Justice Anton Scalia Reportedly Found Dead At Texas Resort

@DrewDad,

I use old safari and added firefox recently; you're right, I should see if I can find them on firefox.

1 Reply

@DrewDad,

Thanks, once I re-figure out how to find the cookies again, that will be a terrific help... glad to know about it.

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@blatham,

Got it, thanks everybody.
I do read New York Magazine, off and on.

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@DrewDad,

DrewDad wrote:

Just clear your cookies. Boom. Ten more articles.

Isn't that dishonest?

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@Finn dAbuzz,

I've never actually had to do it; when I run into one of those sites I go elsewhere; it's very rare that content is only available from one source.

Are you saying that telling someone else how to do it is dishonest? Somehow, I think my conscience will be clear.

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@ossobuco,

ossobuco wrote:

I use old safari and added firefox recently; you're right, I should see if I can find them on firefox.

On Firefox: Menu (The little three bars in the upper-right-hand corner) -> Options -> Privacy and then the link to remove individual cookies. Either find the one you want to remove, or select remove all cookies.

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@DrewDad,

I used to clear cookies off and on for some years, but lately, this machina is on its last legs and I tend to try not to disturb its sensibilities. We'll see, I haven't checked yet. I have to be in an adventuresome mood with this mac now. But - thanks for the advice and I will play with it.

Re somehow cheating by clearing cookies, I also tend to not use paywall sites; hardly ever look at NYT anymore, whereas I was once a long time subscriber, from Los Angeles. I sympathize with the newspaper sites and their circulation problems, but I'm not subscribing, not being a money bags now. I do use Washington Post since their views allowed are more numerous. I haven't counted how many news sites I have bookmarked, but it probably approaches a hundred. Some of them are more recent additions, local news, say, for San Francisco, or Seattle or San Diego. Also, that's part of the reason I fairly often mention The Guardian. It's not perfect, but has plenty on their pages to interest me.

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@DrewDad,

I'm questioning whether foiling the means a provider uses to obtain revenue is honest. I don't think it is. I also don't think that advising someone how to do it is ethical. If it doesn't bother you, that's fine. I'm not your judge.

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@Finn dAbuzz,

That's a reasonable position. I signed up with the Times so long ago they apparently consider me a subscriber. I don't think I'll bother correcting their accounts records. I pay a small fee to the Wash Post each month and a yearly fee to TPM (really to help them out more than anything). But that's it for money to media entities.

I should add though that I don't find this position so ethically critical or compelling such that I would say more than I've just said. As ethical dilemmas go, it isn't a big one.

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Quote:

In a July 2005 appearance on Fox News, McConnell was even more blunt on Senate’s role in evaluating Supreme Court nominees.

“Our job is to react to that nomination in a respectful and dignified way, and at the end of the process, to give that person an up-or-down vote as all nominees who have majority support have gotten throughout the history of the country,” McConnell said. “It’s not our job to determine who ought to be picked.”
This is McConnell in 1986: “Under the Constitution, our duty is to provide advice and consent to judicial nominations, not to substitute our judgment for what are reasonable views for a judicial nominee to hold.”

Perhaps most damning for McConnell are these lines from a 1970 Kentucky Law Journal article he wrote. McConnell was elected to the Senate in 1984, but he has cited the article in floor speeches since then.
“The president is presumably elected by the people to carry out a program and altering the ideological directions of the Supreme Court would seem to be a perfectly legitimate part of a presidential platform,” McConnell stated. “After all, if political matters were relevant to senatorial consideration it might be suggested that a constitutional amendment be introduced giving to the Senate rather than the president the right to nominate Supreme Court justices.”

http://politi.co/1T0r7ZA

This really is going to be a test as to whether American style democracy can actually continue to function. I'm not confident this test will be passed.

1 Reply

@DrewDad,

Well, I'm on basic Yahoo (near hilarious, don't get me started) and Safari has shut all of us off, circa 2011? re any back up support. My mac is early 2oo6, which may mean 2005.
As for Foxfire, I get two alerts a day that my firefox needs updating, security in danger. I did add the security bits. I just got the browser.

I presently use it so I can pay bills with my bank account. Hanging in. Other wise I have to drive over to the bank, with the seriously badly designed parking lot, large trucks, speeding cars.
I get to say that, having designed many parking lots.

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@blatham,

blatham wrote:

This really is going to be a test as to whether American style democracy can actually continue to function. I'm not confident this test will be passed.

it has been a bit of experiment hasn't it?

does any other country use the same format?

1 Reply

@ehBeth,

Quote:

does any other country use the same format?

I wish I knew more about this and could answer your question knowledgeably, beth. Here's a reference but I can't assure of it's bona fides (no evident reason to be overly suspicious) http://www.semipresidentialism.com/?p=195

I was thinking about this earlier today seeing George Will's present column where he alludes to Obama's "overreach". That's a common right wing line, of course - the assertion that Obama has continually sought to grasp more power than was intended in the constitution. But I doubt any of us ever read such a column from him or his crowd when Cheney and Addington were demanding more power centered in the presidency while Bush sat there.

The only reason the charge is made, when it is made, is because the framers sought to prevent the presidency from abusing his unique access to power and decision making through a tempering legislature.

But this all ceases working if party X comes to believe it represents the only legitimate political philosophy for the nation. Then broad to full-on obstruction of party Y (where it holds power) becomes a moral and patriotic duty - quite regardless of what voters have expressed when choosing that president. As Norquist famously said, "Compromise is date-rape". That is the position of the modern conservative movement and it is why they work very hard to primary out representative who argues for compromise or who acts in such a fashion.

And that is now the situation in the US because it is the reigning philosophy of the modern conservative movement and, now, the GOP.

1 Reply

@blatham,

I'll add one other very important element to what I've just written.

This zest towards de-legitimizing and dis-empowering the Democratic party in the US corresponds very closely with the goals of highly reactionary forces in America. The Koch brothers, Scaife, the Bradleys, the Coors, the De Vos family, etc - the heirs to Bircherism - are quite in agreement with Norquist's vision. If the elected government can be obstructed to the point where it is no longer effective in acting as a stop or a curb to non-elected power centers (which are the very wealthy individuals and their organizations, corporations, churches, etc) then those entities can work their will, for their own perceived interests, and can effectively disregard the will of the electorate, thus making democracy a sham.

The reason I came to despise Scalia was because of his increasing self-certainty that he was right and that opinions differing from his were wrong. He became increasingly absolutist in this regard. And it is not difficult to see this as a personal characteristic in the man. When he suggested in his notable interview a few years ago, the Constitution "may have been" divinely inspired, he was leaning on a theocratic absolutism. When he claimed that the document must be used only literally, he was leaning on absolutism.

There's no evidence I know of that the Koch boys are religious at all. But their obsolutism and self-certainty grant them (in their minds) the same sort of legitimacy to dominate others' notions and wishes.

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@blatham,

blatham wrote:

And it is not difficult to see this as a personal characteristic in the man. When he suggested in his notable interview a few years ago, the Constitution "may have been" divinely inspired, he was leaning on a theocratic absolutism. When he claimed that the document must be used only literally, he was leaning on absolutism.

my thinking on this got a bit confused when I realized how very Catholic he was.

If there's one thing the founders weren't , it was Catholic. They weren't even High Anglican. There's argument about how Christian some of them were, but Catholic wasn't part of the mix. With folks like Scalia pushing more government involvement in people's private lives, it was like they were pushing to a 1950's Catholic view of the family vs the Constitution written by the founders of the US.

1 Reply

@blatham,

Quote:

The reason I came to despise Scalia was because of his increasing self-certainty that he was right and that opinions differing from his were wrong.

I had to re-read this because I thought you were talking about yourself. It's one of the reasons many of us despise you so I can see what you mean.

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@McGentrix,

Gee, imagine a jurist who actually had the ability to argue positions with their peers in order to come to a decision. Of COURSE he disagreed with those who had come to different conclusions. That's their JOB !!! Yet he NEVER EVER disparaged the person, unlike some here Wink

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@blatham,

blatham wrote:

The reason I came to despise Scalia was because of his increasing self-certainty that he was right and that opinions differing from his were wrong.

He certainly wasn't the first judge who thought he was right all the time. In fact, based on my experience, I'd rather have a judge who was certain he was right than one who was indecisive.

No, the problem with Scalia wasn't that he thought he was right all the time, the problem was that he was wrong when he thought he was right.

1 Reply

@ehBeth,

Quote:

With folks like Scalia pushing more government involvement in people's private lives, it was like they were pushing to a 1950's Catholic view of the family vs the Constitution written by the founders of the US.

That's a good point, beth.

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@joefromchicago,

Quote:

He certainly wasn't the first judge who thought he was right all the time. In fact, based on my experience, I'd rather have a judge who was certain he was right than one who was indecisive.

No, the problem with Scalia wasn't that he thought he was right all the time, the problem was that he was wrong when he thought he was right.

Open-mindedness can be overdone and lead to a sort of paralysis. That doesn't work.

But there's variance in how individuals conceive of the validity/certainty of their ideas and the grounding for that validity/certainty. My notion is that certain personality types manifest a tendency towards absolutism as a feature of their personality or psychology. To the degree that this is so for an individual (presuming I've got this right) to that degree he or she will be unable to move off of a certainty held. We all recognize that there are types of theists which exemplify this tendency.

1 Reply

Justice Anton Scalia Reportedly Found Dead At Texas Resort

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