A Justice I’d Like to See
I think it’s obvious that an Obama judicial appointment is going to be a great fundraising opportunity for conservative groups even though the votes clearly aren’t there for a real Jüdgerdämmerung. But this would be fun:
Early front-runners for the bogeyman nod have cropped up: Darling mentioned Yale University Law School Dean Harold Koh, whom he called “very extreme.” Sekulow specifically called out 2nd Circuit Appeals Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor, an early favorite for the nod, as “to the left of David Souter.”
“This is not my ideal situation,” said Kay Daly, president of the Coalition for a Fair Judiciary. “Obama could conceivably put a justice onto the bench that literally would make Souter look like [Associate Justice Antonin] Scalia.”
If Obama knows someone who can literally make Souter look like Scalia, then I think Republicans better be careful before opposing the person in question. Maybe he or she can also turn Mitch McConnell into a toad or turn lead into gold. Watch out! Meanwhile, David Souter was appointed by George H.W. Bush so would it really be so crazy if Obama appointed someone who’s somewhat to Souter’s left? But ideology aside, I want the magician-justice!
44 Responses to “A Justice I’d Like to See”
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May 1st, 2009 at 4:10 pm
Sadly for progressives, no nominee could possible live up to the hype he or she will be getting from the GOP and its allies.
In fact, I’m not entirely sure Sotomayor in particular is to the left of Souter at all, and may well be a bit the other way.
May 1st, 2009 at 4:12 pm
Making Souter literally look like Scalia seems like a heartless, cruel thing to do to a decent man who has had to deal with Scalia all these years. Kinda like the last scene from Freaks.
May 1st, 2009 at 4:14 pm
“Even the Democrats, who took the filibuster to new levels, ultimately weren’t able to use it against Bush’s nominee,” Levey said.
How do these people sleep at night?
May 1st, 2009 at 4:15 pm
“This is not my ideal situation,” said Kay Daly, president of the Coalition for a Fair Judiciary.
I really feel Kay Daly’s pain that after losing 15 Senate Seats and the presidency over the course of two elections, a new Justice reflecting the makeup of the current government is not her ideal situation.
May 1st, 2009 at 4:16 pm
“Even the Democrats, who took the filibuster to new levels, ultimately weren’t able to use it against Bush’s nominee,” Levey said.
How do these people sleep at night?
The filibuster wasn’t taken to new levels until the Democrats regained the Senate. If they had simply stayed in their proper place there wouldn’t have been so many of them. Therefore, it’s the Democrats’ fault.
May 1st, 2009 at 4:24 pm
Who cares what the loser Repubs think? Obama should look to bring in the justices he wants – hopefully fully left of center – and cram them through the Senate, if necessary.
Forget bi-partisan support, the GOP has clearly proven with Cabinet nominations, etc that they are running as the party of NO. And the American people (except that stoopid 21%) don’t consider these dopes credible on any issue.
May 1st, 2009 at 4:28 pm
Obama should nominate Hillary in order to push the teabaggers buttons and create media “buzz” and then move Susan Rice to Secretary of State.
OR he should nominate a moderate Republican Senator so that the Democrats can pick up another Senate seat.
May 1st, 2009 at 4:29 pm
Remember all that conservative hand wringing during the Bush era about how Bush daren’t pick someone too far to the right? Because Democrats might have a problem with it?
yeah….I thought so.
May 1st, 2009 at 4:33 pm
What poptarts said. They would have to approve HRC.
May 1st, 2009 at 4:33 pm
“literally make Souter look like Scalia”?
You mean, he’d be so clean shaven that he’d make Souter look like he had a five o’clock shadow? He’d be seven feet tall? His arms would be so short that it’d seem like Souter was dragging his knuckles?
May 1st, 2009 at 4:33 pm
Incidentally, given that Sonia Sotomayor, like Souter, was first appointed to the Southern District of New York by George H.W. Bush, before being elevated to the 2d Circuit by Clinton, you would expect that Senators Snowe and Collins, at least, would be hard-pressed to oppose her.
May 1st, 2009 at 4:33 pm
I’m for Koh. He has already gotten the endorsement of the Conservative Legal Movement’s heavy hitters, hasn’t he? Not having to relitigate the matter would be magic.
May 1st, 2009 at 4:40 pm
That’s a hilarious post, Matt.
May 1st, 2009 at 4:41 pm
That would be a brilliant idea, Poptart, if there were any such mythical beasts.
May 1st, 2009 at 4:42 pm
Incidentally, given that Sonia Sotomayor, like Souter, was first appointed to the Southern District of New York by George H.W. Bush, before being elevated to the 2d Circuit by Clinton, you would expect that Senators Snowe and Collins, at least, would be hard-pressed to oppose her.
Not only that, but I would be curious to see how Mel Martinez, who isn’t running for anything ever again, filibusters the first Hispanic justice. Especially since she isn’t actually a liberal.
May 1st, 2009 at 4:49 pm
I, for one, look forward to Matthew’s forthcoming repeated posts calling all conservative opposition to Sotomayor racist!
Because everybody knows those posts are inevitable, in the event she is nominated.
May 1st, 2009 at 4:55 pm
Look, Al, if you want to Matt to stop, all you have to do is get conservatives to stop being racist. It’s not that hard. I’ve gone most of the day without being racist; I’m sure the GOP can do as well.
May 1st, 2009 at 4:57 pm
Is the regular Al on vacation or something? The Al posts have been pretty half-assed recently.
May 1st, 2009 at 4:57 pm
Suggestion for Supreme Court justice: Anita Hill.
Would make Thomas so uncomfortable, he may resign.
May 1st, 2009 at 5:09 pm
That’s even better than my idea. I want to start a rumor that Glenn Greenwald will be nominated. Anyone with half a brain would know it was a joke, so we’d only get 90% of the conservative blogosphere foaming at the mouth.
May 1st, 2009 at 5:10 pm
“Because everybody knows those posts are inevitable, in the event she is nominated.”
Considering that I’ve never seen Matt call a statement racist unless it was, in fact, racist, how?
May 1st, 2009 at 5:23 pm
It is somewhat bemusing to observe that both Souter and Sotomayor were raised to the bench originally by the elder Bush. He really was the image of comfortable, establishment complacency personalified.
It was people like him who left the country to the liberal consensus; it was people like him who could not move themselves to prevent the entrenchment of liberal consensus after the war; and it was people like him, with their chronic complacency, that made the post-Goldwater conservative uprising necessary.
He is what Margaret Thatcher would have called a pathetic, tremulous “wet.” A weakling. A knee-bender. A compromiser. A bleeding-heart. I sincerely hope there are no more of such figures in the conservative movement in the future.
May 1st, 2009 at 5:33 pm
Dems should find their own female teenager who passed the bar but was not president of the federalist society. She could twitter the oral arguments.
May 1st, 2009 at 5:37 pm
Since no matter who you appoint the Republicans are going to attack them as being an evil activist liberal somewhere to the left of Hugo Chavez, Obama might as well appoint an honest to goodness liberal
May 1st, 2009 at 5:42 pm
they are correct to fear that Obama will appoint the Shapesmith.
May 1st, 2009 at 5:47 pm
If only Noam Chomsky was younger, he would have been a better candidate for the rumor. Even wingnuts might see through this one. Actually, dont these guys really hate Al Gore, how about him?
May 1st, 2009 at 5:48 pm
If Obama knows someone who can literally make Souter look like Scalia, then I think Republicans better be careful before opposing the person in question. Maybe he or she can also turn Mitch McConnell into a toad or turn lead into gold. Watch out!
Great post! I literally LOL’ed at that one. Never lose your sense of humor…even when wingnuts are hurling ridiculous epithets and ad hominem attacks.
May 1st, 2009 at 6:07 pm
You want heads exploding, nominate Marjorie Cohn from the National Lawyers Guild. Imagining reading her opinions, makes me gleeful.
May 1st, 2009 at 6:23 pm
Is the regular Al on vacation or something? The Al posts have been pretty half-assed recently.
No, that’s vintage Al. I remember him trying to spin unhappiness with one of Bush’s appointments as concealed anti-papistism. He doesn’t believe in discrimination at all, and sees any accusation of the kind as some sort of weapon being deployed dishonestly, so he just blasts this stuff out there randomly.
More or less, he’ll lie and claim to believe stupid things to point out your imagined hypocrisy. It’s a weird and oddly amoral worldview.
May 1st, 2009 at 6:30 pm
Who is this mysterious jurist/plastic surgeon?
May 1st, 2009 at 7:15 pm
A word on the filibuster: Democratic and Republican filibusters can’t really be compared: a Democratic filibuster in tantamount to an insisence that measures gain a majority; but a Rethug filibuster is a demand for a superduperwhoopergazoopermajority. Today’s 40 Senate rethugs represent 30% of the population. Their filibuster nothing more or less than a veto of a 70% majority by a 30% minority. But Democratic minorities of recent Congresses typically represented more than 50% of the population.
One can reasonably view Democratic filibusters as essentially democratic maneuvers, and Rethug filibusters as the opposite. What is a Democratic filibuster but an ethical and principle corrective to our undemocratic system for electing representatives?
I don’t understand why the representation assymetries in the Senate aren’t more openly discussed on the Senate floor and elsewhere.
I guess it’s because our third-grade teachers told us that the Senate system is A-OK because MINORITY RIGHTS OMIGOD LULZ and many of us have accepted that as truth.
May 1st, 2009 at 7:26 pm
So you liked his son better? There’s a reason why conservatives are on the way out.
May 1st, 2009 at 9:49 pm
If Obama appointed someone who looked like Scalia then perhaps each of the two Justices could pretend to be the other for fun. Identical twins do that sometimes. Also, the original Scalia might feel less lonely, and perhaps less bitter. Imagine the poignant moments as each Justice learned valuable lessons about empathy by experiencing life through the other’s relationships. But think of this as well, and be warned, could Obama appoint someone who both looked like Scalia and also had a name very much like Scalia’s? Justice Anthonee Skaleea, for example. That would be diabolical. I’m assuming the folks at Redstate and Hot Air are on this and feverishly writing posts about the potential dilution of the Scalia brand.
May 1st, 2009 at 10:23 pm
Oops, lazy reading caused me to miss an important point. To correct my mistake and perhaps salvage my earlier comment, if the new Justice could make Souter look like Scalia, s/he could probably make him/herself look like Scalia as well – and perhaps all of the Justices, which would be horrible beyond description. Where might this power end? Is it limited to only making innocent people look like Scalia? It seems to be, according to Kay Daly. That’s good because it’s hard to see the evolutionary advantage to having power that only allows one to make people look like Scalia. In fact, looking like Scalia seems to be a positive disadvantage evolutionarily. But wait, perhaps this is an adaptation that gets rid of competition.
May 2nd, 2009 at 6:53 am
In all likelihood, Justices Ginsberg and Stevens will retire in the first term, too, so all of these people are going to have a shot.
And maybe we will get lucky and have Scalia and Thomas, go, too.
May 2nd, 2009 at 8:40 am
Speaking of which, my first reaction to the news was disappointment. Scalia and Thomas–they’re the justices who really need replacing!
May 2nd, 2009 at 9:01 am
So you liked his son better? There’s a reason why conservatives are on the way out.
No. But the elder Bush has very little to recommend for him either. He was of that weird, rather bizarre post-war generation of establishment WASPs who felt a strange obligation to shoot themselves in the foot out of some liberal-guilt, patronising sentiment. Ergo his appointment of liberal judges.
Thatcher used to detest those people; she absolutely abhorred the ugly spectacle of guilt-ridden Establishment figures patronising those “less well-off.” And her greatest achievement is the elimination of this sense of guilt and patronage in British establishment life, that had caused so much misery and retrenchment for post-war Britain, and directly led to the loss of Empire.
May 2nd, 2009 at 9:55 am
Rechte(r)dämmerung ?
May 2nd, 2009 at 10:55 am
And her greatest achievement–
is that when she finally shuffles off to hell, ten million Britons will form an orderly queue to shit on her grave. Really, Miley, you were a twinkle in the pizza delivery man’s eye when Thatcher received the wooden stake, so stop acting like you’re Boris fucking Johnson.
May 2nd, 2009 at 11:38 am
Forty comments in and no one has responded to “turn McConnell into a toad” with “How could you tell?”?
when she finally shuffles off to hell, ten million Britons will form an orderly queue to shit on her grave
ObLink
May 2nd, 2009 at 12:27 pm
After decades of ultra conservative activist Justices posing as strict constructionists (not unlike Republicans posing as small guvment activists while shilling for record deficits) being put forward by reactionary Republicans to swallow a little fair and balanced sandwich. To the left of Souter? I should hope so as the Supreme Court with its Thomas, Scalia, Alito, et al, are dangerously close to sinking the ship of the SCOTUS with its ultra biased starboard list.
May 2nd, 2009 at 5:47 pm
This post brings to mind my reaction to Valerie Jarrett describing her excitement over her job at the White House to Rachel Maddow on 4/29: “It is such a privilege to work in the White House, to serve our country. There really is no greater honor, no greater thrill in my life than public service, and so each day when I come to work I literally pinch myself.”
The image of Ms. Jarrett literally pinching herself each workday morning is initially humorous, but very quickly turns quite disturbing. Ms. Jarrett seems fairly competent at her job as a spokeperson, and for the most part comported herslf well when speaking to Ms. Maddow, but I really honestly did not want the mental image of Ms. Jarrett pinching herself–much less repeatedly and routinely.
And the questions the comment raises become even more disturbing: Does she wait until she closes her office door to do this pinching, or does she do it as she crosses the threshold into the White House, in full view of her coleagues and subordinates, or perhaps even White House visitors? Is this a conscious or a compulsive activity? Does she see this act of physical self-abuse as part and parcel of the thrill of public service, or an adjunct to it? Is this activity peculiar to Ms. Jarrett, or is it something engaged in by all of President Obama’s top advisors?
Unfortunately, this revelation came just after the President’s most recent press conference, so it will probably be some time before the press can get any additional information about PinchGate.
May 3rd, 2009 at 12:40 pm
Hey, if we could literally make Souter look like Scalia, then maybe we could convince him to stay and impersonate Scalia during votes, and then we could actually shift the balance on the court. The big question: is Shapesmith a liberal?
May 7th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
I say down with Koh, he is a dangerous transnationalist! Foreign courts should have no influence on U.S. courts!
http://thesovereigntysource.wordpress.com/2009/05/06/opposition-builds-against-koh-nomination/