I believe that he literally thinks what he is saying. I think he is that bubbled from us.
But he's met his colleagues! He was familiar with their confirmation hearings! He knows McConnell held Scalia's seat open for a year so they could cheat Gorsuch onto the court! He watched Kennedy retire strategically!
It's not that he's bubbled from us, it's that if he believes what he's saying he has no idea what's going on in his own institution!
I wish I knew. Do you feel this is a distinct phenomenon from the legislature, where a bunch of older Dems profess belief in the delusion that bipartisanship is possible and everything more or less works?
In the legislature, I can sort of wave my hands and explain things with a combination of self-deception and corruption coming out of too much influence from donors. For Breyer, I am utterly mystified.
One of my very good friends from college was a Breyer clerk. I usually see her once a year, but of course COVID meant I missed this year. I feel vaguely guilty every time people on twitter are talking about how you should try to convince your Breyer clerk friends to talk him into retiring. Maybe at some point I'll have more insight into this.
If Manchin retired, are we sure that we would get a Democrat?
Oh, I didn't mean Manchin and Sinema should retire, just that they should vote like Democrats.
I assume the answer is that you don't get to the Supreme Court without becoming at least a little high on your own supply.
This is ex recto, but what are the odds he's not aware due to senility? If so, is there any removal process other than impeachment? It would be funny in a very sick way to see the Democrats try to impeach him and Republicans oppose it...
4 I don't think it's the same. Even Senators who know that bipartisanship isn't possible still have to spend a lot of time acting like it is, and like it's a legitimate goal, because there's a must-win section of their electorate that really wants to believe that people ought to be able to work stuff out. Let's say it's the 43rd to the 53rd percentile of voters who want that shit. They have to be pandered to, in each issue, until it becomes too obvious even for the most deluded fantacist, that something people really want won't happen.
A decisive slug of the electorate just won't pay close enough attention to understand why things are happening as they are. So they end up voting for Obama twice, and then Trump, because Obama couldn't get anything done, and Trump surely would.
I imagine that Justice Breyer doesn't understand himself to be part of a team that includes Joe Biden, or anyone else, and so he's free to stay for as long as he thinks he's doing a good job. And he is doing a reasonably good job.
4 I don't think it's the same. Even Senators who know that bipartisanship isn't possible still have to spend a lot of time acting like it is, and like it's a legitimate goal, because there's a must-win section of their electorate that really wants to believe that people ought to be able to work stuff out. Let's say it's the 43rd to the 53rd percentile of voters who want that shit. They have to be pandered to, in each issue, until it becomes too obvious even for the most deluded fantacist, that something people really want won't happen.
A decisive slug of the electorate just won't pay close enough attention to understand why things are happening as they are. So they end up voting for Obama twice, and then Trump, because Obama couldn't get anything done, and Trump surely would.
I imagine that Justice Breyer doesn't understand himself to be part of a team that includes Joe Biden, or anyone else, and so he's free to stay for as long as he thinks he's doing a good job. And he is doing a reasonably good job.
6: wait - is this *the* courtney milan??? 🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩 completely star struck!!!!
I had the same reaction, but I think it's a regular being anonymous.
1 and 10 have it, I think. There is a certain kind of procedural liberal who looks at what McConnell did with the Scalia vacancy and says: That was terrible! We must never try to game nominations to the Supreme Court again. Lawyers are particularly prone to this sort of thing: Rules and norms -- the very rule of law itself! -- is what's at stake here.
14, 15: We are presidential for a reason, people!
Sorry! I thought it was obviously presidential, but perhaps she's at just the right level of fame that it's not entirely obvious. Still from context, the actual Milan clerked while Breyer was on the court so would know a lot more than one Breyer clerk!
I didn't know until just now that Justice Breyer's father in law had been a prominent Tory politician in the 50s and early 60s. Not that this would have any impact on his thinking he's doing the right thing, every day, staying in his current job.
I see from the list that I kind of know one of Breyer's former clerks. I have no reason to think he would find my opinion on the matter even remotely persuasive, though. Our most complete discussion was an argument about the character of then soon-to-be Chief Justice Roberts. I think my position has been borne out by events, and he probably does as well.
I don't know her, but if KBJ is as good on the circuit as people think she'll be, she'd be a very worthy successor.
I'm less convinced that the rest of you that Breyer should retire right now. Today Senator Manchin has veto power or the nomination. Most likely this will remain the case for another year, so we are no worse off. The balance will shift if a Senator dies, and the Republicans are just as old as the Democrats, and some of them aren't vaccinated. It's also possible that the Senate will become more democratic after 2022, and it's possible that after 2025 or maybe sooner President Harris will make the pick.
There's a public rumor that he wants to be succeeded by his former law clerk Ketanji Brown Jackson, whose nomination for the DC Circuit is now pending, and he's hanging on because it would be best for her to spend a year on the Circuit Court.
As for Breyer's internal views, he was a federal judge when Brennan and Blackmun were on the Supreme Court, and he served alongside Stevens and Suter for decades, so he may be less certain than we are about the ideology of the next Republican appointee on the Supreme Court.
Fun fact on "political" resignations: Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan are all successors to Republican-appointed judges who voluntarily resigned during Democratic presidencies.
Blackmun, Souter, and Stevens didn't just voluntarily resign during Democratic presidencies; they intentionally, strategically reassigned during Democratic presidencies because they understood the difference. Is Breyer really that much stupider than those guys?
Blackmun, Souter, and Stevens didn't just voluntarily resign during Democratic presidencies; they intentionally, strategically reassigned during Democratic presidencies because they understood the difference. Is Breyer really that much stupider than those guys?
Apparently he is. Or he figures that the majority is lost for decades anyway, so who cares? Or maybe there actually aren't fifty votes in the Senate to replace him with someone similar in ideology.
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bleg: recommended headphones for zoom living? Windows, cheapish, wireless preferred.
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Does pf or anyone actually know the kind of liberal described in 16? I feel like I can deduce their existence from the way American politics work -- they're like the political equivalent of dark matter in galaxy rotation curves -- but I don't think I know any, so I don't really get how they think. I find them hard to understand.
I have a well-off (okay, rich) liberal friend who still goes on and on about how bipartisanship is what we need now. Does that count? She is not dumb. But she seems completely invested in the idea that a change in tone is all we need to get back to a well functioning democracy. I think that socially she is surrounded by republicans just because of geography and money and though she disagrees with them she can't really see her lifelong friends as the enemy, so she disregards or discounts what the actual republican party stands for. At that level the type seems ordinary to me.
Of course the type is ordinary. You elected one president.
I thought it was obviously presidential
Would've thought a former SC clerk would understand separation of powers better. (I kid, but now I wonder, what is the acceptable set of names to use for "going presidential"?)
Anyway, mulling over this I'm leaning towards Charlie's take. Reading far too much into it: his goal is individual excellence, which he correctly believes he has achieved. His rulings are good rulings and he'd be happy if all decisions were 8-1 against him. He doesn't see his role as having allegiance to the left-of-center politics team. If the court is even broken it isn't the job of individual justices to fix it by timing their departures; if the form of the Court needs ot change, Congress should change it. This is clearly a bonkers perspective--as if he were an independent legislator hearing Washington's farewell speech and rolling his eyes about all that faction stuff. Once one faction has decided to politicize a mechanism of government, all other factions must fall in line or perish in the evolutionary shift.
28: Do you know if her friends endorse the "Biden stole the election, 1/6 was antifa" narrative?
29: Surprisingly, I don't know Biden personally, so I don't have much insight into his mental state.
I don't know who you mean, but I do know that guy's mental state.
I occasionally see Mrs. Breyer around but I'm guessing she doesn't want to hear about it any more than he does.
22 Right, Kennedy got Kavanaugh, why shouldn't Breyer get KBJ? That's such a specific thought, though, and, distant that I am, I just don't see anything at all that is evidence that Justice B is actually motivated by this particular thought. (She was apparently on the short list for the nomination what went to Garland -- and maybe that also reflected Breyer's influence?)
To the OP, though, I'll say that whatever is going through his head, I can't imagine demonstrators at the Court or at his house being a positive addition to the mix.
The waiting a year thing is dumb, just put KBJ on the Supreme Court now.
Yeah, it's not exactly that I think demonstrators are a good idea, I'm just stuck on how you communicate with someone in his position. Isn't there anyone he listens to who can beg him to get his head straight?
Interpretive dance? Anyway, my dad retired at 72 and he said it was because he noticed that judges became less good (I forget exactly how he put it but he wasn't talking about dementia) at that age.
31.1 I don't know. Obviously she would not hang with firebreathing types, but there are enough well-bred "we certainly think Trump is awful (but we're still voting for him probably, and Antifa is scary)" republicans around to fill out a school reunion.
"Does pf or anyone actually know the kind of liberal described in 16? I feel like I can deduce their existence from the way American politics work -- they're like the political equivalent of dark matter in galaxy rotation curves -- but I don't think I know any, so I don't really get how they think. I find them hard to understand."
Cass Sunstein.
27: There are a lot of them in my insular little world. When I am at my desk in our open office, I sit next to a guy whose professional responsibilities include a solid understanding of how politics, courts and the federal government work. He's a smart person, politically center-left and very pleasant to be around. Because I am not so pleasant to be around, I derisively refer to him, to his face, as being a member of the alt-center, and give him endless shit about opinions like, "The media should have more oped columnists who are sympathetic to Trump. It's only fair."
I feel pretty confident that he would be against Breyer resigning.
What's his reaction to post-1/6 developments?
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LOL at gnoled dropping an unfoggedism in an argument about Summers.
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"The lurkers support me in email"? That's not us, that's old internet -- maybe all the way back to Usenet?
"The lurkers support me in email"? That's not us, that's old internet -- maybe all the way back to Usenet?
Double posting is pure Unfogged, though.
You'd think that if a majority of Republicans really thought the January 6th insurrectionists were antifa they'd want a Congressional investigation. Yeah, I know...
43: I'll ask when I'm sitting next to him again. But I personally don't see 1/6 -- or its aftermath -- as some kind of break with what went on before. There are certainly dumb centrists who found that circumstance persuasive, but my centrist colleague isn't that dumb, I don't think.
You don't see 1/6 as a break (I assume) because you knew the Republicans were capable of it. If you're a "can't we all get along" type, it should appear as a break to you.
And really, it is a break. There's a break between "capable of murder" and "murder". I thought a Trump coup was in the range of possible outcomes of his Presidency, but I can see why someone would have disagreed with that. I can't see how someone could disagree in the aftermath of an actual attempted coup.
See my vest, see my vest, see my vest.
50: I understand the distinction you're making, but nobody was actually murdered on 1/6. The only homicide was one of the protesters being shot by law enforcement.
Does Joe Biden confront Trumpism with the level of loathing it deserves? I don't think so -- even though I think Joe's approach is appropriate. I think, politically, it's wise for Joe to pretend at this stage that we aren't in a country that is hopelessly riven. I think, for a different reason, a lot of individuals are motivated to do the same thing.
Centrists -- especially the ones who refer to themselves that way -- tend to define their views in relation to the views of other people. They like to understand the folks on the other side, no matter what the other side does.
Sicknick was fatally injured by the mob, who grievously injured others of the officers that resisted them.
I'm really not sure how publicly acting in denial of an apparently mortal threat to our erstwhile democratic civil society is a good choice for Biden but I've been wrong plenty of times before.
Of course, so have the third way centrists. Way more than they ever seem to acknowledge.
Regarding 54.1, we've got the medical examiner's finding that the cause was a stroke, and was not hastened by any injury. I think the medical examiner is likely to be reliable here.
Regarding 54.2, I won't claim a high level of confidence that I'm right about this. Maybe the right thing to do is to level with the American people and talk about the ongoing threat to democracy in terms that are justified by facts. My intuition -- and I'd argue that history backs me up on this -- is that Americans are fine with withholding democracy from some people, and some of those Americans have to vote for Democrats if Democrats want to win.
Regarding 54.3: The Third Way centrists have eaten a lot of crow over the last decade or so -- from the lax regulation of financial markets to the failure to provide ample stimulus in a recession to the stupidity of the Iraq war. You've still got Larry Summers out there Larry Summers-ing, but a lot of them -- including Biden himself -- have obviously learned a thing or two.
> The Third Way centrists have eaten a lot of crow over the last decade or so
I see very little evidence of this, on a few points Biden specifically has shifted left slightly, but this hasn't been to universal centrist agreement.
The Third Way centrists have eaten a lot of crow over the last decade or so
Here's a very long article by Adam Too/ze on Krugm/an's public intellectual trajectory that's probably on point, and highly praised on twitter, but I keep putting off reading it. Feel free to summarize it for me!
Two opinions from the Supreme Court today, both unanimous, both overturning the Ninth Circuit. The one by Justice Breyer is kind of a big deal: holding that tribal police can detain and search non-Indians traversing a reservation on a public highway (in this case US 212). The other case had to do with how appellate courts deal with contradictory evidence in immigration cases. The Ninth Circuit had a rule that unless the immigration judge made an explicit credibility finding regarding the petitioner, the petitioner's testimony must be accepted as true. Justice Gorsuch wrote the opinion: no, "The Ninth Circuit's deemed-true-or-credible rule cannot be reconciled with the INA's terms. Instead, immigration cases like these should proceed as follows. First, the factfinder--here the IJ--makes findings of fact, including determinations as to the credibility of particular witness testimony. The BIA then reviews those findings, applying a presumption of credibility if the IJ did not make an explicit adverse credibility determination. Finally, the court of appeals must accept the agency's findings of fact as "conclusive unless any reasonable adjudicator would be compelled to conclude to the contrary."
58.1 -- To clarify, tribal officers can search and detain non-Indians suspected of violating non-tribal laws. If you're a non-Indian and you see a tribal officer approaching your stopped vehicle, don't leave your meth in plain view.
57: I haven't read that, but this related very long Tooze piece on the face of it casts a wider net, and more relevant, as Yellen and Draghi are (hugely powerful) practitioners as well as academics.
But that said, they both appear to be very inside-the-finance-ministry moves from center leftward, a very different story than among voters or elected politicians.
55: he just happened to die of a stroke right after being beaten half to death? a surprising number of police brutality deaths have been ruled to be slow-growing prostate or cancer that reached a crisis point at the moment the victims were being knelt on by a police officer carrying several medicine balls. they're selling and I ain't buying. also, fuck breyer, all my homies hate breyer.
let's pretend that "or" went magically away. or even non-magically; some mechanical application would do.
My vague impression, and I can't remember what this is founded on, was that there was at least something in the medical examiners report that supported the conclusion that they genuinely could not find a causal connection between the beating and the stroke, which required a finding of natural causes, but they didn't believe it was a coincidence either, just a causal connection they couldn't pin down.
(More generally, findings like that are usually just bad faith like the Chauvin defense, but I think this one was real.)
alameida!
(I don't buy that the stroke was unconnected either.)
I get that you can't prove it as related, but even without it, beating on a cop alone is a very serious crime if you aren't a Republican activist.
64: Maybe from this: '[chief medical examiner] Diaz told the Washington Post that there was no evidence that Sicknick had an allergic reaction to chemicals or was otherwise injured, but stated that "all that transpired played a role in his condition."'
The actual cause of Sicknick's death is not even remotely relevant to any fucking thing about 1/6. Has become a stupid shibboleth for misogynic tic white guy pseudo populist scumbags . Stupid even to discuss.
So much about the whole event is a bellwether for a probable slide into semi-democratic autocracy. Reaction of Rs of course, but also Ds in congress, mainstream political news media and all of us.
What is the correct tactic to fight it? Who the fuck knows. We are deep into an Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds thing and who even the fuck knows.