The Supreme Court now has five votes to sabotage the next Democratic presidency.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

Beginning in the latter half of the Obama administration, Federalist Society gatherings grew increasingly fixated on diminishing the power of federal agencies to regulate businesses and the public — an agenda that would severely weaken seminal laws such as the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act.

On Monday, Justice Brett Kavanaugh signaled that he is on board with this agenda.

Kavanaugh’s opinion is not especially surprising. The Trump appointee to the Supreme Court keynoted the Federalist Society’s annual banquet earlier this month and he spent much of the Obama years frustrating the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and other federal agencies. But his opinion is nonetheless significant because it shows that there are almost certainly five votes on the Supreme Court to slash agencies’ regulatory power.

https://www.vox.com/2019/11/26/20981758/brett-kavanaughs-terrify-democrats-supreme-court-gundy-paul

[LiberalLovinLug]

1. I still think Democrats, including Obama, never fought hard enough to get their appointments

And allow both Gorsuch and Kavanaugh to be appointed without much push back.
I know legally their hand were tied. But it just seemed there was such a lack of urgency, of anger, of speechifying.

Not to speak ill of the dead, but when Scalia died, that SHOULD have been a turning point for the nation. Towards a liberal SCOTUS. What happened? Republicans went into overdrive. Show Angry. Even before anyone was proposed. They quickly circled the wagons getting everyone on board. Inventing some new precedent that no appointment is possible in a Presidents last year in office. And stamped their feet and held their breaths, and the MSM didn't see any equal passion on our side.

They shouted down our side. And the MSM dutifully, as usual, gives the win to ones with the loudest, most upset and crying foul. A few grumbles from the leadership but that was all.

At least they tried with Kavanaugh, but not enough.

I don't know if its just a matter of faking emotion as the Republicans are good at, but it seems like no one takes politicians seriously unless they get bug eyed and red and shout over the others. We don't have to go that far, but it just seems that we are always come off as above the fray, and keep accepting defeats with some notion that somehow everything will work out in the future. Maybe it will get worse. To the point where it won't even matter how much Democrats fight back, we will be in a full fledged Fascist state.

[okieinpain]

2. Lol, you answered your own theory

Remember McConnell said he wasn’t going to approve any dem appointment as long as he was the leader of the senate.

[LiberalLovinLug]

3. ?

Yes. I remember.

What does what a Republican politician spouts, have to do with how Democrats respond to it?

You make my theory more valid as you prove how that attitude seeps even to the rank and file. You sound like you give up just because Mitch tells you you must. And are incredulous that anyone would think different.

[Hortensis]

4. His history before was strongly biased to empower both

business and civil authority against the individual. Even decisions that benefited individuals actually had secondary effects that served power. So far he's only the second most conservative justice, that honor lying with Clarence Thomas. Third is Gorsuch.

All three would have been called extremists all through last century. With much of the right shifting toward extremism and setting a new relative definition of "normal" used to misrepresent what's happened, they're just...conservative. Nothing really "extreme" about making the Clean Water Act functionally unconstitutional. Or the ACA.

Or establishing under law that the "general welfare clause" was never meant to lead to anything like Social Security, and also it violates states rights.

Or establishing that no right of privacy exists in the constitution, invalidating laws protecting our right to decide about our own bodies, such as to contraception. We finally "interpreted" that right from various points in the constitution after NJ decided to make birth control illegal for all its residents, but it's on very shaky ground. Abortion? Right to a free and open internet? Anyone need to ask?

To textualists/originalists they're all shocking corruptions of what the constitution says.

[NCLefty]

5. I'm starting to believe the core GOP docrtine is simply: "History is written by the victors."

They don't care about anything else and they will cheat just as much as they can get away with to do it.