Supreme Court is illegitimate, either impeach them or increase the size.

[Eliot Rosewater]

Of course we have to beat the KGB who is AS WE SPEAK in our election system in all 50 states.

I am so fucking pissed, but I have been for years.

Hopefully most others have caught up with me.

ps

constitutional crisis has been going on for the entire time our enemy has an installed puppet in our WH

And yet we arent marching in the streets yet

S I G H

[Dawson Leery]

1. I am all for adding seats.

[FarPoint]

26. Immediately after we have a sworn in Democratic President...

Plus, add statehood to Puerto Rico abd Washington DC... for starters.

[onetexan]

27. +1 -K&R

[Zoonart]

2. Preach Elliot.

[hughee99]

4. Adding seats to the USSC to gain political advantage?

I don’t see how that could possibly backfire or have unintended consequences.

[W_HAMILTON]

6. So, the president's party controls who controls the Supreme Court?

That sounds a lot better than another generation of 5-4 conservative decisions because the Republicans blocked Obama's nomination.

Sign me up!

[hughee99]

8. Yes, that's how separation of powers works, the leader of the executive branch

Gets to control the judicial branch. This works out great when Dems are in office.

[W_HAMILTON]

11. I was being sarcastic...

What do we have to lose by adding, say, two seats to the Supreme Court, which would revert it to a 6-5 court in our favor, which is what we would have had if McConnell and the Republicans did not steal a seat from Obama? Republicans nominate more justices when/if they win the presidency and regain control of the court? Well, that's better than them having control of the court for another couple of decades due to their stealing the seat from Obama to begin with.

[hughee99]

12. Sorry, I didn't pick up the sarcasm.

But having presidents add justices isn’t really going to fix anything in the long run.

[W_HAMILTON]

13. It will fix the immediate problem of having a conservative court for another generation.

[Eliot Rosewater]

35. Long run?

[hughee99]

37. I guess we shouldn't worry about the long run, because by the next election

It’s going to too late to save the environment anyway.

[GulfCoast66]

5. I doubt I ever see 60 Senate seats controlled by democrats in my lifetime.

I’ll be happy with 51 and the presidency in 2020.

And certainly not the 67 required to impeach.

Baby steps. Focus on 2020 and getting the White House the Senate and keeping the house.

And if we get 60 seats the best radical actions would be increasing the house to 800 members. If Germany can do it so can we. Gerrymandering would be next to impossible and cities would be better represented. Read the history of the house. The number was regularly increased until it became apparent the cities were gaining more representation. It has been frozen for almost 100 years. A simple law can change it.

[FBaggins]

7. Gerrymandering would not be substantially harder at 800

It’s still rampant at the state level and there are far more than 800 state legislative seats across the country.

[GulfCoast66]

9. I think Miami/Dade and places like that would be harder.

But the real difference would be states like California and New York which would effectively double their number of seats. State like Wyoming, the Dakotas, even Mississippi and Alabama would run out of residents before the could double their amount. Granted states like Texas and Florida would be a wash. But it would make cities more represented. Preventing that was the reason it was frozen. Ironically it was not all that partisan. Both parties supported freezing it to some degree. As America urbanized the rural representatives of both parties, who still had a majority took action to insure their continued control. And remember, African Americans could not even vote then!

It would sure make representatives more accessible regardless of its other results!

I love these types of discussions/Polite arguments on DU! Especially with people smarter than me.

[MichMan]

15. What makes you think existing House members would want to dilute their power?

By having smaller districts representing fewer constituents?

[GulfCoast66]

20. Excellent point.

[NewJeffCT]

18. Democrats had 60 seats briefly in 2009

after Al Franken was seated (election was so close, recounts and lawsuits lasted until June 2009) until Ted Kennedy passed away. Then, they had it for a little bit longer when Paul Kirk was appointed to hold the seat until the special election, where Republican Scott Brown won.

[pecosbob]

24. If you can capture the Senate and the Presidency, regardless the margin

the first thing you should do is make D.C. and P.R. states. Four shiny new senators (likely of color and left leaning)...that's how you can build toward a supermajority. If and when the GOP goes back to minority standing in both the House and Senate, I believe the party will implode. We may even see a third party emerge.

[Moral Compass]

10. The Republic is dead

The all-out assault on our imperfect constitutional republic began when Bill Clinton was elected. That is when the right wing think tank infrastructure was created. The real constitutional crisis happened in 2000 when the loser of the Presidential election was installed as President by the SC. This is just a continuation of the constitutional crisis that began then.

Since then the power grabs have become ever more blatant. Citizens United legalized bribery, granted person-hood to corporations, and declared that political contributions were equivalent to free speech and were thus protected by the 1st amendment.

The Robert's court has strategically snipped away at the philosophical and legal underpinnings of the Republic. Just last month the SC declared that blatant gerrymandering was beyond the purview of the courts.

And now, the SC has given the power of the purse to the executive branch. Trump now has a slush fund that he can use to fund his perverse priorities.

There is now no real legal way to return our republic to something that might resemble the nation we thought we lived in.

The reality is that very few really understand what our country should be because civic education was eliminated from junior and high school curriculum.

An ignorant populace is easily controlled and easily fooled.

A leader like Trump is a mirror of our populace. It is no small surprise that an ignorant and angry electorate egged on by the right wing propaganda channel, Fox, elected this pathetic, venal, ignorant, greedy idiot to the Presidency.

[Farmer-Rick]

28. It started with Nixon and the Powell memo in 1971

The stupidity of Health Insurance and out of control costs (by turning health care into a for profit business) was a con developed by Nixon for his buddy Kaiser. Yeah, that Kaiser, from Kaiser Permanente.

The whole Nixon idea was that the rich needed to get richer because, well Capitalism, and then all the rich capitalist kings would vote for RepubliCONS and give the GOP money.

The Powell memo was a blue print for cooperate domination of our democracy. It advocated the subjugation of labor, unions and democracy to corporate profits. It has led directly to fat Traitor Trump and his Slovenian sex worker representing the United States.

Control of every branch of government by a handful of capitalist kings was the goal. The Russian involvement was a twist and of course they were going to pack the courts with their hate filled criminal politicians.

Putting some less corporate friendly judges on the court of criminals called the supremes is NOT packing the court. Packing the court is what the GOP did.

It has already been packed with rapists and criminals. It's time to fix it. Thomas and Brett are known sexual predators and most of the Supremes play the stock market....how can that NOT be a conflict of interest? I really wonder about Roberts foreign monies that he accepts on a regular basis. I don't trust any of them any further than I can throw them.

[Moral Compass]

33. Absolutely agree

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

14. No. Nine justices is just fine.

You might want to do some research on FDR's attempts to pack the Supreme Court.

[ms liberty]

16. First thing I thought of when reading the OP

How'd that work out for FDR? Not well...the most popular, most beloved President ever, and when he tried packing the court by increasing it, he failed.
History. It's a thing. Know it.

[onenote]

17. +1

When someone as knowledgable and respected as Ruth Bader Ginsburg gives thumbs down on the idea of increasing the court's size, you can take it to the bank that it's not going to happen.

[standingtall]

22. How many elections did FDR lose after that?

The only reason it failed was, because Democrats did not support it. Before then the size of the court was expanded all the way up until 1869. Congress has the right under the constitution to alter the makeup of the court and when the court starts usurping the powers of congress it is time to Exercise that right.

[Farmer-Rick]

29. Exactly, just because it didn't work for FDR doesn't mean it can't ever be expanded.

And the court is already packed with right wing ideologues. We would be Unpacking it. We would be making it more representative of America's differing political opinions.

Just because Mitch found a different way to pack the court does NOT mean we have to leave it that way.

[Eliot Rosewater]

36. Country is on fire, about to turn into complete shit, ANYTHING we can do to stop that

we MUST do.

Increasing the court is one of the ONLY legal ways I know of.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

34. History. It's a thing. Know it.

I may need to use that phrase more often.

Especially here.

[NewJeffCT]

19. The bigger problem is Congress has continually allowed presidents

of all parties to get away with declaring National Emergencies on many different things over the years. Sadly, because of this, Trump's abuse of the national emergency was stronger legally because so many previous emergencies had gone unchallenged and never really ended. I forgot how many emergencies have been declared since the days of (I think) Eisenhowever, but it was well over 50 and none of them have ever really been revoked or repealed.

[standingtall]

21. The Supreme Court needs to be expanded

and the arguments against it are weak. Just because FDR failed 80 years ago, because his own party would not support does not mean we should never try again. Or we shouldn't do it, because it might backfire, because we would be doing it for political reasons. What price did republicans pay for refusing to even hold a vote on Obama's nominee? Supreme Court justices are nominated by politicians and therefore it is impossible to separate political reasoning from it.

The size of the Supreme Court was expanded all the up until 1869 it is not fixed at 9 in the constitution. That is only a tradition and the constitution is not bound by any tradition that is not enshrined in the constitution.

Republicans have been running to the Supreme Court for years to strike down legislation passed by Democrats. Under the constitution congress has supremacy over the court not the other way around. Congress controls the makeup of the Supreme Court it does not control the make up of itself. Now that the Supreme Court is assisting a corrupt President in usurping the power of congress altering it's makeup is well beyond justifiable.

[Farmer-Rick]

30. Yes, we would merely be Unpacking the court to make it more reflective of American's diverse opinion

Congress has the authority and should use it to right an injustice.......Or we could simply Impeach Brett and Thomas.

[MineralMan]

23. Neither is possible until we control the White House and both

houses of Congress. First things first! GOTV!

[pecosbob]

25. WWWD?

What would Woody do? VOTE and AGITATE.

[Amishman]

31. RBG is against it

I'm not sure who would be a more sympathetic and knowledgeable voice on the subject.

It's a really bad idea.

[standingtall]

32. RBG is a member of the Supreme Court if we let

members of the Supreme Court even ones we agree with on most things determine what the makeup of the court should be than we might as well be a dictatorship. The authority of the Congress to add seats to the court is a check and balance on the supreme court and that should never be forfeited.