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A Reminder For 2008
- Thread starter Bartholomew Roberts
- Start date
Ahh. Well there's yer problem. You should read the entire train of thought. Makes more sense that way.
Just like you didn't bother to address my point about McCain not shopping at the ACLU? The bottom line, no matter how you dice it, is that McCain will not appoint judges as bad as Obama. Thats just a fact.
Frankly, I think well-poisoning is a cheap tactic and personal attacks have no place on this forum.
There's no poisioning here at all. You've sat here for months and dumped on the current administration. Most recently you've criticized Heller as essentially being worthless. I don't know what it takes to satisfy you, but I do know that its nothing that is going to happen in the real world. Again, the all or none mentality will always get you the latter, and by what you've written over the last several days, you'd rather have that because of some unintelligible principle you seem to hold rather than get some of our rights back.
The real difference without the fuzzy logic is that Obama has stated he will use the criteria of being socially liberal and McCain will use the criteria of restricted government.
The fuzzy logic that Obama will do nothing tho change the court since liberal Justices are the ones most likely to retire while McCain MIGHT appoint a less then uber conservative justice.
In the majority opinion Scalia described the very problem with the sitting SCOTUS.....a must read. The SCOTUS needs Justices NOT using their positions to shape opinions to fit socially liberal agendas. Keeping it the SAME (as the fuzzy logic stated) is in it's self harm. It needs to have MORE Justices that are able to see and read the Constitution from the perspective of the time and mindset it was AUTHORED. not from their current political perspectives.
The most likely vacancies ARE most likely from the 'descenter' list of Heller. That is the very point, THOSE are the seats that need be filled by Justices that read the Constitution for what it says not to twist it's words into strained interpretations that form a conclusion not written.
The vacancies WILL get filled, filibuster or not. SCOTUS vacancies, unlike Federal Court vacancies will NOT be left open for a next administration to fill. The President will select the nominee up for confirmation. The next President WILL be either Obama or McCain short an act of God. These two have stark contrasts in what their qualifiers will be.
Bottom line, vacancies being likely to be from those that decented Heller, Obama WILL give us a social liberal leaving the SCOTUS in a continued state or McCain WILL appoint a Justice that re-establishes the SCOTUS to a condition of reading the Constitution for what it says. Filibuster all they like but those two options are where it lays.
Now it is possible that Obama will nominate a social liberal that converts into a constructionist Justice but the odds are very long. McCain might select a Justice that converts to social liberalism but also, the odds are long. I don't like to bet long odds when the stakes are so high. Remember, Mexico has a Right to Bear Arms in their Constitution also but they lost that right to 'common sense gun laws' and have no recourse now as their high court is occupied by Breyers, Souters, and Ginsbergs, those that know better then what the Constitution says.
The stakes are very high. Fuzzy logic has gotten us a far too risky SCOTUS.
The fuzzy logic that Obama will do nothing tho change the court since liberal Justices are the ones most likely to retire while McCain MIGHT appoint a less then uber conservative justice.
In the majority opinion Scalia described the very problem with the sitting SCOTUS.....a must read. The SCOTUS needs Justices NOT using their positions to shape opinions to fit socially liberal agendas. Keeping it the SAME (as the fuzzy logic stated) is in it's self harm. It needs to have MORE Justices that are able to see and read the Constitution from the perspective of the time and mindset it was AUTHORED. not from their current political perspectives.
The most likely vacancies ARE most likely from the 'descenter' list of Heller. That is the very point, THOSE are the seats that need be filled by Justices that read the Constitution for what it says not to twist it's words into strained interpretations that form a conclusion not written.
The vacancies WILL get filled, filibuster or not. SCOTUS vacancies, unlike Federal Court vacancies will NOT be left open for a next administration to fill. The President will select the nominee up for confirmation. The next President WILL be either Obama or McCain short an act of God. These two have stark contrasts in what their qualifiers will be.
Bottom line, vacancies being likely to be from those that decented Heller, Obama WILL give us a social liberal leaving the SCOTUS in a continued state or McCain WILL appoint a Justice that re-establishes the SCOTUS to a condition of reading the Constitution for what it says. Filibuster all they like but those two options are where it lays.
Now it is possible that Obama will nominate a social liberal that converts into a constructionist Justice but the odds are very long. McCain might select a Justice that converts to social liberalism but also, the odds are long. I don't like to bet long odds when the stakes are so high. Remember, Mexico has a Right to Bear Arms in their Constitution also but they lost that right to 'common sense gun laws' and have no recourse now as their high court is occupied by Breyers, Souters, and Ginsbergs, those that know better then what the Constitution says.
The stakes are very high. Fuzzy logic has gotten us a far too risky SCOTUS.
Bartholomew Roberts
Moderator
GoSlash27 said:So the only 3 justices likely to be replaced are the 2 liberals followed by the swing voter.
So you don't see any problems with these Justices being replaced (including the possible swing vote) just as waves of litigation that will put more teeth into Heller have kicked off?
Just a second ago weren't you expressing disappointment with no guarantee of incorporation and now you are saying that a 33% chance of losing the swing vote in Heller is not a big worry as the Chicago/San Francisco cases kick off?
The difference is that Republicans will fillibuster Obama's craptacular choices but will not fillibuster McCain's craptacular choices.
Well, lets examine past appointments and see how they came out on Heller:
Democrat-appointed Justices:
Ginsburg: anti-Heller
Breyer: anti-Heller
Republicans appointed the remainder of Justices with Souter and Stevens being the two anti-Heller Republican-appointed nominees (though for what it is worth, Stevens is a Ford-appointee and post-Watergate, Ford did not have the political capital to do squat. Stevens might as well have been appointed by a Democrat).
So just looking at past historical trends, it looks to me like we have a 100% chance of an anti-RKBA appointment from Obama and even if McCain isn't any better than pseudo-conservatives such as GWB, GWHB, and Ford, he still stands a 72% chance of picking a pro-RKBA Justice. I'd also note that past Justices picked by Republicans who did not meet your standards of conservatism include guys like Thomas and Alito.
All in all, I know which way I would bet.
Bush has really hit home runs with his SCOTUS judges. I'm pleased that 40% of the Heller majority was appointed by Bush and those judges will be serving for a long long time to come. I am glad that I voted for him in '00 and '04 when it comes to judges. I'm not anywhere near 100% happy with him but he has made excellent appointments when it comes to judges. Gore and Kerry appointees would surely have stripped us of our rights.
Obama's picks for SCOTUS judges will be uber-liberal judges who won't use original public meaning in their deliberations. Instead they will push a left-wing collectivist dogma using whatever legal fictions they can conjure up. The Republicans can filibuster them, but if the battle begins soon enough Obama will eventually get his nominees in. An Obama judge is at least a 100% bad choice; we can only count on the Republicans to filibuster the 110% bad choices.:barf:
McCain may not be as successful as Bush was at picking judges, but his picks will be far superior to Obama's. He is far less likely to pick judges who believe in leftist dogma invented decades AFTER the Constitution and BOR were written. There's no guarantee that McCain will pick good judges, but there's no guarantee that McCain will pick bad judges either.
Obama's picks for SCOTUS judges will be uber-liberal judges who won't use original public meaning in their deliberations. Instead they will push a left-wing collectivist dogma using whatever legal fictions they can conjure up. The Republicans can filibuster them, but if the battle begins soon enough Obama will eventually get his nominees in. An Obama judge is at least a 100% bad choice; we can only count on the Republicans to filibuster the 110% bad choices.:barf:
McCain may not be as successful as Bush was at picking judges, but his picks will be far superior to Obama's. He is far less likely to pick judges who believe in leftist dogma invented decades AFTER the Constitution and BOR were written. There's no guarantee that McCain will pick good judges, but there's no guarantee that McCain will pick bad judges either.
I had thought to myself that my pole was pretty firmly planted in the ground that I would not be voting for McCain. That was up and until the Heller decision. That was my wakeup call. Now, I must vote for the lesser of two evils keeping in mind that the lesser of two evils just might appoint less evil judges to the Supreme Court. When I read Steven's and Breyer's dissents, I had to judge them as being at least partially evil. No one can come up with the excuses and reasoning they came up with to abridge a right explicitly enumerated in our Bill of Rights, without some evil intent, in my opinion.
Thus, I've come up with a new justification to vote FOR McCain. In addition to hoping for a reduction in the risk of having more loopy justices like Stevens, Breyer, Souter and Ginsburg appointed, I want Obama to lose, pure and simple. Why? Several reasons, but here's the biggest one.
Many people on the right say they won't vote for McCain because he is not conservative enough. I understand their positions and I don't disagree. However, the democrats have lost the last two elections because they ran people who were too liberal. So what did they do this time around? They ran someone who was even more liberal. Obama is the leftmost Senator in the US Senate. By having McCain win, maybe the democrats will get it through their thick skulls that far left loonie candidates typically get defeated in Presidential races. This might cause them to run a more "moderate" candidate, which would then allow the republicans to shift to the right in thier nomination.
Now, some folks might say that democrats would never get that smart. Look at their strategy to take over congress. They ran candidates who were almost, if not more so, as conservative as the republicans they ran against. Coupled with the Republicans forgetting that they are supposed to be the party of less spending and smaller government, the democrats beat them in key races and took over both the House and the Senate.
I'm going to go with McCain, clothespin firmly blocking both nostrils. If he loses we are in a world of hurt. If he manages to win, I will watch what happens in 2012 and how the democrats react. If Obama was a moderate candidate, and not just "pretending" to be one, I might not vote for McCain. Since Obama is so far left, even though he's pretending to move towards moderation, I can't let him win. There's too much at stake, because Obama's a left wing marxist, much more so than even Gore and Kerry were.
Thus, I've come up with a new justification to vote FOR McCain. In addition to hoping for a reduction in the risk of having more loopy justices like Stevens, Breyer, Souter and Ginsburg appointed, I want Obama to lose, pure and simple. Why? Several reasons, but here's the biggest one.
Many people on the right say they won't vote for McCain because he is not conservative enough. I understand their positions and I don't disagree. However, the democrats have lost the last two elections because they ran people who were too liberal. So what did they do this time around? They ran someone who was even more liberal. Obama is the leftmost Senator in the US Senate. By having McCain win, maybe the democrats will get it through their thick skulls that far left loonie candidates typically get defeated in Presidential races. This might cause them to run a more "moderate" candidate, which would then allow the republicans to shift to the right in thier nomination.
Now, some folks might say that democrats would never get that smart. Look at their strategy to take over congress. They ran candidates who were almost, if not more so, as conservative as the republicans they ran against. Coupled with the Republicans forgetting that they are supposed to be the party of less spending and smaller government, the democrats beat them in key races and took over both the House and the Senate.
I'm going to go with McCain, clothespin firmly blocking both nostrils. If he loses we are in a world of hurt. If he manages to win, I will watch what happens in 2012 and how the democrats react. If Obama was a moderate candidate, and not just "pretending" to be one, I might not vote for McCain. Since Obama is so far left, even though he's pretending to move towards moderation, I can't let him win. There's too much at stake, because Obama's a left wing marxist, much more so than even Gore and Kerry were.
Anybody regret the 2000 or 2004 elections now?
Considering the number of lives and the amount of money wasted in Iraq, yes.
Iraq (as off topic as it is) is going very well in case you haven't checked lately. IRAQIS perform about 75% of the military offensives right now and IRAQ pays for over half the cost of it's own security and is continuing to widen both gaps between what we do for them and what they do for themselves. We are continuing to bring troops home and reducing our presence. Political reconciliation is also going well and provincial elections to take place in October.
Not even Obama is willing to talk about Iraq as a negative at this point. The closest he got was 'a responsible withdraw' versus his past immediate and complete withdraw. We are currently performing that responsible withdraw. Once we eliminated AlQ's influence in trying to instigate a civil war we could now resume the corse of a free Iraq as an example of Democracy in the middle east and as an ally in the heart of that breeding ground for terrorism.
As for whether the investment made for another solid ally in the heart of the middle east and an example of a free democracy as an alternative to Islamic Fascism to influence change is yet to be determined and for history to decide. One thing is sure, killing them continually throughout time would be an endless exercise. An alternative example is far more influential.
Not even Obama is willing to talk about Iraq as a negative at this point. The closest he got was 'a responsible withdraw' versus his past immediate and complete withdraw. We are currently performing that responsible withdraw. Once we eliminated AlQ's influence in trying to instigate a civil war we could now resume the corse of a free Iraq as an example of Democracy in the middle east and as an ally in the heart of that breeding ground for terrorism.
As for whether the investment made for another solid ally in the heart of the middle east and an example of a free democracy as an alternative to Islamic Fascism to influence change is yet to be determined and for history to decide. One thing is sure, killing them continually throughout time would be an endless exercise. An alternative example is far more influential.