This is one of the really brilliant things the GOP has done. They've led us all to believe that it's just McConnell and a couple of other shitbags but that the rest of the Republicans are mostly OK.
That's a deliberate smokescreen. Notice that the "handful of Republicans" always happen to be in red strongholds? McConnell volunteers to be the public face of the GOP's bad policies because they know his seat is secure. Meanwhile, all the other GOP Congresspeople who support those same awful policies but might risk losing an election can stay out of the news and pretend it's not their doing.
McConnell was voted into his seat by a majority of the GOP Senators. They all know what they're doing.
Even so, D and R are both beholden to the American aristocratic wealth class for support, legitimacy, and power, so there is effectively no difference beyond a few, token, mild progressives in D who don't hold sway over the majority of neoliberals.
I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm warming up to the idea of the Democrats passing court-packing legislation for the Supreme and Appellate courts the next time they control both houses of Congress and the presidency. Especially if they can somehow establish a very strong super-majority requirement for all future judicial branch nominations that would be immune to stealth court-packing tactics like the Senate Republicans have been using.
The prior institutional restraints have broken down, and balance needs to be restored and new restraints implemented if the system is going to survive.
They will conveniently forget that were the tables turned, Republicans would not do the same.
When we ended a government of enumerated powers and everything could be done at the federal level without an amendment - great things like the drug war.
Maybe, and maybe that means that the Japanese internment was worse then anything the federal government did to the Native Americans.
I mean, it's not like native Americans were forcibly relocated from their homes into federally designated lands for a handful of years like the Japanese... oh, wait...
It didn't happen then, but that doesn't mean it can't happen now. For several decades, the Republicans have played political hardball to pack the courts in their own way [1]; I doubt that was a factor nearly a century ago.
[1] bitter obstructionism to maintain vacancies until they have the power to fill them with their own picks, selected primarily for ideological reliability.
Some time in the past, certainly at FDR’s time, dems were confident about stacking the court. What changed to defang them? The dem’s actions while Merrick Garland was denied hearings infuriate me until today: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2018/06/04/senate-obst...
People take less notice of transgressions when their party is in power. As much as we might like to think there’s universal recognition of the current administration’s misuse of power there’s a lot of people who support it - “to get things done”. People just hate it when it’s not the things they want.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/senate-poised-to-lim...
It is true that the Democrats opened this can of worms, but the Republicans then taking advantage of it instead of setting a better example does not exonerate them. They're all bad actors now.
the feds vs states thing seems like a distinction without meaning, tbh, the federal government certainly intended the states to deal with natives as they did, and there is absolutely no shortage of crimes done by the federal government itself (treaties broken, allies backstabbed, lands taken, literal genocide, fucking DAPL)
Eh, if the definition of "court packing" is so narrow that it only covers things nearly exactly like FDR's proposal, then I don't consider it a very useful term.
If it makes you more comfortable, feel free to replace "court packing" in my comment with a term that's general enough to encompass FDR's proposal and the Republicans' recent tactics.
> People take less notice of transgressions when their party is in power....
I used to fault the Democrats for that (and used to consider myself more of a conservative), but on reflection I think the Republican's obdurate obstructionism is the more important fact. That's clear now that the Republican's priority now seems to be to ram through nominees when they have the power to do so (as shown by their last session, nominations over caronavirus response), and they've done such a shit job at checks and balances when it's needed now more than ever.
I don't think so. The idea is to force compromise by putting the threshold so far out of reach to eliminate fantasies that after the next election one party or other will be in the position not to have to compromise. That's the issue now.
The idea that a minority would try to literally destroy another branch of government for some reason seems so remote and so extreme that I'm not sure if it's worth considering. What would the political calculus be for trying to block the workings of the court system?
An example from Minneapolis, from a City Council member:
https://twitter.com/MplsWard3/status/1267891878801915904
> Politicians who cross the MPD find slowdowns in their wards. After the first time I cut money from the proposed police budget, I had an uptick in calls taking forever to get a response, and MPD officers telling business owners to call their councilman about why it took so long.
I applaud the effort and I think we need to go further and get rid of the fillibuster rules entirely.
Actually, that is specifically the reason some supermajority rules were lifted [1]. Do you recall Merrick Garland?
The filibuster is abused similarly [2].
[1]: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2018/06/04/senate-obst...
[2]: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brookings-now/2013/11/21/char...
Actually, it was to appoint Gorsuch (who replaced Scalia's vacant seat). Kavanaugh was appointed to replace Kennedy.
I have never, ever believed this.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-gop-and-police-unions-a-lo...
> When Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker cracked down on collective bargaining rights of public-sector unions, he exempted cops and fire fighters. He feared the police might go on strike and join the protestors. Videos of that pairing could have doomed Walker’s entire effort. “It’s a decision by politicians not to bite off more than they can chew,” explains James Sherk, a labor policy expert with the conservative Heritage Foundation.
Their impunity to civilian oversight should be concerning to both parties. You're not hearing much concern from the Republicans on this right now.
Instead the federal government can do anything it wants. It's why we have the drug war, DEA, huge national debt, broken medical system.