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Senator Mazie Hirono Opens Up On SCOTUS
She talks about Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, Barrett, and Ginsburg. Merrick Garland makes a guest appearance.
Senator Mazie Hirono, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, gave a lengthy interview to the New York Times. Here are a few highlights that concern the Supreme Court.
First, she said Justice Kavanaugh was a "political operative." She added, "In my view he's not a very good lawyer."
Second, she said she spoke with Attorney General Garland about Kavanaugh's Garza decision. I'm sure Merrick is thrilled that she revealed their discussion to the press:
Hirono: I've gotten to know Merrick Garland a little bit, and he told me he was watching the Kavanaugh hearings. Merrick Garland is not somebody who says anything bad about anybody, but the Garza case — when Kavanaugh said that was a parental-consent case, did you almost fall off your chair, as I did?
NYT: Garland said that to you about the Garza case?
Hirono: No, I said that to Garland. He just kind of looked at me like, Yeah. I knew that he was astounded.
Third, she offered this description of Justice Gorsuch:
I don't mind conservatives on the Court. I mean, of the three new ones Gorsuch is pretty conservative, but he's a literal person: If it says so right there in black and white, then he'll go with it. Sometimes it results in really stupid decisions, in my view. If the law was there to protect people from falling through a round hole and a person fell through a square hole — too bad for you. He's smart enough to know that's a ridiculous posture.
A "literal" analysis that leads to a "stupid decision." It is unclear if Senator Hirono was talking about Bostock.
She offered a comment about Justice Barrett and her Catholicism.
So it wasn't that she was a Catholic, but that there's supposed to be this thing called separation of church and state, which is becoming blurred. Her religion, I didn't care. What I care about is the use of religion as basically trumping every other right.
The Washington Examiner also includes an excerpt from Hirono's new book. The Senator relays a conversation with RBG:
Hirono, who serves on the Senate Judiciary Committee, recalled in her forthcoming memoir, Heart of Fire, how a month after Senate Republicans confirmed Kavanaugh to the high court, the "troubled" Hirono sat herself next to Ginsburg at a dinner party and offered her regrets.
"You have to live forever," Hirono whispered to Ginsburg, noting that she felt "some small comfort" as long as the octogenarian justice sat on the court.
Ginsburg did not respond to Hirono's entreaty directly, only replying that with Kavanaugh on the court, there would be more 5-4 decisions than before. The two women agreed that that was a bleak prospect, Hirono wrote.
…
When the Senate held the final vote to confirm Barrett, Hirono walked to the Senate floor, put her thumb down, and said, "Hell, no."
In the interview with the Times, Hirono states explicitly what many Democrats think: a judge should be measured based on what progressive results they reach:
I expect the Supreme Court to actually expand people's individual rights and freedoms. I don't expect the Supreme Court to be constraining voting rights and a woman's right to choose. I expect the Supreme Court to be protective of minority rights, and that is not where this Court is. So this is not an equivalency.
We are beyond platitudes like "courts should follow the law." Now, Courts should expand rights and protect minorities. That's their job, regardless of what the law says. Senator Hirono's candor is refreshing.
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America hating, $2 whore, and lawyer dumbass. Hawaii is greatly suffering, but they have awful electoral taste. Disloyal Hawaiians deserve their agonies. Tourists will enjoy Florida a lot more. Boycott Hawaii.
And as the econazis raise the price of kerosene, it will also be a whole lot cheaper to get there. Even if they fly, I believe that all of the Continental US is closer to Florida than to Hawaii…
I sold my Florida property 3 years ago. I made money, tax free, a la Trump. I feel stupid earning, now. Trump won, and I added $100000 to the price, got it. The work involved was filling out a re-submission to the real estate office to change the price on the listing. Made $100000 in 10 minutes. That was the Trump Effect for me. In March, 2020, I flew a full plane, no mask on anyone. Still here.
After the policies of De Santis, I have to rush back in. Although quite ethnic, I need a white supremacist enclave. I am speaking of Naples, Trump country, not of the shithole East Coast. Drove around Palm Beach great mansions. In front of one, the police was lifting up a half naked homeless man, and holding him up. Got the message. I went to Boca for a meeting. Walked around, spoke to strangers. It was, welcome to Queens, NY.
Naples faces West on the Gulf of Mexico. The sunsets get standing ovations on the beach. Gulf storms bypass it, on the way to Dem jurisdictions. When one hits, it implies Surf’s Up there. It is also quite egalitarian. You can feel like you are in a colony of the Aztec Empire at times. The prices just a couple of miles from the ocean are affordable to anyone with an average job. Crime is nil. It is not money that makes it a great place, it is policy and white supremacy. My Mexican friends there agree. They went to a lot of trouble to reach it.
The county right to the north of Naples is named after Robert E. Lee. I love it.
Lee County and Fort Myers are also great places, and cheaper. Non-whites are mobbing the malls and spending. They are doing great. There appears to be no race consciousness. Having a black boyfriend seems to be a prestige move for good looking girls. Their blacks are very dark skinned Haitians, mannerly, tops in academics and sports, from intact patriarchal families, Catholic, loving America, non-delinquent. They outperformed whites in the 2010 Census. See one in a store, try to get her help. Get top service.
Compared to the lack of candor on the other side.
Prof. Blackman appears to have conceded that voter suppression is a Republican goal. That’s a start on candor. Most conservatives try to deny it.
Yep, us conservatives have this issue with dead people voting.
They say that we are bigots prejudiced against the deceased, but still, I figure you get to vote enough times while you are alive and hence that’s good enough…
I don’t deny that at all. I’ve said all along that 85 IQ net tax recipients should not be allowed to vote. Any way to make that happen is a good thing.
How do you measure IQ? I’ve never undrgone an IQ test and, therefore, don’t have an IQ. Can I vote? What do you mean by “net tax recipient?” Being that I am a part of the permanent leisure class and net much more than I contribute do I get to vote?
Be careful wht you wish for, Goofy.
Everyone should be forced to undergo an IQ test, with those below 90 sterilized, and voting limited to 110 and above.
Sarcasm aside, the rationale of property (real estate) requirements for voting were that those who were paying the taxes ought to have a say in how their money was being spent.
The rationale for literacy requirements was that you didn’t want illiterate people, who had no idea what they were voting for or on, doing so.
Now both of these were abused, badly, along racial lines — and I am not saying that we should bring them back. Only that when how truly stupid the “person on the street” can be, ummm…..
The same people are pushing for vaccination ID to go and do almost everything – and you need a photo ID to go with it. Photo ID needed for almost everything in adult life except for the unimportant stuff, like voting.
I have to show my ID to serve on a jury, open a bank account, cash a check, drive a car, travel on a plane, enter or leave the US, pick up tickets at the ballpark, and I used to have to show an ID to buy liquor.
Just not to vote.
You also need an ID to get a registered phone. Of course, if you’re satisfied to use a burner then no ID is needed.
“You also need an ID to get a registered phone. Of course, if you’re satisfied to use a burner then no ID is needed.”
Bullshit. You don’t need an ID to do almost any transaction over the intertubes.
You can’t (in any state that I’m aware of) buy a non-burner phone – that is, one actually registered in your name – over the internet.
I suppose there is one exception. You can upgrade an existing phone as long as you already have an online account with the carrier for a previous phone – which means you provided photo ID for that prior phone at some point.
You can’t buy booze over the internet without proof of ID. You can’t gamble over the internet without proof of ID. You can buy airline tickets over the internet but you can’t use them until you provide photo ID. You can’t even watch age-restricted youtube videos without some form of proof of ID.
The truth is that you can’t do a great many important things in life these days without providing photo ID. I’m not saying that’s right. But I am saying that it’s deeply hypocritical to claim that voting is simultaneously less important and more important than all of those. IF those other ID rules are acceptable, then there is no logical basis for refusing a rule about voter IDs.
Bullshit. You don’t need an ID to do almost any transaction over the intertubes.
You should have used a colon (“:”) instead of a period following “Bullshit”, which would have more accurately conveyed that you were using the word to describe what followed it.
Bullshit. Photo ID is needed for almost nothing. Not to open a checking account, I’ve done it multiple times, not to write or deposit a check, to cash a check?, how the fuck would I know, I’ve not cashed a check in 30 years. I’ve opened up checking accounts, brokerage accounts, condicted all financial transactions in the last thirty-forty-five years.
The only times I’ve had to present ID over the last 30, or more, years was when I worked in a federal court house, when I traveled by plane, and, just the other day, when we closed on a house. Open a checking account? No problem, a brokerage account? No problem, jury duty, no problem — if they insisted on ID, they wouldn’t be able to fill the juries — if they asked me for ID, I’d just go home.
“Photo ID is needed for almost nothing.”
We have very different experiences. I have always been asked in almost every brick-n-mortar banking transaction, from opening an account to cashing checks to accessing the safety deposit box. I actually consider it a feature that the bank doesn’t assume that anyone who says they are me is me.
It’s also common for medical visits of all kinds. I will grant that, say, homeless people without ID get treated at the ER, but when I show up for visits I get asked for ID. This isn’t at one particular doctor – it’s at all of them. I will confess that I have never pushed the issue: ‘Up yours, if you want ID you can find someone else to stick in your MRI machine’. They say they require it, and I meekly comply.
In fact, just a couple of weeks ago, I was asked to show ID to get vaccinated. They mentioned it right when we made the appointment – ‘Be sure to bring your ID’.
And if you were to ever drive an automobile, I think you will find that most states require you to carry your license with you in the car whenever you are driving.
brick-n-mortar banking transaction
I don’t own a house, but didn’t need my ID to open my bank accounts. Or even brokerage accounts.
I do use it to e-sign my taxes, and yeah it shows up for medical stuff. But that’s just being middle class seems to me.
In general, ‘this is my experience’ doesn’t seem the best argument. Though I will allow ipse dixiting about not needing ID for much is also not great.
But there are plenty of actual reporting on the issue with real live sources. I just Googled ‘Photo ID is hard to get” and turned up a bunch of stuff. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/getting-a-photo-id-so-you-can-vote-is-easy-unless-youre-poor-black-latino-or-elderly/2016/05/23/8d5474ec-20f0-11e6-8690-f14ca9de2972_story.htm
Sarcast0 — arguments about voter ID have fallen into a pit between two sketchy assertions—first, that it’s hard to get picture ID, on the one hand, and on the other hand, that doing anything as easy as getting picture ID can’t reasonably be a means of suppressing minority votes.
It is about suppressing votes, but in the discussion outlined above, the real mechanism gets left tacit—which is how the would-be vote suppressors want it.
A forthright discussion would note the issue is not really about administrative process, or time off from work, or any of that stuff. It is about making sure that if some poor person wants to vote, but lives a disorganized, defensive, or delinquent life—maybe parking delinquencies, maybe failure to pay child support, maybe outstanding warrants, maybe undocumented household members, maybe worse—there is no way that person can get to vote without first going in person where there will be a police officer in attendance—and identifying themselves. The vote suppressors understand that very few troubled people want to vote so much they will take a risk like that to do it.
If you doubt what I suggest, just take a look at how every means of voting which does not expose the voter to individualized police scrutiny has been systematically stricken. No more drop boxes. No more absentee applications mailed out, you have to go get them. No more letting a relative bring in your absentee vote. Less souls to the polls, where a would-be voter is at least protected by a sympathetic group of compatriots there at the same time.
The suppression mechanism isn’t about creating inconvenience. It is about threatening minority voters with the cops.
Another fascinating example of how people live in different worlds.
On the one hand, back when I physically went to the polls, across several states, I have never seen a police officer at a polling place. Just kindly old polling volunteers … checking ID, having you sign the roll, and handing you a ballot.
“If you doubt what I suggest, just take a look at how every means of voting which does not expose the voter to individualized police scrutiny has been systematically stricken.”
I dunno. My state mails the ballots right to my mailbox without me even asking.
Absaroka, you are right. Different customs at the polls. My town’s election procedures station multiple police officers near the entrance to the polls, with at least one officer inside as well.
When you check in, you don’t sign in. You tell the poll worker who you are, and your address. Poll workers check you off in the roll, in a book where your address and all people who live at that address are listed together. When you check out, your name is announced loudly, saying, for instance, “Stephen Lathrop has voted.”
As far as I know, Massachusetts does not use that routine on purpose as a means of suppressing minority votes. I do experience it as imposing, which probably is intended. It would surprise me if it were not suppressing some votes.
Interestingly, I do not see them checking photo IDs for anyone. I think that does happen when you register.
Is your state one which is now trying to pass new laws to tighten up voting access? Are legislators trying to end that practice of sending everyone a ballot in the mail?
“Is your state one which is now trying to pass new laws to tighten up voting access?”
Nope, the converse. For example, they just removed the requirement that felons successfully complete parole before voting.
Yes. I want to limit voting to those who care enough to be inconvenienced, as that means you exclude lazy people, most of whom are Democraps.
“but didn’t need my ID to open my bank accounts. Or even brokerage accounts.”
I’m not disagreeing with what happened to you (or Stella). Just pointing out that other people have experienced other things.
“I just Googled ‘Photo ID is hard to get” and turned up a bunch of stuff.”
‘is hard to get’ and ‘is pretty much needed in the modern world’ aren’t contradictory.
I agree. If you have any form of ID, it’s almost indispensable and all the others are easy.
If you ever get into a situation where you have nothing (most likely due to homelessness), it becomes a nasty catch-22 of circular requirements. If you don’t have ID, being unable to vote is the LEAST of your issues, as you cannot work, you cannot bank, and you cannot get any non-emergency medical care.
The obvious solution isn’t to rail on requiring ID for one small thing, but either charitable work that helps those in need so that they can get ID or changing the law to make it easier to get ID (though this last point will provide a large weakness to identity theft, which is already too easy).
‘is hard to get’ and ‘is pretty much needed in the modern world’ aren’t contradictory.
Sounds like you agree with me about a government-funded free ID card being a pretty great idea.
You mean like this?
https://dds.georgia.gov/voter-id
I mean, not perfect since it’s not integrated into our current system, hence all that A photo identity document or approved non-photo identity document that includes full legal name and date of birth.
Documentation showing the voter’s date of birth.
Also you need an address??
But I’m much more concerned about the legislature usurping SecState powers and seat on the Election Board, and also the legislature being able to take over county election boards. That’s going to assure Georgia won’t certify the next Dem who wins statewide office.
Yes, and you leftists still whined about the requirement even when the states made it free. Because you think lazy inner city blacks have an inalienable right to vote for Democrats for free stuff without putting in a modicum of effort.
And Sarcastr0, do you have the same problem with California requiring a REAL ID, passport, or birth certificate and a fee to buy ammunition?
I mean, both would be solved by the same issue.
But I think people who are not supposed to have guns getting them is a demonstrably bigger problem than voter fraud.
But I think people who are not supposed to have guns getting them is a demonstrably bigger problem than voter fraud.
Either an ID requirement suppresses someone’s ability to exercise a right, or it doesn’t. Which is it?
No, it’s not. The damage done to America by voting for Democrats is orders of magnitude more than the damage done by guns.
Either an ID requirement suppresses someone’s ability to exercise a right, or it doesn’t. Which is it?
Wuz, American citizens act politically in a dual capacity.
They are individually subjects of government, but jointly they are sovereign. In that system, voting is not a right. It is instead an exercise of sovereign power by a member of the nation’s joint sovereignty. Sovereign power is greater than rights. Rights are afforded to citizens as subjects of government. Sovereign power is about keeping government subject to the sovereign.
A person affected by an increase or diminution of rights experiences the result according to his role in the other half of our peculiar system, as a subject of government—but as a subject protected from government by rights according to the sovereign’s pleasure. That arrangement is complicated, almost paradoxical, but unavoidable. Ordinary citizens enjoy no power on their own sufficient to stay the hand of government, and thus vindicate their own rights. It is sovereign power which accomplishes that, on the citizens’ behalf. Sovereign power is where the limits on limited government come from.
Because the government is subordinate to the sovereign, those complications do not apply alike to voting. During an election, government can only act with legitimacy to convenience, empower, and guard the prerogatives of voters while they exercise their joint sovereign constitutive power at the polls.
That means government actions to constrain voters can only be legitimate to guard accurate election outcomes, which are the sovereign’s interest. Thus, in a case where evidence has appeared to show election malfeasance, government can act legitimately on behalf of the sovereign interest. Absent that evidence, government must do all it can to facilitate sovereign voters in the exercise of their power, not to restrict them, or to thwart their ability to act at pleasure and without constraint.
Sovereign voters in our system yield no power into the hands of government to turn their own paths to the polls into an obstacle course. When members of government propose actions to suppress voting, those are never about defense of rights. They are about crimes against a higher power the members of government have sworn an oath to defend.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Here’s a working link (needs ‘html’, not ‘htm’, at least for me).
I’m curious … your read of that is mostly ‘the gubmint picking on poor people’? My take is mostly ‘yep, I hate bureaucracies’. I mean, we all have DMV horror stories. Catch-22 is a pretty popular book, after all.
And I’m surely sympathetic to excessive ID requirements – we have just had to go through the REAL ID nonsense so we can fly domestically, grrr…. I’ve had to show a birth certificate whenever I changed jobs for the last few decades, for example.
But I think the point still stands that navigating modern life is a lot, lot harder for people without ID. Some of those requirements makes sense, e.g.:
-my state is allocating vaccines by age, inter alia. They asked for ID to verify our age. Is prioritizing vaccination by age wrong? If not, do you just take people’s word for it? IIUC my state made a special effort to get vaccines to the tribes. If I show up at the tribal clinic, is it OK for them to want ID to verify tribal membership?
(additionally, I think the general requirement for ID ad medical places is mostly to prevent insurance fraud, and whatever your opinion of our health care system, adding a lot of fraud to it won’t make it better)
-as above, when someone walks into my bank and wants to withdraw money, I wholeheartedly want my bank to verify their identity before handing over my money. I suppose you could argue the bank should be required to offer no-ID-required accounts, but do you think anyone would actually sign up for one?
-think of lots of public services … free rides for the elderly, rent subsidized housing, subsidized bus passes, EBT cards. Is it really going to work if anyone can walk into the welfare office and say ‘I’m Fred Smith, I’m poor as a churchmouse, I don’t have any ID, give me an EBT card’? As a former climbing bum wannabe, man, that would have been great – wouldn’t have to get those pesky construction jobs off season!
In short, as much as I’d like to live in an ID free libertarian utopia, it just doesn’t seem practical in today’s world.
I’m all for applying a sufficiently sized boot to bureaucracies who make getting ID unneccesarily hard, but fixing that strikes me as the right solution, not ‘sure, getting an ID is hard, so we’ll let you vote without one, but sux to be you as far as driving, banking, health care, social services, employment, buying booze, traveling, and every other part of normal life’.
your read of that is mostly ‘the gubmint picking on poor people’? My take is mostly ‘yep, I hate bureaucracies’.
It can be both.
Catch-22 is my favorite book. Has been since I was 16. And I ended up becoming a bureaucrat. Poetic.
Sure, ID is a really good way to reduce risk of waste and fraud. But that risk reduction is not costless. Any policy has winners and losers.
We currently get our ID from a bunch of stuff tied to the kind of life the bureaucrats who made our system tend to have. Grow up, get a car, go to school, get a house, get married, move a couple of times, help your kids out with same, then they help you out later on.
But that’s not everyone, and I think we need to be aware of and mitigate the harm to groups who don’t really have a lot of voice.
So you criticize Absaroka for providing anecdotes instead of evidence, then cite to a Washington Post article based on nothing but anecdotes.
Sarcastr0, you’re better than that.
When you print out anecdotes, they become data (text for smiley)
The article did have some data – “Across the country, about 11 percent of Americans do not have government-issued photo identification cards, such as a driver’s license or a passport…”
(I wish they linked the source document, I’d be curious to see the data there … what ages, are you including long term prison inmates or residents of Alzheimer’s wards, etc. I have had relatives who spent years in Alzheimer’s wards, for example, and I don’t think anyone tried to renew their ID, or get them an absentee ballot. A percent here, a percent there and you might account for several percent.)
(and going back to the article to get the above quote reminded me of another thing you can’t do in many states w/o ID … buy sudafed. grrr…)
Also, a PSA … I had to fiddle to post the above. Some of the anti-malware stuff at Reason objects to ‘the word that is the plural of datum’ followed by certain punctuation, e.g. a colon. It thinks they are attempts at malicious javascript. There are probably other obscure rules.
Thanks for thinking well of me, Rossami!
I would counter that what I was providing were counterexamples, which may be anecdotes.
But you’re right that for policy purposes, stats are generally the gold standard to look for. I was being facile.
Searching for “How many Americans don’t have a Photo ID” turns up this article, which has some stats:
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/debunking-misinformation-photo-id
Thanks for tracking that down. The Brennan Center isn’t very good at hyperlinking … two of the three sources I spot checked were dead links (one to a Brennan Center link, and one a ‘file colon slash slash’ link that probably worked better on the author’s computer than on mine). Anyway, I persevered until I found one that worked, in this case a paper on ID in Indiana hosted off washington.edu.
That study makes much of the fact that, e.g. prevalence of ID is inversely proportional with income.
Is that because of high fees to obtain ID? They don’t address why low income people are less likely to have gotten ID. I’m sure there are some reasons why, say, a low income 16 year old wouldn’t be standing in line at the DMV. One reason might be that there isn’t a car available to him even if he does get a license.
But there are other possibilities. After college, in my quasi-climbing-bum days, I’d work off season as a construction laborer. This was the very bottom of the labor totem pole – hard, sometime dangerous work for minimum wage. There were surely people with no fixed addresses – I lived either at the company flophouse near the rural job site or in my car. Not only were college degrees rare, so were high school diplomas. These people led hard lives, but it wasn’t completely that the patriarchy was keeping them down.
For one example, when we’d get paid every two weeks, some of them would routinely come back from the strip club that night with most of their paycheck gone – to the point they ran out of food a couple of days prior to the next payday. Naive me fed them the first couple of times.
So my point is that some people lead … disorganized lives, full of what seem to me to be bad choices. That kind of disorganization, and those kind of choices, are going to be highly correlated with both low incomes and lots of other problems. It’s bad science to notice bad outcomes inversely correlated with income and assume that some kind of societal discrimination is the explanation.
My sense is that my co-workers were a lot more interested in who was dancing next week than who was running for senator. That they would be less likely to vote doesn’t surprise me in the least, and I doubt you could get them to the polls without offering beer or strippers.
To be clear, that’s not true of all, or most poor people. But the ID differences in ID prevalence in the study were not that large, either (on the order of 10%).
I think you’re right about it being more about convenience and priority than actual resource limitations (although that’s not statistically established). But so what?
Requiring ID for someone who doesn’t have one is till creating a burden for them, and distorting the electorate thereby.
Making bad choices doesn’t mean you don’t get to vote.
“Making bad choices doesn’t mean you don’t get to vote.”
We agree! But here’s the rub – without that ID, you can’t drive, fly, book a hotel, open a bank account, buy a gun, visit the social security office, visit a doctor, get vaccinated, ??rent an apartment??, buy sudafed for your sick kid, and on and on.
I hear two reactions to the constellation of problems you get from having no ID:
1)Wow, we better make getting ID easier
2)Well, we’ll let you vote without ID, but sux 2 b u for the rest of it
Oddly enough, the people who seem to be loudest for #2 seem to also think their electoral prospects will be helped by not needing ID to vote. And – confessing to being somewhat cynical about human nature – I think their concern for no-ID voting, coupled with little apparent concern for the other problems that come from not having ID, hints that their interest in no-ID voting may be not completely altruistic.
If you want to actually help the down-n-out, make ID easy to get, then it won’t be a problem to use it to vote, nor to use it for all the other things.
Sarcastr0, you’re better than that.
Now that’s the funniest thing I’ve read all week.
Quit being weird.
You cant open a bank account in the United states without ID since the enactment of the patriot act
Unless the banker personally knows you and vouches for you.
My wife and I opened an account without identification last week.
I did not use a Jedi mind trick, at least not intentionally.
Liar. I guarantee that you have not opened an account at any financial institution since 2002 without providing photo ID. You must either apply in person (with ID) or go to a local bank and show them your ID so they can fill out a “medallion signature guarantee” for an account with a non-local institution.
Granted, once you have that account, you do not always have to provide further proof of ID but that depends on the bank. The short version, though – your experience from 30 years ago is irrelevant. That is no longer the law – and hasn’t been for almost 20 years now.
I’ll be curious to hear how you jury duty experience goes when you try to refuse ID. Send us a note from jail.
“…or go to a local bank and show them your ID so they can fill out a “medallion signature guarantee” for an account with a non-local institution.”
I have opened online banking accounts without medallion guarantees. I honestly can’t recall if they wanted a driver’s license scan, or if they did the credit bureau identification thing (where they want to match you against your other financial accounts). I think I have encountered both.
I suspect you are right in the general case; you can’t get the brick-n-mortar accounts/loans/etc without ID, and without them you can’t leverage the brick-n-mortar accounts into online ones. I’m open, though, to anyone who anyone who has signed up online with ID and without any links back to existing accounts that required ID. But I think it would be in conflict with the ‘know your customer’ stuff.
1. Vaccine passports are a very dumb idea that misunderstands the fundamentals of herd immunity.
2. ID requirements act as a burden to marginalized people. This is well reported.
They are both bad ideas, for wildly disparate reasons.
Cheap and unsubstantiated response. A member of the New Black Panthers holding a nightstick outside a polling place in Philadelphia is voter suppression. Setting up voting locations at a union hall, allow the union officers to organize the voting. Do we want to go back to the urban center practices of having the ballot box in the bar, your name is called out, place your mark, get your shot of liquor?
Voting should be easy to vote but hard to cheat. Many of the controversies about the indiscriminate mailing of ballots were in the Carter-Baker Report and are similar to commercial direct mail. Bad mailing lists. No dead people should receive or actually vote. If there is a valid death certificate, it should not take court action for years to have a person with a death certificate legally filed in the county/state removed from the voting rolls and receiving a mail-in ballot. A change of address card filed with the US Postal Service is prima facia evidence a person moved. Let them vote if they show up but, a provisional ballot. I live in Florida and there are voters who have homes back up wherever and have voted in Florida and in the other state at least once in the past 5 years. With universal mailing to every RESIDENT/RESIDENCE, there will be people who will receive more than one ballot. Do they get to vote twice? It is not too much to ask that within a certain distance of the voting booth, voters can be free of interaction with anyone who is not an official poll worker. Both parties should not be allowed to approach voters in line that are within a certain distance.
I am all for early voting. Math drives the early voting places and numbers. As an example, whatever is required to accommodate 50% to 60% of the average number of voters over the last 4 elections. Absentee ballots for any reason but not universal mailing. Family members can deliver ballots for family members. ONLY official employees of the voting supervisor/government may harvest or collect ballots at locations that are not family members. As an example, an official poll worker can pick up the ballots not a Get out the vote group. Voter ID. An ID is required for everything from cashing a check to buying tobacco, buying alcohol to getting a fishing license/permit, getting your Covid vaccination to obtain a notarized document. With absentee ballots, have some form of verification of signatures. Prepare the ballots for processing the day of the election by opening, processing, verifying signatures, etc on the ballot ENVELOPES before election day.
With regards to Senator Hirono’s comments as presented in the blog and media, they were obviously transcribed and written for her. Anyone who has watched a live contemporaneous questioning and interaction with the Senator will find that she doesn’t speak in the organized and succinct fashion set out in the article. Her interactions in hearings are often rambling and incoherent.
That was my thought too; that a comparatively candid interview with Mitch McConnell would have him saying essentially the same things, just from a conservative perspective.
With respect to her comment about judges expanding right, I would say that if you have two plausible interpretations, go with the one that makes more people better off.
Where do you see McConnell (or any other influential Republicans) being less than candid about the judges they want appointed? Seems to me they’ve been very upfront, and followed through with what they promised. And the fact that doing so seems to have helped their electoral prospects suggests that most people want what they’re selling.
McConnell flat out made up a rationale for not giving Garland a hearing, which he promptly ditched so that Barrett would get a hearing.
And if you seriously think that the fact that they get re-elected means their positions are popular among the voters then you simply don’t understand how our anti democratic political system works.
Ah, I thought you were talking about candor as far as what they they want the judges they’re appointing to do. I agree that senate Republicans were somewhat disingenuous in their handling of the procedures regarding the Garland nomination—but no more disingenuous than, say, Hirono’s comments on the filibuster in this article.
McConnell was following the Biden protocols
Considering the Garland and Barrett nominatiions in pari materia, McConnell was playing Calvinball.
Politician switches up importance of political philosophies depending on whether it benefits him or not. This and a pig that snorts “I love you!” at 11!
Use of special prosecutor to dig endlessly on fishing expeditions into political opponents in contravention to the Constitution? Dems: bad! ‘Pubs: good!
20 years later, Dems: good! ‘Pubs: bad!
Oh wait. I got that reversed. Hard to tell. Just for starters.
“Where do you see McConnell (or any other influential Republicans) being less than candid about the judges they want appointed?”
McConnell and Conservatives regularly say that they want judges who will “follow the law”. Their whole shtick is that they want judges who will stick to the constitution, while the left wants to write progressive policies, like the right to abortion or gay marriage, into the constitution. Whether they being candid or not I’ll leave you to judge, but Hirono reinforced that claim.
“I would say that if you have two plausible interpretations, go with the one that makes more people better off.’
What does that even mean?
If you believe abortion is murder, constraining abortion rights make people better off. Similarly, if you believe in self-defense and the Second Amendment, and expanded right to own, carry and use firearms makes people better off.
If 5+ members of a more conservative SCOTUS say people are better off, do you concede the point?
Proving that no matter what happens, leftists make up a story and point fingers. Every single time.
Reality is irrelevant in leftist storytime land.
“With respect to her comment about judges expanding right, I would say that if you have two plausible interpretations, go with the one that makes more people better off.”
The problem with that has always been, once you take that approach to interpreting law, your standards for what is plausible get pretty flexible. Somehow what you would like to do always clears the bar.
Hitler & Co. were thoroughly convinced that getting rid of “incurables,” homosexuals, and Jews would “make more people better off.”
“With respect to her comment about judges expanding right, I would say that if you have two plausible interpretations, go with the one that makes more people better off.”
I am not sure that the aborted baby is better off after the abortion
She is such an unrepentant imbecile. If you are a halfway decent legal mind, but you disagree vehemently with Kagan, you still aren’t going to say she is a shoddy jurist. Same with Kavanaugh.
And progs like Hirono are ingrates of the highest order. In recent decades, conservative leaning judges (not just clear vetting failures like Souter/Stevens) seem to back progressive leaning outcomes on hot-button issues at a far higher rate than do progressives back conservative outcomes.
Would we see a Bostock-type ruling from Kagan? If she doesn’t vote to strike down affirmative action—at least under a purely statutory reading of Title 6, if it can be decoupled from the constitution—she will seem like a major hypocrite.
It seems clear that insuring existing rights get enforced for everyone is a good thing. Not so sure that expanding rights is a good thing. Rights can be in conflict. Expand all rights and you get more conflicts.
Where exactly to put the bounds of personal rights is a big, big problem in constituting governments. Almost every individual right comes at the direct expense of a collective right of self-government. That at least partly explains why folks who want self-government restricted are so keen on expanding individual rights.
That was a response to Krychek_2. Went in the wrong place.
“Not so sure that expanding rights is a good thing. Rights can be in conflict. Expand all rights and you get more conflicts.”
As I’ve remarked before, that’s why libertarian theorists reject the legitimacy of positive rights: It’s only the positive rights that can conflict, negative rights don’t have that problem.
Admitting positive rights into a system of ethics is like permitting division by zero in math. Once you do that, you can ‘prove’ contradictions.
Please try to do better, Brett. Your right to carry a gun is in conflict with my right to peaceable assembly. If you bring your gun, some folks I wish to assemble with will be intimidated, and depart. They disagree with you. They don’t think pistol packing is peaceable conduct. Of course, as a libertarian, the only way you can deal with that objection is to discount their view to zero—just to deny it—while insisting there is no conflict between you.
Likewise, your right to due process is in conflict with my right to gather news from government sources, and protect their anonymity to make news gathering possible. As a libertarian, what are you going to do? You are going to discount my right to zero, and say that eliminates the conflict. Not for me, it doesn’t.
Because you are a fan of libertarianism, I get that you also discount the right of self-government near to zero, because your ideology recoils from joint activity on principle. But also because it is too challenging for libertarians of any stripe to confront hard questions about government, like where does government power come from? What can make that power legitimate? And what power greater than government’s can prescribe limits, and constrain government to act within them? Too hard. No answers from libertarians.
Which, I suppose, is why you do not understand that every individual right, however legitimate and justified, comes at the expense of the right of self-government, which is also legitimate and justified. Oops, rights in conflict. Better quick discount one of them to zero. Which will it be? My money says you axe a right to self-government, because discounting that to nothing is the all-purpose libertarian answer to everything.
No, Brett, precious, libertarian “negative rights”—fundamentally as empty and abstract as the sourceless nothingness from which they come—do in the real world conflict with each other—and also conflict with the right to self-government.
Inability to resolve conflicts of that sort—or even talk coherently about them—is why libertarianism is not only a preoccupation mostly for cranks, but also not really a theory of government at all. Libertarianism works more like a kaleidoscope for arranging random complaints about government into pretty patterns.
It will stay that way until would-be libertarians get serious enough to understand they either have to take on real problems about how governments get made and operated, or they are wasting everyone’s time. Wishing about utopian stuff like, “No-government means no conflicts,” does not get the job done.
Libertarian solutions are founded on nothing more concrete than the structure of libertarian rhetoric. How can you fail to notice?
Brett’s right to carry a gun does not impair your right to freely assemble. You claim that your right is hindered by “intimidation” because Brett chooses to carry his gun. Would you equally quick to claim that your rights were violated because you were intimidated by Brett’s black skin? Remember that a great many people are fearful of large black men.
Intimidation as a legal matter can not be based solely on irrational fears. If you feared Brett merely because he was large and black, that would be irrational. Likewise, your fear of someone lawfully exercising a constitutional right is irrational. There is no conflict between Brett’s right to carry and your right to freely assemble.
In regards to your first point, since when do feelings trump enumerated rights?
Your right to carry a gun is in conflict with my right to peaceable assembly.
As always, you are 100% full of weapons-grade bullshit. People peaceably assemble around people carrying guns all of the time. In fact there have been a great many peaceable assemblies conducted by people while carrying guns. Your inability to control your childish emotions does not constitute an infringement of your rights by others.
There’s no such thing as a collective right. Rights are purely individual. (This is tautological, in fact).
Amazing that in this softball ad for Sen. Hirono’s new book, which was “edited and condensed for clarity from two conversations”, the writers still can’t make her look like anything but a clueless, classless buffoon.
I was going to say she sounded like a Blackman post, but uh, yeah that doesn’t exactly cover her in glory.
I was going to say she sounds like a strong candidate for the staff of “This Week In Supreme Court History.”
Well put—although I’m not sure even Prof. Blackman is obtuse enough to 1. Confront Ted Cruz in a way that makes him (I mean really! Ted Cruz!) look like the gracious one and 2. Think that story paints him in such a good light that he’d volunteer it to the New York Times.
Elected officials, especially from smaller jurisdictions, sometimes are surprisingly unimpressive people. Sen. Hirono appears to have become an elected official two years after completing law school. I do not know much else about her, but those points — young candidate, small jurisidiction — make me skeptical.
the writers still can’t make her look like anything but a clueless, classless buffoon.
She has the IQ of a potato, so asking anyone to make her look like anything but an idiot is asking a bit much.
I think she practived law for about 2 years before getting elected to something.
So, following the law as Congress passed it is “dumb”? If the law is dumb, blame Senators, Representatives, and the President (unless POTUS veto is overridden) who passed it and hold them (and their parties should the failing politician not be standing for election) responsible at the polls. It’s not the place of the courts to “fix” the laws unless there’s a conflict between laws or the law and the Constitution.
“It’s not the place of the courts to “fix” the laws unless there’s a conflict between laws or the law and the Constitution.”
It’s not the place of the courts to fix the laws even in cases of a conflict between laws or between a law and the constitution.
It is the place of the courts to say “we will not enforce this until the legislature fixes the conflict”.
“If the law was there to protect people from falling through a round hole and a person fell through a square hole — too bad for you.”
That does sound pretty bad. If only there were some branch of government vested with the authority to write laws that protect people from falling into both square and round holes!
The Federal Hole Commission?
Not without an authorizing statute. Maybe Hirono can chair the Senate Hole. Committee.
The entire Senate always has the option of sitting as a committee of the hole.
Why don’t you just say what you mean and write “liberals shouldn’t criticize conservatives?” Would sure save both us and you a lot of time. Alternate formulation could be “liberals are always wrong when they criticize conservatives.”
Exactly — not to mention a media totally free to say “and what about square holes?”
I’ve had the dishonor of listening to Hirono speak. She is the by far one of the least educated and stupidest people in Congress. She’s a sociopath political operative who would throw her own family members on a pyre if it helped her far left cause. I expect she would make a great national socialist someday.
Kirkland likes her though.
What I find strange is that she makes a big deal about racism…but her mother chose to come to America in the late 1950s just as Japan’s economy started booming?? Looks like her mother made the correct decision to come to racist America.
Why would you asset that? I do not know enough about her to form an opinion.
You, however, seem disaffected and cranky. Are you a clinger?
The box of flagstones my landscaper delivered this week is far more intelligent and has far more discretion than Hirono on her best days. The people of Hawaii have my sympathy for their embarrassment at her big mouth. My only comfort is that she’s not handling any Top Secret information she can spew at dinner parties to show off.
She’s right about Kavanaugh and ACB—they are Bush loyalists that took glee in stabbing Trump in the back.
Which case(s) did you think Trump had the winning legal argument and they stiffed him?
I get the feeling the people she was talking to were humoring her. She’s a Senator. You can’t easily say she’s nuts to her face.
But I highly doubt that very many judges, and especially doubt that Ruth Ginsburg or Merrick Garland, who were extremely thoughtful judges, actually think Sen. Hirono’s observations were really brilliant or cutting. I especially suspect that Ginsburg probably heard the “you have to live forever” stuff from a lot of people and that it probably came off as very insulting and arrogant.
There’s a great scene in “Othello” where Iago is about to respond to an insult from the Senator, Brabantio (Desdemona’s father), in kind, and says “And you are…”, pausing, and then says, in a flattened voice, “a Senator”. People can’t really say what they think in these conversations, and Sen. Hirono just doesn’t understand the court system. (And as other people in this thread have pointed out, a lot of conservative politicians also don’t understand it.)
Yeah I have to agree. She’s basically saying I was ragging Trump’s picks and they nodded their heads and didn’t disagree with me.
Whenever I come back for a visit here, which is rare given the difficult format, I’m always impressed by the courtesy, sober demeanor and respect for people with whom the commenters disagree. And no misogyny either!
Pacific. Skip this blog a short time, you miss a lot. You may have missed this point. All -isms are folk statistics, mostly true, most of the time. Woke is denial of reality. For example, if you choose a black man to handle your finances, and a Jew for your professional basketball team, you deserve the consequences. As a Dem, you may begin to name the great black financiers and the great Jewish basketball players. You will not run out of fingers. The obverse list will have thousands of names.
These folk statistics keep up with change. Very dark skinned African immigrants outperformed whites in the 2010 Census. So, that has become a new stereotype. Africans are the new Koreans, top performers. Woke won the election. That does not change its being a stupid, self defeating, form of denial.
Man, that is Poe’s law striking like a Mike Tyson right to the jaw!
So Professor Blackman objects to an elected politician supporting, or opposing, SCOTUS nominees based on their political agendas and likely rulings, rather than on, say, their qualifications and reasonableness in interpreting the law?
Well, Professor Blackman was negative-four years old when a guy named Ronald Reagan ran for President. So it’s not surprising that Professor Blackman does not remember that during his campaign, Reagan promised, openly and repeatedly, without apology or hesitation, that he would specifically and exclusively appoint only justices who would rule to overturn Roe v. Wade. When he talked about this, he often mentioned the case by name. He also promised that all his nominees would generally oppose abortion rights, and the context almost always indicated that he meant that they would use their power as SCOTUS justices to oppose abortion rights, not just that they would personally oppose them.
Of course, the plan to overturn R/W didn’t work, largely because the US Senate rejected Bork, who was Reagan’s third nominee to the Court. But he did the best he could to engineer the outcome – against the preferences of the American people – until he realized that his opponents were serious about resisting.
So if Senator Hirono were following in the Reagan tradition, she would list specific cases which she wanted overturned, and proclaim in advance that she would only support nominees whose records and statements showed that they would rule to overturn those cases specifically.
Come back with your complaints, Professor, when Senator Hirono says something like “I’ll vote against any nominee whose record or statements allows the slightest possibility that this nominee would NOT rule to overturn DC v. Heller, Citizens United v. FEC, and Shelby County vs. Heller, in any case challenging any of these decisions which might arise.” Even then, she would only be doing the Reagan thing.
OOOOPS I mean Shelby County vs. HOLDER. Stupid error.
“So it’s not surprising that Professor Blackman does not remember that during his campaign, Reagan promised, openly and repeatedly, without apology or hesitation, that he would specifically and exclusively appoint only justices who would rule to overturn Roe v. Wade. When he talked about this, he often mentioned the case by name. He also promised that all his nominees would generally oppose abortion rights, and the context almost always indicated that he meant that they would use their power as SCOTUS justices to oppose abortion rights, not just that they would personally oppose them.
… But he did the best he could to engineer the outcome – against the preferences of the American people – until he realized that his opponents were serious about resisting.”
It’s always a bad sign when you say something in one paragraph, and contradict it in the next.
The best evidence we have of the preferences of the American people is that he ran on overturning RvW, and got elected.
Republicans have won the national popular vote once in 30 years. That indicates the popularity of the Republican platform, particularly in modern, educated, reasoning, accomplished communities.
Too bad the national popular vote is meaningless. Also, why a 30 year cutoff? If you did it at 32 years (an actual multiple of 4), you’d get twice. 36 years makes it three times. 40 makes it four. Oh right, it’s because you’re a disingenuous political hack who loves to cherry pick.
Twice in 32 years. Congratulations!
I like the trend in national elections. You don’t. I like the trajectory of American progress. You don’t. Too bad. Develop some persuasive arguments and good ideas — and maybe ditch the superstition and bigotry — or prepare to continue to be defeated soundly in the culture war. By your betters.
Brett Bellmore : “The best evidence we have of the preferences of the American people is that he ran on overturning RvW, and got elected”
Really?
1. Abortion was the tiniest of reasons why Reagan was elected.
2. Every GOP presidential candidate runs against abortion and half lose. How does that fit your theory?
3. Maybe the “best evidence” is when you simply ask the American people whether they want abortion illegal. A sizable majority of plus-minus 20% says no, and that number has barely budget over decades.
Perhaps a seasonal pass might be a nice idea for this one. Maybe Brett Bellmore was visited by the Spirit of Easter, or something, and was not arguing in the evidence-based, reasoning world but instead was imparting divine inspiration by speaking in tongues . . .
I think it would be better if she did what you describe (name the cases she thinks were wrongly decided and pledge to support only nominees who would vote to overrule those cases). It is entirely legitimate for a member of the political branch to have an opinion about a constitutional issue and act on that opinion. After all, they swear to uphold the constitution too. If a legislator believes Roe, Heller, Citizens United, or any other case cannot be justified in the constitution, he or she should want such case overruled.
The problem with Hirono’s self-described general preference for “expanding rights” is that she isn’t even willing to engage with the facts and legal issues of individual cases. Instead, she wants the scorecard for each term to reflect wins for the progressive cause. Doesn’t matter what the cases are about as long as the law moves left every year. She doesn’t want the judiciary merely deciding cases and controversies, but acting as a stealth legislative body, insulated from accountability at the ballot box. This ought to scare people.
It is high time to get an ignore function in these comments. There’s some really smart people commenting, but it is extremely difficult to find them now. And even though I’m certainly right of center, there are current more idiots on that side than on the left now.
I agree that we need an ignore function. I’m not sure there are more idiots here than there used to be or that there is a political bias in that count. There are a great many more parody accounts than there used to be, almost all of which are not very good and impossible to distinguish from real-but-idiot-on-the-other-side accounts.
There are also some remarkably persistent spam accounts that Reason inexplicably fails to block. An ignore function would help with them, too.
If this blog wanted to improve, it could. It could be less a right-wing echo chamber (whose main purpose is to own the libs with cherry-picked, misleading hypocritical posts that lather a predictably partisan, downscale, disaffected audience) and more a legitimate exchange of worthy opinions. It could become a blog at which Orin Kerr publishes more and Josh Blackman publishes less. It could become a blog that publishes far fewer racial slurs, features fewer threats of violence, and avoids old-timey bigotry as a staple. Instead, it has chosen to be the Volokh Conspiracy as it exists today. It is entitled to pick its path but can not avoid the consequences of its choices. This blog is where the proprietor wants it to be.
Blackman acts like this is some political point he just scored, but conservatives/Republicans have been explicit about their nominees position on Roe as a litmus test for decades now.
So it’s kind of weird to hear him say “ha, they finally admit to what we admitted to long ago!”
Women are strong and independent until they are criticized by a man. Then suddenly they need a white knight to save them because of “misogyny” or something like that.
I know Hawaii is a small state, but you’d think that it’s voters could at least come up with someone smarter than an ash tray to represent them in the U.S. Senate.