RIP Antonin Scalia

Yeah, Bork was just making it all up.

A memoir by Robert Bork published after his death says President Nixon promised to nominate him for the U.S. Supreme Court as soon as a vacancy occurred.

The book, Saving Justice, says Nixon made the promise after Bork complied with Nixon’s order to fire Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox in 1973, the Associated Press reports. Bork said he’s not sure whether Nixon made the promise to ensure his continued loyalty, or whether the president believed he still had enough clout to get a nominee confirmed.

Bork's posthumous book tells of Nixon's promise after Saturday Night Massacre

 

Apparently the meaning of the phrase "in exchange for" is lost on you ...

 

Start losing in a potentially violent, let's-flip-culture kind of way? Sure. I think that could happen.

I expect no wisdom before then, though.

 

Bork's role as Nixon "henchman" and/or any deal he made with Nixon was not a central focus of his confirmation hearings, or voiced as a reason why he was voted down.

Let's remember why Teddy Kennedy voted against Bork:

Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the Government, and the doors of the Federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens.

Nixon is not mentioned anywhere.

 

I don't think it. The expanding wealth gap proves it.

The most rich in America can buy local, state, congressional races now with their political ads and Super PAC, which serve as brutalizing chilling effects on the political process.

I'm not being a pollyanna here. It's how it is.

 

No, you're definitely not being pollyanna here ... you're being delusional.

 

Well, that's also because the people voting on Bork's USSC nomination were more than 6 years old in 1974.

I'm sure if President Tom Cotton puts Grover Norquist up for the SC in 2027 people will come up with a long laundry list of judicial reasons to vote him down.

 

Bork was the very first political case I remember that I followed and understood. I don't remember the Nixon backstory being on the front burner at the time, but there was plenty else there for Dems to reject him over.

 

Just so we're clear...

Citizens United had, uh, zero chilling effect on political races?

Really?

You're charging me with delusion for claiming Super PACs are an overwhelming factor in politics?

 

If the rich and their super PACs were such an overwhelming factor, I doubt Donald Fucking Trump would be the front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination, and I doubt Herself would be the odds-on favorite to win the White House, and I doubt the Democrats would have a chance in hell at re-taking the Senate.

What was that choice phrase you used? "Brutalizing chilling effect"? Yep, delusional.

 

Huh? His nomination was 13 years later.

What was the average age of a Senator in 1987?

 

A lot of what we're seeing in this election is the poor dumb people the GOP has typically used to win elections finally figuring out they were getting nothing in return and in fact getting poorer for being used. Speaking of supply side economics, this made me laugh today:

Daily Cartoon - The New Yorker