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A call for packing the Supreme Court? Is this man MAD?

By: Moe Lane (Diary)  |  March 1st, 2010 at 01:42 PM  | 

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This is a joke, right?

This may come as a surprise to some people, but the U.S. Constitution does not specify the size of the Supreme Court.

[snip]

So if nine justices is not writ in stone, the embattled President Obama should deal with this hostile conservative/reactionary court by adding three members.

(Via AoSHQ) Leaving aside the fact that author Stan Isaacs apparently felt the need to educate his readers about something which would be familiar to anybody with even a basic working knowledge of 20th century American history*, I’m wondering whether Isaacs can actually count.  The President can declare as many Supreme Court justices as he likes; getting them confirmed requires Senate approval.

And if it was OK for then-Senator Obama to filibuster Alito for ideological reasons, then it’s certainly OK for us to return the favor.  And the GOP has the votes.  And the GOP base will descend like an asteroid from orbit on any GOP Senator that even looks like he or she will not support a filibuster against packing the US Supreme Court.  And then the GOP will rake the Democrats over the coals about it in the November elections.

So, really.  Feel free to try this.

Moe Lane

PS: My initial reaction to the size of the Supreme Court is that it’s not outside the realm of possibility that we’d be better off if the number was reduced to, say, seven.  I’m not wedded to that opinion; I’ve never really thought about it before.

*Insert the standard rant on the American public school system here.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

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COMMENTS

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  • houstoneagle

    and it won’t work for Obama for the reasons you nailed right on the head, Moe.

    Democrats, go ahead and try reconciliation on health care. Go ahead, I dare you.

    Democrats, go ahead and try a Court-packing scheme. Go ahead. I dare you.

    *apologies to the old Duracell commercial from the 1970s that Johnny Carson so famously spoofed, and yes I am dating myself.

  • JadedByPolitics

    believe WE little people are too stupid to decide how best this country is run and they and they alone along with The Won will show US the way! Heck, Newsweek with we are all Socialists now was like a hard you know what for that writer, they believe they are on the edge of “change” and WE can be more European and whatever they can do to further that thought process they will.

    I look forward to the sad sack articles on November 3rd of this year when all of those lefties have HEART FAILURE!

  • http://www.dcworksforus.com Kenny Solomon

    Trial balloon.

    The Left does nothing without a plan – nothing.

    Watch it grow.

    The deliberate part is to get someone or some group to do something VERY stoooooopid, then ‘the crisis too good to waste’ is on.

    So before you call me over the edge again, think – Think on some of the things going on to overwhelm the system – to get people distracted, make them angry, etc.

    Now, add this court-packing thing that if done, will instantly “fundamentally transform The United States”…… and he can do it with an Executive Order.

  • nessa

    I agree wholeheartedly Kenny, “a progressive don’t take a dump without a plan, son.” But I think, when you include the degree that Americans are awakening to the progressives power grab, it would be the equivalent of them standing against the wall and tying on their own blindfold. Any mention of this from anyone in more authority than their pundits will flood the Tea Parties with new adherents, this would be worse for them than attempting reconciliation with Obamacare.

  • redneck_hippie

    immediately fixate on the end. Court-packing is only a means, like reconciliation. A packed court would declare health care a right and then it would be so. Etc.

  • Vladimir

    Who else would recommend going from an odd to an even number of justices?

    Maybe we could resort to shootouts like in the NHL.

  • Common_Cents
  • aesthete

    However, they are also notoriously unable to understand what makes the opposition (and those who are unaffiliated) tick. Therefore, when they find something that works, they tend to hammer that until it’s used up its usefulness. Really, the only reason that they have achieved anything legislatively is because of FDR (who *did* understand the opposition and populace), and the residual majority left after he died. Had it not been for him, the Great Depression, I imagine that progressivism in the federal government would be even more stultified than it already is (relative to other countries), and that our entitlement programs would be a good deal smaller and more privatized than they ended up being. (That assumes that George Wallace, Huey Long, and other Southern populists would have been a merely regional phenomena, as they were historically.)