Re: Mother should I run for president.
 

Yeah, it surprised me he would make anyone's list.

His support for Sinn Féin doesn't get him any points with you lot?

As a lad, I remember going to NORAID fundraisers ("for bandages") at the Hibernian lodge that my dad and uncles belonged to. Not Kidding.

Re: Mother should I run for president.
 

I voted for Bruce Rauner for Governor of Illinois (I voted for Obama twice). He's a socially moderate/fiscally conservative guy who doesn't particularly like unions (I don't either). The Democrats have absolutely destroyed this state. Run it into the ground. It may be past the point of recovery. I'm just waiting for Michael Madigan to go down like Sheldon Silver.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

He's got enough other demerits.

Back when I was young and a night on the town meant more than just the evening, and I was working for the Democratic Party in the Commonwealth, we hosted an Irish Catholic MP who actually sat in Parliament (the Sinn Fein do not sit, they get elected more to make a point). We took him out in Boston's Irish pubs. Our money was no good the whole night long, and if we crawled to a new pub, a whole crowd followed, we had our entourage in the street. That was a night.

If he were Sinn Fein, he would have been able to buy all the bandages his heart desired when he left.

Re: Mother should I run for president.
 

Saint Patrick's name no more we'll speak, his color can't be seen.
 

Re the Not Kidding comment, I should have noted that NORAID (aka the Irish Northern Aid Committee) was found by a federal court in the late 1970s to be the American agent for the Provisional Irish Republican Army, which at the time was setting off bombs in civilian areas in London and shooting people.

Despite my Republican (in Irish terms) sympathies, I think that it's fair to say that from the beginning of the Troubles until the Good Friday Accord, the IRA was a terrorist organization*. And perhaps the only one with any level of mainstream political support - bipartisan, too - in the US.

Pedantic aside ended. Carry on.

*Note to my cousin Mick: yes, the IRA also defended Catholic neighborhoods in Belfast and Derry when the shit was going down, but putting plastique on the boat of a retired Viceroy/WWII hero whose sin was that he was cousin of the Queen? Not to mention blowing up ordinary civilians in London who had the bad luck to be shopping in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Re: Mother should I run for president.
 

The Constitution says the President gets to appoint justices with the consent of the Senate, and McConnell says this Senate won't consent to this President appointing any more justices. I think he's very clear how the Constitution works.

If I were a Republican, I might prefer McConnell to use his leverage to get a deal with Obama to nominate someone more acceptable to me, rather than to take the chance that President Clinton or Sanders will get to fill it next year. But compromise is anathema to too many Republicans, so McConnell can't reach that kind of deal, even if you suspect he might prefer that sort of thing.

So many Republicans (or conservatives, if you will) seem to exist in a sort of conscious denial of the fact that they live in a country where they are the minority. With one exception in 2004, the last time they won the popular vote in a Presidential election was when Ronald Reagan was still in office. In the long term, this strategy of refusing to compromise will not work well for a minority.

Re: Mother should I run for president.
 

This approach, taking a walk on the vote at all, can also be dealt with by a recess appointment, but the rules have been set up to make that very difficult, and the court has narrowed the use of recess appointments considerably, too.

Obviously, the constitution was written assuming each branch would actually carry out the tasks for which they are responsible, and that if they did not, the people would throw them out of office. The last time a party was this obstructionist on S.Ct. nominees, they quickly ceased to exist. It is bad that they are not doing their job, but now the electorate needs to do its job and throw them out.

Re: Mother should I run for president.
 

I don't think most voters care about the confirmation of Supreme Court justices, and I can imagine most Republicans accommodating themselves to the idea that it would be better to have only eight justices on the Court than to confirm a ninth justice who would vote to undo what the conservative wing has been doing.

More generally, we have had an obstructionist GOP for years now, and it seems to be exactly what most GOP voters want. The electorate hasn't really punished them for it yet.

Re: Mother should I run for president.
 

I think a couple appearances by Obama in NH making his case on this issue would make one US Senator up for re-election very, very nervous. I suspect that is the case with other key seats.

Re: Mother should I run for president.
 

OTOH, this.

Re: I can't believe you wasted the electrons necessary to write this post.
 

Or he was "just following orders."

I tend to agree, but I think the jury's still out as to Hillary's intent. If she knowingly intended to hide information, then I guess she's indictable.

I don't think either one should be prosecuted. That's my point. I said they were both indictable, and I said that in both cases, it's political bullshit. If my wording suggested otherwise, apologies. I do not suggest, and never would, that Libby should be given a pass and Hillary indicted. Libby should have been vilified for what he did, but is it any worse than Clapper lying to Congress about NSA snooping? Where's the prosecution for that? These political hit jobs are quite arbitrarily initiated. And that's being ridiculously kind.

No. She absolutely should not be prosecuted. Nor should 95% of leakers, or email abusers. It's a waste of taxpayer money.

I am, however, in favor of prosecuting any politician who leans on any prosecutor, directly or indirectly, to influence a decision to prosecute a politically motivated case. I am also in favor of removing immunity for prosecutors who initiate nakedly political cases. Loser pays should also apply. It's the only way to make the playing field fair for the individual who is targeted by the state, which can endlessly outspend him.

By my calculation, Ken Starr's assets should be liened with a judgment in favor of the taxpayers in the amount of $50 million. Does this adequately present my pro-Hillary bona fides? Clarify that when I said what she did was "indictable," I was saying, "What isn't indictable in the morass of endless, ludicrous laws and regulations with which we've polluted the country?"

Re: Mother should I run for president.
 

My favorite argument is the suggestion it would somehow be disrespectful, or a breach of decorum, to appoint a possibly liberal judge to Scalia's seat. That it's somehow a violation of unwritten tradition (unsupported with any cite to precedent) to put in a judge who would undo what Scalia did.

(I'm not making up this argument. I've heard it several times in the postmortem discussions. There are a pack of Republicans floating this, I think, in the desperate hope it somehow sticks. Because, well, they have nothin' else... Save the "Thurmond Rule," and Schumer's dumb commentary of a decade ago.)

This would mean anytime a judge is clearly conservative or liberal, upon his death, he must be replaced with one of similar bent. Putting aside the problem this would raise upon Kennedy's demise, this is taking the position SCOTUS must have a 5-4 conservative bent forever.

Does the GOP think before it runs out its talking points? This sort of thing makes Trump sound eminently logical and factual.

I'm beginning to think Trump might be winning not because he's amassing uneducated slugs who are mad the foreigners "'Tuk urrr jobs," but because the silent majority of the GOP realizes he's actually less full of shit and more in touch with reality than its Establishment. (I must admit, even I wanted to kiss the man when he told that pack of Bush cronies in South Carolina that the Iraq War predicated on a lie and an unmitigated disaster... And that comment drove up his polls numbers!)

Re: Mother should I run for president.
 

Your last two sentences negate the first.

Re: Saint Patrick's name no more we'll speak, his color can't be seen.
 

From the beginning?? And which IRA?

(Not that I disagree, but why not talk about the esoterics of Irish Republicanism?)