Booker - SMH

[Doctor Phibes]

@George-K said in Booker - SMH:

@Doctor-Phibes said in Booker - SMH:

What a stupid way to select the Supreme Court.

This "tradition" goes back a long time, to when the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee grilled Thomas and before that, Bork when he was a member.

It would probably be cheaper and equally accurate to just use a dunking stool.

[taiwan_girl]

It seems to work, but once they are selected as judges, there is really no "accountability".

I do understand the reasons - they want the judges to be able to rule on cases without haveing to worry elections, etc.

So, overall, I think it is a good process to have, but I do think that there should be a age limit. When the Supreme Court was started, the average age experience was probably 60 years old. I think that people died from sickness and disease before their mind had a chance to deteriorate. Now, that is not always the case. Maybe 80 should be the top age and after that, they have to retire.

[Mik]

I disagree. In Florida I got to meet my aunt's beau, who is 92 and an absolute riot. He's as sharp as anyone you will meet. Mental deterioration is not a given.

[George K]

It used to be university policy that you can't be departmental chairman after age 65. I don't know if that policy still exists.

I loved my chairman, but he was 63. When my other opportunity opened up, I took it, knowing that Ed was going to step down in 2 years, and with my meager academic record, I was not feeling secure in my job.

[Doctor Phibes]

@taiwan_girl said in Booker - SMH:

It seems to work, but once they are selected as judges, there is really no "accountability".

I do understand the reasons - they want the judges to be able to rule on cases without haveing to worry elections, etc.

So, overall, I think it is a good process to have, but I do think that there should be a age limit. When the Supreme Court was started, the average age experience was probably 60 years old. I think that people died from sickness and disease before their mind had a chance to deteriorate. Now, that is not always the case. Maybe 80 should be the top age and after that, they have to retire.

I don't have a problem with justices being old or getting the job for life. It's the ridiculous partisan circus that takes place beforehand. The people doing the questioning are by and large party hacks, and more concerned with massaging their base (I use the term advisedly) than in selecting appropriately qualified people. There's a pretty good chance that all the talk about child-pornography this time was a wink to the QAnon imbeciles and their idiotic conspiracy theories, and all that stuff about whether or not the guy had a beer during the week - GMAFB. Since when did Congress folk become the arbiters of clean upstanding living?

[Horace]

Justices don’t need to be sharp to render tribal decisions on all cases with a political valence. So I suggest age is only important to forecast how long the justice can be expected to perform their tribal duty.

Since conservatives are intellectually and morally superior people, they don’t have as much tribalism to their decisions. But the leftist justices may as well be trained rats, knowing which lever to push so they can maybe someday have an inspirational movie made about their life, starring a courageous actress with somehow identical political opinions, but a hundred times prettier.

[taiwan_girl]

@Mik said in Booker - SMH:

I disagree. In Florida I got to meet my aunt's beau, who is 92 and an absolute riot. He's as sharp as anyone you will meet. Mental deterioration is not a given.

I agree, it is not a given, but the "odds" are that someone will not be as mentally good at 85 (or 92) as they are at 55. ALso, physical energy is not as good.

[Mik]

You do realize you are advocating age discrimination.

[jon-nyc]

@Mik said in Booker - SMH:

You do realize you are advocating age discrimination.

She does, Boomer.

[Doctor Phibes]

Haven't we had enough of old duffers running things?

There's a lower age limit on being President. Probably wouldn't hurt to have an upper one, too.

[George K]

Yeah, it's Mollie Hemingway, but here's what was done to Kavanaugh BEFORE the Blasey-Ford accusation surfaced:

1. Supporters of Kavanaugh being called “complicit in evil” by Sen. Cory Booker soon after he was nominated.

2. ProPublica trying to concoct a “scandal” about Kavanaugh’s baseball tickets with a far-ranging search for information about his habits at baseball games.

3. Teen Vogue columnist Lauren Duca saying during a “Rise Up for Roe” speaking tour that “textualist originalist” is just code for “white supremacist patriarchy.” That might be news to Judge Jackson, who described her own approach to legal interpretation in terms of text and original meaning.

4. The press sending public information requests to the town of Chevy Chase, where Kavanaugh’s wife Ashley worked, seeking her emails on the Chevy Chase township board.

5. Democratic senators actually refusing to meet with Kavanaugh until over a month after his nomination was announced. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell met with Jackson less than a week after she was nominated.

6. Then Minority Leader Chuck Schumer claiming that keeping any documents from Kavanaugh’s time working at the White House confidential for only Judiciary Committee members viewing them was “bogus.” Democrats this time around refused to even seek documents from Jackson’s time serving on the U.S. Sentencing Commission, let alone to delay the process to allow their production.

7. Protesters conveying their extreme disrespect for the nominee by dressing like handmaids in red gowns and white bonnets — and others including a man dressed as a giant condom who were no better.

8. Interruptions — by senators themselves — from the moment the hearing opened as part of an orchestrated plan to delegitimize the hearings, starting with Sen. Kamala Harris. It took nearly an hour and a half for Chairman Chuck Grassley to finish his ten-minute statement. By the first lunch break, there had been 63 interruptions. Sen. Durbin’s ten-minute opening remarks took a whopping ten minutes, with zero interruptions.

9. Protesters funded by Planned Parenthood and other dark-money groups standing up and shouting and getting dragged out by police every few minutes, with arrests totaling over 200 by the end.

10. An online furor accusing former White House staffer Zina Bash of trying to transmit a “white power” symbol when her hand appeared to make the “OK” sign.

11. Sen. Patrick Leahy accusing Kavanaugh of perjury by performing ridiculous linguistic gymnastics.

12. Harris kicking off her presidential campaign by trying to trap Kavanaugh with Perry Mason–like questions about whether he had discussions with employees of Kasowitz, Benson, and Torres. Whatever she thought she was driving at, her questions were barely intelligible, and it turned out there was no there, there.

13. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse holding up signs touting his conspiracy theories about conservative groups and trying to probe any connection between Kavanaugh and the Federalist Society, which fell flat given the fact that every sitting Supreme Court justice, and even Senator Whitehouse himself, had at some point spoken at Federalist Society events.

14. Sen. Booker’s stunt trying to break rules to leak confidential documents that would make him a martyr to (as it turned out) non-existent Republican pushback on his disclosure requests. Booker compared himself to Spartacus, and the materials he released simply showed Kavanaugh giving reasonable advice in support of positions Booker himself believed in.

15. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg noting that the nomination process was “a highly partisan show” and that we should go back to how things were.