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The problem with that explanation is that sure, mommy and daddy paid his bills, but I doubt anyone checked his parents finances. This sounds like a way to launder payoffs.
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The problem with that explanation is that sure, mommy and daddy paid his bills, but I doubt anyone checked his parents finances. This sounds like a way to launder payoffs.
It's a really weird reach to jump to the assumption that someone's rich parents would be taking on the risk of payoffs when they can just, like, not do that.
It's starting from where you want the story to end and then trying to make reality fit that, when it's far more likely that the same parents who made him into a spoiled manchild bailed him out again.
I don't particularly care that his parents had to bail him out, but that someone so irresponsible was considered for the high court really puts into context how much they wanted him compared to pretty much anyone else on the federalist list.
The money is only one of many irregularities in his confirmation and far from the most concerning. So fine, rich mommy and daddy bailed him out for probably the umpteenth time in his life, that's probably the most likely and least surprising option.
If that was the case, where are the receipts and why is this something that wasn't just clearly disclosed?
When I refinanced my house, Bank of America required that I submit letters disclosing the source of a few thousand dollar deposit the previous month (it was a mundane work bonus) for their records. How is being confirmed to one of the most powerful lifetime appointments in the country held to a lower standard than a fucking home refinance?
I know the answer with everything Kavanaugh is 'fuck you, that's why' but that whole clown show of a hearing really made everything about that man suspicious even when it was apparently unnecessary.
With all the focus on the money and sexual allegations everyone sort of forgets that the dude was involved in some really sketchy shit in the Bush administration that was ethically questionable and possibly criminal (Brooks Brothers riot, creating legal justification for torture and war crimes, etc).
I don't particularly care that his parents had to bail him out, but that someone so irresponsible was considered for the high court really puts into context how much they wanted him compared to pretty much anyone else on the federalist list.
With all the focus on the money and sexual allegations everyone sort of forgets that the dude was involved in some really sketchy shit in the Bush administration that was ethically questionable and possibly criminal (Brooks Brothers riot, creating legal justification for torture and war crimes, etc).
This is why they wanted him on the court so bad, he’s been a GOP Bro since the Clinton impeachment
Kavanaugh’s confirmation, and Graham’s insane yelly theater about it, are all about the white dudes rallying to show everyone else that they will fight with all their power against anyone that tries to hold them accountable for abusing their undeserved privilege
It’s the thing that drove Rush Limbaugh to smoke during his shows despite it killing him, to show the emerging voices of the long-disadvantaged who still holds the power
I don't particularly care that his parents had to bail him out, but that someone so irresponsible was considered for the high court really puts into context how much they wanted him compared to pretty much anyone else on the federalist list.
With all the focus on the money and sexual allegations everyone sort of forgets that the dude was involved in some really sketchy shit in the Bush administration that was ethically questionable and possibly criminal (Brooks Brothers riot, creating legal justification for torture and war crimes, etc).
This is why they wanted him on the court so bad, he’s been a GOP Bro since the Clinton impeachment
Kavanaugh’s confirmation, and Graham’s insane yelly theater about it, are all about the white dudes rallying to show everyone else that they will fight with all their power against anyone that tries to hold them accountable for abusing their undeserved privilege
It’s the thing that drove Rush Limbaugh to smoke during his shows despite it killing him, to show the emerging voices of the long-disadvantaged who still holds the power
In fairness Rush probably smoked on his shows because he was an untreated addict. Smoking wasn’t the only substance abuse issue he had.
As the saying goes, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
With all the focus on the money and sexual allegations everyone sort of forgets that the dude was involved in some really sketchy shit in the Bush administration that was ethically questionable and possibly criminal (Brooks Brothers riot, creating legal justification for torture and war crimes, etc).
Even without the sex and money issues I suspect no one would have really cared about his work for the Bush admin. Hell, the main hatchet-man for all of the Bush admin's extralegal bullshit, John Yoo, continues to enjoy a long career at UCLA as a distinguished law professor even though in 2009 he was recommended to be disbarred for his ethical and professional misconduct. Yoo's even taken to clout chasing Trump by authoring bottom feeding books about how Trump demonstrated that GOP presidents should be god kings.
Dark_Side on
+3
MrMisterJesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered Userregular
Rich people don't stay rich by spending their own money.
He can claim whatever he wants, but that needs to be verified.
Never take anyone's word on anything.
The Mother Jones article doesn’t argue that we shouldn’t believe the bribery rumors because we should take his word for it. It argues that we shouldn’t believe them because they are a complicated and implausible explanation of a fact which already has uncomplicated and plausible explanations, aka it is a conspiracy theory.
Bribing a federal judge is complicated and high risk. Who is willing to run that risk? Even if there were someone who was willing and was in position to do so, given that Kavanaugh both has family money and is extremely ambitious, he has little personal reason to accept bribes that he almost certainly doesn’t need and that might blow up his life. The simplest explanation is that he is financially entangled with his rich parents, the disclosure rules do not require him to disclose that, and so he didn’t, both because it is mildly embarrassing and because his confirmation was highly adversarial.
The problem with that explanation is that sure, mommy and daddy paid his bills, but I doubt anyone checked his parents finances. This sounds like a way to launder payoffs.
No the problem with the explanation is that he wouldn’t just say it.
The Wall Street Journal identified 131 federal judges who ruled on 685 lawsuits in which they had financial investments in one of the parties to the lawsuit. They ruled in their own financial interest 2/3 of the time.
Our elites are so hopelessly corrupt.
The idea that your vote is a moral statement about you or who you vote for is some backwards ass libertarian nonsense. Your vote is about society. Vote to protect the vulnerable.
The Wall Street Journal identified 131 federal judges who ruled on 685 lawsuits in which they had financial investments in one of the parties to the lawsuit. They ruled in their own financial interest 2/3 of the time.
Our elites are so hopelessly corrupt.
This is because we have allowed judicial independence to become judicial inviolability. Recusal is merely a suggestion, instead of a law with actual consequences for those violating it, and the profession refuses to actually hold judges accountable (mainly because the bench is a time honored retirement plan in the legal community.)
The Wall Street Journal identified 131 federal judges who ruled on 685 lawsuits in which they had financial investments in one of the parties to the lawsuit. They ruled in their own financial interest 2/3 of the time.
Our elites are so hopelessly corrupt.
This is because we have allowed judicial independence to become judicial inviolability. Recusal is merely a suggestion, instead of a law with actual consequences for those violating it, and the profession refuses to actually hold judges accountable (mainly because the bench is a time honored retirement plan in the legal community.)
I never really understood the retirement angle, but it makes so much sense now. And yes, this is an entire profession basically left to its own devices and a mandate to discipline itself - which works about as well as that works for Congress. As a fun example, the Colorado Supreme Court and a good chunk of the top leadership of the Colorado Justice Dept. were ensnared in a far reaching sexual harassment and discrimination case in which the woman who was about to bring suit, was allegedly bribed with a 2.5 million dollar contract to keep quiet. A memo was released which showed endemic sexual harassment by multiple judges and troubling data about employment of female employees. And the Colorado SC tried to keep it bottled up until the press coverage got away from them. So far, it doesn't appear any of the judges involved, or anyone else for that matter, is seeing any punishment for their actions.
Oh yeah.. but in July of this year they amended their code of conduct to expressly forbid harassment.
The Wall Street Journal identified 131 federal judges who ruled on 685 lawsuits in which they had financial investments in one of the parties to the lawsuit. They ruled in their own financial interest 2/3 of the time.
The Wall Street Journal identified 131 federal judges who ruled on 685 lawsuits in which they had financial investments in one of the parties to the lawsuit. They ruled in their own financial interest 2/3 of the time.
Our elites are so hopelessly corrupt.
This is because we have allowed judicial independence to become judicial inviolability. Recusal is merely a suggestion, instead of a law with actual consequences for those violating it, and the profession refuses to actually hold judges accountable (mainly because the bench is a time honored retirement plan in the legal community.)
Partisanship within the judiciary, legislative dysfunction and a runaway concept of judicial independence has neutered the only actual check on the courts, which is supposed to be the legislative branch.
The Wall Street Journal identified 131 federal judges who ruled on 685 lawsuits in which they had financial investments in one of the parties to the lawsuit. They ruled in their own financial interest 2/3 of the time.
Our elites are so hopelessly corrupt.
CLEARLY they only ruled in favor of their financial interests because their financial interests were on the correct side, OBVIOUSLY that's why they were invested in them in the first place, being people of such high moral character they inherently KNEW the correct side a priori.
2/3rd is actually a lower ratio than I expected. If they were perfectly impartial you'd expect them to rule in their own favor half the time.
You're aware that 66% is higher than 50% right?
edit also this presumes cases and evidence are random which doesn't really work
It implies there is no correlation between judges financial interests and those interests being on the wrong side of lawsuits. Which isn't a terrible assumption.
But what Rahkeesh was mainly saying was that he was surprised that it wasn't higher than 66%. He knows its higher than 50% but its not so much higher as you would expect. That is, in only ~32% of cases did the bias matter.
Goumindong on
+1
Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
It's kind of a meaningless statistic because we have no idea the facts involved in those cases.
That said, the fact that there are that many people who aren't recusing themself is the real problem.
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
Personally, I think high level officials in all branches of government should be restricted to holding index funds. I could be convinced that they shouldn't even be allowed to hold index funds with foreign exposure. And by index funds, I mean a specific white list. Not the index fund of pharmaceutical companies that start with "Pfi" and end in "zer".
I can't read the article but was this direct stock ownership or was this a they invested in index/mutual funds which then had some of the stock as part of the portfolio?
Obviously neither is ideal but one makes me squint much harder than the other.
+2
TetraNitroCubaneNot Angry...Just VERY Disappointed...Registered Userregular
Days before the start of a tumultuous term, and after the Supreme Court justices divided bitterly over a Texas law that bars most abortions after six weeks, Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned an audience of law students about the frustration of having to write dissents.
"There is going to be a lot of disappointment in the law, a huge amount," she said Wednesday at an event hosted by the American Bar Association. "Look at me, look at my dissents."
Earlier this month, Sotomayor penned a scathing opinion when the court's majority allowed the Texas law to go into effect, calling the action "stunning."
"You know, I can't change Texas' law," Sotomayor said Wednesday, "but you can and everyone else who may or may not like it can go out there and be lobbying forces in changing laws that you don't like."
Seems like Sotomayor isn't very optimistic about where we're headed.
Watch the media storm take off that Sotomayer was being political! And she needs to recuse herself from abortion cases for telling people to go vote and change their communities!
Leah Litman, a law professor, is tweeting her way through an Alito speech if anyone is curious
Oh yeah, Alito has apparently been scouring the internet for criticisms of him and is airing all of his grievances about it. You wouldn't think a SC judge would be such a child.
He's literally calling out journalist's articles about him. (Mark Joseph is a staff writer at Slate.)
Leah Litman, a law professor, is tweeting her way through an Alito speech if anyone is curious
Oh yeah, Alito has apparently been scouring the internet for criticisms of him and is airing all of his grievances about it. You wouldn't think a SC judge would be such a child.
Eh, that notion died during Kavanaugh's hearing.
FF XIV - Qih'to Furishu (on Siren), Battle.Net - Ilpala#1975
Switch - SW-7373-3669-3011
Fuck Joe Manchin
“You people just don’t understand our clear arguments when we put out our opinions excoriating lower courts for not following precedent that aren’t precedent…”
Leah Litman, a law professor, is tweeting her way through an Alito speech if anyone is curious
Oh yeah, Alito has apparently been scouring the internet for criticisms of him and is airing all of his grievances about it. You wouldn't think a SC judge would be such a child.
He's literally calling out journalist's articles about him. (Mark Joseph is a staff writer at Slate.)
Leah Litman, a law professor, is tweeting her way through an Alito speech if anyone is curious
Oh yeah, Alito has apparently been scouring the internet for criticisms of him and is airing all of his grievances about it. You wouldn't think a SC judge would be such a child.
He's literally calling out journalist's articles about him. (Mark Joseph is a staff writer at Slate.)
The best part is he doesn't even make an actual defense, he just quotes himself (because given the anger and axe grinding on display here, it sure seems like he's the jackass the wrote the memo,) saying in the order that it is not making a determination on constitutionality of the TX law!
We're not as dumb as you think we are Alito...choosing not to do anything is still making a determination on the constitutionality of the law. (because it's clearly not)
The one thing that's really becoming clear here though is everyone on the court knows they fucked up with the TX law.
Leah Litman, a law professor, is tweeting her way through an Alito speech if anyone is curious
I almost feel like Democrats and Liberals should grab this quote and trumpet it to the Senate and Biden that SCOTUS needs help, so nominate some more justices.
Posts
It's a really weird reach to jump to the assumption that someone's rich parents would be taking on the risk of payoffs when they can just, like, not do that.
It's starting from where you want the story to end and then trying to make reality fit that, when it's far more likely that the same parents who made him into a spoiled manchild bailed him out again.
If that was the case, where are the receipts and why is this something that wasn't just clearly disclosed?
When I refinanced my house, Bank of America required that I submit letters disclosing the source of a few thousand dollar deposit the previous month (it was a mundane work bonus) for their records. How is being confirmed to one of the most powerful lifetime appointments in the country held to a lower standard than a fucking home refinance?
I know the answer with everything Kavanaugh is 'fuck you, that's why' but that whole clown show of a hearing really made everything about that man suspicious even when it was apparently unnecessary.
He can claim whatever he wants, but that needs to be verified.
Never take anyone's word on anything.
About that-
This is why they wanted him on the court so bad, he’s been a GOP Bro since the Clinton impeachment
Kavanaugh’s confirmation, and Graham’s insane yelly theater about it, are all about the white dudes rallying to show everyone else that they will fight with all their power against anyone that tries to hold them accountable for abusing their undeserved privilege
It’s the thing that drove Rush Limbaugh to smoke during his shows despite it killing him, to show the emerging voices of the long-disadvantaged who still holds the power
In fairness Rush probably smoked on his shows because he was an untreated addict. Smoking wasn’t the only substance abuse issue he had.
As the saying goes, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
Even without the sex and money issues I suspect no one would have really cared about his work for the Bush admin. Hell, the main hatchet-man for all of the Bush admin's extralegal bullshit, John Yoo, continues to enjoy a long career at UCLA as a distinguished law professor even though in 2009 he was recommended to be disbarred for his ethical and professional misconduct. Yoo's even taken to clout chasing Trump by authoring bottom feeding books about how Trump demonstrated that GOP presidents should be god kings.
The Mother Jones article doesn’t argue that we shouldn’t believe the bribery rumors because we should take his word for it. It argues that we shouldn’t believe them because they are a complicated and implausible explanation of a fact which already has uncomplicated and plausible explanations, aka it is a conspiracy theory.
Bribing a federal judge is complicated and high risk. Who is willing to run that risk? Even if there were someone who was willing and was in position to do so, given that Kavanaugh both has family money and is extremely ambitious, he has little personal reason to accept bribes that he almost certainly doesn’t need and that might blow up his life. The simplest explanation is that he is financially entangled with his rich parents, the disclosure rules do not require him to disclose that, and so he didn’t, both because it is mildly embarrassing and because his confirmation was highly adversarial.
No the problem with the explanation is that he wouldn’t just say it.
The Wall Street Journal identified 131 federal judges who ruled on 685 lawsuits in which they had financial investments in one of the parties to the lawsuit. They ruled in their own financial interest 2/3 of the time.
Our elites are so hopelessly corrupt.
This is because we have allowed judicial independence to become judicial inviolability. Recusal is merely a suggestion, instead of a law with actual consequences for those violating it, and the profession refuses to actually hold judges accountable (mainly because the bench is a time honored retirement plan in the legal community.)
I never really understood the retirement angle, but it makes so much sense now. And yes, this is an entire profession basically left to its own devices and a mandate to discipline itself - which works about as well as that works for Congress. As a fun example, the Colorado Supreme Court and a good chunk of the top leadership of the Colorado Justice Dept. were ensnared in a far reaching sexual harassment and discrimination case in which the woman who was about to bring suit, was allegedly bribed with a 2.5 million dollar contract to keep quiet. A memo was released which showed endemic sexual harassment by multiple judges and troubling data about employment of female employees. And the Colorado SC tried to keep it bottled up until the press coverage got away from them. So far, it doesn't appear any of the judges involved, or anyone else for that matter, is seeing any punishment for their actions.
Oh yeah.. but in July of this year they amended their code of conduct to expressly forbid harassment.
Cool, impeach all of them and stack the court.
Partisanship within the judiciary, legislative dysfunction and a runaway concept of judicial independence has neutered the only actual check on the courts, which is supposed to be the legislative branch.
CLEARLY they only ruled in favor of their financial interests because their financial interests were on the correct side, OBVIOUSLY that's why they were invested in them in the first place, being people of such high moral character they inherently KNEW the correct side a priori.
I mean, what did you expect, recusal?
You're aware that 66% is higher than 50% right?
edit also this presumes cases and evidence are random which doesn't really work
It implies there is no correlation between judges financial interests and those interests being on the wrong side of lawsuits. Which isn't a terrible assumption.
But what Rahkeesh was mainly saying was that he was surprised that it wasn't higher than 66%. He knows its higher than 50% but its not so much higher as you would expect. That is, in only ~32% of cases did the bias matter.
That said, the fact that there are that many people who aren't recusing themself is the real problem.
Obviously neither is ideal but one makes me squint much harder than the other.
Seems like Sotomayor isn't very optimistic about where we're headed.
Leah Litman, a law professor, is tweeting her way through an Alito speech if anyone is curious
Oh yeah, Alito has apparently been scouring the internet for criticisms of him and is airing all of his grievances about it. You wouldn't think a SC judge would be such a child.
He's literally calling out journalist's articles about him. (Mark Joseph is a staff writer at Slate.)
Eh, that notion died during Kavanaugh's hearing.
Switch - SW-7373-3669-3011
Fuck Joe Manchin
Fucking wow
What a fucking asshole
The best part is he doesn't even make an actual defense, he just quotes himself (because given the anger and axe grinding on display here, it sure seems like he's the jackass the wrote the memo,) saying in the order that it is not making a determination on constitutionality of the TX law!
We're not as dumb as you think we are Alito...choosing not to do anything is still making a determination on the constitutionality of the law. (because it's clearly not)
The one thing that's really becoming clear here though is everyone on the court knows they fucked up with the TX law.
That speech is filled with jaw dropping quotes, but this one takes the cake so far.
I almost feel like Democrats and Liberals should grab this quote and trumpet it to the Senate and Biden that SCOTUS needs help, so nominate some more justices.
MWO: Adamski
(No you shut up!)
In which case I am sure he would be fine if we added a few justices in order to lower the workload.
Is it really politics anymore when you could shit on your desk in front of the whole nation and keep your job?