monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

Well, the "good fight" has already revealed a side of Kavanaugh we'd never have seen otherwise, but the Republicans are very much the party in power and the Dems don't have the numbers to keep repeating this tactic without beginning to piss off increasing numbers of voters.

If the Blue Wave is largely the emergence of the women's vote...

The Republicans have been getting away with murder as regards the female vote...

Canada has not invited the US or China to a high-level meeting on reforming the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

The country will host a "small group of like-minded" trade ministers in Ottawa in late October to discuss the global trade body.

Officials say countries like the US and China will be included at a later date in the reforms discussion process.

The European Union, Australia, Japan, Singapore, and South Korea are expected to attend.

Brazil, Chile, Kenya, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, and Switzerland are also invited to the 24 and 25 October meeting.

"We recognize the challenges inside the WTO and believe in finding ways to do the work necessary to push for reforms," said Joseph Pickerill, a press officer for federal International Trade Diversification Minister Jim Carr, in a statement to the BBC.

"Canada is leading that effort."

US President Donald Trump has made no secret of his dislike of multilateral international trade deals, and has threatened to pull the United States out of the WTO "if they don't shape up".

The president has said he believes the global trade body too often rules against the US in disputes.

China, meanwhile, has been accused of not being completely transparent in opening up its economy the way it committed to under the WTO.

Both major powers have also been involved in a trade war that sees each imposing tit-for-tat tariffs on billions of dollars of goods ranging from suitcases to cutlery, wheat and wine.

Analysts warn the dispute will have an economic knock-on effect for the rest of the world.

The WTO is at the heart of the system of rules for international trade.

Bloomberg reported in September that Canada was seeking to forge an alliance of countries that support a rules-based multilateral trading system and that will defend it against rising protectionism.

Canada's plans focused on improving the effectiveness of the trade monitoring system, modernising trade rules, and strengthening dispute settlement mechanisms, the news agency said.

Members and front organizations must continually embarrass, discredit and degrade our critics. When obstructionists become too irritating, label them as fascist or Nazi or anti-Semitic… constantly associate those who oppose us with those names that already have a bad smell. The association will, after enough repetition, become ‘fact’ in the public mind.

Trump supporter, 53, is charged after 'making threats to kill' Democrat senators and 'weak' Republicans if they vote against Brett Kavanaugh

A man in Florida has been arrested after he threatened to shoot senators who don't support Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court, authorities said.
James Royal Patrick Jr. was arrested at 4pm on Wednesday and charged with making written threats to kill or injure, Polk County Sheriff's Office said.

Exhausted by ugly process, senators ponder SCOTUS term limits

Amid one of the most vitriolic Supreme Court confirmation battles in modern American history, Republican and Democratic lawmakers have managed to find common ground. No one ever wants to go through this type of process again.

But as sure as they are about their desires to desperately avoid the bitterness that’s accompanied Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination, Senators are also entirely unclear on how to exactly do it.

One approach that has sparked a bit of interest on the Hill, is the idea of applying term limits to Supreme Court Justices, who are, under the constitution, given lifetime appointments to the bench.

“That has been discussed,” Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) told The Daily Beast. “One of the real merits of that proposal, in the abstract, is that you could set it up such that every presidency had a certain number of predictable Supreme Court seats. So, look, there is some intellectual appeal to the idea.”

There’s just one problem, as Coons went on to note. There’s a close-to-zero probability that Supreme Court term limits could end up becoming law. Doing so would require the passage of a constitutional amendment, which can only be done through a two-thirds majority vote in both chambers of Congress or a constitutional convention called for by two-thirds of the states.

“I think it is extremely unlikely that that is a proposal that would be advanced because it is extremely difficult to get any constitutional amendment moving forward,” said Coons. “But I can understand why folks are discussing it and why it has some abstract appeal.”

The idea of term limits has been increasingly floated in the world of academia and think tanks as an antidote to the growing toxicity of Supreme Court confirmation fights. The basic theory is that if justices were only allowed to serve a fixed time on the court, there would be less partisan rancor about their appointments. Instead of justices serving 30-40 years, they would be forced to retire after perhaps 12 years. The stakes of any individual nominee would therefore be limited.

There would be added bonuses as well. The terms could be structured in a way to ensure that a Supreme Court opening would generally occur in each presidential term. Justices wouldn’t stay on the bench so late into their lives (when their health or mental capacities may be fading) and presidents wouldn’t be so hesitant to appoint more experienced jurists simply because they were relatively old, and thus with less years on the bench ahead.

“It has piqued my mind,” said Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO). “We are now in a situation where, at least for the immediate future and maybe forever, we are going to put people on the Court by the barest partisan majority. We will have to have a president and the Senate from the same party [for a nominee to be confirmed]. That is an incredible distortion in our system and it hasn’t been the way it’s worked until now.”

Term limits, Bennet added, “could be an answer to it.”

The appeal of term limits has spanned across ideological spectrums too. The Kavanaugh debacle has prompted both liberal-minded columnists and conservative publications to opine on the need for them. And when it comes to elected officials, there is hardly a single member who doesn’t believe—at least publicly—that the Supreme Court confirmation process is in desperate need of fixing.

There is no question that the American people believe that the United States Supreme Court has become politicized and is more of a political body than ever,” said Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA)

But there are downsides with Supreme Court term limits that have given others some pause. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), for one, argued that instead of taking some of the politics out of confirmation battles, term limits could functionally have the opposite impact by forcing the Senate to have to engage in them more regularly.

“I don’t know if i want to go through this more often than I already do,” Murphy told The Daily Beast.

Mainly, however, the reason Senators aren’t rushing to consider term limits for Supreme Court Justices is because literally none of them think that the concept could ever be put into practice. At a time of intense partisan bickering, the notion that any proposal would get two-thirds support in both chambers seems downright fanciful.

And so, Senators appear resigned to the likelihood that subsequent Supreme Court confirmation fights will be remain nasty political affairs—perhaps not as openly hostile as the Kavanaugh one, but certainly combative.

“You’ve got a bunch of people on there with lifetime appointments,” said Bennet. “But they’re getting on there through a process that, hopefully, will not be as perpetually terrible as it is right now.”

Asked why he felt the process would improve, Bennet replied: “Only because I don’t think we want to end up being Ancient Rome.”

The composition of the US Supreme Court is about to change and the nomination of its potential new member, by some accounts unlike any other, has revived discussions about how political the selection is.

The debate is unlike any the UK has when justices at the Supreme Court are replaced, as a different appointment system means their political views are rarely publicly known and, according to experts, do not have any influence in the process.

they are never held accountable for their actions.