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“The Republican Party Is Becoming Goofy”: Judge Richard Posner Bashes Supreme Court’s Citizens United Ruling

The American political system is marked by legal corruption in which “wealthy people essential bribe legislators” with campaign contributions, according to one of the nation’s most influential federal judges.

Speaking to foreign educators, Judge Richard Posner told the assembled that the wealthy give lots of money to legislators and that an individual legislator “knows that if he doesn’t promote the interests of the donor,” he won’t get any more money.

Posner is a renowned member of the Chicago-based Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. He is not only the nation’s most prolific jurist-academic, he is seen by some as the most influential judge outside of the nine members of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Posner is intellectually fearless and, increasingly, far from the reflexively conservative thinker that he’s been long seen to be. In a recent National Public Radio interview, he spoke of the “real deterioration in conservative thinking” in recent years. “I’ve become less conservative since the Republican Party started becoming goofy.”

Posner has taken a poke at the high court’s controversial ruling before. But he’s taking his disdain for the decision to a broader audience. His latest comments came at a post-luncheon appearance Thursday before visiting Asian legal academics at the University of Chicago Law School, where he remains a faculty member.

Posner left no doubt about his criticism of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United campaign-finance decision. He said, “Our political system is pervasively corrupt due to our Supreme Court taking away campaign-contribution restrictions on the basis of the First Amendment.”

He also didn’t mind naming some names, in particular that of Justice Antonin Scalia, a onetime member of the law school faculty who lectured and taught at the school in February. Posner brought up the Supreme Court’s 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, affirming the right of individuals to have handguns at home for self-defense.

Posner doesn’t think the Second Amendment has anything to do with an individual’s right to bear arms, a basis of the decision for which Scalia wrote the majority opinion.

“That didn’t slow down Scalia,” Posner told his Asian listeners. “He loves guns. He’s a hunter.”

 

By: James Warren, The Daily Beast, July 14, 2012

July 15, 2012 Posted by | GOP | , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment

Defcon 1 Alert: Debt Ceiling Crisis Reveals GOP’s Suicide Bomber Wing

In  retrospect, the emergence of a suicide-bomber wing of the Republican Party  should’ve seemed obvious.

Why  use such an inflammatory term? What I mean by it is this: They would blow up  the economy to fulfill a mission of otherworldly righteousness.

Their  first attempt to blow up the economy arrived with the defeat  TARP. It was a  reckless subversion of the leadership of both parties  and, at least for a day,  brought equity markets to their knees.

With  ideological bravado to match their breathtaking economic  illiteracy, they  positively relished the impact they could have on our  national life.

Since  then, they’ve become still more emboldened, knocking off an  incumbent  senator in Utah and propping up a  bad joke of a senate  candidate in Delaware.

Last  year’s wave election infested the party with additional scores of suicide  bombers.

In  a repeat of the TARP fiasco, the bomber boys and (and, lest we  forget  bomber-in-chief Michele Bachmann, girls) have, once again, made  it impossible  for congressional leaders to do the right thing. A grand  bargain was in sight—but the itch for destruction overmatched the  desire for reasonable compromise.

We  may yet stumble toward some cobbled-together agreement that staves off a  catastrophe. But  the bombers will be emboldened again.

And  why wouldn’t they be? They’ve got a cheering section among Washington pundits.

The  normally thoughtful Yuval  Levin calls this suboptimal state of affairs, in which Republicans will secure  far less  in deficit reduction than they could have, a “stunning victory.” New  York Post columnist  Michael  Walsh compares the debt ceiling showdown to the Union’s victory at Gettysburg. Most  depressing of all is my former hero George  Will, who calls the Tea Party “the most welcome political development since the  Goldwater insurgency.”

Will  is dead wrong: Ronald Reagan’s election—or rather his  administration—did not  simply bring the “Goldwater impulse” to  “fruition.” It signaled that the  Goldwater impulse had matured into a  governing philosophy—a governing  philosophy that could accept  compromise, could acknowledge reality.

The  Tea Party’s triumph has reversed that process of maturation; a governing  philosophy has degraded back into mere impulse.

Enjoy  your ascendancy while it lasts, Tea Partyers.

But  know this: You are not legislators. You are vandals.

By: Scott Galupo, U. S. News and World Report, July 26, 2011

July 27, 2011 Posted by | Congress, Conservatives, Debt Ceiling, Debt Crisis, Deficits, Democracy, Democrats, Disasters, Economic Recovery, Economy, Elections, GOP, Government, Government Shut Down, Ideologues, Ideology, Journalists, Lawmakers, Politics, Press, Public, Pundits, Republicans, Right Wing, Teaparty, Voters | , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment

   

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