The Supreme Court and the 2016 Presidential Election

Equal rights may not be a progressive idea in the strictest constitutional sense but in practice it certainly takes a progressive policies to enact certain changes.

Giving a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants? Why that's just equality. But wait, it's mostly a progressive push by liberals to do so.

Giving gay people the same rights under the law as heterosexual people? That's equality, and yet it was a mostly progressive stance that most (particularly conservative) states had outlawed for a long time.

How do 'constitutionalists' interpret the amendments. They were not strictly covered in the constitution.

And no, it's patently false to say not supporting one means one doesn't support any of them. The world is not as black/white as that.

That strawman argument precludes the idea that there is interpretation of the amendments. I don't believe the spirit of the amendment was no limitations on arms of any kind. People don't own functioning RPG's or plastic explosives. We've decided that's not acceptable. To say we're at a point where criminals shouldn't have access to automatic weapons or mentally ill people any weaponry is not a violation of the spirit of the law.

 

FDR was many things, but it's pretty clear he was not a fool.

 

Only a fool would call FDR a fool. Your post is an absurd and twisted conglomeration of far right bull ****, with all due respect, Bobby. FDR wasn't perfect, but no president in our history has been perfect. Franklin Roosevelt is considered by an overwhelming majority of historians as one of the greatest presidents in United States history.

 

Breaking News:

Sanders says he would ask President Obama to withdraw Merrick Garland's nomination to the Supreme Court if he is elected.

I'm very disappointed with Senator Sanders. The President made an excellent selection to the nation's highest court and certainly deserves the support of Democrats for his nomination of Judge Garland, especially from a prominent candidate running for president. So what does Sanders do? Undercut the President. This mistaken act by Sanders just gives Republicans another weapon to use in their unprecedented attempt to block even hearings on Garland's nomination, much less a vote.

You blew it, Bernie. If you don't win, all you accomplished is to undermine the President. If you do win, you will get your chance to pick at least 2 additional SC justices, in my humble opinion. Just a perplexing decision by Senator Sanders.

Mycentraloregon.com

 

Those historians are wrong. FDR's programs did more harm than good and prolonged the depression by nearly a decade. Most of what he tried to do was unconstitutional and was struck down, and one of the things that wasn't struck down is one of the single biggest problems this country faces today, social security.

Now sure, some people romanticize FDR, and I get it. When you look at things with rose colored glasses you could think that FDR was great, but that's just not reality.

 

Your commitment to a hot take in every thread is really impressive. I don't say that sarcastically, it really is something.

 

See, I don't see it that way. I see it that liberals want to make things equal for all people. Their policies usually reflect this as well and they are willing to make the government responsible for the welfare of its people. If you do this to an extreme extent though, you will have problems. Without liberalism though we'd have no healthcare, we'd have no unions, and no regulations which as we can see...is not always a good thing...Conservatives think that if you just let the market handle itself then things will work itself out. What happens instead though is greedy companies decided to save a few more cents on the dollar instead of having any concern about what they may be doing to the environment and mega monopolies, which really hurts the small businesses they claim to protect.

As for FDR...well I'll believe historians before you. FDR aggregate historical ranking is 2nd...2nd.

Was he perfect, of course not. He presided over an extremely tough time though. You are knocking him for an economy during the biggest war event in human history and I guess wouldn't find that unfair because he's a liberal. The great depression was a global event. I'd say thanks to FDR we came out of that and WW2 stronger. I don't need to say that, history says that.

I get that he's was a huge liberal and I get that the New Deal wasn't perfect...but to say that FDR was a fool like he was a joke of a president is way overboard.

 

Consider the source, and just ignore it. He lives to bomb threads with hyperbolic rhetoric. (shrug)

 

It's a cross between Colin Cowherd and Dylan Gwinn.

 

FDR a fool and not great? I've heard it all...

Oh, what could've been had FDR and JFK not have been taken from us prematurely.

 

Has anyone paid any attention to what Sanders did today? I am royally pissed off, and I'm interested in what others think about a so-called Democrat undercutting a sitting Democratic President who is attempting to get a moderate/centrist, who is an enormously qualified gentleman, into a vacant chair on the Supreme Court. It is a huge mistake. I'm sorry I voted for him in the Texas primary. I wish I could take that vote back. I am well and truly pissed off. All he has done is provide another "excuse" for Republicans to hide behind in their attempt to prevent even hearings on the man's confirmation. In the unlikely event that Sanders actually wins the nomination and wins the general, he will have every opportunity to put a couple of his own picks on the highest court in the land, in my opinion.

Senator Bernie Sanders is NOT a Democrat. Not in my opinion, and I wouldn't have said that yesterday. He may be running in the Democratic primaries, but his action today shows him to be exactly what he said he was for decades. An independent who doesn't care about the party. Hell, an independent that doesn't care about the President. An independent who has stabbed our President in the back. It is astonishing. I don't know what he was thinking, who he is trying to appeal to, or if it was a selfish political act that he thinks will somehow help him win some primary states. That's hard to believe.

The man has lost it. He has certainly lost me.

http://www.politico.com/

 

Bobby judges presidents on an F to D- scale.

While I agree that what Bernie said was ill-advised, I don't think it's so egregious that you should wish to take your primary vote back. He is appealing to his bread-and-butter base, hardcore liberals. He's still hammering the republicans, though.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bernie-sanders-merrick-garland_us_56ebe53ee4b084c6721ff46c

 

I will add that I do think it's a mistake to appeal to his most staunch constituency, as those people are already behind him. An appeal to the middle would have been a more effective move.

 

I don't think it amounts to anything close to "undercutting." First of all, the Senate Republicans have already said no hearings no matter what, so the president isn't really any footing that could be undercut to begin with.

Secondly, if anything, Bernie saying that he'd rather pull Garland and put a MORE PROGRESSIVE candidate up if he wins the election actually reinforces the idea that Obama picked a "moderate" and the Senate should have hearings on him.

 

Sanders is trying to have this issue both ways. Undercut President Obama while attempting to appeal to the liberal wing of the Democratic Party and presumably to independents. Well, I've been a liberal Democrats for several decades and he has lost my support. I'll add that there are many independents out there who will be wondering what the hell is going on and are as confused as I am as to what Sanders is thinking. I'll vote for him in the unlikely event that he wins the nomination, but only because the alternative doesn't bear thinking about.

Thanks for the comment. -

 

He's not undercutting Obama or the Democrat. He's clearly in favor of a hearing, a vote and for Garland to be confirmed. He's just saying he would like a more progressive judge and that if he's elected (and obviously if GOP has yet to confirm), he would want Obama to withdraw the candidate so he can nominate a more progressive one.

 

I actually thought of the "maybe he's trying to help the President by doing the opposite" of what the vast majority of Democrats, independents and yes, some Republicans would expect him to do. I had to dismiss that idea, justtxyank. It just doesn't sound like Sanders to me. He's trying to win, and somehow he thinks that this move will help. It won't, not in my opinion. Thanks for the comment. -

 

That's the deal, he is trying to remind the GOP obstructors that Garland is the most centrist nominee they are likely to see since they probably can't elect a President for 8 years or more. Holding the specter out that, in the future when it's time to replace the older judges, and they possibly won't hold the Senate, they will see ever more leftist nominees.

all old men die.

 

Carpet bomb you mean.

 

What is the extent of your expertise on the era and economics? You don't know what you're talking about so much so that you don't know that you don't know what you're talking about.

you're out of your element bobby.