Here’s a question I’d like to hear people’s answer to. We’re hearing a lot of names tossed out as Supreme Court nominee possibilities. But here’s a question my mind keeps turning back to. How old should a Supreme Court nominee be? Not for their ability to do the job necessarily but, given the governance stakes involved, for their ability to do it well for a long period of time?
We all know that life is unpredictable. Someone in their forties can be befallen by terrible illness and someone like Justice Stevens can keep on going alert and in apparent good health on the verge of 90. But given the odds, does it make sense for the president to put someone on the Court who is already 60 or over? Scalia was 50 when he joined the court in 1986. Thomas was a mere 43. Alito was a comparative old 56.
Robert Reich explains why immigration is the answer to the budgetary strains of the aging and retirement of the Baby Boom generation.
Whether Marco Rubio or Charlie Crist win the Florida Republican senate primary, they’ll almost certainly succeed in wrecking the state’s institutional Republican party, which goes by the increasingly appropriate acronym RPOF. The latest story kicked up by the Crist/Rubio ruckus is that of a state party staffer who managed to rack up $1.3 million in Amex bills over two and a half years.
Harry Reid’s got his work cut out for him if he plans to be in the Senate in 2011. But, my God, his probable opponent, former Nevada GOP chair Sue Lowden, looks like her ideas for reform come from the 18th rather than the 21st century. In this video, she suggests more use of ‘barter’ may be a key way to rein in health care costs.
What’s the point in hanging around the militia compound waiting to fight on Jesus’s side in the battle of Armeggedon without some crack and steroids to help pass the time?
Is Harry Reid really staking his reelection on the fact that Nevada ballots include a “none of the above” option?
The University of Chicago has kindly provided us with some additional photographs from its archives of Justice John Paul Stevens as a younger man:
I realized that when I saw this new video of Tina Fey doing Sarah Palin it didn’t so much remind me of Sarah Palin as Sara Benincasa doing her impersonation of Sarah Palin.
Today our Justin Elliott got hold of an email sent to members of the Columbus Tea Party, a local Tea Party organization in Ohio, telling them how and how not to act at the Tax Day event later this week. And one of the admonitions is “No alcohol (or other mood-enhancer) or pre-drinking.”
Now, that’s probably pretty good advice. But the reference to ‘mood enhancers’ got me thinking about the political taxonomy of mind altering substances. Read More
The Tea Party movement sets up shop in the US military. “There is at this time a debate within the ranks of the military regarding their oath. Some mistakenly believe they must follow any order the President issues. But many others do understand that their loyalty is to the Constitution and to the people…”