Kavanaugh hearings- now with sexual misconduct allegations.

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Re: Kavanaugh hearings- now with sexual misconduct allegations.

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The America I used to know is pretty much dead with this unless there is an overwhelming blue wave in November that guarantees an impeachment of Trump and Kavanaugh.
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Re: Kavanaugh hearings- now with sexual misconduct allegations.

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Thanas wrote: 2018-10-06 04:47pm The America I used to know is pretty much dead with this unless there is an overwhelming blue wave in November that guarantees an impeachment of Trump and Kavanaugh.
Currently the left wing plan that's gaining traction among the dem establishment and leadership is to expand the supreme court by several judges if/when we win the house, senate, and presidency in 2020 which is looking very plausible.
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Re: Kavanaugh hearings- now with sexual misconduct allegations.

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Dominus Atheos wrote: 2018-10-06 04:59pm Currently the left wing plan that's gaining traction among the dem establishment and leadership is to expand the supreme court by several judges if/when we win the house, senate, and presidency in 2020 which is looking very plausible.
Rinse and repeat every time the government changes hands, then?
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Re: Kavanaugh hearings- now with sexual misconduct allegations.

Post by bilateralrope »

Wild Zontargs wrote: 2018-10-06 05:02pm
Dominus Atheos wrote: 2018-10-06 04:59pm Currently the left wing plan that's gaining traction among the dem establishment and leadership is to expand the supreme court by several judges if/when we win the house, senate, and presidency in 2020 which is looking very plausible.
Rinse and repeat every time the government changes hands, then?
At least that means that the court reflects the outcome of the previous election. Instead of locking in the outcome of whichever election happened shortly before someone died/resigned. Until the court gets so ridiculously large that a constitutional amendment becomes an option.

Though I'd hope that the Democrats have the restraint to only add one judge to the court so that it deadlocks on partisan issues.
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Re: Kavanaugh hearings- now with sexual misconduct allegations.

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Not that I want to condone anything the Republicans have done vis-a-vis the Supreme Court, but at least let's not all pretend that the Democrats would have had any greater respect for the institutions of our democracy were the situations reversed. They would have been just as happy to push through a controversial candidate, using any trick necessary, and its idiotic to think that the Democrats would have held any higher standard if they had been in the situation of power.

The problem here isn't partisan, in an of itself, it's a much broader, deeper issue with our political culture. I'm not trying to argue for some golden mean fallacy about the Democrats and Republicans being "equally bad", my point is that the reasons that allowed the current political paradigm to develop are not necessarily partisan. Both sides are quick to demonize any position the other takes as being horrible, and the lack of any sense of compromise between those polarities means that supposedly non-partisan elements like the Supreme Court get dragged in as well. I'm sure I'll be labelled an "apologist" and other such nonsense for pointing out the obvious, because apparently these days it's anathema to try and take a step back and assess the bigger picture instead of getting dragged down into the partisan weeds.
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Re: Kavanaugh hearings- now with sexual misconduct allegations.

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Ziggy Stardust wrote: 2018-10-06 06:10pmThe problem here isn't partisan, in an of itself, it's a much broader, deeper issue with our political culture. I'm not trying to argue for some golden mean fallacy about the Democrats and Republicans being "equally bad", my point is that the reasons that allowed the current political paradigm to develop are not necessarily partisan. Both sides are quick to demonize any position the other takes as being horrible, and the lack of any sense of compromise between those polarities means that supposedly non-partisan elements like the Supreme Court get dragged in as well. I'm sure I'll be labelled an "apologist" and other such nonsense for pointing out the obvious, because apparently these days it's anathema to try and take a step back and assess the bigger picture instead of getting dragged down into the partisan weeds.
Nearly half of each party now hates the other party, rather than simply disagreeing with them:

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Re: Kavanaugh hearings- now with sexual misconduct allegations.

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Ziggy Stardust wrote: 2018-10-06 06:10pmNot that I want to condone anything the Republicans have done vis-a-vis the Supreme Court, but at least let's not all pretend that the Democrats would have had any greater respect for the institutions of our democracy were the situations reversed. They would have been just as happy to push through a controversial candidate, using any trick necessary, and its idiotic to think that the Democrats would have held any higher standard if they had been in the situation of power.
Define "controversial candidate" in this context. I don't particularly like the Democrats, but I'm pretty sure whoever they came up with wouldn't be this bad.
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Re: Kavanaugh hearings- now with sexual misconduct allegations.

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Thanas wrote: 2018-10-06 04:47pm The America I used to know is pretty much dead with this unless there is an overwhelming blue wave in November that guarantees an impeachment of Trump and Kavanaugh.
I'm pretty sure it would take a super-majority to pull that off and there aren't enough senate seats open for that to be possible. And who would bet on the elections being honest anyway? The Republicans have consistently blocked measures to ensure anything like secure voting.

From where I'm sitting it seems like the GOP have now stacked the branch of government that was supposed to act as a check on corrupt governance with party operatives. A party elected by gerrymandered minorities now controls every branch of government and the judiciary. The only question is how much crap they can ram through before they lose their grip. It's probably going to be a lot.

I'm glad I'm not American and don't have to live through this directly, but American problems tend to be exported.
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Re: Kavanaugh hearings- now with sexual misconduct allegations.

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Ziggy Stardust wrote: 2018-10-06 06:10pmThe problem here isn't partisan, in an of itself, it's a much broader, deeper issue with our political culture. I'm not trying to argue for some golden mean fallacy about the Democrats and Republicans being "equally bad", my point is that the reasons that allowed the current political paradigm to develop are not necessarily partisan. Both sides are quick to demonize any position the other takes as being horrible, and the lack of any sense of compromise between those polarities means that supposedly non-partisan elements like the Supreme Court get dragged in as well. I'm sure I'll be labelled an "apologist" and other such nonsense for pointing out the obvious, because apparently these days it's anathema to try and take a step back and assess the bigger picture instead of getting dragged down into the partisan weeds.
Like, I see where you're coming from and I've thought it myself more than once, but like you said both sides aren't equally bad. It's easy to demonize someone when they're legit evil and most of the major issues driving them boil down to iterations of wanting to punish people for not being white, male, straight, affluent and/or Christian. Some amount of compromise and collegiality are necessary for a functioning democracy, but the Republicans have collectively proven over and over that they aren't a party that can be compromised with effectively because they'll freely renege on deals, violate norms and generally do anything to shove the aforementioned evil agenda through.

Democrats hating Republicans because they (the Democrats) are gay, black, a rape victim or because they lost a family member or went broke because their shithead Republican governor fought tooth and nail against Obama trying to improve access to healthcare refused federal funds intended to make that easier isn't the same as Republicans hating Democrats for trying to stop them from hurting gays and blacks, enabling rapists and killing people by doing everything they can to fuck up access to affordable healthcare.
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Re: Kavanaugh hearings- now with sexual misconduct allegations.

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What happens if the FBI decide that they have enough on Kavanaugh to start a criminal investigation ?
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Re: Kavanaugh hearings- now with sexual misconduct allegations.

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Wild Zontargs wrote: 2018-10-06 05:02pm Rinse and repeat every time the government changes hands, then?
Probably best to institute term limits like most other countries.
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Re: Kavanaugh hearings- now with sexual misconduct allegations.

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bilateralrope wrote: 2018-10-06 08:50pm What happens if the FBI decide that they have enough on Kavanaugh to start a criminal investigation ?
The Republicans gut the FBI's ability to investigate him and/or refuse to do jack shit about anything the FBI finds.
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Re: Kavanaugh hearings- now with sexual misconduct allegations.

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The Jester wrote: 2018-10-06 08:56pm Probably best to institute term limits like most other countries.
Why? To spread the post-Congressional lobbying/think tank/pundit job money around more?
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Re: Kavanaugh hearings- now with sexual misconduct allegations.

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bilateralrope wrote: 2018-10-06 08:50pmWhat happens if the FBI decide that they have enough on Kavanaugh to start a criminal investigation?
They will be leaned on from behind the scenes, rather heavily, to quietly drop it. The interesting question is what happens if they refuse to back down.

Unfortunately, however, the chances of a criminal investigation leading to a conviction are not great. Historic rape accusations are a ball-ache to prove beyond reasonable doubt: The physical evidence is long gone and after twenty-odd years even the victim's memory is going to be unreliable on some of the details, and for better or worse the fact that multiple allegations have been made is not admissible evidence when trying Kavaunagh for one specific offence.
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Re: Kavanaugh hearings- now with sexual misconduct allegations.

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Ralin wrote: 2018-10-06 09:20pm Why? To spread the post-Congressional lobbying/think tank/pundit job money around more?
Because appointments could be spaced between presidential terms making it a lot harder to game politically.
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Re: Kavanaugh hearings- now with sexual misconduct allegations.

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Napoleon the Clown wrote: 2018-10-06 09:18pmThe Republicans gut the FBI's ability to investigate him and/or refuse to do jack shit about anything the FBI finds.
All the investigations into Trump make me think that their ability/willingness to interfere is limited.

Are members of the Supreme Court protected from criminal prosecution ?

I've never heard a good explanation for why certain members of the US government, like the president, get to be formally above the law.

Does the FBI even need to tell the Senate about the investigation before they are ready to indict ?
Zaune wrote: 2018-10-06 09:22pm They will be leaned on from behind the scenes, rather heavily, to quietly drop it. The interesting question is what happens if they refuse to back down.
I'm thinking the FBI could spin any attempts to stop such an investigation as obstruction of justice. It all depends on how much they care about people interfering in their job.
Unfortunately, however, the chances of a criminal investigation leading to a conviction are not great. Historic rape accusations are a ball-ache to prove beyond reasonable doubt: The physical evidence is long gone and after twenty-odd years even the victim's memory is going to be unreliable on some of the details, and for better or worse the fact that multiple allegations have been made is not admissible evidence when trying Kavaunagh for one specific offence.
Last I heard, the statute of limitations applies to the sexual assault allegations. But an investigation could be into anything Kavaunagh has done. I know we were hearing odd things about his finances before the sexaul assault allegations came to light.
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Re: Kavanaugh hearings- now with sexual misconduct allegations.

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The Jester wrote: 2018-10-06 09:23pm
Because appointments could be spaced between presidential terms making it a lot harder to game politically.
I'm not following. The Republicans just proved that they're capable of stonewalling appointments as long as a Democrat candidate is in office. Term limits don't seem likely to change that or their ability to hold seats in Congress. If Ted Cruz can't run anymore there are plenty of other Tea Party/alt-right fucks who will eagerly take his place and the same sorts of people will vote for them.

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Re: Kavanaugh hearings- now with sexual misconduct allegations.

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Wild Zontargs wrote: 2018-10-06 04:34pm So, assuming that Kavanaugh wasn't blindly partisan before, what are the odds that he is (or if he was, that he's even more so) now, after that confirmation process?
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Re: Kavanaugh hearings- now with sexual misconduct allegations.

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Napoleon the Clown wrote: 2018-10-06 09:18pm
bilateralrope wrote: 2018-10-06 08:50pm What happens if the FBI decide that they have enough on Kavanaugh to start a criminal investigation ?
The Republicans gut the FBI's ability to investigate him and/or refuse to do jack shit about anything the FBI finds.
Or Trump pardons him.

Since every Republican save one voted for Kavanaugh, impeachment is nothing more than pissing up a rope and sucking the wet end of it*. If (and I know it's a colossal IF) the dems take the Senate, they need to block any and all of Trump's appointments to the courts. It won't do anything about Kavanaugh and Gorsuch, but it will prevent further damage. If they take Congress and the White House in 2020, they need to pack the courts by adding extra seats -preferably two for every Trump appointee.

As for the FBI, given the way the Bureau kneecapped Hillary for an October Surprise, and the other bullfuckery the FBI has done over the years, anyone remotely left of center who considers them an ally, a bulwark against Trump, or their friend is a fucking fool.

* Yes, I know that it might be possible to remove someone if a quorum of 51 shows up and 37 vote to remove the person from office. I'm not betting on it happening.
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Re: Kavanaugh hearings- now with sexual misconduct allegations.

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Ralin wrote: 2018-10-06 09:54pm I'm not following. The Republicans just proved that they're capable of stonewalling appointments as long as a Democrat candidate is in office. Term limits don't seem likely to change that or their ability to hold seats in Congress. If Ted Cruz can't run anymore there are plenty of other Tea Party/alt-right fucks who will eagerly take his place and the same sorts of people will vote for them.

Give me the exploded version?
Sure. So it's basically a given now that no party will ever support each other's nomination from this point forward. Stonewalling is going to happen under the present rules as you probably agree. And true, term limits may require some additional rules to make them work, so that's a fair criticism. If unworkable in practice, you could implement a transition period such that retirement from the supreme court was evenly spaced and term limits were fixed to, for example, 12 or 18 years, then any presidential term would ideally only result in the appointment of a fixed number of justices (3 or 2 in the example terms). Attempting the same arguments as they did with Garland would no longer have any meaning and one would hope that the electorate would punish a party for attempting such political games. Granted, maybe that's too ideal and additional rules would need to be put in place to prevent that eventuality, but I'm not quite that cynical (really close, but not quite).

Then you have to deal with the real life factor that a justice may want to retire prior to the conclusion of their term or may be incapacitated or found to be unable to conduct their duties which would throw the even distribution out of whack. In that case, you'd have to shorten the term of the specially appointed justice to keep the system stable. Granted, games could still be played ("Justice X was appointed under the spotty party and therefore specially appointed justice Y should also be a spotty appointee") but you're not in a worse position than now.
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Re: Kavanaugh hearings- now with sexual misconduct allegations.

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EDIT: Thinking about it carefully, it's not unreasonable that a term limit would naturally result in a fixed number of regular appointments per presidential term. The simple argument that each president is intended to appoint X justices is fairly natural following fixed term implementation since it's easy to demonstrate. But maybe I'm being overly optimistic.
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Re: Kavanaugh hearings- now with sexual misconduct allegations.

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Oh, you mean term limits for the justices. I was thinking about general term limits for Congress members.
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Re: Kavanaugh hearings- now with sexual misconduct allegations.

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Congress needs to move over to public financing with short, fixed campaign lengths. Irony is a lot of members serving, despite opposing such a change, would be quite relieved they don't need to spend countless hours chasing donors.
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Re: Kavanaugh hearings- now with sexual misconduct allegations.

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Zaune wrote: 2018-10-06 07:46pm Define "controversial candidate" in this context. I don't particularly like the Democrats, but I'm pretty sure whoever they came up with wouldn't be this bad.
I originally meant "controversial" only in the partisan sense (i.e. controversial to the other party, for reasons that may or may not be justified).

To be perfectly frank, though, now that I think about it more, I don't have enough faith in the current Democratic party to even believe that they would necessarily back down if they had put forward a candidate that was accused of sexual assault like Kavanaugh had. I can just as easily see some Democratic Senators accusing the Republicans of running a smear campaign. I hope I am wrong about that, but the Democrats have done very little lately to give me much faith in them.
Ralin wrote: 2018-10-06 08:41pm Like, I see where you're coming from and I've thought it myself more than once, but like you said both sides aren't equally bad. <snip>
Yeah, I mean, I'm with you on that. We almost certainly have the same or similar worldviews, and so I find the racist, homophobic, classist policies of the Republicans to be morally repugnant. The Democrats are generally either incompetent, corrupt, or useless as opposed to being actively evil. On the other hand, I can't help but think about the fact that many Republicans are saying essentially the same thing about Democrats. According to their worldviews, the liberals are the ones that are actively promoting morally repugnant policies and not making any room for compromise, and so on. I'm not trying to make any sort of relativist argument, but from a purely pragmatic standpoint it's disheartening to see that we are in a situation where both sides demonize the other. It seems to lead to this endless downwards cycle where the rhetoric becomes increasingly poisonous. It's not like I have any particular solution to this, because I don't think that giving in to right-wing populism is the right thing to do, I just wish as a culture we could be having a different type of conversation.

(Sorry to snip the rest of your post, but I agree with everything you said, so trying to keep the clutter down).
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Re: Kavanaugh hearings- now with sexual misconduct allegations.

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Ziggy Stardust wrote: 2018-10-07 10:09amI'm not trying to make any sort of relativist argument, but from a purely pragmatic standpoint it's disheartening to see that we are in a situation where both sides demonize the other. It seems to lead to this endless downwards cycle where the rhetoric becomes increasingly poisonous. It's not like I have any particular solution to this, because I don't think that giving in to right-wing populism is the right thing to do, I just wish as a culture we could be having a different type of conversation.
The closest thing to an answer I can come up with is that something needs to give. Either the Republican Party needs to die (as an organization and coherent political bloc before someone starts getting vapors over me advocating violence) and be replaced by a new party that can be dealt with without every single vote becoming either a death struggle or sacrificing someone's well-being for nothing or some sort of new opposition party needs to surface and...well, make the same thing happen only with an extra step.

Personally I have a way narrower concept of basic rights (as opposed to 'good things which I support and should be done) when it comes stuff like healthcare or gay marriage than a lot of people here, but nuances like that aren't meaningful when the choice is 'support those things at all or surrender to the evil woman and gay-hating fascist party.'

Either that or just say fuck the democracy thing for a generation and try to install someone like Obama or Clinton as dictator for life and maybe start fresh several decades for now. But that's crazy Clancy talk. For now.
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