It saddened me to write this . . .

[markpkessinger]

This is a comment I posted in response to retired Justice Stephen Breyer's op-ed in today's NY Times (see https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/03/opinion/stephen-breyer-friendship-court.html?ugrp=c&unlocked_article_code=1.hk0.zL3T.vi50e3X9BiUj&smid=url-share ). I have always held Justice Breyer in high regard, and so I was quite saddened to feel compelled to write this comment:

The sheer tone-deafness of this column is breathtaking. At a time when a hard-right majority on the Court is busy dismantling rights that half our population enjoyed for a half century, and is chomping at the bit to undo more recently-attained rights such as same-sex marriage, for a former liberal justice to issue such a condescending lecture about "civility," and to support it by bringing up his own chumminess with other former conservative justices, is not only singularly unhelpful in the present moment, but is positively infuriating!

(Link to comment: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/03/opinion/stephen-breyer-friendship-court.html#commentsContainer&permid=132291916:132291916 ).

[Irish_Dem]

1. Excellent comment.

[PlanetBev]

2. Thank You for this

I’ve heard Justice Breyer paper-over the condition of the SC on a number of talk shows and I thought it was pathetic. I don’t care if he has a wild three-way with Alito and Thomas, I care about where these pricks are taking our country.

[Voltaire2]

3. The institutionalists are going down with the ship.

On a certain level I respect their determination to protect the traditions of republican government, however once a party with access to power has decided to subvert those same institutions, and has quite obviously done so with the judiciary and with the senate and with legislative districts across the country, that defense is both ludicrously detached from reality and obstructing reform to undo the damage.

[peppertree]

7. Shades of 1933 Germany - when Reichstag "institutionalists" backed Hitler just to thwart socialists

"Vee can handle him," they assured themselves.

And when Hitler's goons then set fire to the Reichstag, and blamed communists just to get them suspended from the floor (and thereby assure his Nazis a working majority)?

"Vell - zey are communists. Vee should go along, ja?"

[Voltaire2]

8. historical patterns are so peculiar in real time.

Somebody said 'history doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes' (and it wasn't Mark Twain).
In the moment of an historical rhyme, the observer can be aware of the echoed pattern's facts, the era being rhymed, but it is only a conjecture as to how the rhyming era, the present, unfolds.

Perhaps we just need to imagine a better rhyme than theirs.

[Ursus Rex]

10. Citation

1965, Curiosities of the Self: Illusions We Have about Ourselves by Theodor Reik, Essay 3: The Unreachables: The Repetition Compulsion in Jewish History, Quote Page 133, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York. (Verified with scans)

[link:https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/01/12/history-rhymes/|

[Celerity]

25. A similar (and more elegant IMHO) thought actually from Twain in 1874:

History never repeats itself, but the Kaleidoscopic combinations of the pictured present often seem to be constructed out of the broken fragments of antique legends.

https://books.google.se/books?id=PmgOAAAAQAAJ&q=kaleidoscopic&redir_esc=y#v=snippet&q=kaleidoscopic&f=false

[wolfie001]

21. General Kurt von Schleicher............................nt

[peppertree]

22. And that snob, Franz von Papen - the Mitch McConnell of his day

The leader of the "establishment" conservatives, who gave Hitler his crucial working majority.

This is how elected fascists in other countries have taken over - by initially securing the support of the "center-right" middle class and lawmakers.

"I wish we had some other, more potable option," they'll fret, "but we have to keep that left-wing rabble away from the levers of power!"

And von Papen, with his initial misgivings? He was rewarded with plum posts in the Nazi regimes, plenty of business - and to his dying day, never regretted his role.

[wolfie001]

23. Van Papen died in 1969

The bastard. He must've played three sides against each other.

[yonder]

13. "....I thought it was pathetic." Agree.

Recently, I saw him being interviewed on the Colbert show.

I was seriously underwhelmed and dissapointed.

[LudwigPastorius]

4. Yeah, the SC justices are really in their own bubble.

I can see it getting easy for them to chat and guffaw over cigars and brandy with their colleagues, conveniently compartmentalizing the fact that those same folks are stripping away the rights of millions of regular people and leading this country down the path of authoritarian doom.

[calimary]

11. True. All the nice-sounding chumminess in that article may be an attempt to excuse

the justices - "gee, they're really just nice people and look how they get along and they're really just like us or not too different from us and they're really okay and isn't that just great and all friendly and nice and normal and harmless and ... "

Well, whatever.

The FACT is: We the People who weren't lucky or prominent enough to be selected by some President to join that bench are stuck with the shitty rulings that can, and do, come down from this same bunch of allegedly "just nice people." Scalia always struck me as such a monumentally pompous ass that I wouldn't care if he rescued kittens and puppies as a side job. That wouldn't redeem him from making another noxious ruling that's bound to hurt women, the poor, the needy, and the weak who don't have big-ass connections and political clout and the right private phone numbers to allow access to the right people.

[SWBTATTReg]

5. I got a feeling that the Supreme Court, with it's toxic, unfettered judgments made over the last several years, has

undone itself. Maybe now Pres. Biden and the powers that be, expand the Supreme Court from nine to 13, maybe more justices, so at least more eyes are looking at rulings before they are made, to ensure an even keel, 'more heads are better than one' rulings. To dismantle the law of the land that has been the law for so long has had merit already for so long, and to willy-nilly dismantle them is crazy.

[DENVERPOPS]

18. What if McConnell

just delayed the appointments until a Republican got back in the presidency.....

There certainly is now a precedent of that being okay, thanks to McConnell and the Senate Republicans last time an appointment could be made during the Dem Presidency........

Just as now their is a precedent of the USSC intervening and deciding, single handedly, a Presidency...2000
Even though it was clearly a "States Matter" and there was absolutely nothing in the U.S. Constitution allowing for the USSC to legally intervene. It clearly "threw" the election, with incomplete evidence to WBush, sadly when several legitimate groups examined the ballots and determined that Gore IN FACT would have won if the re-count had been allowed to be completed..........

[SWBTATTReg]

19. My take. That is, I agree w/ you.

The fact is that the Supreme Court took actions that it shouldn't have, that they only have the task of deciding when a law is written, that it's badly written, and that interpreting it would have resulted in a morass of unconstitutional actions and rendering laws moot. The Congress and sometimes the President (signing the bill(s)) put these laws into place. They (US S. Court) should just recommend a temporary solution in place (correcting somehow the 'bad parts', while leaving the law mostly in place, and let Congress fix, along w/ the President, if needed, to sign.

After all, the Congress does sometimes, write bad laws. It seems to me that they (Supreme Court) have appointed themselves the overall see all, do all, decide all, and I can't believe that the founders of this Country would have wanted a Supreme Court to basically rule w/o safeguards in place, to prevent this very sort of thing.

Using the Senate to pass judgment on these characters, as well as errant members of Congress has been a nightmare if it's ever done. It seems like every time a party takes over and changes the makeup of the Supreme Court, our long-established laws (some of them, not all of them), are thrown out, and we all have to start over again.

I'm just ranting. Sorry.

[DENVERPOPS]

24. Hey SWB

Good ideas and comments! Thx

[Blue Idaho]

6. He's making the rounds

Trying to write a convincing history of himself and the Supreme Court as Camelot. In my opinion, they are all too insulated from the world. It’s worth noting the SC has an approval rating pretty close to the cluster fuck that is the House of Representatives.

Time to add members to the SC bench and rotate that membership between that court and other federal court appointments. Let them see the shit the help create.

[Old Crank]

9. It will take just a few short years

to dismantle several decades of work towards equality and fairness for the people.

[lastlib]

12. It's easy to take it apart.....

It's damned hard to put it together. It took us the greatest part of two centuries, a civil war, and a couple of minor revolutions to do it. In less than two decades, the basturds have disassembled much of it, and are threatening to finish the job. We have to fight them and defeat them NOW. As a famous celluloid orator (Otter) said, "We could fight them with conventional weapons--it would take years, cost millions of lives...."

[Earth-shine]

14. This man is full of himself. Liberals had to pressure him to retire.

He wants to sell books.

Until the end of his tenure and beyond, he refused to see the problems with the court. Too chummy. Too much rarified air.

They should not have lifetime appointments. Are they kings?

[myohmy2]

15. +1...

...sign of the times...we can't seem to stop it...

...I' m readying myself for the potential domestic 4th Reich...

...I've found several good hiding places...

[Magoo48]

16. When the rulings of our courts are often heinous and vigorously brutal, how can they expect "civility"?

[et tu]

17. and there is

blood on their hands with the roe reversal!

[czarjak]

20. So...

Racism is dead according to Roberts. Does civility include going along with BS? Asking for a friend. (Jesus, if you're listening)