Last Sunday, former White House press secretary Jen Psaki, now with her own MSNBC program, asked Representative Nancy Pelosi (D‑Calif.) about packing the Supreme Court.
Rep. Pelosi’s response was, shall we say, telling.
“It’s been over 150 years since we’ve had an expansion of the court,” Pelosi said. “It was in the time of Lincoln that it went up to nine. So the subject of whether that should happen is a discussion. It’s not, say, a rallying cry. But it’s a discussion.”
Ms. Psaki also asked about term limits for the justices, and Nancy eagerly endorsed the idea, insisting there “certainly should be term limits. There certainly should be and if nothing else, there should be some ethical rules that would be followed.”
Justices aren’t getting as rich as congressmen … but still.
“I had one justice tell me he thought the other justices were people of integrity, like a Clarence Thomas,” Pelosi went on. “I’m like, get out of here.”
This plays as comedy off the MSNBC channel, of course. Nancy Pelosi, introduced by Psaki as being in Congress for a long, long time (“first elected to the House when Roe v. Wade had been the law of the land for 14 years”) is herself a fit poster ch — er, octogenarian — for establishing legislative term limits. Highlighting the High Court’s dip in popularity, Pelosi scoffed that the 30 percent approval “seemed high.” Of course, congressional approval is ten percentage points lower, and has been consistently.
Limits to power is something that applies to others, not oneself, I guess.
With permanent leaches at the teat of the State lingering year after year in office, like Pelosi, our attitude should be, like, get out of here.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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3 replies on “Term Limits for Thee”
As I have explained in a comment to a different entry in your ‘blog, term-limiting what had been lifetime appointments has a very different effect on incentives than does term-limiting offices to which might otherwise indefinitely seek reëlection.
If the Justices serve until death or retirement, then we are usually unsure whether the next President will appoint any.
With fixed terms for Justices of the Supreme Court, we would be much closer to their being deliberately chosen by the Electoral College, especially if Presidential candidates are lured or pressured into announcing whom they would nominate.
Ms Pelosi is of course wrong about when the size of the Court was expanded to nine; it happened in the time of Grant.
That expansion was to prevent the Court from ruling that the Federal government had exceeded its constitutional authority by resorting to inflationary finance. When Franklin Roosevelt sought further to increase the size of the Court, he was likewise seeking to prevent it from abiding by the Constitution. The Democrats of to-day want to expand the Court for the same reason.
And FDR was successful in his goal. The ‘switch in time that saved nine’ resulted in subsequent New Deal legislation being declared constitutional. Within a few years all of the GOP-appointed justices left the court. The desire to expand the court may have failed in Congress, but the Supreme Court gave in.
She has been in office and accustomed to stealing so long that she no longer puts much effort into hiding it.
Likewise re her contempt.