"We have the first Black woman… The first Black we ever had - we've only had two, Thurgood Marshall, 1967. When he died, it was George Bush, the first, was president. And so they accepted the idea that there was now a Black seat on the court and that's how we got to Clarence Thomas," Maher said during a panel discussion on Friday. "Now, I thought it was not exactly crooked to give the Black seat to somebody who didn't represent the majority of Black thinking in America, but here's the difference, at least they accepted, George Bush did, the idea of at least one Black seat on the court."
"I think that today's Republicans would not do that. I think they would be thrilled to have no black seats on the court," Maher told the panel, before clarifying, "Okay, a lot of them."
(no message)
As Senator Tester and Heilemann discussed, the pushback on Bork was substantive -- it was a full on class re constitutional law. Bork was deemed way too rigid and batshit crazy, leading to Senator Kennedy's famous "In Robert Bork's America ...." summary.
Since then, nominees have been coached to avoid any discussion of the their jurisprudence and views of constitutional law -- which would actually be a good thing for the American people to watch -- a televised American Government class.
The panel all agreed that (1) McConnell's hijacking two seats -- obstructing Garland and then seating Barrett a week prior to an election -- made the process even more partisan, and (2) the GOP's treatment of KBJ was asinine.
People forget that he fired Cox. The Judiciary Committee did not.
Fuck that guy.
And after him both Scalia and RBG were confirmed by 95+. So that didn’t really change anything.
I know it isn’t your personal view, but there’s a perspective on this that isn’t nefarious. Pick the best people for the job.
There isn’t. There is a group of highly qualified, smart, roughly equal people.
Dozens of them. Maybe hundreds.
(no message)