Senate Democrats introduced legislation on Thursday to place term limits on Supreme Court justices, reigniting debate around the issue championed by Democrats in the House and the Senate.
To refresh your memory, Obama asked her to retire so that he could appoint a young liberal justice who could sit the court for the next 30 years. Unfortunately, that geriatric bag of bones clung to power until her death. Guess who's term she died under, and who got to appoint her replacement? Oh yeah, the big Don. So now because of that we have a conservative court for the foreseeable future.
Too true. Since the Republicans can't organize a speaker of the house at the moment, I imagine we'll see a lot of pie-in-the-sky style legislation come through Senate Democrats in the next few days. It will look great to have a bunch of action on the books to please their most extreme liberal elements for the next election cycle, but with the deadlock in the house, there's little change any of it would become effective law.
Why would they? A move like this directly benefits democrats. I promise democrats would not be pushing for this if they had the majority. This is a political strategy, not a quest for just governance.
Actually it benefits everyone. There are a ton of reasons why this should be a bipartisan issue, but expecting people to think long-term is, of course, a fool's errand. I also think that most people, including most politicians, haven't really educated themselves on the subject and haven't really thought it through in terms of what it would actually do.
I'm talking about how it's always those who are at a disadvantage that cry foul the loudest. In this case Democrats want term limits because they're currently in the SCOTUS minority and are looking for ways to shift things to their favor. Yet when they're in the majority, suggesting something like this would be seen as a miscarriage of tradition or some other such nonsense. For once I'd love to see Democrats take an ethical stand when it doesn't advantage them. Push for term limits when you have the majority.