Nancy loves her blue dogs. She campaigned down in South Texas for one of the bluesest in 2020 for Cuellar, who was in the Dubya's Texas Gov and has the financial support of the Koch Bros. Congrats to Nancy for narrowly beating the progressive young Latina who was backed by the Justice Democrats. Nancy and the usual contented Dem moderates can hypocritically denounce criticism of Cuellar and the other Blue Dogs as being divisive and a reason to not even talk about court packing even if the two GA Senate seats go Dem.
Henry Cueller won TX 28 rather handedly even though Trump won McMullen and Zapata counties in that district and was close in other counties in that district. Just because a Democrat US Rep won that district doesn't mean that any Democrat can win that district. Given that Trump had plenty of support in that district it looks like Pelosi backing a Blue dog was the right call.
lol Well I suppose we cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the Justice Democrat Cynthia Cisneros native and resident of Laredo, could not have won against the Republican white woman in the at least 78.5% Latino District. -- 2016 figures. Can't prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the white woman GOP candidate might not have become the first Republican along the border in So Tx to win in years. Hey I might be talking to a lobbyist friend in Austin this week who knows Cuellar and is probably familiar with whether Cisneros could have beaten the Republican in that District.
Adding justices essentially destroys the supreme court... it means we are voting for it every election cycle and that is not the way it was designed.
Yes you cannot prove that Cisneros would've won. As you yourself have noted Trump did do better among Latinos than predicted and in TX he did better than expected in the Rio Grande Valley. Note Zapata County that Trump won is in the Rio Grande Valley. What that indicates is that race / ethnicity might not have been as important to the Latino vote in TX as thought. Given Trump's support in that district also shows that the district doesn't trend Leftward on issues and since Cueller still won it handedly there were likely many voters who still split their vote and that most of the district is satisfied with where Cueller stands ideologically.
It’s happening j/k https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-biden-idUSKBN2BW22G President Joe Biden on Friday formed a bipartisan commission to study potential U.S. Supreme Court changes including expanding the number of justices beyond the current nine, a goal of some liberal Democrats hoping to end its conservative majority. Under an executive order signed by the Democratic president, the 36-member commission would consider the "merits and legality" of potential reforms to the nation's top judicial body including adding justices or imposing term limits on their service instead of the current lifetime appointments. The number of Supreme Court justices has remained at nine since 1869, but Congress has the power to change the size of the bench and did so several times before that. Imposing term limits would likely require a constitutional amendment, though some scholars have proposed ways to accomplish it by statute. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said the commission will represent the full political spectrum. It will include liberal and conservative legal scholars, former federal judges and lawyers who have appeared before the court. It will hold public meetings and have 180 days to report its findings. Biden promised in October, late in the presidential election campaign, to establish the commission - a step that enabled him to avoid taking a firm position on the proposal floated by some liberals to expand the court, though he has opposed the idea in the past. Republicans fiercely oppose the idea of what is sometimes called "court packing." Some Democrats and liberal activists have said all options including expansion must be considered to counter an entrenched conservative majority that could threaten abortion rights, civil rights, gun control and access to healthcare in the coming years. Republican former President Donald Trump was able to appoint three justices during his four years in office, giving the court a 6-3 conservative majority. Democrats accused Republicans of "stealing" a Supreme Court seat in 2016 when the Senate, then controlled by Republicans, refused to consider Democratic President Barack Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland to fill a vacancy left by the death of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia. Republicans at the time said it would be inappropriate to confirm a justice during a presidential election year. Their gambit paved the way for Trump in 2017 to replace Scalia with another conservative, Justice Neil Gorsuch. ...
My guess this is less about more justices actually being added to the USSC and more about Biden placating Progressives. Considering the problems Democrats are having just getting united on removing the filibuster I think there is even less chance of adding USSC Justices.
Manchin and at least two other Dems are against this. He's keeping his promise for now. They usually throw something this extreme when they've blown their entire political load. I do think it'll be brought up more if there's some tea party debt ceiling event but I think it's in both parties interest to focus on reflating post covid recovery and the appearance of getting out of the way. Government plugging a lot of leaks in the economy right now....
https://reason.com/volokh/2021/04/1...-cut-for-the-scotus-commission-and-who-didnt/ excerpt First, almost everyone on the list is a constitutional law professor–by design. Biden's executive order stated that "Members of the Commission shall be distinguished constitutional scholars, retired members of the Federal judiciary, or other individuals having experience with and knowledge of the Federal judiciary and the Supreme Court of the United States (Supreme Court)." If the President wanted to reform one of the most important and long-standing institutions in America, why on earth would he limit his search to "constitution scholars"? Constitutional law only makes up a small part of the Court's docket. And–present company included–constitutional scholars have a very limited perspective of important societal issues. *** What are we left with? A group of mostly-reasonable people who will write a reasonable report that will make no one happy. I agree with Slate: Looking at the membership and goals of this commission, it seems obvious that Biden does not really want to pursue court reform. Rather, he appears eager to scrape the issue off his plate by tossing it to (and I say this lovingly) a bunch of eggheads who have spent their careers marinating in the fantasy that the Supreme Court is apolitical. Perhaps the one up-shot of this experiment is that all 36 members will be able to write articles about their experience. Who knows? Yale Law School can host a two-day symposium with all of the members, and publish a collected book volume in a few years. At that point, there will still be nine Justices.
Turley comments: https://jonathanturley.org/2021/04/...rt-commission-to-consider-court-packing-plan/ excerpt: The 36 members include many respected and thoughtful academics. It is also heavily liberal and Democratic. Professor Josh Blackwell notes that, by his count, there are only around seven moderate to conservative members giving an over 2-1 advantage for liberals on the Commission. As Blackwell notes, that is better than many faculties which have only one or two (if any) conservative faculty members. Over the last couple of decades, faculties have purged their ranks of conservative and libertarian faculty members. The result is a diversity of thought that often runs from the left to the far left on faculties. This imbalance is often used in Washington to produce letters with hundreds of law professors universally denouncing conservative nominees or supporting liberal proposals. Such ideological bias is now an assumption on faculties, panels, and journals. That does not mean that these members will not give serious consideration to these issues. Some of these members did sign the letter seeking the rejection of Justice Brett Kavanaugh or supporting the impeachment of President Trump. However, while those stands are likely to alienate conservatives, such views do not necessarily mean that they cannot do a fair or thorough job. *** There are also proposals for the creating of entirely new courts or limiting the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. This parade of horribles will now be the focus of this Commission. The hope of advocates is that they will recommend some form of substantive change but they will face opposition in the Congress which (unlike the Commission itself) is almost evenly divided. These calls may appeal to the most extreme voices in the Democratic Party, but the public is overwhelmingly opposed to court packing schemes. Yet, there is a smaller percentage that drives both parties in Congress because they have a pronounced impact in primaries. The Commission may offer some political cover to Biden but it is unlikely that many on the far left will be satisfied with cosmetic changes after 180 days. additional commentary at The Week: https://theweek.com/speedreads/9767...s-why-bidens-supreme-court-commission-may-dud
from the essay: "I am particularly disappointed to see Nadler in this group. I never imagined that I would see the day that the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee would step forward to call for raw court packing. It is a sign of our current political environment where rage overwhelms reason."
Democratic leadership gonna drown this bill in the bathtub. The court does need to expand, a lot, and we need to ditch lifetime appointments. Single terms only, somewhere between 10-15 years.
Is it a Zen or contentment thing or what to always try so desperately to seem contented with injustices that you also occasionally note? Puzzled
That what you seek is within yourself grasshopper... It's interesting that you read a comment about the likelihood of something as contentment. That statement is less about what should or should or not happen but an acknowledgement of where things stands politically. You can choose to ignore that but I suspect that's why you consider "contentment" a pejorative when you're always frustrated.
for what it's worth, my wife had a case heard this week in the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals where the three judges on the panel were all in their 80s. I listened to the arguments, each judge struck me as still sharp and eager to cut through lawyer bullshit when lawyer bullshit was occurring. Two originally appointed by Clinton and the third by Jimmy Carter. While sympathetic to the idea of term limits, I think there are also some benefits that come with having experienced judges on the bench who are not past their sell-by dates.
We need to engineer our systems to protect against obvious risk. Having lifetime appointments just invites chaos. It's simply unnecessary. Even if we expanded the court 3 times over and put in 10 year terms it would still be an job held by a vanishingly small number of people and the standards would remain astronomically high. Since Nixon the average seat has been held for almost 25 years vs. the average for the entire history of the court being about 15 years. Justices are sitting longer and longer.... Thomas - 30 years (age 72) Breyer - 26 years (age 82) Gorsuch - 4 years (age 53) Kavanaugh - 2 years (age 56) Barrett - 1 year (age 49) All of these folks are likely, if not definitely, going to break 30 years on the court. No one person should have that much influence on the government.
