How America Was Lost

And there’s no telling how long that situation may last. If a Democrat wins the White House but the G.O.P. holds the Senate, when if ever do you think Republicans would be willing to confirm anyone the new president nominates?

.. Even if you’re disappointed in what President Obama accomplished, he substantially raised taxes on the rich and dramatically expanded the social safety net; significantly tightened financial regulation; encouraged and oversaw a surge in renewable energy; moved forward on diplomacy with Iran.

 

Any Republican would undo all of that, and move sharply in the opposite direction. If anything, the consensus among the presidential candidates seems to be that George W. Bush didn’t cut taxes on the rich nearly enough, and should have made more use of torture.

.. So why do I say that only one party has gone off the deep end?

One answer is, compare last week’s Democratic debate with Saturday’s Republican debate. Need I say more?

Beyond that, there are huge differences in tactics and attitudes. Democrats never tried to extort concessions by threatening to cut off U.S. borrowing and create a financial crisis; Republicans did. Democrats don’t routinely deny the legitimacy of presidents from the other party; Republicans did it to both Bill Clinton and Mr. Obama. The G.O.P.’s new Supreme Court blockade is, fundamentally, in a direct line of descent from the days when Republicans used to call Mr. Clinton “your president.”

.. Maybe we should all start wearing baseball caps that say, “Make America governable again.”

What Liberals Learned From Antonin Scalia

The fact that today the court’s right-leaning bloc has far more interesting internal disagreements than the often lock-step-voting liberal wing is itself a testament to the premium its leading intellectual light placed on philosophical rigor and integrity.

.. and it makes it impossible to imagine Republican senators confirming an Obama appointee in the next 11 months. And it’s probably a good thing for the republic that they won’t: If there is to be a liberal replacement for a figure as towering as Scalia, if the court is about to swing sharply to the left, it’s far better for the judicial branch’s legitimacy if that swing follows a democratic election, a campaign in which the high court stakes are front and center in the race.

Scalia’s Putsch at the Supreme Court

Justice Breyer was referring to the compromise at the heart of the 1977 precedent, Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, that Mr. Carvin was asking the court to overrule. The court in that case upheld the constitutionality of the fair-share fee as long as it was limited to the union’s collective-bargaining expenses and did not subsidize the union’s political or other “nonchargeable” activities.

.. The case was Locke v. Karass. The decision was unanimous.

What changed since 2009? How could the court go from unquestioning acceptance of a long-lived precedent to a situation in which all that remains in doubt is whether that same precedent will be overturned in early June or late June? In the answer to that question lie some disturbing observations about the Roberts court.

It’s no secret that in recent years, major segments of the Republican Party have declared open season on public employee unions — selectively, of course. Police unions and correctional officers’ unions, which have stood in the way of reform-minded policy initiatives in states and cities across the country, have been exempt as targets. Conservative and Tea Party ire has instead been focused on teachers’ unions.