Poll: Sen Whitehouse begins process to put SCOTUS under ethics rules. Is it needed?

[Sunburn74]

Yep - next time Dems have a trifecta (whenever that is...) they should take a minute in like May of the first year and eliminate the filibuster and pack the court. Conservatives will be outraged but the voters won't care and it will be long forgotten 18 months later when the next election happens.

It's like with Merrick Garland - Republicans bet the voters wouldn't care about that and they were right.

Agree. Voters won't care. Do the right thing for the good of the country.

 

[fskimospy]

Agree. Voters won't care. Do the right thing for the good of the country.

Yes. Show me one time voters cared about changes to parliamentary procedure. (There are zero)

I think adding justices will cause a larger societal debate but that’s why you do it a year+ from the next election. I sincerely doubt people will care by then.

 

[Greenman]

SCOTUS will just say those limits are unconstitutional.

That's amusing until you think through the consequences.

 

[fskimospy]

That's amusing until you think through the consequences.

Sorry, what are those consequences? I have thoughts as to what they are but I wonder what yours are.

 

[MrSquished]

Sorry, what are those consequences? I have thoughts as to what they are but I wonder what yours are.

The consequences are he might actually have to have morals and use his brain so those consequences will never happen

 

[Greenman]

Sorry, what are those consequences? I have thoughts as to what they are but I wonder what yours are.

Exactly the consequences you mentioned. No mater what's done to bring them under control it will be ruled unconstitutional. At this point I don't see constraints as being necessary, but as the political divide widens it seems likely it will become so.

 

[dainthomas]

Exactly the consequences you mentioned. No mater what's done to bring them under control it will be ruled unconstitutional. At this point I don't see constraints as being necessary, but as the political divide widens it seems likely it will become so.

They'd probably say the slightest ethical rules would have to be implemented via constitutional amendment, which is a ridiculously high bar. The only other check the other branches have is impeachment, and given said political divide it's tough to conceive of a scenario where members of a party would vote to remove one of their own.

Yet another reason this two party system is so effed. As far as things have fallen the last 30-40 years, I can't imagine where we'll be in another 30-40. Some major structural changes will need to be made eventually.

 

[hal2kilo]

I think that you are calling Republicans destroying themselves Democrats nailing it. Anyway, in my opinion, nailing it can't happen without a synthesis of opposites at a higher degree of understanding articulated to a significant degree. Only a synthesis of opposites, in my opinion, characterizes real understanding.

Yea, that's what fly over America is thinking right now.

 

[Greenman]

They'd probably say the slightest ethical rules would have to be implemented via constitutional amendment, which is a ridiculously high bar. The only other check the other branches have is impeachment, and given said political divide it's tough to conceive of a scenario where members of a party would vote to remove one of their own.

Yet another reason this two party system is so effed. As far as things have fallen the last 30-40 years, I can't imagine where we'll be in another 30-40. Some major structural changes will need to be made eventually.

I don't see it that way. But I've been wrong before.
The problem I see is that extremism get's attention, it gets views and that makes it profitable. Start giving away boner pills and toe fungus cures and half the extremist sites would disappear overnight.

 

[Moonbeam]

Yea, that's what fly over America is thinking right now.

I was describing what democrats nailing it would have to include in my opinion, not what I think most liberals consider what nailing it is much less conservative Americas who are terrified of anything lacking black and white certainty.

I also reject calling rural America dismissively as residents of fly over land. You are still part of a delusional world in my opinion, where you can point a finger at others and assign blame. Humanity blames because humanity is asleep. How do you blame people who are asleep? How could they be otherwise?

 

[MrSquished]

I was describing what democrats nailing it would have to include in my opinion, not what I think most liberals consider what nailing it is much less conservative Americas who are terrified of anything lacking black and white certainty.

I also reject calling rural America dismissively as residents of fly over land. You are still part of a delusional world in my opinion, where you can point a finger at others and assign blame. Humanity blames because humanity is asleep. How do you blame people who are asleep? How could they be otherwise?

So you think all the evil humans have perpetrated over the millennia is purely because some people were asleep? Come on, there is some root evil in many people and that is true in a majority of the Maga crew

 

[Moonbeam]

So you think all the evil humans have perpetrated over the millennia is purely because some people were asleep? Come on, there is some root evil in many people and that is true in a majority of the Maga crew

Just imagine how much blame you have dumped on people that would have been totally unwarranted if you are wrong. Then ask yourself if that is something you would welcome seeing? The problem about blame and blaming others is that you learn to blame others by being blamed yourself.

At any rate, while it is useless, doubtlessly, to argue the point I believe you could take all the babies born on our coastlines and switch them with all the babies born in the heartland and Father and Mothers throughout the nation would in 18 years be at war with each other. I consider your opinion to be as absurd as the idea there is a Catholic or a Mormon gene. There is no such thing as evil other than belief that evil is real. Good and evil are ideas maintained by a capacity to think abstractly which is possible because of language. Language creates associations between sounds and emotional experiences. Evil is what creates pain and pain is the consequence of childhood so called bad behavior. Bad behavior is in the eye of the beholder, made up of thought that creates notions that have no reality.

If you want to understand the truth of this define and prove what is the absolute good is. You won't be able to prove jack shit.

 

[MrSquished]

Just imagine how much blame you have dumped on people that would have been totally unwarranted if you are wrong. Then ask yourself if that is something you would welcome seeing? The problem about blame and blaming others is that you learn to blame others by being blamed yourself.

At any rate, while it is useless, doubtlessly, to argue the point I believe you could take all the babies born on our coastlines and switch them with all the babies born in the heartland and Father and Mothers throughout the nation would in 18 years be at war with each other. I consider your opinion to be as absurd as the idea there is a Catholic or a Mormon gene. There is no such thing as evil other than belief that evil is real. Good and evil are ideas maintained by a capacity to think abstractly which is possible because of language. Language creates associations between sounds and emotional experiences. Evil is what creates pain and pain is the consequence of childhood so called bad behavior. Bad behavior is in the eye of the beholder, made up of thought that creates notions that have no reality.

If you want to understand the truth of this define and prove what is the absolute good is. You won't be able to prove jack shit.

Right. So bad behavior is just in the eye of the beholder. So that means there is inherently nothing wrong, it's just in the eye of the beholder. Why should anybody be punished for anything then? It's just a point of view thing. Anarchy much.

If you want to live a life that thinks humans are all blank slates but yet somehow there have been thousands of years of evil perpetrated by man, you do you. Do you think man learned to do evil by watching trees grow or birds fly? Oh wait, there is no actual evil, it's just a perception thing. Nothing innately evil in humans. Maybe there is a big guy in the sky pulling all our strings? Driving our totally blank slates into madness?

Good luck bro.

 

[Moonbeam]

Right. So bad behavior is just in the eye of the beholder. So that means there is inherently nothing wrong, it's just in the eye of the beholder. Why should anybody be punished for anything then? It's just a point of view thing. Anarchy much.

If you want to live a life that thinks humans are all blank slates but yet somehow there have been thousands of years of evil perpetrated by man, you do you. Do you think man learned to do evil by watching trees grow or birds fly? Oh wait, there is no actual evil, it's just a perception thing. Nothing innately evil in humans. Maybe there is a big guy in the sky pulling all our strings? Driving our totally blank slates into madness?

Good luck bro.

As I said we are asleep due to the fact that we believe that we know the truth based on the unconscious assumption that the assumptions we make are true and are thus never examined. We are unaware that we make and have them. The assumption you make here is that without good and evil there is no such thing as truth or moral standards. And because the values we hold are programmed and not self realized we are unaware of our true human nature. The notion that morality is genetic, that even monkeys have an inner sense of justice, remains like light from a candle in the bright light of the sun, the fear that if our inculcated programmed morality is false we are guilty and blameworthy. because that is what anchored those false ideas in place. You hate the blind when you should pity them but you can't because you have no pity for yourself.

The only difference between you and me, in my opinion, is that I think I happen to have had better teachers.

 

[trenchfoot]

The SCOTUS should be restrained with Ethics Rules for sure, although I think the hubris, arrogance and inflated confidence of the corporate sponsored corrupted conservative ones would simply defy those rules in so many deviously inspired ways and dare the other two branches to do something about it.

 

[cytg111]

The Hobby Lobby leak looks bad for Alito. But there's worse news.

The real story is the religious right's growing influence over the court.

www.msnbc.com

You’re fired!

 

[fskimospy]

Exactly the consequences you mentioned. No mater what's done to bring them under control it will be ruled unconstitutional. At this point I don't see constraints as being necessary, but as the political divide widens it seems likely it will become so.

One of the justices’s wives was implicated in an attempted coup and he is actively attempting to keep information about that away from investigators. That seems bad.

 

[soundforbjt]

One of the justices’s wives was implicated in an attempted coup and he is actively attempting to keep information about that away from investigators. That seems bad.

But it wasn’t successful so it doesn’t count.

 

[Greenman]

One of the justices’s wives was implicated in an attempted coup and he is actively attempting to keep information about that away from investigators. That seems bad.

Uncle Thomas, as the left so lovingly likes to call him, should recuse himself from any issues involving his wife his wife.

 

[fskimospy]

Uncle Thomas, as the left so lovingly likes to call him, should recuse himself from any issues involving his wife his wife.

I don’t call him that so I don’t see why that’s relevant.

That being said, he doesn’t recuse himself. So, what’s the answer?

 

[kage69]

Uncle Thomas, as the left so lovingly likes to call him, should recuse himself from any issues involving his wife his wife.

Works for pissed off moderates and independents too, "if the yoke fits" and all. I've noticed people familiar with his record call him that now, pretty sure it was explained to you the last time you clutched your PC pearls over it too.

Your crowd can't even seem to condemn the mass murder of gay and trans people at a club, you know, the 'sinners and heathens' as the right so lovingly likes to call them. Should we go out on a limb and say that labeling didn't bother you enough to post about it (or the murders)?

How about you take that indignation of yours and just pound it up your ass? Grats on the recusal admission though I guess, it's more than many of you can manage.

 

[iRONic]

^^ Can I have your permission to marry that post? I love it so much!!

 

[fskimospy]

I find most of these dueling recriminations tiresome but that aside we need to accept as a country that in 2021 the right wing tried a coup when they lost an election. Anyone who can’t admit this is burying their head in the sand.

 

[kage69]

I find most of these dueling recriminations tiresome but that aside we need to accept as a country that in 2021 the right wing tried a coup when they lost an election. Anyone who can’t admit this is burying their head in the sand.

I don't feel holding others to a basic level of consistency is a vice. Hypocrites deserve to be called out as much as liars IMO.

But you're right, anyone still trying to portray the insurrection as a simple riot is definitely burying their head somewhere, we just differ on the location.

 

[Muse]

This all comes down to Congress doing their job, and if they were willing to do that we would not be in this mess in the first place.

Well, now that we're here what are we going to do? Wait for the majority to die off? Can't be the best idea.