Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

Outgoing President Biden has made more appointments to the federal judiciary than incoming President Trump did in Trump's first term. Specifically, Biden has put 184 district court judges where they are today as of this writing. Trump appointed 174.   This is important, because most cases do NOT go up the appellate ladder at all.  The Supreme Court (where of course Trump got a pivotal three appointments) ends up taking a very small percentage of the petitions for review it receives. A little under 1 percent, so less than 80 out of about 8000. That is a matter of necessity. This is a big country, there is a heck of a lot of litigation. There is only one Supreme Court.  The upshot, then, is that although he only got to make one SCOTUS pick, Biden's other judicial appointments are an important legacy.  There are 673 active federal court judges across the country.  So (my quick arithmetic at work) Biden has appointed somewhat more than one quarter of them....

  Oddly, the debt ceiling debate became linked in the mind both of legislators and the public with modifications to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program-- i.e. "food stamps." The literal use of pieces of paper as food "stamps," has gone by the boards and SNAP transactions now involve plastic cards that look a lot like credit or debit cards. Politicians still once in a while spout off about how they saw someone buying (insert name of a luxury food item here) at the grocery store with food stamps and they were indignant because SNAP should be used for basic nutrition, blah blah blah.  I think the salience of that as an issue has declined in recent years. The plastic cards may have something to do with it. It is difficult to tell whether the person ahead of you in line is using "food stamps" at all. Heck, automated checkout kiosks probably worsen the opportunities for such on-site oversight even further, since you'd literally have to be looking o...

  A great old war movie cliche: protagonist, gesturing toward the front line, says something like, "it's quiet tonight. Way too quiet." The silence means an impending enemy attack.  The end of the 2023 debt ceiling crisis seemed a lot like that. Normal. Waaaay too normal. The President and party leaders of both Houses decided, after a lot of meetings by their senior staff, that a certain package was going to become law. Everybody who was in on the deal marshaled the amount of votes they had to marshal -- more than enough, in fact. The deal was done. It seemed just like the old days before Trump, before pandemic era craziness about how the vaccines are about to turn us all into zombies, before a riot in which the rioters threatened to lynch the Vice President of the United States, before a 15-rounds contest for Speaker of the House ... just like what would once have been considered normal politics.  No trillion-dollar platinum coin. No invocation of the 14th amendment. Not...

  The latest figures on inflation turned out poorly. Yes, gasoline prices have headed down but that has been overwhelmed in the rising numbers by increases elsewhere.  We're not back to 1970s-era figures yet. But it is worth mentioning that this administration has not been honest with us about inflation. Not by a long shot. Yes, Biden is not Trump and I am willing to cut him some polemical slack for that great merit. Further, under Biden's administration there appears to be a real chance Trump will be quite deservedly indicted. More slack.  Still, this is a "normal politics" issue. And I have to say, the administration has not been straight with us.  Early on it said there was no inflation, just a transitory blip in prices. As the blips continued and increased, the Biden line become: this is all Putin's fault.  What Putin did was wage a war against a neighboring country, leading to sanctions, leading to the cut off of pipeline supplies to western Europe. That in...

I am positive that Biden's first priority is to choose a Justice who will vote essentially the way Breyer has been voting on politically sensitive matters. After all, 3-6 is not a great hand, but it is better than 2-7. He has said that he will pick a black woman because it helps him with much of his base and because he is confident he can do it without compromising that prime directive. None of this is complicated, though it seems to have set off the predictable conniptions among those for whom having conniptions is part of a business model. There is nothing distinctive about specifying demographic classifications in this way. LBJ nominated Thurgood Marshall, the first black Justice, in August 1967. His key Civil Rights legislation, won by breaking filibusters, were fresh memories and for some fresh wounds. Nobody bothered pretending the Marshall nomination was not race conscious. To make this a bipartisan point we need only note that Ronald Reagan said during the 1980 presidentia...

  It appears that there is a backlash brewing against a major accomplishment in the cause of liberty in recent years. The major accomplishment I have in mind is, of course, the legalization of marijuana use in much of the country at the state level. The accomplishment occurred in the Obama era, and many thought it was in for a reversal when Sessions took the reins as AG in early 2017. But Sessions, though he had been a war-on-drugs hardliner in the Senate, did little on point in the cabinet. Barr -- otherwise occupied to be sure, did even less.  So effective legalization remained.  Now, under Biden: a backlash? Possibly. It has taken the form of campaigns in several states to limit the THC content of the legalized products. The arguments aren't exactly your grandfather's Cadillac, or Grandpa's Reefer Madness either. But they ARE lame.  Something to watch. And worry about.