On Breyer

Out goes, "voluntarily", one of the Just-Us-es who thinks the Federal government has unlimited power with no boundaries set by the Constitution, and who is scared of his own shadow. 

The timing is obvious; after the last Just-Us (Ginsburg) who thought far more of herself than anyone else decided to play for time and it blew up in her face, landing the seat open during Trump's administration, Breyer has obviously come under immense pressure to not only avoid that mistake but also to not wind up with a vacant seat post January of 2023 when the Democrats almost-certainly will not have the Senate majority.

Filibuster II de-fanging was stupid, incidentally, and the entire reason that January 2023 matters.  Absent that you'd need 60 votes to confirm, not 50+1 and the precise nature of the timing within a Presidential cycle would not matter at all.  Indeed it is precisely the partial destruction of the filibuster which the late Senator Reid initiated that has led us to where we are today and plenty of people like it.  Just have a look at the votes to confirm on the nominees Trump put up.

I do remind you that Breyer was confirmed originally under the original rules where you needed a filibuster-proof margin to get confirmed.  Indeed, we got all those who falsely claimed 100,000 kids were in the hospital with Covid-19 and similar inanity out of that process where a supermajority was required so save me all the bleating about how we'd all be so much better off without a requirement to get 60 Senators in agreement that someone should sit behind a federal bench.

It is my considered opinion that anyone who believes, having heard those oral arguments, that those three people are fit to sit on the Court is out of their mind.  This is not about philosophical or even political and doctrinal differences when it comes to interpreting the Constitution, all of which are worthy subjects of debate: It is simply a matter of insufficient intellectual firepower to bother checking an alleged factual claim against the formal data out of our own government agencies before opening one's mouth from the back side of the bench.

Why do I assert this?  Because there's always a philosophical or doctrinal dodge available to someone sitting on the court if some outcome is, based on your political leanings, how you want to rule.  To not even bother with the intellectual exercise required to get there, and instead attempt to rely on a claim that thirty times the "bad" that is truthful is occurring is wildly beyond any explanation other than a hard vacuum being present between the ears of the person doing so.  We are now down to trying to determine if that's age-related dementia or was always there in the first place.  Since until recently there was no live oral argument broadcast I can't say.  One would hope that's not representative of what has happened in the USSC over the last many decades and is a recent development; sadly, we'll have to accept that assertion without evidence.

In any event Biden and the Democrats, along with their "media partners" have now laid bare another ugly piece of what has happened over the last 20 or so years in the United States when it comes to hiring.

Specifically, the explicit qualifications for a USSC appointment are now that you're black and female first and foremost.

By the way Joe Biden isn't the first one to do this.  Ronald Reagan said he'd nominate a woman.  Not that he'd nominate the most-qualified jurist, who might happen to be a woman, but that he'd nominate someone specifically because of their sex.  He did, I remind you.  Sandra Day O'Connor, who was confirmed on a vote of 99-0.

It was wrong when he did it and its wrong now.

In fact its not just wrong: It's illegal in the United States -- with good reason.

It wasn't that long ago in this nation that we had entire seating sections in theatres that were no coloreds allowed, along with drinking fountains and similar.  We supposedly removed that from our society, or thus we have been told, and indeed that was the very subject of MLK's famous 1963 speech.

In 1964 it became unlawful to discriminate in public places or employment on the basis of race, color, sex or national origin when The Civil Rights Act was passed.

You should be alarmed, with just cause, that such a blatantly-unlawful act is back in full force, and worse, that our President is happy to announce it in advance and that such doesn't draw an immediate demand for impeachment and removal.

There is no possible way to sugarcoat this sort of issue, or make it "less important" when you get down to it: Race and sex-based discrimination is not only wrong its illegal when it comes to any sort of job, housing or other public and economic activity and has been for decades.

Apparently Joe didn't get the message, and neither did we as a society.

After all, he promised to do exactly this during the campaign, didn't he?

Answer this America: Why wasn't a political promise, made during a campaign, to engage in both racial and sexual discrimination in the matter of public employment good for an instant removal from consideration as a blatantly-unlawful act under long-standing Statute, and why isn't it now? (read more)