In case you missed it, Gorsuch:
* Celebrated legislative supremacy as a Founding principle
* Praised legislators over judges for their fact-finding, judgment, & consensus
* Criticized judges who "sweep in" to address problems

Gorsuch is going to love the next Congress.
Who am I kidding. Gorsuch just likes this Republican legislature restricting voting access.

Phony originalism. Just reading a single clause how he likes. Not a single historical source.

Text of DNC v. Wisconsin State Legislature here. Full of whoppers.
drive.google.com/file/d/1tcsRiv…
Kagan hits Kavanaugh hard in this footnote, after Kavanaugh puts the Trump Party Line on mailed ballots into a Supreme Court opinion. You can't make this stuff up.

This is an already-packed court, folks.
Gorsuch sure proved his point about legislatures being better than judges in fact-finding, research, and consensus...

...by writing an "originalist" opinion utterly devoid of historical facts, research, and consensus.

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More from @jedshug

26 Oct
The Court question should be disentangled into at least 2 questions:
1) What is the right size for a Supreme Court?
(Is it 9? No.)
2) What is the right method for judicial selection?
(The current model? Hell no.)

If we are going to change one, change both in a balanced way.
I have concerns about the @danepps @GaneshSitaraman 5/5/5 proposal, because I think the existing conservative Justices will play hardball harder.
But it moves the debate forward by thinking creatively about both questions, and I haven’t seen anything better that addresses both.
For what it’s worth, I suggest:
1) President nominate 1 Justice every 2 years (2 per 4 yr term)...
Let size increase. No term limits.

2) But with a statutory merit model of bipartisan House committee (perhaps with input of governors, the bar...) creating a short list/slate.
Read 5 tweets
22 Oct
The progressive knee-jerk rejection of originalism over the past 40 years & in a fever pitch in 2020 is one of the sloppiest own-goals I’ve seen in law.

The left doesn’t have to adopt it. But to suggest it’s in bad faith & ignorant is, among many things, unfair & unwise.
Hear me out right here on why the left should adopt, appropriate, and fix originalism.
Better yet, hear Amy Coney Barrett herself show you how to find an originalist right to privacy in the Bill of Rights! She doesn’t even know it, but she’s right:
3/ As a progressive small-d democrat, I think the best way to read law is how the public understood what they ratified (&how the people’s legislators understood what they enacted & its broader purposes), more than how judges later interpreted it. Judges have usually been worse...
Read 10 tweets
20 Oct
The GOP's electoral college advantage (gap between national polling averge & the tipping-point-state average) is ~ 4%:

On @FiveThirtyEight, national avg is Biden +10.3%
PA, the tipping-point-270 state is +6.4%

That means Dems need to win by at least 4% to squeak past 270.
We won't know final gap for a while, but this is a bigger gap than 2016, when Clinton won nationally 2.1%, but lost tipping-point states by > 1%.

One way to fix this gap by Congressional majority vote (and referenda):
Statehood for DC, Puerto Rico & North/South California
2/
3/ I meant " < 1%"

Anyway, keep a Federal District w/ 3 electors for the popular vote winner. (h/t @imillhiser)
That's 11 more electors.
The winner needs a majority of the new 549 = 275 (odd numbers are good)...
Read 4 tweets
19 Oct
On @realTrumpcast w/ @page88, I said let's expand the Senate before the Court. Add at least 3 states:
1) DC
2) Puerto Rico
3) N & S California

Friends ask: "Can you really do that? By majority vote?"
Answer: The Founders did it!
KY, TN, etc...
Thread
slate.com/podcasts/trump…
2) This is the first map of the United States, 1789-90.
Note Virginia, Massachusetts, Georgia, Connecticut "Western Reserve."

Those were formally giant states. Over the next few decades, Congress & their state legislatures split them up under Art IV, Sec 3 by majority vote.
3)
In 1792, Congress added Kentucky from the western half of Virginia.
VA's legislature had already voted to release the land in the Articles of Confederation era, but Congress had not yet acted. Thus, the new Congress formally added KY as a new state out of an old one.
Read 5 tweets
30 Sep
Watching FoxNews post debate.
"Trump bullied himself across the stage. Changed no one's minds."
"Biden had no car-crash moment, so that's a win for him."
"Muddled, no memorable moment. So not a win for Trump."
All of the FoxNews ads are for Amy Coney Barrett.
And Biden ads as the fiscally responsible candidate.
And home security ads.
And big pharma ads for medicating mental illness.

I haven't seen a single Trump ad on FoxNews.
Read 6 tweets
29 Sep
A remarkable coincidence in Trump timing of tax refund and going Birther:

2010: Trump received a likely illegal refund of $73M per @nytimes

March 2011: Trump goes all-in Birther.

Was the Obama IRS investigating?
Did Trump go birther to frame it as Obama's partisan retribution?
The @nytimes bombshell on the 2010 tax refund & IRS audit that followed:

"Starting in 2010 he claimed & received a refund totaling $72.9M. The legitimacy of that refund is at the center of the audit battle that he has long been waging, out of public view, with the IRS..." Image
@nytimes documents "square with the way Trump cites, without explanation, an ongoing audit as grounds for refusing to release his tax returns."
E.g.: July on @seanhannity @FoxNews: “They treat me horribly, the IRS, horribly.”

Now obviously Obama's IRS:
nytimes.com/interactive/20…
Read 6 tweets

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