very clever, but also to have lived a life free of blemishes.

    To live a life free of blemishes is a pretty fair accomplishment even if you start with all the advantages in the world. Sure, it takes luck for anyone to be blemish free, but it also takes a fair bit of self control and the ability to defer immediate pleasure for future gain. And you object to someone who has those qualities … why exactly? Sure, I’d respect Gorsuch even more if he’d come up from the ghetto without blemishes, but I still respect what Gorsuch has accomplished.

    And just why are you demanding different economic viewpoints? It’s completely irrelevant to what the Supreme Court is supposed to do! Its job is to determine how the law is to be interpreted and applied in accordance to the text of the law, or whether the law violates the Constitution. The Supreme Court isn’t supposed to determine the best and just course for a society, that is the job of the Legislature. All the Court is supposed to do is be a neutral adjudicator. When the courts step in and warp the law to provide the “right result” the courts lose legitimacy and we’re left with the situation we have now where the courts have become another law-making branch involved in politics. And fighting about politically activist courts makes the fight about politics all the more vicious and cutthroat because judges are essentially appointed for life and rule without check from the governed. Or haven’t you noticed that Reid was quite willing to blow up 200+ years of comity, deference, and tradition in order to “win” a judicial appointments battle?

    That’s what I hope that originalists can save us from: by reducing the power of both the Federal government and returning to the proper function of a judiciary I hope they can return us to less bloodthirsty politics. We wouldn’t be at each other’s throats over abortion if the Supreme Court hadn’t invented a new “right” and instead referred the matter back to the states to deal with as being not within the enumerated powers of the Federal government, for example. We know that “wise Latinas” have no interest in returning us to that path of judicial restraint and respect for the proper scope of the Federal government, nor do the rest of the court’s activists on both sides. I had hoped that Scalia and Thomas could foster a rebirth in judicial restraint, and Scalia accomplished much towards that goal. I hope that Gorsuch continues it.

    But on your side of the aisle, Emery, I see nobody who’s learned the lessons about abuse of power concentrated in the Court and Federal government. Indeed, all I see is is hysteria that all that power is now being wielded by “the wrong people” rather than any interest in changing the structure to protect the system from abuse. What’s driving all the Democrats nuts isn’t the fact that the government is weaponized, it’s that finally the GOP has put in someone who has as few compunctions about using that power as a Democrat does. And remember, The Donald was a Democrat right up until his quest for power began. He learned about the use of political power in a city and state completely controlled by Democrat politicians. He’s only behaving as he was instructed by Democrats and now Democrats are howling.

  23. Mammuthus Primigenius Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenius

    Obama could have withdrawn Garland and put forward a more conservative candidate. It would have made sense, since Scalia was the intellectual leader of the conservatives on the court.
    The GOP senators might have gone for a far more moderate conservative than Scalia. They all thought Trump was going to lose, anyway.
    So did Obama, and he didn’t see a downside to having the seat left vacant until Hillary could make a choice. It was always possible the terrible Trump nomination would cost the R’s the senate, and Hillary could appoint Obama or Bill, if she wanted.
    But the winner was Trump.
    It is wise not to underestimate Trump.

  24. Emery Incognito Avatar
    Emery Incognito

    nerdbert: You make it sound as if I don’t support Gorsuch. I am simply pointing out a trend for most SCOTUS nominees. I think we’re better off focusing on skills as a jurist, rather than skin color, sex, religion or country of origin. After all,the loyalty of a USSC Justice is to the US Constitution, not a political party.

  25. Joe Doakes Avatar
    Joe Doakes

    Nerd, bravo.

    Emery: which party focuses on skin color, sex or country of origin as primary considerations in its judicial nominations, and which on intellect? Does the phrase “Wise Latina” ring any bells? Have you looked at Clarence Thomas’s photo lately? Your point is correct but your aim is reversed.

    I don’t think Republicans should go nuclear on this pick. Democrats will raise a token filibuster for a while but Trump will divert them with some new outrage and Democrats will allow the seat to be filled because it won’t shift the ideological balance of the court, it simply returns us to status quo ante.

    The time to nuke the court is when the next vacancy occurs, where we have an opportunity to seize control. And we can justify it by pointing out that Democrats filibuster everybody, qualified or not, so the smooth and efficient administration of justice demands prompt action blah blah blah. Save the nuke for a really important target.

  26. Emery Incognito Avatar
    Emery Incognito

    Neil Gorsuch will be approved, and the GOP will not have to use the nuclear option. All McConnell has to do is require the Democrats to do a real filibuster, where they actually have to be there and talk and visibly hold things up. Then the daily bombardment of tweets from President Trump will hit, attacking democrats for shutting down the Senate, being the party of obstruction, not getting to work on jobs programs and health care. The democrats won’t last a week under that bombardment since 25 of them are up for election in 2018, and the American voter is sick of hyper-partisanship and wants to see the nation’s business done.

  27. justplainangry Avatar
    justplainangry

    It is very telling and expected that eTASS did not respond to the complete dissemblance of his arguments re Gorsuch “eliteness” and how SCOTUS adjudicates. It is amazing how he manages to spout “real facts” demonCrat and Marxist talking points every time he opines. It is like he cannot form a coherent argument without doing so and cannot and will not defend/discuss the subsequent fisking. You are pathetic.

  28. Alt-Good Swiftee Avatar
    Alt-Good Swiftee

    Last night, Tucker Carlson interviewed Marge Baker, executive vice president of People for the American Way, as she and her ilk Protested on the steps of the Supreme Court, because she has “real concerns” about Gorsuch and his record. (Is there a Masters course in smug face required for leftist spokes creatures?)

    Carlson noted that this protest had been planned well before Gorsuch was nominated. Baker responded that Trump had provided a list during his campaign, and the ACLU had found them all unsuitable.

    That is a list of 20 men and women who managed to follow a path of education and distinguished achievement, while avoiding any behaviors that would blemish their reputations.

    I wonder how many people Marge, or Emery for that matter, know who have spotless records of distinguished achievement?

    Blathering mindlessly, Marge was at a loss to provide any details for her objections, and the broad brush condemnations consisted of faulty legal observations. She said the Hobby Lobby decision allows “Corporations” to invoke religious belief to crush hard working serfs. Marge wanted viewers to envision GE mandating attendance for mass at the corporate church.

    Tucker played the edges, but he didn’t serve Marge the meat; the Hobby Lobby decision turned on the fact HL is a privately held company run by a family with a long history of demonstrated observance of their Catholic faith. It was a very narrowly decided case.

    The fact that Gorsuch was involved in the case proved, Margie said, that he was a lap dog of Wall Street; an institution Hobby Lobby has no connection with.

    I’m not well versed in the law, but it was clear that if Marge ever had been a smart lawyer, her close relationship with ideological zealots have turned her brains to mush.

  29. Alt-Good Swiftee Avatar
    Alt-Good Swiftee

    Emery said: ” I think we’re better off focusing on skills as a jurist, rather than skin color, sex, religion or country of origin. ”

    The Wise Latina said: “Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging.”

    How much are you willing to bet, Emery, that you voiced support for the Wise Latina SCOTUS Justice? Are you ashamed?

  30. Emery Incognito Avatar
    Emery Incognito

    OK, totally serious for a moment. (I never joke about the dead.) If you take politics that seriously, you are doing it wrong. And by “it”, I mean living your life.

  31. justplainangry Avatar
    justplainangry

    Not taking politics seriously is what gave birth to 0bumbler. Of course, a Marxist-Leninist state is your Utopia so you are all about people not taking politics seriously and slowly boiling them into submission and slavery. You truly are an amoral and depraved soul. No, strike that, you have no soul.

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