The decision of the Supreme Court to end the use of race in college admissions was not unexpected. Indeed, the rulings in cases involving Harvard and the University of North Carolina ended decades of muddled 5-4 decisions. Yet, President Joe Biden seemed to go into full attack mode and actually claimed that the Court gutted the constitutional guarantee that “all men and women are created equal.” In declaring that this Court was not “normal,” Biden further insisted that these admissions decisions and the Dobbs abortion decision reversed the gains that “we fought a war over in 1860” to secure.
In an interview on MSNBC’s “Deadline: White House,” President Biden accused the Court of ignoring what “the Constitution says: We hold these truths to be self-evident, all men and women are created equal, endowed by their creator.” That is actually a reference to the Declaration of Independence, but it was the substance of the point that was so baffling.
In barring the use of race in admissions, the Court believed that it was protecting that very guarantee. It erased what the Court viewed as a glaring anomaly in its cases in the treatment of racial discrimination in education as opposed to employment. It was the capstone opinion for Chief Justice John Roberts who in 2017 declared: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” In 2006, Roberts added: “It is a sordid business, this divvying us up by race.”
The Court was enforcing what it saw as the “self-evident” guarantee referenced in the Declaration and later protected in the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court reaffirmed that all men and women are created equal and will be treated equally in both education and employment.
The President is not alone in such hyperbole. Figures like Whoopi Goldberg actually asked whether the decision means that we are “heading to no women in colleges soon? Who knows.”
We actually do know. An opinion rejecting the use of racial classification to determine who goes to college could not be read by anyone as endorsing the exclusion of other groups.
The truly baffling statement was Biden’s claims over the Civil War. By leaving questions like abortion to the states, Biden claims that the Court was reversing what was gained in that war. The criticism came in response to an opinion insisting that there is no place for racial discrimination in higher education. That would hardly seem an argument that would be embraced by the Confederacy.
President Biden has long taken liberties with our constitutional history. Many of us have repeatedly objected to claims that he has made in areas like the Second Amendment. One of his most repeated lines is that the Second Amendment was passed with the understanding that certain guns would be banned and adding “You couldn’t buy a cannon, when in fact the Second Amendment passed.”
That happens to be utterly false. Yet, even after the Washington Post declared Biden’s understanding of the Second Amendment to be false, he has continued to make the same false assertion over and over again.
Now Biden has moved on to the Civil War and his revisionism is about as subtle as Sherman’s scorched “March to the Sea.”
The Civil War did not end federalism or states rights. It denied the right of the states to secede and ultimately fulfilled the pledge to equality first made in the Declaration of Independence.
One can have good-faith disagreements on whether the use of racial criteria is constitutional affirmative action or unconstitutional racial discrimination. However, Biden is belittling our prior struggles for equality with these sweeping and erroneous claims.
In his interview, the President also insisted that one has to “look at how it’s ruled on a number of issues that are — have been precedent for 50, 60 years sometimes, and that’s what I meant by not normal.”
In reality, the Court’s decisions on affirmative action in education have been muddled and conflicted for decades. In 1977, in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, the Court barred affirmative action in higher education. However, it allowed some consideration of race as part of a holistic admissions process.
In the decades that followed, the Court remained sharply divided. By 2003, the Court was ready to issue the very decision that it issued this week. However, in Grutter v. Bollinger, then-Justice Sandra Day O’Connor supplied the fifth vote to uphold the use of race by the University of Michigan. Yet, O’Connor wrote that the court “expects that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today.” That was roughly 20 years ago.
It is also ironic to hear the President bewailing the reversal of precedent since the greatest advance in racial equality was the reversal of Plessy v. Ferguson and the doctrine of “separate but equal.” That was the governing precedent from 1894 to 1954, but few denounced the Supreme Court for reversing the precedent in Brown v. Board of Education. It was a decision to eliminate different treatment on the basis for race.
This Court did indeed overturn long-standing cases but these have long been areas characterized by closely and fiercely divided 5-4 and plurality decisions.
The President also asserted that “the vast majority of the American people don’t agree with a lot of the decisions this court is making.” The majority clearly opposed the Dobbs ruling, but that is not the case on the affirmative action ruling. Polls have consistently shown (including this week) that the majority of the public does not support the use of race in college admissions. Indeed, even in the most liberal states like California, voters have repeatedly rejected affirmative action in admissions.
We should have a robust and passionate debate over these issues. Yet, a president should be seeking to facilitate that dialogue rather than distorting and weaponizing our shared history. It is a continuation of his prior declarations that members of Congress opposing his election reforms to block state laws are voting with “Jefferson Davis” and the Confederacy. Despite the laws in states like Georgia being upheld as constitutional, Biden declared them a return to the “Jim Crow” South based on distorted accounts of those laws. The claim was again historically and legally ridiculous even if one opposed these state laws.
We should not allow the President’s constitutional and historical distortions to become, to use his description of the Court, “normal.” We have fought hard to address the scourge of slavery and racism in our country. That struggle is continuing but we cannot address those problems in the future by distorting our past.
This is a corrected version. A short version appears on Fox.com.
FWIW, Biden clearly said “1960,” not “1860.”
If you are a Republican who supports Ukraine, then Mike Pence and Nikki Haley are your best options.
The court is not going to be packed. Dems talk that way for fundraising purposes. Three things would have to align: a majority of the House that favors packing it; 61 senators that favor packing it; and a POTUS that favors packing it. Ain’t gonna happen.
They get ideas like adding Washington DC and Puerto Rico as states.
This is a good first step toward eliminating the racists’ 40+ year control of our education system. That’s something they won’t take lightly so we can expect their full efforts to reinstate their control.
Not to worry.
Putin is losing the war in Iraq,
Man!
A lot of comments here about legacy admissions..
Is it possible that many academically-mediocre students were admitted or selected (over more academically or personally-achieving students), – primarily to beef up the school’s basketball or football money-making rankings? Kill two birds with one stone: keep your overall AA statistics looking good, as well as, bring in the $$$$ bucks.
But for their athletic ability, would they have been admitted? I know that minimal GPA is usually attached/appurtenant to such admissions, but have we really pushed for their academic excellence, or just given them (and our schools) a way to achieve instant visibility/fame and fortune?
I rue the day when incoming $$$ from legacy patrons or athletic endorsements means more than putting out good quality graduates.
The SCOTUS did exactly what was predicted with the college admissions case and the website case–split 6-3, with the 3 Trump appointees being in the “6” category of radical right-wingers who never heard of stare decisis, and who can find standing to sue when there isn’t even an actual controversy before them. Instead of admitting that this is exactly what was predicted when Kavanaugh, Barrett and Gorsuch got appointed by an election cheater, after vetting by the Federalist Society, of course–what does Turley do? Attack Joe Biden for disagreeing, accusing him of making “unhinged” arguments. Thank goodness Turley has lost credibility.
It is not Turley who has lost credibility, it is the Fake News media, Joe Biden, his administration and the Democrat Party.
In fact, NUTCHACHACHA has lost affirmative action, welfare, food stamps and “credibility,” which she never possessed in the first instance.
You go, girl!
Get help for your TDS.
And the good professor has not lost credibility. He writes columns for many outlets, gets speaking engagements and has testified before Congress more than a few times.
My, My, bitter are we. Election cheater, not sure who or whom you are calling out, but that was settled long ago. Clinton was unlikeable, unelectability, unethiical, entitlement, and a host of other issues. Mrs. Clinton had more baggage that Samson, more negative ratings than Trump, less likeable than a heat lamp on a hot summers day.
Gigi — Did you read about the teen who was accepted to Stanford after writing Black Lives Matter 100 times on the application?
https://www.usatoday.com/story/college/2017/04/04/this-teen-wrote-blacklivesmatter-over-and-over-on-his-stanford-application-and-got-in/37430957/
Gigi, you never touched what part of the decision veers away from the constitution. Specifically that part about not treating people different because of their race.
Election cheater? Ignore precedent? Nonsense
Obviously you have no knowledge of the past. Nothing has changed since the beginning of time. Read Kipling’s poem, published in 1919, The God’s of the Copybook Headings. You’re following the wrong gods!!
Stare Decisis as an argument ?
When almost 25 years ago OConner rules that eventually Afirmative Action MUST go, she Conceded that it was unconstitutional.
There can be no such thing as a law that is only constitutional for a Time.
I would note that left wing nuts who fixate on Stare Decisis had absolutely no problems overruling prior precidents when they created the precidents that they demand be preserved today.
Turley is attacking Biden – because as is typical Biden is WRONG about the constitution, and the rule of law and the powers of the president.
We are constantly told by the left that Trump is a wana be dictator, Yet it is Biden and Democrats who are constantly looking to circumvent the constitution.
Even Now Biden seeks to find a way to bring back the Student Debt Boondoggle.
But there is no constitutional means for the president to spend $400B on his own authority.
Constitutionally the President may not spend $0.01 on his own authority.
Spending is controlled by congress – specifically the house of representatives.
Biden is free to disagree. He is not free to act outside the constitution.
He is free to make unhinged arguments – which his attacks on recent court decisions are.
If anything the courts did not go far enough.
Regardless, If Harvard wishes to continue to discriminate on the basis of race in admissions, it is free to do so,
All that is required is to forego all government funding.
The vast majority of these faux constitutional messes that the left creates disappear entirely if Government gets its nose out of places it does not belong.
The declining Joe Biden said “the court once again walked away from decades of precedent” and that “This is not a normal court.” Sorry, Joe, but there is nothing sacrosanct about precedent. It has often been upended with society’s changing times and realities.
It is now 23 years into the 21st century and the court has done what was destined to be done when in 1978 Chief Justice Powell, although part of the 5-4 Bakke decision, parted from the other four (justices Brennan, White, Marshall and Blackmun) who felt the special admissions program of the Davis Medical School was “valid in every respect.” Powell did not hold it to be valid in “every respect.”
It was Powell’s view that the only state interest that fairly may be viewed as compelling on this record is the interest of a university in a diverse student body. He said that a university’s interest in a diverse student body is not limited to ethnic diversity. He said it’s compelling interest in this respect encompasses a far broader array of qualifications and characteristics of which race is only one. He said that although adopted primarily to protect persons of the black race, the guarantee of the Equal Protection Clause by its terms protects all persons. It provides explicitly that no person shall be denied equal protection of the law.
There was a time when race was too often a factor denying admissions to too many universities, but that time has passed. I believe Powell left it to the advance and progress of time to determine when race no longer would be an insurmountable factor preventing student bodies from becoming diverse, and when the Equal Protection Clause would come to be seen as a guarantee for all persons regardless of race.
Jews are extremely over represented in ivy league admissions to the tune of 2200% on average, so I look forward to see what happens now. My guess, even more jews. Christians of course are under represented, and atheists get the opposite treatment. I haven’t seen many reports on other religions like Islam or Hindu.
Shakdi,
Jews and Asians are not ‘over represented’ if they gained their admission by merit.
It is those who gain their admission by race or class instead of personal merit and achievement who are ‘over represented’.
Shakdi. A serious question. How do you know who is a Jew when they are accepted into a university? This is not a question on any application.
A good week for freedom and the rule of law. A bad week for totalitarians and the rule of unelected bureacrats.
Every time I hear Joe Biden talk about racism in America I recall who the man really is. When he thought it was more expedient to be a racist he didn’t hold back. Then he had an epiphany about how to capture the back vote. To this day he still milks it for all it’s worth. It’s strange how Democrats vote for a man with a racist past. Here’s a link from NBC News that should refresh our memory. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/joe-biden-didn-t-just-compromise-segregationists-he-fought-their-n1021626.
@ScottAdamsSays
Will Biden “pack” the Supreme Court so Democrats never lose again?
That would be the dumbest and most destructive thing any president could do, effectively ending the Republic.
So I’m guessing yes.
re: Anonymous
Republicans started this problem when they denied Obama’s millions of voters about 100 federal judge picks and a U.S. Supreme Court pick.
When Trump came into office, those same Republicans in Congress (that denied Obama about 100 federal judges) then rammed through Trump’s judges – packing the federal judiciary with lifetime terms!
Before Obama it was tradition only to reject corrupt or incompetent judges, respecting the will of millions of voters that chose a particular president. Republicans have already packed the courts!
Your historical memory is too short. Ted Kennedy and his fellow Democrats started the judges war in 1987 with the Bork hearings and his lies about Judge Bork. They have waged total war since then.
Then, when the GOP doesn’t just roll over and play dead, the Dems are shocked, shocked.
re: oldmanfromkansas
Bork was involved in the Watergate Scandal and wanted to overturn civil rights laws.
Nixon wanted to fire special prosecutor, Archibald Cox. When Nixon ordered his Attorney General to fire Cox for being too law abiding, his AG refused and quit. Then he ordered his assistant AG to fire Cox, he refused and quit also.
Nixon finally found a “yes man” to obstruct the Watergate investigation – Bork!
Reagan – And so? That says nothing about Bork being “corrupt” or “incompetent.” It’s just your political disagreement with him.
Anon made the assertion that the judges war was started by the GOP during Obama’s tenure. That simply is false. Witness not only Judge Bork but then-Judge Thomas.
(AND, guess which Senator from Delaware voted NO on nomination of Clarence Thomas to SCOTUS…https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1021/vote_102_1_00220.htm)
Only one senator voted “no” for both African American SCOTUS nominees (Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Thomas). What party, and who? It was a Democrat (surprise, surprise) . . . former Klansman Robert Byrd.
There was one senator who voted “yes” on both: a Republican, Mark Hatfield.
And the stuff about wanting to overturn civil rights laws? That’s part of Ted Kennedy’s lies, which you have bought into. You can read all about it in The Tempting of America. Bork admits that he thought at the time the law was unwise, but (a) that has nothing to do with saying it’s unconstitutional, and (b) he relates how he changed his mind on that well before he was nominated for SCOTUS.
Anonymous, I have a simple solution for you. Get enough votes to keep control of the Senate, the House, and the Presidency for more than two years and your dream of a leftist Supreme Court will come true. Just think, If the Republicans can gain control of all three branches of government they can pack the courts with even more conservative Justices. We should find it interesting that only one party has said right out loud that they want to increase their power by packing the Supreme Court. I’m certain that every year you secretly celebrate the birth of Machiavelli and you keep his book ever at the ready on your nightstand. Then again, I’m really not so sure that you even know who he was or what he wrote.
Anon says: “…when they denied Obama’s millions of voters about 100 federal judge picks and a U.S. Supreme Court pick.”
Bzzzt. McConnell played by the same rules Dems play by, only much nicer. McConnell simply and rightly said, ‘you’re not getting Garland, you can shove it up yours’ to Obama and the Dems. For that alone, McConnell deserves a statue in the middle of Washington DC.
Anon: Put this in your pipe and smoke it….
Mike Davis 🇺🇸
@mrddmia
Many Republican politicians talked–for decades–about transforming the Supreme Court.
Trump actually delivered.
He never flinched.
The Clarence Thomas Court is Trump’s most consequential accomplishment of his 1st term.
Dismantling the federal government will be his 2nd act.
Today is a good day to thank President Trump. Ding dong the witch is dead.
@ClayTravis
If Hillary Clinton had won in 2016, the Supreme Court would have mandated the covid shot for all employees, allowed Joe Biden to unilaterally end student loan debt, forced a woman to make websites for gay people, kept affirmative action the law of the land and Roe v Wade would still exist too. Staggering to even think about, honestly.
@joelpollak
The new Supreme Court rulings bring conservatives a happy Fourth of July. Racial preferences in college admissions were ended, and elegantly so; free speech and religious liberty were upheld; Biden’s student loan power grab was stopped.
The enduring benefit of Trump’s 2016 victory.
The Court also would have allowed the “eviction ban” that would have gone on forever.
Ding Dong and wicked witch indeed!
Best President and the most hated since Lincoln. For Lincoln and Trump’s achievement, they incurred the violent wrath of the DemocRat Party and its murderous oligarchs.
“Dismantling the federal government will be his 2nd act.”
For this I see a Trump/Ramaswamy ticket. Give the dismantling to Vivik and he’ll get it done.
The different was Obama’s “judges” weren’t really judges, they were activists. Look at the spectacle some of the left ‘judges’ are making of themselves today during Senate confirmations. Their ignorance of the law and the Constitution is truly alarming and dangerous to the Republic.
Let’s see, the Queen of England had been dead for ten months and Biden said God save the Queen. Now good old Joe doesn’t know the difference between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. He does however know all the hot buttons like “Put you all back in chains and their bringing back the Jim Crow days. A racist like Lyndon Johnson taught him how to keep black people voting for Democrats for the next hundred years. All this coming from a guy who was known to sip a Mint Julep with a guy named Robert Bird. Lyndon figured it out and Joe is sticking to the plan.
He alson does not know the difference between Iraq and Ukraine.
Another amazing facet of the AA case is that the Democrats are all over the airwaves saying how bad this is and yet the polls clearly show that this decision is popular, even among DEMOCRATS.
Mike Pence had the definitive answer on why this was a good decision. He’s smart…
“There may have been a time 50 years ago when we needed to affirmatively take steps to correct long-term racial bias in institutions of higher education,” Pence told MSNBC’s Dasha Burns. “But I can tell you, as the father of three college graduates, those days are long over.”
There you have it, he sent three kids to college.
Mike Pence will be forever known as a traitor – a backstabbing RINO who cared not for breaking the chains of communism and freeing the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Jun 29
Pence is in Ukraine doing his photo op with Zelensky.
Why is he there? What could possibly be the reason Pence went to Ukraine?
Mike Pence got a $3million book deal just 3 months after he flipped on Jan 6th. Now he’s in Ukraine to get his cut.
Betraying Trump has its rewards. @EmeraldRobinson
Since the Conservative justices on the U.S. Supreme Court claim to be “originalists” and “constructionists” on the U.S. Constitution.
Shouldn’t they also invoke Section 3 of the 14th Amendment?
Section 3 of the 14th Amendment clearly states if an official (including a president, member of Congress, state official) takes an Oath of Office then supports insurrection or rebellion (betrays that oath of office) – that official is banned from future government authority.
Section 3 has successfully been used recently against state level officials that participated in the January 6 insurrection/coup attempt – banning them for life from ever having government authority again.
The 14th Amendment was created in response to newly freed African-American slaves after the Civil War. Institutionalized racism is the catalyst that created the 14th Amendment – race was always a factor. Not sure how the “color blind” comment squares with the history of the amendment created due to racism.
Unlike most nations following civil wars, America didn’t execute or imprison most of the losers of our civil war. America essentially offered an amnesty deal, allowing former confederates to become police officers, mayors, governors, legislators, members of Congress and even presidents – with one condition!
The condition: Former confederates that wanted government jobs and have government authority, swore supreme loyalty to the newly amended U.S. Constitution – which now included the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments treating African-Americans as equal citizens.
Trump gave aid & comfort to the January 6 Insurrectionists/coup plotters. In fact Trump appears to have started in November 2020 leading and engineering the coup plot himself.
Why aren’t the Conservatives on the high court invoking Section 3 of the 14th Amendment if they are indeed “originalists” and “constructionists”? From an “originalist” view, like Roberts, Section 3 was custom designed precisely for an official like Trump.
Reagan’s Unenforced Torture Treaty, I guess you missed the part where Trump said to go and peacefully protest. The truth is that you didn’t miss it but it just doesn’t fit your narrative. They say that an inability to grasp reality is a sign of a derangement syndrome. Another definition would be PTSD. Post Trump Derangement Syndrome. The common medical treatment would be administered by Psychiatrist. We’re all hoping that you will have a swift and complete recovery.
Is that the same Jan 6 that Nanny Peeloosi refused the National Guard for, and the capitol cops allowed and escorted the “insurrectionists” into the capitol building, dropping barricades and opening doors for them all, including “Buffalo Head?”
The declining Joe Biden said “the court once again walked away from decades of precedent” and that “This is not a normal court.” Sorry, Joe, but there is nothing sacrosanct about precedent. It has often been upended with society’s changing times and realities.
It is now 23 years into the 21st century and the court has done what was destined to be done when Chief Justice Powell, although part of the 5-4 Bakke decision, parted from the other four (justices Brennan, White, Marshall and Blackmun) who felt the special admissions program of the Davis Medical School was “valid in every respect.” Powell did not hold it to be valid in “every respect.”
It was Powell’s view that “the only state interest that fairly may be viewed as compelling on this record is the interest of a university in a diverse student body.” He held that “a university’s interest in a diverse student body is not limited to ethnic diversity. Rather it’s compelling interest in this respect encompasses a far broader array of qualifications and characteristics of which race is only one.” He said that “although adopted primarily to protect persons of the Negro race, the guarantee of the Equal Protection Clause by its terms protects all persons. It provides explicitly that no person shall be denied equal protection of the law.”
There was a time when race was too often a factor denying admissions to too many universities, but that time has passed. I believe Powell left it to the advance and progress of time to determine when race no longer would be an insurmountable factor preventing student bodies from becoming diverse, and when the Equal Protection Clause would come to be seen as a guarantee for all persons regardless of race.
To the liberal Justices, and all liberals, I would ask if they would think it is legal to force a liberal performer that sang at Obama or Clinton’s inaugurations to sing at Trump’s affair? Can you hire Streisand to perform at a Trump inaugural ball?
Or how about asking, no, forcing, a Jewish baker to make a cake, create a cake, featuring a swastika? How about forcing a trans person to CREATE a cake for e de-transitioning party? How about a Muslim baker being forced to create a cake that has Mohammed eating pork? The arguments of the liberals are internally inconsistent and this is why the never debate.
Just another opportunity for biden to divide the country. Happy Fourth of July!
Clearly, the SC majority are turning the page from transitional affirmative action to post-racial meritocracy.
The country is more than ready for this, having endured a period of hyper-race-consciousness which has been unproductive and divisive. Meanwhile, operating everyday outside the interest of mass media are post-racial Americans whose mantra is common humanity — we’re all facing the same challenges as human beings, and benefit from ignoring racial identity leading to enhanced cooperation and synergy.
MSM journalists, Dem operatives, and race-hustlers will be the last ones to “get it”. This is the way political change happens.
pbinCA: Well-written comment, and encouraging. Unfortunately, your second-from-last sentence “MSM journalists…”) is likely prescient, i.e., there’s more to come before it’s all over.
We had the AA case, the 303 case and the student loan case all decided logically and correctly under our Constitution. What is sad is that the 3 liberals will never “dissent” from their ideology and their liberal bias, no matter what the Constitution says. The most blatant example is of course the student loan case. How is it possible for 3 “legal scholars” to see the president, without congressional sanction or even approval, let alone actual legislation, spend over FOUR HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS wiping out student loans? Where did Biden get the power to do this? Where under our Constitution does a president have this authority?
We have seen some of the 6 conservative Justices dissent from conservative opinions and sometimes to even create a majority that goes against what conservatives want due to what they analyzed as the law in question vis a vis the Constitution. We almost always have one of the 6 conservatives siding with the liberals due to their honest reading of the law and the Constitution. We have NEVER seen a liberal Justice say that they support a law in intent but that it is still unconstitutional.
As an example of honesty in the realm of SCOTUS decisions and thinking I offer up Justice Scalia’s opinions regarding flag burning and the use of heat monitors to detect illegal drug growing. He was against the former and he supported the latter, but his opinions and votes followed what he deemed the Constitution required. It saddened him that he had to vote the way he did but vote that we he did. That is legal honesty and we NEVER see it from a liberal Justice. NEVER!
You make an important point hullbobby (what’s a hullbobby?) The right often breaks rank and retreats; the left comes home with its shields or upon them. Off the top of my lawyers head, I can think of Justices Stewart, Burger, Blackmun, Stevens, Kennedy, O’Connor, Souter, Roberts and probably Kavanaugh who joined with their Supreme Court adversaries to undermine their constitutional principles.
I would like to see an historical analysis of Justice votes/ decisions on political matters since FDR’s 1st term.
That might confirm or dispel what hullhobby alleges (and what seems intuitively and empirically true to me, with 60 years of Court watching,) that the left always goes left, while the right often splits rank.
It is interesting t and closely related that the right loves circular firing squads and the left never shoots its own.
On that matter, I will never understand how Saint Nino could embrace the blatantly political, intellectually shallow RBG as his dear friend or why he would have urged Obama’s White House Counsel to “give us Elena Kagan.” Nor can I grasp what seems to be happening with Justice Kavanaugh: that he’s a man who does not punish his enemies, but embraces them, even when his constitutional principles support punishment.
It is important in law and politics to choose friends wisely, have a long memory and follow Machiavelli on the handling of opponents.
Paladin, to me you sound as if you “have logic, will travel”. If I can confuse you with Hullbobby then I have to wonder about your moniker. As for Hullbobby, it is in honor of the great Chicago Blackhawk Bobby Hull, the Golden Jet. Bobby Orr was better, but I idolized the GJ before Orr was even in the NHL.
As to your points, you are right on the money with regard to the ;eft never taking on their own. Proof of this, sad proof, is what we are witnessing with Joe and Hunter Biden right now. Imagine that not one Democrat has said that Joe is corrupt or even more surprising is that not one of them has said that he is losing his mind. They insist, as recently as the last few days with Klobuchar and Mayor Pete bot saying that he is sharp and cogent. It is sickening.
As a Court watcher myself I thank you for agreeing with my premise that the conservatives will switch sides as the liberals never do. We always accuse the Republican presidents of appointing squishy conservatives, and this has happened, but it is deeper than that as is shown by how poisonous the DC water is and how it corrupts or weakens resolve among the weak minded conservatives. Although I will add one caveat, sometimes it isn’t weakness but strength that has a Scalia, my favorite Justice, siding not with the liberals but with the Constitution as I cite din my previous comment.
All praise to Justice Scalia. He turned the tide.
He was to originalism what Washington was to the founding, the indispensable man.
But Thomas is the constitutionalist whose opinions will lead the way back.
Paladin inre Scalia/RBG: In a previous era there were three customary (though not official) categories of Race used. These were White (narrowly defined as WASP), Black, and a euphemism for “Colored” called Ethnic. Both Jews & Italians were considered “Ethnic” and often both were fans of Opera. I believe this may have been the basis of their friendship.
Crikey! You have it.
Thanks.
A common view on ethnicity, with both Justices on the same side of that aisle looking out, is a logical explanation for the odd couple, and it satisfies the essential criteria of every friendship: mutual respect and affection born of sharing deep life experiences.
The love of humor and opera, too me, was not nearly enough.
Button and Paladin: Thanks to both of you for reminding us that the common salutation, “With all due respect, but I must disagree..” can be not only genuine (and not perfunctory), but also in recognition that “reasonable minds can differ” without personal attack on the opposition…
Something Sotomayor and Jackson could use some tutoring on, IMO
(p.s., picture Jonathan Turley standing in for Andrea Bocelli singing “Nessun Dorma…”)