101 Comments

Redistricting to achieve partisan advantage, even if it had nothing to do with race, should not be constitutional. Members of a legislature should not be able to choose their voters and thereby ensure that they will be re-elected. Districting should be done by some sort of objective non-partisan method.

But what's the point in complaining about partisan redistricting when the six Republican politicians on Court have given their blessing to the far more disgusting practice of racist redistricting? I fear that we really are on the road back to Jim Crow, even as white people become a minority. Republicans cannot win democratic elections, so their solution is to end democratic elections.

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I don't think it's over-inflated rhetoric to say that if the GOP extremists could figure out a way to do it, they would round up all people of color and force them back into slavery.

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Not just Black, Brown, and Asians. Jews and Muslims, who aren’t insane and people with disabilities will be rounded up too. Just like in Germany. That’s who they want to emulate.

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Maybe, but they actually do so many horrible things that it's better to cite them than hypothetical things they might do. That way you can't be accused of exaggerating.

Also, "GOP extremists" is redundant. Look at Haley today.

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Good points! But having read a Christian Dominionist manifesto some years ago, it's clear to me that these "exaggerations" are policies they are determined to put into effect. Another long-term goal is taking away women's right to vote. How? By eventually having a substantial majority of their own legislators in enough state legislatures, and an equally substantial majority of US Senators and Representatives of their persuasion to overturn the 19th Amendment. And of course having a SC majority, the latter already accomplished.

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Not to forget the medieval mind meld practice of textual originalism.

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May 24·edited May 24

Originalism does not exist. It is an empty phrase used by right-wingers to pretend that their decisions are objective. The framers of the Constitution didn't all interpret its provisions the same way. Consider Bruen, which held that a gun restriction is constitutional only when a parallel one existed back when automatic weapons did not exist. The right-wing justices were saying that, if, around 1787, Congress did not enact a gun law, then it could only have been because they thought that such a law would be unconstitutional. It did not occur to these justices that maybe members of Congress in 1787 just hadn't thought to enact such a law--and perhaps couldn't have, because they lived in a different world.

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"End democratic elections"

Exactly!

And they will use a "god" sent criminal to accomplish such.

Alito is obviously a trembling white male racist who fears that non white people will rule the planet. Got news for you Sammy. Its gonna happen!

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Bravo! Well said.

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Or cheat.

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Ending democratic elections and cheating are essentially the same thing. Even though the Supreme Court allows gerrymandering and voter suppression, they are still forms of cheating. Maybe it's a stretch, but I think of the Electoral College as a form of cheating, even though the Constitution provides for it. If Republicans were fair-minded, they'd agree to a constitutional amendment providing that the president be elected by popular vote. But, as people said when I was growing up, "If my grandmother had balls, she'd be my grandfather." (The clean version was, "If my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a trolley car.")

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There is a National Popular Interstate Compact which needs a few more states to sign onto to eliminate the electoral college and elect a President by popular vote. I'm not sure which states are not signed on, but you can find it on-line. If your state, or anyone else's reading this, that's not signed on, write, call, or visit your reps and tell them to get it done!

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It's the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, and it has a Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact

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Excellent. Thank you.

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founding

It took me longer than usual to read one of your posts, Lucian. I had to excuse myself to go vomit.

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The Roberts court has all the makings of going down in infamy as the Taney court (Dred Scott) and the Fuller court (Plessy v. Fergusun). If I mis-spelled, apologies.

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May 24·edited May 24

You misspelled "misspelled"☺ (and "Ferguson").

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I live downtown Charleston. I was once in Nancy Mace’s district but am now in Jim Cyburn’s what is not said is that the Charleston Peninsula is largely Democratic, going for Obama, Hillary and Biden in recent elections. We were moved to Clyburn’s district so we could not vote agains Mace. If you look at the district map, it is divided almost completely by the Charleston peninsula. Only South Battery and Murray Blvd allow the district to connect. Of course nobody talks about all of the moderate dems who were moved into Clyburn’s district. Too bad because Mace is terrible

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founding

She's a hollow shell.

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Actually worse than that

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founding

Far and away.

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Agreed. Mace is a train wreck. She had a 100% turnover rate in her first year and it continues. She insisted to be booked on radio and TV at least three times a week. She is a train wreck.

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I have a number of conservative friends in Mt Pleasant and Isle of Palms who have known her for years. They will not vote for her because, like Nikki Haley, the only thing she stands for is her own self adcancement

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Also left unsaid is that the majority of dems on the Peninsula are white

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Are Democrats just going to sit around with their collective thumbs up their collective asses? We need new leadership that isn't sclerotic and bound by decades of comity. Although tbf, Biden recently has shown signs of life.

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I said earlier today on another post that Dick Durbin needs to grow a pair of balls.

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May 24·edited May 24

Dick Durbin? Balls? After all this time? It will never happen. Heart in the right place and always 100 per cent ineffectual.

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I don't think there is such a thing as adult onset puberty.

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You are right!

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Hopefully, not too little and Too late.

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Crap. Remember when the Supreme Court protected voting rights.? No easy solution. Vote Blue

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I’ll purloin a Liz Cheney quote: “There will come a day when Donald Trump will be gone, but your dishonor will live forever.” Unless, of course, his wife made him do it. Then no one could possibly blame him.

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LOL!

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I hold that any decision made by the Robert’s court is tainted and illegitimate.How could it not be?The entire GOP majority of the SCOTUS is complicit with Trump’s plan to end democracy and are making no secret about it.They are giving a big F U to the rule of law and to Americans everywhere. We need a flood of flags of freedom.This flag trumps Trump.

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Aaaaaamen!

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Thanks Lucian for the wake up! reminder, one among many. Sam Alioto, meet Joe McKenna, another Supreme Court Associate Justice. McKenna wrote the 1898 Court Opinion in Williams v. Mississippi, in which the Court upheld the newly-passed state constitution, disenfranchising Black voters. Alito et al are adding a new meaning to the word "conservative.": The act of conserving White power and priviledge by concentrating dem uppity darkies ("uppity" means voting Democratic) into as few as possible Congressional Districts, or "camps."

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Shake me-noggin' when Rs/cons invoke their refrain and iterations of, we don't see skin color or we are color blind. Sounds sooo good yet lack all soundness. People do see skin color and 99.99% of color blindness involves blue/yellow and red/green.

Always found their refrain too clever by half doublespeak meaning we don't see the colored (POC) as people. And today 6-3 ruling is another example of doublethink written in doublespeak.

All this pre-dates Trump by decades. And w/o a doubt is rooted in yt-male supremacy which has plagued this nation since its official founding. America had one opportunity to fix it in the immediate aftermath of the American [un]Civil War, then blew it.

A hundred years later what emerged was words on papers not written in the heart, mind, or soul. Long have forewarned the CRA/VRA are akin to the broken Treaties w/my kind. Yt-words are good for nothing. Weep for the white people of this land who like my ancestors and people from Africa were beguiled by the yts forked tongue.

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U got that right, Shadowcloud.

Spoke to Geronimo today, he is still very angry and hiding out in the Chiricahuas.

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Good to know he is still roaming cuz last heard dancing with the Gaan on the White Mountain with Mescalero N'de, then coming down to play 18, place a few bets in the casino, of Mountain Gods, and at the pony track in Ruidoso.

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The six Republican appointees are responsible for destroying Democracy. Alito and Thomas lead the corruption . Robert’s stamps it .

If Durbin cannot be effective in exposing Alitos and Thomas’ ever expanding corruption, get him out of there and install someone who’s willing to go to bat for Democracy , Freedom , and Reality.

Alito and Thomas think that their twisted interpretations of Justice are fine. They are wrong . Put their pompous asses back in reality.

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And five of those appointees were appointed by MEN who lost the popular vote

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Sam Alito is an asshole. And he doesn't give a hot fuck who knows it. If Dick Durbin can't handle the job, he should give the gavel to Sheldon Whitehouse. Article lll says that Congress regulates the Federal judiciary.

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Roberts and Alito both out of the REAGAN administration, where all this shit was born!

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Yes it was. This cannot stand!! Sheldon Whitehouse has been on this. Durbin is fucking up by not hammering this!!

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May 24·edited May 24

Um.........both Roberts and Alito were appointed by Dubya. Blame Dubya, Turtleman and that loathsome little cockroach Leonard Leo and his Federalist Society. The four Justices appointed by Reagan (O'Connor, Scalia, Kennedy, Rehnquist) have either retired or died. and of course those last three 'just-asses' all appointed by Dump: Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Coney.

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I was referring to the fact that Sam and John worked together in the Reagan Admin...not that he appointed them. W wanted to appoint Harriet Myers, but she was #1 Not A Man. And #2 not radically conservative enough for the Rs.

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Ah...well that isn't surprising, given that Reagan seemed to attract corruption (and corruptible men) like rotten meat attacts flies. Yeah, the corruptions and the authoritarian ideology were floating around the in the Republican hierarchy already, but Reagan's arrival on the scene, seemed to galvanize the forward movement of the 'movement conservatives'.

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The supreme court is worse than covid I'm effing exhausted.

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We need a superhero. Now.

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Looks like it will have to be the relatively sane and determined democrats in the polis writ large.

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May we descend on them with determination

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Because we’re going to have to be our own super heroes and use the vote as our superpower..

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Which it truly is!

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Bernie Sanders comes out of a phone booth

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I am heartily grateful that (a) I am genuinely terrified of guns; and (b) for that reason, I am not a professional assassin -- because nowadays, I wouldn't know where to start and when to stop.

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I know the feeling.

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And I am tired of feeling this way. I worry about being mentally infected with the verbal violence of today's politics -- and it's a good thing I'm too much of a coward to consider actual violence.

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You and me both!!!

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Marjorie, an very old film but relevant.

Three Days of the Condor.

"But will they print it."

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I live in SC 1. This redistricting has turned the district from one which can be competitive to one now where two bat crap crazy Republican women are completing to out Trump each other.

Mace is a self promoting ego maniac. Her competitor is trying to defeat her by calling Mace “a liberal.”

We are doomed. Thanks, Sam.

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