{"id":2211,"date":"2020-10-12T14:31:20","date_gmt":"2020-10-12T21:31:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=2211"},"modified":"2020-10-12T14:31:20","modified_gmt":"2020-10-12T21:31:20","slug":"lying-and-more-lying-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=2211","title":{"rendered":"Lying and More Lying"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former Vice President Biden has said<\/a> that the Republican effort to seat Judge Amy Barrett on the Supreme Court is unconstitutional, and Delaware Senator Chris Coons, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said that it constitutes court-packing<\/a>.\u00a0 Both statements are so palpably false that it’s very unlikely Biden or Coons believes them.\u00a0 So what’s going on?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

First, let’s briefly touch on their falsehood.\u00a0 Had the Framers wanted to forbid a President from nominating a candidate for a Court vacancy in his last year (or last six months or whatever), they knew how to do it.\u00a0 They didn’t.\u00a0 As Justice Ginsburg herself once observed, the President is President until he leaves office.\u00a0 And there is more than adequate historical precedent for nominations (and confirmations) late in the President’s term.<\/p>\n

Second, “court-packing” has a specific meaning, to wit, adding seats to the Court.\u00a0 The Republicans are not attempting to do that and never have.\u00a0 FDR’s attempt to do it famously failed, even though Congress was overwhelming controlled by his party.\u00a0 Sen. Coons is simply attempting to alter the meaning of language\u00a0 —\u00a0 not that this is a new trick on the Left, see, e.g., the phrase “mass incarceration” being used to denote the fact that two-thirds of one percent of the population is behind bars (while 99.3% isn’t).<\/p>\n

Why are we seeing these maneuvers surrounding the Barrett nomination?\u00a0 In my view, it’s all in tandem with Mr. Biden’s repeated refusal\u00a0 —\u00a0 because the voters “don’t deserve to know”<\/a>\u00a0 —\u00a0 to say whether, if he is elected with a Senate majority on his side, he will attempt to pack the Court as that phrase has always been understood.\u00a0 Biden knows that packing the Court is unpopular with the public, so he also knows (1) it’s politically wise for him to refrain from saying he’d do it, but (2) he plans to do it anyway, because that is what the most vocal and “progressive” segment of his party demands\u00a0 —\u00a0 believing, as it has for years, that the Court exists, not to apply the Constitution as written, but to act as a quasi-disguised instrument of “legislation” that can’t get through Congress.<\/p>\n

This, in turn, is the principal stated reason for Biden’s and Coons’s objection to Barrett:\u00a0 That she, like her mentor Justice Scalia, sees the Court as a means for enforcing the Constitution, whatever that might mean for the substantive outcome in any particular case; while they see the Court as a means to achieve particular policy outcomes (preserving Obamacare, open borders, more liberal abortion, etc.), whatever that might mean for the survival of the Constitution.<\/p>\n

Bottom line:\u00a0 Biden is indeed going to pack the Court if he gets a Senate majority, and wants to set the table now to frame this attempt as merely a “defensive” move to answer the supposed Republican “court-packing” that preceded him.<\/p>\n

People are so cynical these days that they think politicians just lie out of habit.\u00a0 There is something to that, yes.\u00a0 But in my experience in this town, there’s often a more thought-through purpose for their lying.\u00a0 And that’s what’s going on here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Former Vice President Biden has said that the Republican effort to seat Judge Amy Barrett on the Supreme Court is unconstitutional, and Delaware Senator Chris Coons, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said that it constitutes court-packing.\u00a0 Both statements are so palpably false that it’s very unlikely Biden or Coons believes them.\u00a0 So what’s going on?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,41,56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-judicial-selection","category-politics","category-u-s-supreme-court"],"yoast_head":"\nLying and More Lying - Crime & Consequences<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=2211\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Lying and More Lying - Crime & Consequences\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Former Vice President Biden has said that the Republican effort to seat Judge Amy Barrett on the Supreme Court is unconstitutional, and Delaware Senator Chris Coons, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said that it constitutes court-packing.\u00a0 Both statements are so palpably false that it’s very unlikely Biden or Coons believes them.\u00a0 So what’s going on?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=2211\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Crime & Consequences\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/CriminalJusticeLegalFoundation\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2020-10-12T21:31:20+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/FB_DefaultLJ.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"300\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"400\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Bill Otis\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Bill Otis\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=2211\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=2211\",\"name\":\"Lying and More Lying - 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