• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

PoliGAF 2014 |OT2| We need to be more like Disney World

Status
Not open for further replies.
Joe Molotov

Joe Molotov

Member
Lifetime appointments
sJoiEvX.png
 
C

cooljeanius

Member
The Founders couldn't have foreseen the increasing life expectancies that people enjoy nowadays. At the very least the Constitution needs an amendment to decide how to handle the (highly unlikely) case in which one of the justices gains immortality.
 
G

Gotchaye

Member
cooljeanius said:
The Founders couldn't have foreseen the increasing life expectancies that people enjoy nowadays. At the very least the Constitution needs an amendment to decide how to handle the (highly unlikely) case in which one of the justices gains immortality.
Click to expand...

I don't know about that (the foreseeing part, not the immortality part). Wikipedia's got a list of Supreme Court justices, and plotting years served against order of appointment doesn't really show obvious patterns (I've excluded the currently-serving justices, but their average right now is about the same as the historical average).

Hhi6Bkg.png


Eyeballing the list, while people live a bit longer nowadays they also get appointed older.
 
F

FyreWulff

Member
Don't worry, we'll get term limits on the supreme court once it's majority female, since women tend to live longer no conservatives will want 40 years of majority-women judicial branch.

edit: current SP birth years

1933
1936
1936
1938
1948
1950
1954
1955
1960
 
N

NYCmetsfan

Banned
cooljeanius said:
The Founders couldn't have foreseen the increasing life expectancies that people enjoy nowadays. At the very least the Constitution needs an amendment to decide how to handle the (highly unlikely) case in which one of the justices gains immortality.
Click to expand...
People lived into the 80s in the 1700s. They knew and expected it.

Read the federalist to see why they did things they way they did (or at least justified it).
It's about insolation not time. People are pissed about time because we still have Reagan appointees but forget Obamas will last long after him.
 
W

Wilsongt

Member
The face of pure evil, ladies and gentlemen.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney on Sunday continued to fiercely defend the harsh interrogation techniques employed by the CIA under the Bush administration after 9/11.

On NBC's "Meet the Press," Cheney said he would use the questionable interrogation methods "again in a minute."

Host Chuck Todd asked Cheney to respond to the Senate Intelligence Committee report's account that one detainee was "chained to the wall of a cell, doused with water, froze to death in CIA custody."

"And it turned out it was a case of mistaken identity," Todd said.

"Right," Cheney responded. "But the problem I have was with all of the folks that we did release that end up back on the battlefield."

"I’m more concerned with bad guys who got out and released than I am with a few that in fact were innocent," he continued.

Todd pressed Cheney, asking if he was okay with the fact that about 25 percent of the detainees interrogated were actually innocent.

"I have no problem as long as we achieve our objective. And our objective is to get the guys who did 9/11 and it is to avoid another attack against the United States," Cheney responded.
Click to expand...
 
M

Mario

Sidhe / PikPok
Host Chuck Todd asked Cheney to respond to the Senate Intelligence Committee report's account that one detainee was "chained to the wall of a cell, doused with water, froze to death in CIA custody."

"And it turned out it was a case of mistaken identity," Todd said.

"Right," Cheney responded. "But the problem I have was with all of the folks that we did release that end up back on the battlefield."

"I’m more concerned with bad guys who got out and released than I am with a few that in fact were innocent," he continued.
Click to expand...

This is just... wow. Not surprising, but you don't really expect senior (former) officials to say this straight out.

Who cares whether innocent foreigners are killed as long as America's interests are maintained? Certainly not Mr Cheney (his piles of money arising from such action helps I'm sure).

This is something that has always disturbed me about a lot of US political rhetoric - so much "eye for an eye" and revenge sentiment rather than holding ones self to a higher standard. How can you legitimately paint terrorists as the monsters while maintaining complete disregard for the consequences of your own actions and the lives of others? Indeed, anything less than "revenge plus more" seems to be positioned as weakness.

Oh to be a fly on the wall of meetings at the top of the military industrial complex. Would be truly sickening I'm sure when they are already prepared to say this much in public.
 
Joe Molotov

Joe Molotov

Member
lawl, remember that time the Supreme Court put Dick Cheney a (plastic) heartbeat away from the Nuclear launch codes? Wasn't that some shit?
 
W

Wilsongt

Member
And no court in America or the world will indict him for it.

I am currently in a baptist mega church for a christmas concert and I could probably sneeze in any direction and find at least 5 people whi agree with Cheney.
 
C

Chichikov

Member
Poodlestrike said:
Lifetime appointments for judges, while sometimes inconvenient, aren't really a bad idea. You don't want them worrying about what they'll do when their term expires.
Click to expand...
Lifetime appointment are always bad, elected officials should always been answerable to the people.
The problem with judicial appointments is that the process is way too politicized, but if a fucker goes full James Clark McReynolds, having him facing consequences is not a bad thing.
 
I

ivysaur12

Banned
I'm totally okay with lifetime appointments for judges. They shouldn't be close to the political process. I'm also against reelecting any judges.
 
G

Grexeno

Member
Lifetime appointments are the only reason some of the best court decisions in history ever got made. Those don't get made if the judges were worried about elections.
 
S

speculawyer

Member
Host Chuck Todd asked Cheney to respond to the Senate Intelligence Committee report's account that one detainee was "chained to the wall of a cell, doused with water, froze to death in CIA custody."

"And it turned out it was a case of mistaken identity," Todd said.

"Right," Cheney responded.

...

"I’m more concerned with bad guys who got out and released than I am with a few that in fact were innocent," he continued.

Todd pressed Cheney, asking if he was okay with the fact that about 25 percent of the detainees interrogated were actually innocent.

"I have no problem as long as we achieve our objective.
Click to expand...
You know, I'm loathe to wish for the deaths of politicians that I don't agree with. But let's just say that no tears will be shed when this piece of shit dies.

He is literally saying that he does not give a shit about killing innocent people.
 
C

Chichikov

Member
ivysaur12 said:
I'm totally okay with lifetime appointments for judges. They shouldn't be close to the political process. I'm also against reelecting any judges.
Click to expand...
I'm all of removing them from the political process, but they're already part of it.
It's not like your two options are lifetime appointments and periodic elections.
 
F

FyreWulff

Member
Chichikov said:
Lifetime appointment are always bad, elected officials should always been answerable to the people.
The problem with judicial appointments is that the process is way too politicized, but if a fucker goes full James Clark McReynolds, having him facing consequences is not a bad thing.
Click to expand...

The general public that had access to voting at the time wouldn't have voted him out. When he was appointed women still couldn't vote and black voting supression was at an all time high. The president that appointed him openly did not hire black employees and explicitly segregated the government.

He was a shitlord but everyone at the time were also being shitlords :(
 
C

Chichikov

Member
FyreWulff said:
The general public that had access to voting at the time wouldn't have voted him out. When he was appointed women still couldn't vote and black voting supression was at an all time high. The president that appointed him openly did not hire black employees and explicitly segregated the government.
Click to expand...
That's democracy for you.
An argument can be made against it (not being sarcastic) saying that the people cannot be trusted with such decisions, but if you go that route (pretty much what China says) you can do better than whoever was the president and which party had majority in the senate at the time when a justice died.
 
F

FyreWulff

Member
Chichikov said:
That's democracy for you.
An argument can be made against it (not being sarcastic) saying that the people cannot be trusted with such decisions, but if you go that route (pretty much what China says) you can do better than whoever was the president at the time when a justice died.
Click to expand...

Supreme Court justices are installed by the other 2 branches. They're a reflection of the voting populace already.

It's just that the other two branches have become so deadlocked that now the SC is in the spotlight more because now they're having to remove the deadlock on everything.
 
D

Diablos

Member
Gotchaye said:
Are we supposed to assume that somehow we know for sure that there's a nuke, that it's about to explode, that we've got someone in custody who we know knows how to stop it, that he won't give up the information unless we torture him, that he will definitely give up useful information if we torture him (which we know we can act on to stop the nuke), and that we've somehow been dropped in to make that decision independent of any institutional systems we've got in place that would actually be making that kind of decision?
Click to expand...
Basically, yes. It sounds outlandish (because it is).

Then probably. But all you're really getting at there is this consequentialism/deontology divide. That's an important philosophical question, but it's weird to phrase it this way where it's easy to confuse it as a question with direct real-world implications for the permissibility of torture. All those things we had to assume away aren't things that we can assume away in real life.
Click to expand...
Good point. I personally think in the scenario we're talking about, in terms of real-world implications, you'd be torturing someone who is essentially willing to go to great lengths to destroy the US, even if that means a slow and agonizing death, to justify their cause. You could do things not seen outside of places like North Korea, and they still might not tell you anything legitimate. But if it's a scenario where there's literally a nuke about to go off and we know this for a fact, and the person in custody knows and it's the only way to stop it, I think extreme measures could be justified -- but only if you know the person is guilty. Otherwise it's just a shot in the dark, and still a shot in the dark but perhaps less so if they are guilty. If a bomb is ticking and everyone is going to die, the terrorist could just keep taunting everyone, lying, laughing, whatever. I don't think torture would work, because the individual(s) trying to carry it out are so incredibly dedicated to their cause that they are more than likely aware of the risks and prepared to deal with them in the name of their cause.

I think if you want to pose a real-world scenario which suggests that torture is permissible, you've got to flesh it out so that it's plausible and so that your audience doesn't have a bunch of obvious questions about how you know the things you're claiming to know. If the only way you can make the result you want seem plausible is if the terrorists are comic book villains and we have James Bond, that probably says something about whether or not torture is ever in practice a good idea and especially whether or not we should institutionalize it.
Click to expand...
Indeed, it is a comic book villian type of scenario. It's totally crazy and, as previously said, one in a zillion type of scenario. But it just might happen, someday. I feel like we're living in a time where these kinds of things, while still highly unlikely, are within the realm of possibility.

speculawyer said:
Bill Clinton already provided the best answer to this. Torture should still be illegal. That 1 in a zillion situation just doesn't really happen often if ever. But even if it did happen then the president should just break the law and throw himself on the mercy of justice system. In all probability, if you torture the person in that situation, you are gonna get a pardon.
Click to expand...
This is basically what I think too.

Also Cheney's comments are absolutely revolting and quite scary. We know torture more or less did fuck all for our intelligence efforts against terrorism post 9/11. Yet he's perfectly content with openly admitting it was just fine letting people die who were innocent for nothing.

He's a monster, and if you were to ask me, no better than many of the people he sought to kill after 9/11. Think about it -- he's admitting to shrugging his shoulders over innocent prisoners being brutally murdered in the name of his "war on terror". What does this sound like?
 
H

HylianTom

Banned
We need more exposure of Cheney; I loathe the man but still enjoy it whenever he shows-up on TV. Voters need to be reminded constantly of what they get from the GOP. They obviously forget far too easily.
 
J

JesseEwiak

Member
The only decent option for judges is a limited time that cycles so every President gets an appointment. Obviously, the current Justices would keep their lifetime appointment, then their replacement would be the one who gets the let's say, 22 year appointment.

Unfortunately, we probably wouldn't get that, and the only thing worse than the lifetime appointment of judges is judges having to be voted in every four years.
 
S

StopMakingSense

Member
cooljeanius said:
The Founders couldn't have foreseen the increasing life expectancies that people enjoy nowadays. At the very least the Constitution needs an amendment to decide how to handle the (highly unlikely) case in which one of the justices gains immortality.
Click to expand...

Life expectancy is a misleading metric in this use. You want to look at life expectancy past age 40/50/60, etc, which has a lot less change than just average life expectancy.

(This is also very useful for bullshit raising the Medicare/SS/Retirement Age arguments)
 
A

AndyD

aka andydumi
Gotchaye said:
I don't know about that (the foreseeing part, not the immortality part). Wikipedia's got a list of Supreme Court justices, and plotting years served against order of appointment doesn't really show obvious patterns (I've excluded the currently-serving justices, but their average right now is about the same as the historical average).


Eyeballing the list, while people live a bit longer nowadays they also get appointed older.
Click to expand...

I think this is where people get critical of the system. That while they serve the same amount of time (decades), that period comes later in life, so they are not as representative or in touch with the population at large, but more on the older end of the spectrum.

While it appears that length of term stays relatively constant, it would be nice to see an average appointment age graph and see if it actually changed significantly.
 
Joe Molotov

Joe Molotov

Member
AndyD said:
I think this is where people get critical of the system. That while they serve the same amount of time (decades), that period comes later in life, so they are not as representative or in touch with the population at large, but more on the older end of the spectrum.
Click to expand...

They're also more likely to be in the advanced stages of senility, and no longer able to distinguish TV shows from reality.
 
D

Don Chalupa

Banned
speculawyer said:
The major effect on the USA economy will be a good one. Cheaper gas means everyone has more money in their pocket to spend on other things. Despite all the propaganda over the past couple years, we still import close to half the oil that is run through our refineries . . . as an oil importing nation, this will benefit us overall despite the pain that will be felt in the oil fracking biz that only benefits a few states.
Click to expand...

Like you said, I think the bigger problem we have with the crash in oil, is that hundreds of billions of dollars of debt (close to $550 billion since 2010) is riding on the price of oil not falling, and shale oil companies not cutting production (which they already are doing). The bonds going down in price, has in turn scared the entire credit market, which has in turn scared the equity markets. High yield bonds are crashing in a big way, and all this debt is also likely tied to the same old credit-default-swaps that triggered the 2008 panic. Somebody will either pay the cash or be bailed out if the defaults start happening. The other big problem with the credit markets crashing, is that the lift in stocks we have seen in the last 3 years, is hugely due to companies issuing debt to buy back their own stock. If companies stop doing this (QE is done for now, and credit markets are turning), no one else will be buying equities at these insane valuations (maybe only the central banks will keep buying equities).

QE did enough damage to fuel a debt bonanza since 2010, and the normal workings of the oil market (global demand down in a big way, supply up in a big way), plus some shortsighted strategy by OPEC against US oil, and the stage is set for the bigger leg down of the 2008 crisis.
 
G

gcubed

Member
In the Dem Planning Sessions - "Apparently we didn't go far enough to the right!"

I have no faith in the committees and their chairs for the House and Senate to understand why people stayed home, and thus have no faith in democrats as a whole (barring a select few bright spots).
 
W

Wilsongt

Member
If people didn't expect Fox News to jump on the torture defense bandwagon, then those people deserve to be slapped.

Fox & Friends made a smooth transition from breaking news coverage of the Sydney hostage crisis this morning to Vice President Dick Cheney’s defense of the CIA torture program on Meet the Press. Within the span of a few minutes, host Elisabeth Hasselbeck was using the still-unfolding situation in Australia as justification for the CIA’s use of so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques.”

After her co-hosts gave an update on the hostage situation, Hasselbeck said, “Meanwhile, the actual individuals here at home who have been looking into and trying to stop attacks like this and perhaps future hostage situations, as we are still at war indeed with ISIS and terrorism are the CIA, and they have been painted as the bad guys at home.”

Following a clip of Cheney’s face-off with Chuck Todd, Hasselbeck added, “When you see what’s happening in Australia, today, right now, in a chocolate shop and you understand the real war with ISIS that we’re in, and the sharp contrast with the CIA trying to do their job and keep America safe for the past 13 years, startles you, any day.”
Click to expand...
 
A

Aaron Strife

Banned
Reading the comments section on a DailyKos article about Elizabeth Warren's 8 millionth denial that she's running for president.

Man, some people can't let go of the dream.
 
D

Don Chalupa

Banned
Aaron Strife said:
Reading the comments section on a DailyKos article about Elizabeth Warren's 8 millionth denial that she's running for president.

Man, some people can't let go of the dream.
Click to expand...

It is with great pain that I will vote for the corporatist military-industrial-complex ally, Hillary Clinton.

Better her than to have all the above with a touch of bigotry coming from the Republicans.
 
N

Necrovex

Member
Aaron Strife said:
Reading the comments section on a DailyKos article about Elizabeth Warren's 8 millionth denial that she's running for president.

Man, some people can't let go of the dream.
Click to expand...

I am certain that Clinton will be the Democrat's nominee, I can see Warren running for President after Clinton's time is over (or the following election if the Republicans somehow wins the Presidency).

Don Chalupa said:
It is with great pain that I will vote for the corporatist military-industrial-complex ally, Hillary Clinton.

Better her than to have all the above with a touch of bigotry coming from the Republicans.
Click to expand...

Like you, I am hardly a big Clinton fan, but better her than the GOP having control of the Executive branch.
 
W

Wilsongt

Member
...HAHAHAHAHAH. Suck it, Alan Wilson:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matt-...-owe_b_6325108.html?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000592

Marriage is here to stay in South Carolina, but Attorney General Alan Wilson seems to be having a hard time accepting it. Even though South Carolina couples have been getting married since last month, Wilson has continued his losing battle to stop the weddings. But the longer he drags out his appeal, the more money he may wind up having to give to a coalition of gay rights groups.

That's because the coalition has filed a petition seeking to recoup the money that they've had to spend to keep marriage legal. If the court grants their request, Wilson will have to give over $150,000 to organizations fighting for equality. Wilson really has no chance of stopping marriage at this point. He's appealing to the Fourth Circuit, which has repeatedly allowed marriages to go forward. So all he's doing now is running up a huge tab.

And the same thing's happening Arkansas. Outgoing Governor Mike Beebe and incoming Governor Asa Hutchinson both say they oppose marriage equality. Last week Beebe went even further, telling supporters that he might be willing to consider limited civil unions. That might've been an okay position twenty years ago. But civil unions are a compromise, and at this point we're so close to winning we don't have to compromise anymore.

In fact, there's a new study this week that shows why we're so close to winning. And no surprise, it's what Harvey Milk said back in the '70s: You have to come out. The new study in the journal Science shows that when door-to-door canvassers come out, and talk about wanting to get married, voters' minds change -- and stay changed. If we don't come out, their minds change back after less than a week. So that's why coming out as queer is so important, and why those anti-gay politicians are going to lose.
Click to expand...

Also, in today's "No shit, Sherlock" news:

During the primetime hours of 8-11 p.m., MSNBC’s audience is 24% black, CNN’s audience is 16% black and Fox News’ audience is just 1% black. By comparison MSNBC’s primetime audience is 67% white while CNN’s is 73% white and Fox News’ is 92% white.
Click to expand...

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/only-1-of-fox-news-viewers-are-black/
 
W

WayneMorse

Banned
Aaron Strife said:
Reading the comments section on a DailyKos article about Elizabeth Warren's 8 millionth denial that she's running for president.

Man, some people can't let go of the dream.
Click to expand...

Well, to be fair, she always says "I'm not running for President" in the present tense saying she's not running at the moment, but she could in the future. If she would just come out and say "I will not run for President in 2016" she would put a stop to all the speculation, but she doesn't.
 
Metaphoreus

Metaphoreus

This is semantics, and nothing more
For those interested, [url="http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/antonin-scalias-spirited-defense-torture]MSNBC[/url] has more of Scalia's comments on torture:

The interviewer asked, for example, what the U.S. Constitution says about torture. “We have laws against torture,” Scalia replied. “The Constitution says nothing whatever about torture. It speaks of punishment; ‘cruel and unusual’ punishments are forbidden.”

“So torture is forbidden, in that case?” the host asked. “If it’s imposed as a punishment, yes,” Scalia responded. “If you condemn someone who has committed a crime to be tortured, that would be unconstitutional.”

When the interview sought clarification, asking about interrogations, Scalia interrupted mid-question. Here’s his response in its entirety:

We have never held that that’s contrary to the Constitution. And I don’t know what provision of the Constitution that would, that would contravene.

Listen, I think it is very facile for people to say, ‘Oh, torture is terrible.’ You posit the situation where a person that you know for sure knows the location of a nuclear bomb that has been planted in Los Angeles and will kill millions of people. You think it’s an easy question? You think it’s clear that you cannot use extreme measures to get that information out of that person? I don’t think that’s so clear at all.

And once again, it’s this sort of self-righteousness of European liberals who answer that question so readily and so easily. It’s not that easy a question.
Click to expand...

When the host noted that American liberals tend to agree with European liberals on the issue, Scalia added, “And American liberals too. Yes. But the Europeans are more self-righteous, I think.”
Click to expand...
 
T

thezerofire

Banned
that doomsday scenario still doesn't hold up to criticism because there's still no guarantee that the person won't lie under torture, buying more time
 
A

AntoneM

Member
thezerofire said:
that doomsday scenario still doesn't hold up to criticism because there's still no guarantee that the person won't lie under torture, buying more time
Click to expand...

No, some how you know that if you just torture them they will tell you the absolute truth because this totally plausible scenario is just like Hollywood real life!
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

  • Locked
PoliGAF 2017 |OT6| Made this thread during Harvey because the ratings would be higher
338 339 340 341 342
17K
2M
UselessNapkin replied
  • Locked
PoliGAF 2017 |OT5| The Man In the High Chair
395 396 397 398 399
20K
2M
RDreamer replied
  • Locked
PoliGAF 2017 |OT4| The leaks are coming from inside the white house
396 397 398 399 400
20K
2M
ShironRedshift replied
  • Locked
PoliGAF 2017 |OT3| 13 Treasons Why
393 394 395 396 397
20K
2M
Zaraki_Kenpachi replied
  • Locked
Poligaf 2017 |OT| It Almost Isn't Fair
9
4K
Bonen no Max'd replied
Top Bottom