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Originally Posted by loquitur
Guys, as I said, partisan politics makes people say stupid things.
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You're suggesting partisanship has some connection to Justice Alito's ruling? I thought we agreed the bench was non-partisan? Or are you referring to the President of the United States of America?
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Originally Posted by loquitur
Anyone with a shred of intellectual integrity will say that, at best, Obama "overstated" the holding. Please, I spent too many years in law school and practicing law to have to listen to this crap about how to read a case. Obama does know how to read a case, and he knew exactly what he was doing - he was tossing raw meat to his base at the expense of the Supreme Court, and he wasn't too particular about accuracy when he did it.
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Right, but, as I said, there were four dissenting opinions that took the form of an incredible dissenting paper. Please read it if you've not, because much of what's written falls in line with what President Obama said in his State of the Union. You're probably a pretty good lawyer, I'd hire you, but if you're telling me that Justice Stevens doesn't have a shred of intellectual honesty, I'm coming down on his side.
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Originally Posted by Supreme Court Justice Stevens, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission
At bottom, the Court's opinion is thus a rejection of the common sense of the American people, who have recognized a need to prevent corporations from undermining self government since the founding, and who have fought against the distinctive corrupting potential of corporate electioneering since the days of Theodore Roosevelt. It is a strange time to repudiate that common sense. While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this Court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics.
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That's ten times as harsh as what President Obama said.
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Originally Posted by loquitur
Will, Alito at his hearings had cameras on him and knew it. He had no reason at the SOTU to think he'd be focused on when the Pres was speaking - he isn't a politician and is rarely in front of a camera. Just take that for what it was - Obama got it wrong, did it indecorously, and Alito muttered about it without realizing he'd be caught on camera. Why is this so hard to understand? Because it doesn't fit your preferred good guy/bad guy narrative? And Alito didn't even write that opinion, Kennedy did. It wasn't his work being shot at. You also might want to look at Ginsburg - her face was tightening during that applause, too. Believe me, Obama made no friends on the court that day, on either side of the 5-4 split. The justices are very solicitous of each other.
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President Obama did not "get it wrong", he communicated a legitimate take on the decision. I don't think you're qualified to correct Justices Stevens, Sotomayor, Ginsberg or Breyer. Certainly you're welcome to your opinion, and certainly your opinion carries more weight than mine, but stating as fact that President Obama was wrong is confusing fact for opinion. Once you accept that President Obama was presenting a perfectly legitimate opinion, Justice Alito's reaction takes on a different form.