Comment by Kattywumpus | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Kattywumpus | Hacker News Reader

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If Trump and the Republicans confirm a new Justice, Democrats have indicated they will pack the Supreme Court, appointing as many Justices as they feel necessary to get the rulings they want.

"If they show that they're unwilling to respect precedent, rules and history, then they can't feign surprise when others talk about using a statutory option that we have that's fully constitutional in our availability," he said. "I don't want to do that. But if they act in such a way, they may push it to an inevitability. So they need to be careful about that."

-- Tim Kaine, D-Va, https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/democrats-war...

The Constitution and Bill of Rights are interpreted through the Supreme Court. If you pack the court, you have essentially destroyed the legitimacy of Constitutional government. The consequences of this cannot be overstated.

All Constitutional rights will be up for reinterpretation and elimination. This is a very precarious moment in history. Perhaps the end of American history as we have known it. That's a grandiose statement, but it's not an incorrect one.

The Republicans have won the popular vote once since 1988. They have no politically legitimate claim to those seats.

They wouldn't in a direct democracy, but the US is intentionally not a direct democracy. So, no.

Power isn’t decided by popular vote so I’m not sure what you mean?

The popular vote means jack shit. They do have a politically legitimate claim to those seats.

This is amusingly silly. Changing the composition of the Court is not unheard of and FDR, not exactly known as the poster child of "destroying the legitimacy of Constitutional government," nearly did it in 1937 (and likely would have if not for another untimely death.) https://today.law.harvard.edu/if-democrats-win-in-november-s...

FDR can absolutely shit on by his own party for the idea. He ended up backing down.

A lot of what FDR did was overturned as unconstitutional, though.

Consider Maduro (Venezuela). He and his government are enduring all kinds of enormous attacks from all around the ("Western") world and horrible malicious interference by USA, but the only thing that we know of that Maduro's side did wrong (arguably) was packing the Supreme Tribunal of Justice.

https://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/Pages/NewsDetail.aspx?...

"Venezuela: UN report urges accountability for crimes against humanity"

“The Mission found reasonable grounds to believe that Venezuelan authorities and security forces have since 2014 planned and executed serious human rights violations, some of which – including arbitrary killings and the systematic use of torture – amount to crimes against humanity,” said Marta Valiñas, chairperson of the Mission.

“Far from being isolated acts, these crimes were coordinated and committed pursuant to State policies, with the knowledge or direct support of commanding officers and senior government officials.”

I appreciate the link to the UN's press release for the new report, but note that my point stands: the attacks on Maduro happened long before this report, so long before they could have been justified.

Furthemore, considering the attacks on Maduro included a smearing campaign from media and governments all around the "Western" world, I will read the Mission's report with a heavy dose of skepticism. (Of course, on the other hand, it wouldn't surprise me if the Mission's report was honest.) An example warning sign: it seems strange to entrust the Mission to only three people. Another example, the Mission relied heavily on blogs and similar for the report.

I could have just as easily pointed out that Maduro didn't allow the opposition to run in 2018, or that Venezuela has been starving since 2012, etc, but the your comment coupled with news of the recent report was too much of a contrast not to point it out.

I'm not going to keep commenting about this though. Ultimately, I can't convince people who do not want to be convinced. The Western far Left supports murderous clients much like the governments it condemns - probably moreso. But the West's governments are actually elected, and they operate in the real-politick world. The far Left does its support for tyrants voluntarily as part as its struggle against other Western factions - treating the locals as pawns even more than the Western governments do.

I am not in any way invested in the Maduro regime, but it would be simply stupid to "want to be convinced" of something like this. When I saw a lot of journalistic coverage of Maduro that is not just non-neutral in the presentation, but even uninterested in presenting facts (at least in manner that the reader could verify); so basically just Maduro-bashing - of course I am going to be skeptical.

The uncertainty with the Venezuela-related facts is not the only thing that raises suspicion; the other thing is how deficiencies of democracy (even when the issues are much more clear cut) in non-socialist South America are under-reported compared to Venezuela (take, e.g., the coup in Bolivia, or how the former Brazilian president was seemingly framed, or the Pegasus spyware). One has to wonder why is it that all the big media organizations and most Western governments try to intervene in Venezuelan politics, and not, e.g. in such problems in some Indian state or in, e.g., some ex-USSR republic. I'm not claiming I know the answer, but it seems that some powerful but hidden motivations do exist. (I guess the simplest answer for the journalism part is that journalists need something sensational to write about and it's easy and acceptable to bash on some socialist government.)

From my cursory readings over the last few years, there has been far more coverage of Brazil than of Venezuela, and inasmuch there has been coverage of Venezuela it focused on the US-Venezuela relations angle (which is comfortable to the regime) rather than the 'Venezuelans are dying' issue (which isn't).

But again, this is a distraction. There will always been some excuse by the far Left which is basically 'look over there!'. The issue is not press coverage, but the crimes of the 'socialist' regime (that's how they call themselves, but not the practice, which is why Chavez's daughter's wealth is estimated in the billions).

The legitimacy of the court is long-gone--its nothing more than a political body. Don't like the precedent? Just overrule it and claim it was 'poorly argued'.

Especially funny, considering that Ginsburg was perhaps the most likely to vote based on how she thought the country should operate, and not on stare decisis or leaving issue to congress.

Tell that to Merrick Garland.

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