Slate Writer: Curiel, Garland Targets of GOP’s ‘War On the Judiciary’
Conservative Paul Ryan and liberal Lithwick agree that Donald Trump’s recent digs at Gonzalo Curiel were racist, but disagree about their significance. Ryan considers the attacks peculiar to Trump, while Lithwick sees them as of a piece with the Republican party’s “wider assault on the judiciary in the Obama era.”
Lithwick even wondered rhetorically, “Do Trump’s smears of Judge Curiel differ all…
Rolling Stone: Cruz, Fiorina ‘Failed Approximations of Human Beings'
A few months back, some maintained that Ted Cruz was ineligible for the presidency because, in their view, he wasn’t a natural-born citizen of the United States. In a Thursday article, Jeb Lund made an even more extreme argument about Cruz, suggesting that he isn’t even a full-fledged person. Specifically, Lund opined that both Cruz and his would-be running mate, Carly Fiorina, are “spectacular…
Slate Writer: GOP Angry That Evenly Split SCOTUS Can’t ‘Screw’ Obama
Eight Is Enough was a popular television series in the late 1970s and early ’80s. Dahlia Lithwick hinted in a Saturday article that a show about Republicans’ sour attitude toward the current Supreme Court situation might be called Eight’s Not Enough, with the key role played in absentia by Antonin Scalia.
Lithwick theorized that for Republicans, “the 2016 term was meant to be the Supreme Court’s…
Guardian: Hillary, Anita Hill Faced ‘Poisonous Displays’ From GOPers
Confirmation, HBO’s new “fact-based dramatization” of the October 1991 Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill clash, reminded Jill Abramson, a former New York Times Washington bureau chief, managing editor, and executive editor, of “more recent congressional proceedings” that featured both “a lone woman witness” and copious Republican misogyny.
“Hillary Clinton was the star of this show trial, the Benghazi…
Blogger: SCOTUS Often Has ‘Overcome’ Right’s ‘Inexcusable Wrongness’
If judicial review means that the U.S. Supreme Court is a de facto super-legislature that can in effect supersede actual legislatures, that’s fine with Washington Monthly blogger Martin Longman. In a Wednesday post, Longman acknowledged that certain SCOTUS rulings over the past several decades have been politically motivated, but argued that those were appropriate remedies for the “deplorable and…
Slate Writer: Stalled Garland Nomination Result of GOP ‘Insanity Gap’
There’s a saying, attributed to Woody Allen, that “showing up is 80 percent of life.” Dahlia Lithwick suggested in a Tuesday piece that showing up might be even more important for Merrick Garland if he wants to become a Supreme Court justice. Lithwick semi-seriously wrote that if “by the end of September of 2016” Senate Republicans still haven’t given Garland a hearing, he “should simply suit up…
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Woodward: Garland Would Be a Liberal Justice, But Isn't 'Partisan'
While discussing President Obama’s appointment of D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals Chief Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court on Wednesday, The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward emphasized on Fox News Sunday that while Garland would provide a fifth vote for liberals in cases before the Court, but was someone who’s “not really partisan in anyway.”
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Halperin: All Agree Great for SCOTUS to 'Look More Like America'
I'm guessing most NewsBusters readers could care less about "diversity" when it comes to choosing Justices of the Supreme Court. That they'd be thrilled if all nine justices looked, for example, like Clarence Thomas--so long as all shared his philosophy of judicial restraint and original intent.
On today's With All Due Respect, Mark Halperin interviewed Planned Parent president Cecile Richards.…
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On HBO, Maher Panel Slams Scalia, Jokes About His Death
On Friday's Real Time with Bill Maher, left-wing HBO comedian Bill Maher and his all-liberal panel went after deceased conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, as Maher not only joked about the possibility that he died while watching his show, but ended up imagining him "murdering" birds and looking like Dumbledore from the Harry Potter series the evening before his passing.
Pundit On SCOTUS Vacancy: GOP ‘Taking a S**t on the Constitution’
Scatology has typically been out of bounds in mainstream-media political commentary. (Not in all political commentary, of course. For example, actor John Cusack once called former actor Ronald Reagan “a criminal who used the Constitution as toilet paper.”) Nonetheless, Michael Tomasky went there in a Wednesday column trashing Senate Republicans for refusing to consider any Supreme Court…
Jeffrey Toobin: Scalia’s Successor Should Be the Opposite of Scalia
CNN and New Yorker pundit Jeffrey Toobin considers Antonin Scalia “a perfect model for everything that President Obama should avoid in a successor.” The late SCOTUS justice, asserted Toobin in the New Yorker, “lived within the sealed bubble of contemporary conservative thought” and “devoted his professional life to making the United States a less fair, less tolerant, and less admirable democracy…
Blogger: GOPers Don’t Want Obama’s ‘Kenyan Paws’ On Scalia’s Seat
Some analysts have pointed out that it’d be risky for Republicans to preemptively block anyone President Obama nominates to succeed Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court, but that approach wouldn’t necessarily end when Obama leaves office. Washington Monthly blogger Martin Longman believes that if in 2017 a Democrat becomes president but GOPers retain sufficient power in the Senate, they’ll just…
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ABC Hypes Hillary Pinning GOP as Racists; 'Coded Racial Language'
The Tuesday edition of ABC’s World News Tonight played the role of spin doctor for the Hillary Clinton campaign as it stood out from the CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News by prominently touting Clinton attacking Republicans as being racist in their opposition to President Obama and most recently his desire to place the late Justice Antonin Scalia. Further, ABC saw it fit to play up Clinton…
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CBS, NBC: Obama ‘Plans to Follow the Constitution’ vs. GOP ‘Roadblock'
The “big three” networks ABC, CBS, and NBC all made sure to weigh in Tuesday night on President Barack Obama’s comments hours earlier about his desire to fill the Supreme Court vacancy left by the late Justice Antonin Scalia and spun them as Obama “plan[ning] to follow the Constitution” against “the Republican roadblock” in the Senate.
