People don’t usually remember it this way, but on Dec. 13, 2000, Vice President Al Gore gave one of the most important speeches in American history. Mr. Gore had contested the initial results of the Florida vote count and prevailed in the Florida state courts, but the Supreme Court had voted, 5-to-4, the day before to end the recount and effectively hand the presidency to George W. Bush.
“Now the U.S. Supreme Court has spoken,” Mr. Gore said. “Let there be no doubt, while I strongly disagree with the court’s decision, I accept it.” The frenzied battle over a few hundred votes had spawned intense anger across the country — but it had been resolved “as it must be resolved, through the honored institutions of our democracy.”
Mr. Gore’s concession that night still stands as the most powerful reaffirmation in modern times of the Supreme Court’s unique and fragile role in the American system of government
.. Millions of people were furious at the justices’ decision in Bush v. Gore — many believed it was the result not of legal reasoning but of rank partisanship — and yet virtually everyone followed Mr. Gore’s selfless lead, accepted the court as the final arbiter of the dispute, and moved on. There were no riots in the streets, no attempted coups, no “Second Amendment solutions.” There was, instead, a peaceful transfer of power: the hallmark of a civil society operating under the rule of law.
.. Even Senator John McCain, who once joined with Democrats in an effort to depoliticize the judicial nomination process, recently told a radio show, “I promise you that we will be united against any Supreme Court nominee that Hillary Clinton, if she were president, would put up.”
.. Step back for a moment and consider the radical absurdity of this position. Senate Republicans first justified their refusal to hold hearings or a vote on Mr. Obama’s nominee before the presidential election because “the people’s voice” needed to be heard. That was always a transparent lie. Now, apparently believing their candidate, Donald Trump, will lose, they are acting as though the Supreme Court is the property of the Republican Party.
.. it takes open aim at the court’s legitimacy as the sole unelected branch of government. Because the court “has no influence over either the sword or the purse,” as Alexander Hamilton wrote in the Federalist Papers, its legitimacy and authority depend entirely on the shared public acceptance of its verdicts.
.. the court has had a majority of Republican-appointed justices for nearly half a century
.. Republicans want to maintain that majority, even if that means tossing out all political norms
More Jobs, A Stronger Economy and a Threat to Institutions
A hundred and sixty-one thousand new jobs were created in October, the unemployment rate fell to 4.9 per cent, and wages grew faster than at any point since the financial crisis. Combined with last week’s report of strong G.D.P. growth, this is evidence that our economy is healthy and growing—and that growth is being reasonably widely shared. While this doesn’t mean that America’s growth is as robust as we might wish, or that we don’t face deep challenges, these numbers are incompatible with a view that America is in a profound economic crisis. Yet many people believe it is.
.. Every four years, Republicans argue that they, alone, can help the economy grow, while Democrats argue that they will make sure that economic growth doesn’t just help the rich.
.. Growth is actually notably higher during Democratic Administrations. The graph of economic performance since the Second World War shows growth averaging 4.33 per cent a year under Democratic Presidencies, while growing at 2.54 per cent under Republican ones.
.. Kevin Hassett, of the American Enterprise Institute, who advised every Republican Presidential candidate between 2000 and 2012, sees the cause and effect differently: American voters choose Democrats when they believe the economy is about to take off, because they want the government to spend a lot of money; then, when Democrats damage the economy and things turn south, voters choose Republicans to sort out the mess.
.. What matters most are those things that endure for decades and centuries: democracy, rule of law, a civilian-led military, political stability, and freedom of speech and movement. America is a rich country not because of what the Democrats or the Republicans did separately. It is successful because of those things that the parties share, national values and institutions.
.. Institutions are significant to economists, who have come to see that countries become prosperous not because they have bounteous natural resources or an educated population or the most advanced technology but because they have good institutions.
.. The societies with the most robust systems for forcing the powerful to accommodate some of the needs of the powerless became wealthier and more peaceful. Good rules persuaded people with ambition and ideas to invest in the future, trusting that stability and rule of law would protect them. Most nations without institutions to check the worst impulses of the rich and powerful stay stuck in poverty and dysfunction.
.. This explains why America’s quadrennial fights over tax rates and government spending are meaningful in the short term and to many individuals, but, over a longer arc, it’s the institutions we’ve built and respect that allow for a trajectory of growth.
.. No economist, save one, supports Donald J. Trump’s stated economic plans, but an even larger concern is that, were he elected, Trump would attack the very institutions that have provided our economic stability. In his campaign, Trump has shown outright contempt for courts, free speech, international treaties, and many other pillars of the American way of life.
.. Sulla, a wealthy and powerful élitist, was able to take advantage of anger among the less privileged to suggest that existing societal rules were keeping Rome from reclaiming its greatness. He steadily eroded custom, by, for example, encouraging soldiers to pledge allegiance to him rather than to the state, and to suggest that the Senate was sclerotic and corrupt.
.. Robinson said that it’s easy to imagine a President Trump refusing to heed our own highest court, which, as President Andrew Jackson observed, has no way, other than respect of institutions, to enforce its decisions. No one knows what Trump would do as President, but, based on his statements on the campaign trail, it’s possible to imagine a nation where people have less confidence in the courts, the military, and their rights to free speech and assembly. When this happens, history tells us, people stop dreaming about what they could have if they invest in education, new businesses, and new ideas. They focus, instead, on taking from others and holding tightly to what they’ve already amassed. Those societies, without the institutions that protect us from our worst impulses, become poorer, uglier, more violent. That is how nations fail.
Justice Dept. Strongly Discouraged Comey on Move in Clinton Email Case
“There’s a longstanding policy of not doing anything that could influence an election,” said George J. Terwilliger III, a deputy attorney general under President George Bush. “Those guidelines exist for a reason. Sometimes, that makes for hard decisions. But bypassing them has consequences.”
He added, “There’s a difference between being independent and flying solo.”
.. After hearing the Justice Department’s concerns, Mr. Comey concluded that the ramifications of not telling Congress promptly about the new emails far outweighed concerns about the department guidelines, one senior law enforcement official said.
Under Justice Department policy, restated each election cycle, politics should play no role in any investigative decisions. In Democratic and Republican administrations, Justice Department officials have interpreted that policy broadly, to cover any steps that might give even an impression of partisanship.
The Tweetstorm Heard ‘Round the Republican Party
Women nationwide are denouncing Donald Trump. Conservative Marybeth Glenn is furious that men aren’t following suit—and she has a message for them.
you cowards sit this one out? He treats women like dogs, and you go against everything I – and other female conservatives – said you were & back down like cowards.
Get this straight: We don’t need you to stand up for us, YOU needed to stand up for us for YOU. For YOUR dignity. For YOUR reputation. Jeff Sessions says that he wouldn’t “characterize” Trump’s unauthorized groping of women as “assault.”
Are you kidding me?!
Others try to rebuke his comments, yet STILL choose to vote for a sexual predator – because let’s be honest, that’s what he is. “What he said is wrong, and the way he treats women is wrong, but it’s not wrong enough for me to not vote for him.”
Thanks, cowards.
Various men in the movement are writing it off as normal, confirming every stereotype the left has thrown at them. So I’m done. I’m sooo done.
If you can’t stand up for women & unendorse this piece of human garbage, you deserve every charge of sexism thrown at you. I’m just one woman, you won’t even notice my lack of presence at rallies, fair booths, etc. You won’t really care that I’m offended by your silence, and your inability to take a stand. But one by one you’ll watch more women like me go, & you’ll watch men of ACTUAL character follow us out the door.
.. These sentiments felt so familiar to me. Then I realized why. It’s how I heard Catholic women of my mom’s generation talk after the church’s child molestation scandal broke. Learning about the predatory behavior was awful in its own right. But what really caused them to lose faith, what caused many of them to never return to the Catholic Church, were the religious leaders who failed to denounce the molestation; who dishonestly minimized it in hopes of saving the institution in the short term.
A bad actor can cause a scandal in any institution. The true test of core soundness or rot is how everyone else reacts to the depravity.
.. If the groups that Trump targets, especially the sizable ones, like women and Latinos, turn out in large enough numbers to vote against him, handing a crushing loss to the corrupting billionaire; if other folks who usually vote Republican join in that protest, to signal that this behavior is a dealbreaker; then the GOP will likely never nominate a man like this for high office ever again.
.. rare election where the larger the margin of the GOP loss, the better the chance it will have to be reborn into something viable and constructive.