Patting the wrists, rolling the eyes.

[ltl/fb]

Originally posted by Sidd Finch
It's easy to avoid the travails of public schools. You just need to be willing to blow, say, 15k a year.

For f'ing kindergarten.

Heh. No fucking way.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Sidd Finch
In general, I would say that teachers receive decent pay, but hardly high pay given the qualifications and demands involved.

All of our words-passing-in-the-night aside, I agree with this.

[bilmore]

(I love this guy.)

[Sidd Finch]

Originally posted by bilmore
All of our words-passing-in-the-night aside, I agree with this.

Clearly we just don't speak the same language. I blame the public schools.

[Sexual Harassment Panda]

Originally posted by bilmore


(I love this guy.)

Heh-heh.

Here's another --

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Well, I think it's very appropriate that in order to install conservative judicial activists on the federal bench, Bill Frist is willing to declare unconstitutional a Senate rule that he was using just a few years ago. This is a matter of principle, and the conservative principle here is that if the law doesn't say what conservatives want it to, we need to get rid of that law and interpret ourselves a new one.

eta:

At least Justice Janice Rogers Brown has been candid about this:

• Republicans, and their conservative allies, have been willing to make . . . lame arguments to rescue even nominees whose jurisprudence is questionable. Janice Rogers Brown, one of Bush's nominees has argued that there is properly 'an extra-constitutional dimension to constitutional law.' She has said that judges should be willing to invoke a 'higher law' than the Constitution. She has said that judicial activism is not troubling per se; what matters is the 'worldview' of the judicial activist. If a liberal nominee to the courts said similar things, conservatives would make quick work of her.

That would Ramesh Ponnuru on her.

[Say_hello_for_me]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
the conservative principle here is that if the law doesn't say what conservatives want it to, we need to get rid of that law and interpret ourselves a new one.

Well, if by "the law", you mean "something that nobody seems to have voted on before", and by "we", you mean "the majority" and not "the minority" or "some activist lawyer in a Judge's robe", than, uhm, actually, yes.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Say_hello_for_me
Well, if by "the law", you mean "something that nobody seems to have voted on before"

Bitch, please.

This morning on the floor of the Senate, Sen. Chuck Schumer asked Majority Leader Bill Frist a simple question:

• SEN. SCHUMER: Isn’t it correct that on March 8, 2000, my colleague [Sen. Frist] voted to uphold the filibuster of Judge Richard Paez?

Here was Frist’s response:

• The president, the um, in response, uh, the Paez nomination - we’ll come back and discuss this further. … Actually I’d like to, and it really brings to what I believe - a point - and it really brings to, oddly, a point, what is the issue. The issue is we have leadership-led partisan filibusters that have, um, obstructed, not one nominee, but two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, in a routine way.

So, Frist is arguing that one filibuster is OK. His problem is that several Bush nominees have been filibustered. This position completely undercuts Frist’s argument that judicial filibusters are unconstitutional. (Which is, in turn, the justification for the nuclear option.) If judicial filibusters are unconstitutional there is no freebee. But Frist digs his hole even deeper:

• The issue is not cloture votes per se, it’s the partisan, leadership-led use of cloture votes to kill - to defeat - to assassinate these nominees. That’s the difference. Cloture has been used in the past on this floor to postpone, to get more info, to ask further questions.

When Frist voted to filibuster Paez’s nomination it had been pending for four years. It’s hard to believe he couldn’t get all the info he needed or ask all the questions he had during that time. Make no mistake about it: Bill Frist was trying to kill the Paez nomination. A press release issued the following day by former Sen. Bob Smith, who organized the filibuster effort, read “Smith Leads Effort to Block Activist Judges.”

link

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Say_hello_for_me
Well, if by "the law", you mean "something that nobody seems to have voted on before", and by "we", you mean "the majority" and not "the minority" or "some activist lawyer in a Judge's robe", than, uhm, actually, yes.

Geshundteit.

[Say_hello_for_me]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Bitch, please.



link

The fact that you did something 5 years ago (or last night) does not mean that you actively considered whether it was legal in all respects of the Constitution; nor does it mean that it was in fact legal in all respects of the Constitution.

The great burden of leadership that Delay carries is that he is now in a position where he is expected to know and understand all of the rules, requirements, obligations, laws, provisions, amendments, preambles, penumbras, permutations and everything else on behalf of his constitutents, his party, and the whole U.S. of A. No more sleeping in homeroom for ole boy Bill.

And the fact that he voted for a filibuster does not mean that he had considered the underlying issue of whether filibusters of that particular type would stand up to challenge. Lots of things legislators do don't stand up to challenge. You expect they are worried about what every critic in a robe might think? No. They carry about what their constituents and contributors will think.

Take some small measure of comfort that in the year 2250, the tables will be turned on the Republicans and the Martian Cooperative will gleefully shoulder aside a filibuster attempt of this sort. Til then, bye bye baby!

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Say_hello_for_me
The fact that you did something 5 years ago (or last night) does not mean that you actively considered whether it was legal in all respects of the Constitution; nor does it mean that it was in fact legal in all respects of the Constitution.

Aw, c'mon. Both sides are crying "unConstitutional!!", and all of us on these boards know both sides are wrong.

[Sidd Finch]

Originally posted by bilmore
Aw, c'mon. Both sides are crying "unConstitutional!!", and all of us on these boards know both sides are wrong.

Maybe you should scroll up one post and read what your compatriot says. There's still time to edit this.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Sidd Finch
Maybe you should scroll up one post and read what your compatriot says. There's still time to edit this.

I don't have compatriots. I have interests.

(Which compatriot? You mean Ty??)

[Sidd Finch]

Originally posted by bilmore
I don't have compatriots. I have interests.

(Which compatriot? You mean Ty??)

Assuming the question is serious, Say Hello. He seems to believe that it is, in fact, unConsitutional, and that Frist is being honest and pure as the driven snow.

Assuming it's not serious, then Atticus. I often think you're both full of shit.


[psst-let's not go round and round again]just kidding, no offense intended[/psst-let's not go round and round again]

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Sidd Finch
Assuming the question is serious, Say Hello. He seems to believe that it is, in fact, unConsitutional, and that Frist is being honest and pure as the driven snow.

It was serious. I was responding to SH's belief, disagreeing with him. Frist and Reid are simply bloviating and lying, pandering to all those voters who have no effing clue what a filibuster really is, and what the Constitution says, while they play out their strategies and tactics. There's nothing unconstitutional about denying a vote through filibuster, or wiping out judicial filibusters. Similarly, there's no abridgment of freedom of speech (asshole Reid) by invoking cloture. They're just trying to spin to get the most uninformed support. Anyone who paid attention to two or three pertinent law school classes knows this. This is all simply a fight over votes, not principles, on both sides.