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Stephen Breyer to retire at the end of this court session.

 
 
 
Derec said:
It would be if I was trying to make a fallacious statement. Pointing hypocrisy is not the same as whataboutism.
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From the Wikipedia entry for  Whataboutism (see boldface text):

Whataboutism or whataboutery (as in "what about…?") is a variant of the tu quoque logical fallacy, which attempts to discredit an opponent's position by charging hypocrisy without directly refuting or disproving the argument.
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Derek, most of your reply is just restating the same points that I feel I've addressed adequately, but there is some new material that I'll leave for others to assess on their own. All I know about Keyser is what I posted, so she may well have changed her opinion for other reasons in her 2019 book. I don't think it necessary to keep arguing about whether psychology professors are good at manipulating others, but I've worked with a lot of them in the past, so I probably know a little more than you about that subject. Dr. Ford is a respected academic who seems quite ordinary in that respect, just as most psychologists do.

Anyway, I'll let you have the last say on this subject other than these few remarks. I think we've exhausted the topic as much as it deserves in this particular thread, which is about the current Supreme Court nominee.
 
Quick question...

Suppose Biden did not nominate say and do this and instead nominated some qualified white male to the Supremes, would Republicans block him like they've been blocking nominees against Democratic Presidents? Right now, Tucker Carlson is screaming about the US becoming Rwanda, for example. Can all Republicans actually get away with that? Does Biden's choice immediately put Republicans on the defensive to say "I'm not racist. I do not support white male supremacy," or at least exert a lot of pressure on so-called moderate Republicans in swing states, like let's say Collins from Maine.
 
Derec said:
Loren Pechtel said:
A psychologist is much more likely than the average person to recognize manipulation. That doesn't make them good at actually doing it.
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Why would ability to recognize manipulation not be helpful in actually doing it?
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Recognizing it is far easier than actually doing it.

Ever watch Penn and Teller's Fool Us show? I know something of how magic works and can sometimes bust the tricks at least partially (knowing basically what was done even if I don't get every detail.) Does that mean I'm remotely able to actually do them?? The big stage illusions, maybe--most of them are about the mechanism, no substantial skill is required. The sleight of hand stuff where it's a matter of skill? Not a chance in the world even when I know what's being done.
 
No matter which well-qualified black woman was nominated by Biden, the same suspects would crawl out from beneath their rocks and hurl irrelevant dirt b while trotting out the canard that the SCOTUS appointments having nothing whatsoever to do with politics. And all because some white man did not get considered or nominated.

Really, it is so predictably boring.,
 
Derec said:
blastula said:
And the winner is the notorious KBJ.
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So she went to Harvard. Does that mean she will recuse herself from the Harvard racial discrimination case,
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Weird question, but I don't care if she does or not.

given that she was most likely a beneficiary of said discrimination?
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Based on? Just that she's black?

I would also like to know how far left she is, compared to other judges on Biden's short list.
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Why?
 
So now we wait to see if the Republicans all act like lickspittles and deny consent to a perfectly well qualified judge.
 
Rhea said:
So now we wait to see if the Republicans all act like lickspittles and deny consent to a perfectly well qualified judge.
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I think they've already done that with Merrick Garland. They are just getting better at it with practice. If they suddenly got a majority in the Senate, chances are good that we wouldn't see a new Supreme Court justice until they lost that majority or got a Republican president.
 

Confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson are set to begin Monday, and Republicans are already signaling their plan to attack her for providing legal representation to people imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay. In doing so, lawmakers are revealing a belief that certain people don’t deserve a quality legal defense — undermining a key pillar of the U.S. judicial system.

The GOP concedes that in her role as a Washington, D.C., public defender, Jackson did not choose her clients, but nonetheless accuses her of being too enthusiastic in their defense. “Jackson’s advocacy for these terrorists was ’zealous,’ going beyond just giving them a competent defense,” the Republican National Committee says on its website in a takedown of Jackson.

The implication is that Jackson should not have tried as hard at her job because of who she was representing: brown men from predominantly Muslim countries held without charge in an offshore detention facility. The D.C. bar’s rules of professional conduct explicitly instruct lawyers to represent their clients “zealously and diligently.” Even if every person held at Guantánamo Bay had committed acts of terrorism, they would be entitled to vigorous representation.

“That concept is fundamentally American, going back to John Adams’ representation of the British soldiers after the Boston Massacre,” said Alka Pradhan, a human rights lawyer who has represented several people imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay.
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apnews.com

AP FACT CHECK: Republicans twist Jackson's judicial record

Republicans have previewed some of the lines of questioning they will employ this coming week in Senate hearings for Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson.
apnews.com apnews.com

Republicans "are treating questions from her judge’s life over the years as statements of opinion to portray her as an outlier not deserving of a seat on the high court.

Their assertions on this front don’t stand up to scrutiny:

GOP SEN. JOSH HAWLEY OF MISSOURI: “Judge Jackson has opined there may be a type of ‘less-serious child pornography offender.’ ... ’A ‘less-serious’ child porn offender?” — tweet Wednesday.

THE FACTS: She opined no such thing. She asked questions about it.

Jackson was vice chair of the U.S. Sentencing Commission when it held a hearing on sentencing guidelines in 2012.

She told the hearing she was surprised at a Justice Department expert’s testimony that, as she put it, some child-sex offenders may actually “not be pedophiles” but perhaps “loners” looking for like-minded company in child pornography circles. Being surprised by an assertion and wanting to know more are not the same as endorsing it.

“So I’m wondering whether you could say that there is a — that there could be a — less-serious child pornography offender who is engaging in the type of conduct in the group experience level?” she asked the expert witness. “They’re very sophisticated technologically, but they aren’t necessarily that interested in the child pornography piece of it?”

From those questions, Hawley extrapolated that Jackson had drawn conclusions, when she hadn’t.

But several behavioral science researchers testified at that hearing that there may be nonsexual motivations among a portion of child-sex criminals. It is not a radical view. And many judges do see a distinction between those who produce child pornography and those who receive it.

In 2020, in denying compassionate release on medical grounds to a convicted sex offender serving almost six years in prison, Judge Jackson asserted: “The possession and distribution of child pornography is an extremely serious crime because it involves trading depictions of the actual sexual assault of children, and the abuse that these child victims endure will remain available on the internet forever.”
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blastula said:
Weird question, but I don't care if she does or not.
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Why? I guess you do not care about justices' possible conflicts of interest. At least when you agree with their political positions.

If Yale had a policy to preferentially admit Irish, would you not think Kavanaugh should recuse himself in a case about whether such policies were legal?

Based on? Just that she's black?
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Harvard has been systematically discriminating against white and Asian students and in favor of black ones.
So yes. Her being black is sufficient to suspect her of being a beneficiary of racist admission policies.

Why?
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I am concerned about the old man's hard shift to the left over the last 2 years. And I am concerned about the kinds of opinions another far left justice might come up with. Red Sonja is horrible enough!
 
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ZiprHead said:
Confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson are set to begin Monday, and Republicans are already signaling their plan to attack her for providing legal representation to people imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay. In doing so, lawmakers are revealing a belief that certain people don’t deserve a quality legal defense — undermining a key pillar of the U.S. judicial system.
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I think that there is a big difference between legal representation and actual advocacy that goes beyond the professional duty to provide a vigorous defense. I think that's what doomed Obama's DOJ nominee Debo Adegbile - he wasn't Wesley Cook's lawyer, but he supported that murderer's cause while working for NAACP (that this formerly illustrious organization has stooped so low as to defend unrepentant cop killers is really beyond the pale!) There was also a far left-wing lawyer (Lynne Stewart) who, while defending an Islamic terrorist, acted as a courier to smuggle messages from him to his terror cell. She was eventually sent to prison for this, but served way too little time. In other words, just because somebody acts as a lawyer, does not mean all their actions are fair game.

I do not know if KBJ's work with Gitmo terrorists went beyond her professional duties. I agree that merely acting as a lawyer for unsavory criminal defendants is not in itself objectionable though.

The implication is that Jackson should not have tried as hard at her job because of who she was representing: brown men from predominantly Muslim countries held without charge in an offshore detention facility.
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Why do you think the issue is with their hue and not with the fact that they are Islamic terrorists?
 
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I guess when you're a great lawyer, the GQP will use it against you by screaming, "Look, they did their job too well!!!111one"
 
Derec said:
that this formerly illustrious organization has stooped so low as to defend unrepentant cop killers is really beyond the pale!
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Are we ripping on the GQP again?
Oh-sorry. I forgot.
Conservos don’t complain about their leaders.
 
Derec said:
Why do you think the issue is with their hue and not with the fact that they are Islamic terrorists?
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Maybe it’s the fact that you never express any real “issues” with white cop killing domestic terrorists. Which is really odd, since you are well aware that the people and entities that study such things consider right wing white domestic terrorists to be the greatest threat we face as a nation …
 
Rhea said:
Derec said:
Her being black is sufficient to suspect her of being a beneficiary of racist admission policies.
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And there you have it.
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I didn't know what I was expecting when I exposed the cut there but holy shit..

It might not be often that the mask slips, but when it does, oh boy does it ever.
 
Rhea said:
Derec said:
Her being black is sufficient to suspect her of being a beneficiary of racist admission policies.
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And there you have it.
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We really need an emoji of Spock raising an eyebrow.

Two questions.

(1) To you, is a person being white in a white majority country sufficient for you to suspect him of being a beneficiary of white privilege?
(2) I went to a big name university that practices legacy admissions, and I'm a legacy. Is that sufficient for you to suspect me of being a beneficiary of legacy admissions?

Oh, that makes a third question occur to me. Should you being leftist be sufficient for me to suspect you of taking a quotation out of context?
 
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