I think the average time from appointment to confirmation is like 2-3 months so Mcconnel is right to say it will be done before the election.

Rage at the End of Justice Kennedy's Camelot

Weekly Standard
Adam J. White

If John F. Kennedy’s presidency was, for Democrats, a kind of three-year “Camelot,” then Anthony M. Kennedy’s three-decade tenure on the Supreme Court was also, for Democrats, a kind of judicial Camelot. A place where progressive rights could be created and protected, safe from the people outside the castle.

Since at least 1992, when the Reagan appointee unexpectedly joined the bloc of centrist justices to save Roe v. Wade’s right to abortion, liberals placed immense hope in Justice Kennedy to advance progressive cultural policies by the judicial creation and expansion of constitutional rights not actually specified in the Constitution—especially, rights to abortion and (in Obergefell v. Hodges) same-sex marriage.

Which is why progressives are having a rough week. Just two years ago, they assumed that President Hillary Clinton would be replacing the late Justice Scalia and possibly, they hoped, two, or even three other justices. (One particularly enthusiastic law professor bragged in mid-2016 that the imminently liberal court would be well positioned to help the left deal with social conservatives—“the losers in the culture wars”—like vanquished Confederates after the Civil War, or Japanese soldiers after World War II.)

Now the left realizes that this tantalizing future is almost certainly foregone. Perhaps a current or future justice appointed to the Court by a Republican president will shift leftward—it has happened before, and recently—but the more likely outcome, at least by the world as it is now, is one in which Republican appointees lead the Court for a generation.

What does that mean? No matter what activists are shouting, Roe and Obergefell are not in imminent danger of being “overturned.” But Roe and Obergefell are now unlikely to enjoy the persistent expansions that many progressives hoped the Court would be undertaking over the next two decades—expansion that would have come at the further expense of the Constitution’s protection for religious liberty. And at the expense of nonprofit status for pro-life or pro-traditional-marriage organizations. And at the expense of the federal and state governments’ remaining authority to legislate on matters involving abortion or same-sex marriage in any ways contrary to progressive cultural dogma.

It’s the loss of that judicial Camelot that has many on the Left distraught and grieving. And as with the grief of any major loss, the initial moments have been marked by astonishing outbursts of rage and denial.

The Center for American Progress’s president, for example, issued a flurry of tweets asserting that Justice Kennedy’s involvement in recent Court decisions siding with the Trump administration was connected to Kennedy’s son’s employment at a bank that made loans to Trump—and that these are the sorts of things for which a president and justice might be impeached. One is tempted to mock that sort of thing, but again this is a moment of deep trauma for these folks, and we ought to be kind as they work through their grief.


Meanwhile, on a popular Supreme Court podcast, two legal scholars who previously clerked for Kennedy theorized that the justice had retired due to sheer exhaustion at the prospect of having to save the country from Trump and the right—and that Kennedy’s concurring opinion in Trump v. Hawaii (which concurred with the Court’s 5-4 decision allowing the latest iteration of the “travel ban” order to stand) was actually Kennedy’s announcement of surrender. One of the two podcasters translated Kennedy’s opinion into: “I’m done. I can’t stop this to the extent that this bothers me or strikes me as constitutionally problematic, and I’m done policing it.”

Here’s a simpler explanation for Kennedy’s concurrence in Trump v. Hawaii: it was a straightforward and eloquent opinion, respecting the practical limits of judicial power while also calling (as in Masterpiece Cakeshop) for public respect for the First Amendment religious liberty in all parts of government. Still, if story-telling is the form that progressives’ grief has taken, one can hardly blame them.

But when partisans for a permanently liberal Court move beyond Kubler-Ross and start calling for specific actions, we ought to take them more seriously. And we already are seeing two rather startling demands.

First, some legal scholars, are calling on Democrats to commit to “pack the Court” by adding new seats to the Court as soon as Democrats recapture the presidency and Congress—and filling those seats with extra Democratic-appointed justices. These calls preceded Kennedys’ retirement (they began shortly after President Trump was inaugurated, as Josh Blackman observed at the time). But they seem to be taking on new urgency now: Fordham’s Jed Shugerman, for example, announced on Twitter that if President Trump succeeds in appointing a replacement for Kennedy, then the next Democratic president and Congress should add six(!) new seats to the Supreme Court in 2021. (And abolish the filibuster for legislation, if it’s necessary to get the six bonus seats.) Ian Samuel, a Harvard Law fellow, staked out a similar position immediately upon Kennedy’s retirement.

It’s hard to think of a better way to galvanize Trump-skeptical Republicans for the 2020 vote than to preemptively announce a Democratic court-packing agenda for 2021. If law professors hadn’t started vowing that the next Democratic president would “pack the court,” then a pro-MAGA Super PAC would have made it up.

In this case, Shugerman’s court-packing agenda is particularly ironic given his vocal denunciation, just months ago, of a conservative professor’s harebrained proposal to pack the lower courts with new judicial seats—which was, as Shugerman noted, a transparent move toward “undoing President Obama’s judicial legacy.”

But irony aside, everyone should pause at the notion of overhauling the Supreme Court’s structure in a fit of partisan pique. The Court has had nine seats since the mid-19th Century; next April marks the 150th anniversary of the Judiciary Act of 1869, which fixed the Court at that number.

Nine isn’t a magic number, and the Court can function perfectly well for extended periods of time with fewer justices, as I noted in 2016. But to legislate partisan changes to the Court’s structure will simply inaugurate a new era of further escalations. Shugerman’s 15-justice court under the next Democratic president would become an 18-justice court under the next Republican president.

And on and on with each turn of the partisan wheel. It would do to the Court’s structure what Ted Kennedy did to Supreme Court confirmation fights with his unprecedented attacks on Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas. Or, for that matter, what Harry Reid did in changing the Senate’s rules for voting on judicial nominees in 2013. For all the left’s complaints about Senate Republicans’ decision not to vote on the Garland nomination to fill a presidential-election-year vacancy, it violated neither constitutional text nor any well-established tradition to the contrary—indeed, it was itself precedented.

And, more immediately, for all the talk of President Trump’s harm to institutions, legislating changes to the Supreme Court’s structure for mere partisan advantage would be institutionally ruinous for the judicial branch. Our politics will have a hard enough time repairing President Trump’s own reckless norm violations. For the Constitution’s judicial branch, there would be no way back from court-packing.

Meanwhile, Prof. Paul Schiff Berman writes in the New York Times that the Senate should refuse to vote on Trump’s nominee for the Court so long as Trump himself is being investigated. “People under a cloud of investigation do not get to pick the judges who may preside under their cases,” Berman writes (although Alyssa Milano may have come up with the idea first). “By this logic, President Trump should not be permitted to appoint a new Supreme Court justice until after the special counsel investigation is over, and we know for sure whether there is evidence of wrongdoing.”

Berman offers no authority for his assertion that presidents under “a cloud of investigation” don’t get to appoint judges who may eventually hear their cases. And, in fact, it requires only a passing awareness of the last several decades’ history to see that Berman is plainly wrong about this.

Start with the very same justice whom Berman does not want Trump to replace: Anthony Kennedy was appointed to the Supreme Court (with the consent of a Democratic-majority Senate) in February 1988, more than a year after both Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh and Congress began investigating the Reagan White House’s Iran-Contra affair. In fact, at Kennedy’s confirmation hearing, Senator Arlen Specter specifically asked Kennedy about the Supreme Court’s power to decide cases arising from disputes between the president and Congress over covert operations related to Iran-Contra.

Next, President Clinton appointed Justice Stephen Breyer in August 1994, eight months after Attorney General Reno appointed Robert Fiske as special prosecutor to investigate the Clintons’ Whitewater scandal. Breyer was appointed months after the president and others began receiving Fiske’s grand jury subpoenas. The investigation ultimately led to President Clinton’s impeachment and Senate trial, after Independent Counsel Ken Starr was appointed to succeed Fiske.

Next, President Bush appointed Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito in 2005 and 2006, while the White House was being investigated by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald (who was appointed by a deputy attorney general named James Comey).

Finally, just last year, President Trump appointed Neil Gorsuch to the court despite the FBI investigation into the Trump campaign’s possible collusion with Russia.

The factual predicate for Berman’s actual argument doesn’t survive any scrutiny. But that may not be Berman’s real point. Instead, Berman seems focused on preemptively delegitimizing whatever justice Trump eventually appoints to succeed Kennedy:

Both Democrats and Republicans in the Senate should therefore resist calls for a quick confirmation process. Otherwise, there will be a stain on the legitimacy of this nomination, on the performance of whomever is confirmed and, even on the Supreme Court itself.

One wonders whether Berman would say there was a similar stain on the legacies of all the aforementioned justices appointed by under-investigation Presidents: Kennedy, Roberts, Alito, and Breyer. Would Berman delegitimize Breyer for his role in Clinton v. Jones (1997)? There the Court unanimously held that President Clinton was not immune to Paula Jones’ lawsuit—but Breyer alone wrote a separate opinion spelling out a more Clinton-friendly view of presidential immunity. Applying Berman’s new standard to Justice Breyer would be utterly damning, especially in light of Breyer’s role in Clinton v. Jones. Luckily for Breyer, Berman’s standard is a new invention for this particular president and this particular vacancy.

Let’s be candid: No matter when this particular Supreme Court vacancy happened to occur, it was destined to be the most hotly contested confirmation fight of our lifetimes—even more than the Thomas and Bork nominations—because it has the potential to cause a major shift in the ideological balance of the Court.

All confirmation battles will be ugly so long as the Court asserts so much power over our politics, as Justice Scalia warned in Planned Parenthood v. Casey (when Justice Kennedy first stepped to the forefront of our national politics). And they will be all the more so whenever the seat in question has the potential to flip ideologically.

But Justice Kennedy’s retirement happens to occur in the most poisonous political year of the last half-century. Which means that we are about to face a political and cultural storm of the century.

These radical proposals—to utterly overhaul the Court’s structure and preemptively delegitimize the next justice—are just the start.

Link

quote:

All confirmation battles will be ugly so long as the Court asserts so much power over our politics, as Justice Scalia warned in Planned Parenthood v. Casey (when Justice Kennedy first stepped to the forefront of our national politics). And they will be all the more so whenever the seat in question has the potential to flip ideologically.

But Justice Kennedy’s retirement happens to occur in the most poisonous political year of the last half-century. Which means that we are about to face a political and cultural storm of the century.

I disagree in one sense:
This IS NOT the most poisonous political year of the last half-century.... We aren't about to face a political and cultural storm of the century....
We are living through a continuation of the Bork Battle. This started when the Dems Borked Bork. It's an ongoing battle.

Anthony Kennedy: Reagan’s Worst Mistake

Paul Kengor


The price we paid for the borking of Robert Bork.

The year was 1987. It was fall. It was November 11. It had been a tough year for President Ronald Reagan. Liberals were going bonkers with Iran-Contra as a hopeful tool to destroy a great president on the verge of winning the Cold War. The media was dubbing Iran-Contra the worst mistake of Reagan’s presidency. It was not. What happened on November 11, 1987 would, in due course, constitute the worst mistake of the Reagan presidency: the nomination of Anthony Kennedy for the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Kennedy pick was supposed to calm the waters after the storm generated by the Robert Bork and Douglas Ginsburg nominations. Bork would have been a brilliant justice, but leftists savaged the man, transmogrifying him into an ugly beast — a gargoyle. Bork suffered the ignominy of the likes of Senator Ted Kennedy portraying him as “anti-woman.” A new verb was introduced into the political lexicon: the process of being “Borked.”

In the end, Anthony Kennedy got the nod, and was sworn in February 18, 1988. His subsequent 30 years of judicial decisions literally redefined things as basic as life and marriage. His calamitous three decades on the court will be followed by an endless maze of legal-cultural wars and church-state battles dealing with the disastrous dust-up of what he unleashed.

It’s ironic that Kennedy exits after having made some decent decisions in recent days, including on cultural hot-buttons like the Masterpiece bakeshop case and the California abortion case. Such decisions do not begin to redeem what Kennedy did. Among his 30 years at the Supreme Court, two especially odious decisions stand out:

The first was the June 1992 case, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the latter being Pennsylvania’s governor, the late Bob Casey Sr., who represented something now near-extinct: a pro-life Democrat politician. Casey lost in a 6-3 vote that affirmed a constitutional right to abortion in all 50 states. This pivotal case flatly preserved Roe v. Wade. And Kennedy led the majority with one of the most breathtakingly outrageous statements in the history of jurisprudence: “At the heart of liberty,” averred Kennedy, “is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”

To repeat: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”

Tens of millions of unborn babies would continue to be legally aborted courtesy of that bucket of philosophical hogwash.

And hogwash it was. Had Anthony Kennedy been in Philadelphia trying to peddle that bunkum in 1776, the Founders would have either ordered him a straight-jacket or chased him out of the hall with torches. Imagine telling John Adams and James Madison that “liberty” is the right of every individual to define his own meanings of life and existence and the universe and human life. That was plainly not the Founders’ conception of liberty, nor a Judeo-Christian conception. Adams would have burst at the seams snapping at Kennedy: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

Freedom, properly discerned and practiced, isn’t about the freedom of a slim majority of robed justices — let alone a country of 300 million people — coming up with their own definitions of reality.

In fact, the president who appointed Kennedy could have given him a tutorial: “At its full flowering, freedom is the first principle of society; this society, Western society,” said Ronald Reagan at Georgetown University in October 1988. “And yet freedom cannot exist alone. Each reinforces the others, each makes the others possible. For what are they without each other?” This is why, said Reagan, quoting Tocqueville: “Religion is more needed in democratic societies than in any other.”

Reagan called faith and freedom the “twin beacons” that “brighten the American sky.” Take away one of those beacons and the sky is darker. Take away one and you cannot see with the full clarity of vision to navigate the nation.

But for Anthony Kennedy, liberty, existence, the universe, human life, and meaning itself is whatever one wants it to be (or whatever a court majority wants it to be).

To behold such sophistry emanating from our nation’s judicial elite is a sad sign of how far we’ve sunk. And yet, in a sense, Kennedy captured the zeitgeist.

Behold the statement again: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”

Any self-respecting Poli Sci prof would flunk a student who handed in a paper filled with such bull-session nonsense. Of course, 90% of those professors are leftists; thus, they would happily accept the gibberish in service of their ideological agenda. It gives them their “abortion rights.” It gives them their “marriage equality.”

That brings me to the other Kennedy decision, uniquely brazen in its sheer ludicrousness: the June 2015 Obergefell decision.

There, in one fell-swoop, this master of judicial creativity rendered unto himself — with the help of four liberal friends — the astonishing ability to redefine the multi-millennia, natural, Biblical, Western, Judeo-Christian conception of marriage. Since the dawn of humanity, over 99.99% of human beings who have bestrode the planet shared the consensus that marriage is, by its very nature, between a man and a woman. It’s an institution not ours to change. But that didn’t give pause to Kennedy and fellow human-nature redefiners. Not in their new America. Not in America after Planned Parenthood v. Casey, where meanings are subject to the whim of whatever we mean them to mean.

And so, in Obergefell, rendered on June 26, 2015, Anthony Kennedy and four liberals took it upon themselves to legally redefine marriage from the bench and impose their judicial fiat upon all 50 states. In an unprecedented display of judicial conceit, Kennedy and comrades arrogated unto themselves the right to create their own definition of marriage — a right theretofore restricted to the laws of nature and nature’s God.

If you were surprised by that spectacle in June 2015, you shouldn’t have been in light of June 1992. Once we’ve established the right to conjure up our own definition of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of life itself, then conjuring up our own definition of marriage is small potatoes. Welcome to Anthony Kennedy’s America.

And so, alas, why did Ronald Reagan pick this man to serve on the high court?

Anthony Kennedy’s situation is yet another example of so many failed court picks that ran far afoul of a president’s original expectations. I can speak to this with intimate knowledge, which I learned from a good friend, Judge Bill Clark, who was a good friend to Kennedy.

Clark was the closest adviser to Ronald Reagan. Reagan offered Clark the Supreme Court seat that went to Sandra Day O’Connor in 1981. Clark turned it down, instead taking the helm at the National Security Council, where he would lead the effort to defeat the USSR.

When Reagan was governor of California, he appointed Clark to the California Supreme Court in Sacramento. There, Clark had a close relationship with Anthony Kennedy, who served there on the federal bench. They had regular lunches together.

As Clark’s biographer, I was privy to his ongoing grave concerns over Kennedy’s decisions at the U.S. Supreme Court. Clark warned me often that Kennedy was a person “unusually influenced” by his surroundings. He always feared that Kennedy, though a moderate-conservative, would blow with the wind of prevailing opinion in Washington and its liberal-progressive circles. As Clark noted, that’s exactly what happened with Kennedy in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. To Clark’s knowledge, Kennedy had been pro-life, but his pro-life convictions failed him and his nation when tested and influenced by peers.

Clark didn’t live to see Obergefell leveled by Kennedy in June 2015. If he had, I don’t know his heart could’ve handled it.

To be sure, there have been worse Supreme Court justices than Anthony Kennedy; in fact, four reside on the high court right now: Breyer, Ginsburg, Kagan, and Sotomayor. But it’s hard to find a worse disappointment than Anthony Kennedy. The entirety of all his good decisions will never outweigh the human damage of his catastrophically bad decisions.

Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy — President Ronald Reagan’s worst mistake.

https://spectator.org/anthony-...agans-worst-mistake/

quote:

Originally posted by JALLEN:

From The Weekly Standard:

What does that mean? No matter what activists are shouting, Roe and Obergefell are not in imminent danger of being “overturned.” But Roe and Obergefell are now unlikely to enjoy the persistent expansions that many progressives hoped the Court would be undertaking over the next two decades—expansion that would have come at the further expense of the Constitution’s protection for religious liberty. And at the expense of nonprofit status for pro-life or pro-traditional-marriage organizations. And at the expense of the federal and state governments’ remaining authority to legislate on matters involving abortion or same-sex marriage in any ways contrary to progressive cultural dogma.

This is hardly the only judicial 'expansion' they were counting on. The obvious issue for us is the Second Amendment and the process of continuing to elaborate Heller. But think of every arbitrary move Bill Clinton or Obama ever wanted to make (taxes, buisness regulation, banking and insurance regulation, the environment, the power of the government to operate in secrecy, the ability to use government authority to go after private political enemies, etc.) and then think of what would've happened to those arbitrary moves with a majority on the Supreme Court that would be absolutely dedicated to justifying those moves. That is what the Democrats are mourning having lost.

Reagan's worst mistake was not Kennedy, it was the illegitimate Hughes Amendment

Cruz is probably more temperamentally suited to be a justice than a Senator, although I don't think he will be nominated. It isn't likely a Dem will get elected to the Senate in Texas in the foreseeable future, but his seat is a strong one. He may like being a sentator, too.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: jhe888,

quote:

Originally posted by darthfuster:
Reagan's worst mistake was not Kennedy, it was the illegitimate Hughes Amendment

tens of millions of babies disagree.

There is a profile of ultra short list nominee Thomas Hardiman today on SCOTUSblog.com

http://www.scotusblog.com/cate...ice-anthony-kennedy/

quote:

Originally posted by YellowJacket:

quote:

Originally posted by darthfuster:
Reagan's worst mistake was not Kennedy, it was the illegitimate Hughes Amendment

tens of millions of babies disagree.

Roe got through the Court long before Kennedy. You can't blame him for that. Failing to reverse it or failing to strike down later limits isn't the same.

This guy's recommendation has merit!

A pretty good AP News article about Leonard Leo, who advises President Trump on judiciary selections:

“… "He isn't exactly a political person," Keller said. "He's been a principled advocate for textualism and originalism now for decades."

Or, as Meese described Leo: "He is not looking for conservative judges because the phrase 'conservative' connotes a political orientation. And what he is looking for are constitutional judges - judges that will be faithful to the Constitution."

https://www.google.com/amp/s/m...urt-adviser.amp.html

Apparently New York Dems are simultaneously going through denial, anger and acceptance, so they're trying to fit bargaining and depression somewhere.

quote:

Schumer Takes Heat After Canceled Town Hall
Elana Schor, Politico, 7/2/2018

Activists in Chuck Schumer's hometown were stewing in frustration, clamoring for more fight from his Senate Democrats, even before he cancelled a long-awaited public meeting on Monday night. But once Schumer bowed out, citing an equipment problem that kept his small plane grounded upstate, the frustration reached a simmer that matched the day's sweltering temperature. After spending nearly a year pressuring the Senate minority leader to meet with his constituents, liberal organizers scrambled to press Schumer to reschedule and not rely on a teleconference that was hastily assembled for him to take their questions.

The liberals who'd hoped to see Schumer at a sold-out event resorted to chants of "don't phone it in," a possible portent of trouble as he asks his party's fired-up base for backup in the long-shot fight against President Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominee. Schumer urged progressives to stay as engaged in the high court battle as they were on health care last year, reminding them that official Washington portrayed defense of Obamacare as a "fools errand." Yet he spent much of his time on the phone after his delayed town hall reassuring skeptical activists.

"There are thousands and thousands of people in this city who want to support him, so that he can win battles," said Liat Olenich, 32, a member of the liberal group Indivisible's Brooklyn chapter who spent months directing personal appeals at Schumer to schedule the event. "But he's not talking to those people, and we want him to do that."

During his remarks on the phone, Schumer tried to energize the Democratic faithful with a play for unity. The Democratic path to victory, he explained, is successfully making the case that Trump's still-unnamed Supreme Court pick would roll back Roe v. Wade and Obamacare. "I'm willing to entertain using any of the procedural tools available at the appropriate time," he said on his Monday night call with New Yorkers. "But I think if we put all of our eggs in that basket, we'll have less of a chance to focus on the substantive issues."

Schumer's stance - that Democrats can't realistically block a confirmation using Senate rules - received a boost last week when Indivisible warned its members that "there is no procedural tool to stop this" Supreme Court confirmation process. (Emphasis added - IC)

But activists were looking for more from Schumer on Monday night, and his move to speak from afar didn't ease their anxiety. "We are in a gunfight, but we have a butter knife," one New Yorker who identified herself as Monique sighed to Schumer on his conference call.

Schumer has not held a town hall so far this Congress, according to data maintained by the nonpartisan Legistorm database. Olenick drew a sharp contrast between that tally and the multiple public meetings held by New York's junior senator, Kirsten Gillibrand. Another local Indivisible organizer, 44-year-old Lisa Raymond-Tolan, didn't rule out a protest in front of Schumer's Brooklyn home, a tactic that hundreds of activists first used in the winter of 2017, if he failed to reschedule the promised town hall. "It's extra-important that he knows who it is he's fighting for and what they want him to be fighting for," she said.

Schumer outlined his approach to Trump's Supreme Court pick in a New York Times op-ed on Monday, focusing on the abortion rights and health care arguments he made to activists on the call. Indivisible organizers praised that sentiment but also told a small crowd that arrived early for the town hall that they want Schumer to twist arms in his own caucus. Activists chafed at Democratic leaders' disinterest in whipping moderates against CIA Director Gina Haspel before her confirmation in May. And while Schumer has won praise from his red-state members facing tough reelections in November for his readiness to let them vote their own way, his base wants to see evidence that Schumer will meet his own call for an "all hands on deck" strategy.

"Whip the vote," they chanted, as some attendees fanned themselves in the 90-degree heat. "Whip the vote".

Original text at http://www.politico.com/story/...hall-canceled-692200

So would Chuckles be in more of a hurry to hold public events if he had more good news to deliver, or is he just feeling a little bit old these days? Somehow I think a younger, more Chuckie-esque Schumer would've considered a Supreme Court nomination a "substantive issue", or at least come up with a broader range of arguments than "abortion" and "Obamacare"!

At the same time, if there is no "procedural" way to block the nominee, then that leaves only "political" ways to block the nomination. Chuckles has a whole bunch of Dems in a lather, so why isn't he pushing for a political means of blocking the nomination? Maybe he doesn't think that politics will do it?

While I'm at it, weren't the libs trying to claim that Trump, having altered Obamacare somewhat, now owned it and made it "Trumpcare"? Apparently the New York City media didn't get the memo.

You will see the Dems REAL "war on women" if the nominee is a female, they will go absolutely apeshit.

quote:

Originally posted by lkdr1989:
This guy's recommendation has merit!

None of those can be hard and fast rules.

Clerking for Kennedy doesn't mean that a candidate is a Kennedy clone. And many seem to be forgetting that Kennedy was, for the most part, a pretty conservative justice. His swing votes came on a few issues.

I'd like to see fewer Ivies, just so there isn't only one perspective. But the reality is that the candidates with the premier experience come disproportionately from the Ivies. The other reality is that the really smart, qualified candidates tend to attend the Ivies, or Chicago, or Stanford. Not too many outstanding candidates go to other colleges and law schools. If their ambition is the federal bench, they know the path and resume that gets them there. It feeds on itself, but there it is.

And the "stench of Bush?" Whatever. (Seriously, what does that even mean?)

I think you have to take each candidate on her merits.

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:
You will see the Dems REAL "war on women" if the nominee is a female, they will go absolutely apeshit.

All part of the larger plan... getting the Dems on video bashing a successful woman...

An ivy league education helped our President. Not all ivy league grads are on the wrong side of things.

quote:

Originally posted by YellowJacket:

quote:

Originally posted by darthfuster:
Reagan's worst mistake was not Kennedy, it was the illegitimate Hughes Amendment

tens of millions of babies disagree.

quote:

Originally posted by deepocean:
An ivy league education helped our President. Not all ivy league grads are on the wrong side of things.

Which one?

How many Presidents were grads of Harvard or Yale, Princeton, Columbia, etc?

Which schools are considered Ivy League these days?