So many good quotes in this:
Folks couldn’t sleep all over the country last night, I know I couldn’t. So, here’s some advice from RBG herself, for moments like this:
Ruth Bader Ginsburg is a Tzaddik.
Just last week, Tom Cotton, one of the names Trump has been pushing for S.C., said, let’s get rid of Roe v. Wade.
From a reader: Turn RBG’s Passing into a Fretful Political Discourse?—I Dissent.
RBG’s final words.
“Our nation has lost a jurist of historic stature.” ~ Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.
It’s okay to mourn, to cry—and to fight, and to stand up and force justice—all at the same time.
Let us honor her final words, and wish:
“My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed.”
With RBG’s untimely passing, Mitch McConnell’s own Words Say it Best.
This is devastating to millions, unless we can hold off cynical partisan machinations. Some say Mitch won’t risk blowback? C’mon. He’s shameless:
He’s undoing democracy. It’s unconstitutional. And yet, he’s set a precedent–we’re gonna make him honor it.
It gets worse. Even if they fail, they’ll have a clear Supreme Court majority in place to support President Trump if he chooses to contest the election. This could be the moment when Democracy fell, in these United States.
“Probably planned to retire when Hilary Clinton is president, little did she know…” ~ Reddit Comment
Yup:
Let us walk her words with every step of our lives. That’s how we carry on her legacy.
I care about RBG. She’s a genuine heroine.
And, I much more care about what she cared about, and her final last words spoke to that–do not replace me, Trump.
Millions of good humans will suffer if Trump gets to replace her with, say, Ted Cruz, as has been discussed.
For a generation.
~
This is the worst possible thing that could have happened to women’s rights, black and minority rights, LGBTQ rights, to the already tattered-balance of this once-great Democracy, a further crack in the pillars of democracy.
Unless. We demand that Mitch honor his own logic:
“In 2016, Senate Republicans refused to consider President Barack Obama’s nomination of Judge Merrick B. Garland, saying that holding hearings in the last year of a president’s term would deprive voters of a role in the process…
Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, led the effort to block Judge Garland’s nomination. But he has said he will press to fill any vacancy that might arise in the last year of Mr. Trump’s first term.”
Can we repeat that? Yes we can:
Mitch McConnell in 2016: “The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president.”
There’s more where that came from.
2016, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas): “It has been 80 years since a Supreme Court vacancy was nominated and confirmed in an election year. There is a long tradition that you don’t do this in an election year.”
2018, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.): “If an opening comes in the last year of President Trump’s term, and the primary process has started, we’ll wait to the next election.”
2016, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.): “I don’t think we should be moving on a nominee in the last year of this president’s term – I would say that if it was a Republican president.”
2016, Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.): “The very balance of our nation’s highest court is in serious jeopardy. As a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, I will do everything in my power to encourage the president and Senate leadership not to start this process until we hear from the American people.”
2016, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa): “A lifetime appointment that could dramatically impact individual freedoms and change the direction of the court for at least a generation is too important to get bogged down in politics. The American people shouldn’t be denied a voice.”
2016, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.): “The campaign is already under way. It is essential to the institution of the Senate and to the very health of our republic to not launch our nation into a partisan, divisive confirmation battle during the very same time the American people are casting their ballots to elect our next president.”
2016, Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.): “In this election year, the American people will have an opportunity to have their say in the future direction of our country. For this reason, I believe the vacancy left open by Justice Antonin Scalia should not be filled until there is a new president.”
2016, Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.): “The Senate should not confirm a new Supreme Court justice until we have a new president.”
2016, Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Col.): “I think we’re too close to the election. The president who is elected in November should be the one who makes this decision.”
2016, Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio): “I believe the best thing for the country is to trust the American people to weigh in on who should make a lifetime appointment that could reshape the Supreme Court for generations. This wouldn’t be unusual. It is common practice for the Senate to stop acting on lifetime appointments during the last year of a presidential term, and it’s been nearly 80 years since any president was permitted to immediately fill a vacancy that arose in a presidential election year.”
2016, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.): “I strongly agree that the American people should decide the future direction of the Supreme Court by their votes for president and the majority party in the U.S. Senate.”
~
Oh my god.
Her untimely passing could alter the US for generations, if we don’t hold Mitch’s BS final-year no-appointee logic with Merrick Garland to the fire.
Obama was still the President. It was unconstitutional to take that power from him.
Going by Mitch’s logic, to be fair, we must now wait. A new tradition has been born.
Two apt Reddit comments:
Vote blue. For the love of f*cking god please.
Doesn’t matter, Supreme Court is lost for a generation and probably longer.
RBG has died. Read about her love and legacy, here.
RBG has died. Read about her love and legacy, here.
Unless we rise up and demand they wait, and demand, and demand, and stay up. Please share. Keep this fire burning bright. Make noise, peacefully, but with power—just as did she.
I really thought she could hold on. She was so tough. So tough, coming out of the hospital again and again over the past years.
I’ll always remember her wisdom.
I’ll always remember that toughness, and that humor, from Colbert’s delightful workout video with her.
But much more importantly—I’ll always remember what she did for us. Let us honor her final wishes.
PS: if you’re feeling numb, in shock, scared—you’re not alone. Allow yourself to feel heartbreak–that’s the surest path to empathy, which is RBG’s legacy. Caring.
Three more sharp Reddit comments re: “Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death could mean the end of church/state separation, abortion rights, LGBTQ rights, and civil rights in general.”
Of everything that has happened this year, this has been the one thing that has made me feel dread. This has the potential to plunge the U S Supreme Court into deep conservatism for a generation and give Trump four+ more years. Protest. Vote. Don’t let people forget about Merrick Garland. Don’t let Trump steal this election.
Of everything that has happened this year, this has been the one thing that has made me feel dread.
Well I am way ahead of you on existential dread this year, but this article and this one on McConnel’s unchecked Federal Judge scheme was the most recent thing to put me in crisis mode prior to RBG’s death. I had not realized that Federal judges are also lifetime appointments, I’d thought the Supreme Court appointments were our biggest fear. But no, he’s been packing in hundreds of lifetime-appointment judges for years as well as grabbing every Supreme Court slot that becomes available.
Even with a Democratic majority, this will be shaping our social programs for decades. Of course, without a Democratic majority to help balance the damage, I really will have no optimism left.
Your comment is exactly why Democrats need to run on judicial reform and expand (pack) the courts. Already in the SCOTUS mix of names is Josh Hawley, an accomplished person to be sure, but not having the resume befitting of a federal judge, much less SCOTUS judge. He’s in the mix because he’s 40 years old and can wreck havoc during a lifetime appointment, and is a religious zealot who worked for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. They are working to advance the language of the Religious Freedom and Restoration Act to the First Amendment, basically taking an accommodationist view of the Free Exercise clause, protecting discrimination under the guise of “religious freedom”.
One of the cases that deals with employment and religious freedom (requiring a firefighter to be vaccinated) in the fifth circuit has the petitioner argue that Employment Division v. Smith should be over turned. Cases like this will be tee’d up for a 6-3 SCOTUS, and unless we fight hard, we will see the walls separating Church and State begin to crumble.
Read 8 Comments and Reply
Read 8 comments and reply