re: Sources: Trump will likely pick Kavanaugh

Barrett still the betting favorite as of now

LINK

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He's not a fool.

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"pour over my tweets"

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I want Amy to get the job. I don't trust Kavanaugh. Looks like another Sandra Day O'Conner to me.

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I’m just the opposite. I like that Amy is triggering, but there has never been a good woman scotus. She is catholic with two adopted Haitian virtue trophies so I don’t know how strong she would be against immigration, especially if her king in Rome tells her not to be. Also, she has crazy eyes and women typically end up more liberal.

I’d prefer a square jawed landowning male but will trust trump to make a good pick.

Here's two rulings from Kethledge.

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In United States v. Bistline, 665 F.3d 758 (6th Cir. 2013), Richard Bistline pled guilty to knowingly possessing child pornography. Under the Sentencing Guidelines, Bistline’s recommended sentence was 63 to 78 months’ imprisonment. The district court rejected that recommendation, however, on the ground that Congress had written the relevant guideline itself, rather than allowing the Sentencing Commission to do so. The court then sentenced Bistline to a single night’s confinement in the courthouse lockup, plus ten years’ supervised release. The Sixth Circuit, in an opinion by Judge Kethledge, vacated that sentence as substantively unreasonable. Judge Kethledge explained that the Commission had the authority to fix criminal penalties only because Congress had given the Commission that authority. Thus, saying that “Congress has encroached too much on the Commission’s authority” was “like saying a Senator has encroached upon the authority of her chief of staff, or a federal judge upon that of his law clerk.” It may be true that Congress had marginalized the Sentencing Commission’s role, Judge Kethledge concluded, but “Congress can marginalize the Commission all it wants: Congress created it.”

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Also:

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In United States v. Gabrion, 219 F.3d 511 (6th Cir. 2013), Marvin Gabrion murdered Rachel Timmerman, a 19-year-old woman who had reported him for raping her. He bound and gagged her, tied her to concrete blocks, and drowned her in a weedy lake. Because he murdered Timmerman in a national forest, Gabrion committed a federal crime and was also eligible for the death penalty even though the surrounding State of Michigan had outlawed that penalty. The United States charged Gabrion with murder. A jury convicted him and imposed the death penalty. On appeal, Gabrion argued that the district court should have allowed him to argue to the jury that a death sentence was unfair because he would have been ineligible for that sentence had he murdered Timmerman in nearby Michigan territory. According to Gabrion, the murder’s location was a “circumstances of the offense” and thus the kind of “mitigating factor” the Eighth Amendment and Federal Death Penalty Act allow a jury to weigh during sentencing.

Writing for a majority of the en banc court, Judge Kethledge rejected that challenge. He wrote that not every “circumstance of the offense” is a “mitigating” factor; otherwise, jurors could consider the “moonphase” during sentencing. Kethledge further explained that mitigating evidence is evidence relevant to a “reasoned moral response to the defendant’s background, character, and crime,” and that the murder’s location was not that kind of evidence.

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I love this guy. Pick him, GEOTUS. Dude owns libs and dishonest defense attorneys with his opinions.

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Still, the sources insist the president could change his mind.

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Renders this whole story meaningless.

Both of those rulings look reasonable on the law, not on the basis of ideology.

There is certainly a seemingly valid suggestion that Trump and Kennedy communicated about the retirement. Who knows? Maybe Kennedy extracted some kind of parameters for a replacement.

It is best for us all to have a jurist rather than a hack.

A woman raising 7 kids is as emotional as a carnival barker, or a flight traffic controller. No time for anything but hawk like observation and complete wisdom.

fine to me, I like Thapar

I don’t think she wants the job. Too many kids.