What is *wrong* with these people?! No one has manners anymore. No one thinks anymore. Yet another disgusting person, and what he said blindsided me tonight. Here I was hoping there weren’t two of these jerks in any office. Boy, was I wrong! And wait until you hear what this guy’s position is. He sure as HAIL does not belong there, not when he says things like this. Acknowledgment to Slate and Raw Story:
A federal appeals court judge appointed by President Donald Trump drew an “unprecedented rebuke” from dozens of his judicial colleagues after issuing what legal analysts described as a coarse and indecent dissent targeting transgender women.
According to Slate, Judge Lawrence VanDyke of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals authored a solo opinion going after fellow judges for upholding Washington state’s anti-discrimination law in a case involving Olympus spa, a Korean spa whose owners argued they had a religious right to exclude trans patrons.
We are not going into trans people now. They *are* people, and they have made the choice they felt was best for them after careful thought. A whole lot of thought. That is their business, not ours. What we are discussing is this jerk judge. He needs to be slapped, too. We should put together a slap machine and sell it. I’m pretty sure a number of folks would love to have one. But I digress. This guy is a *judge*. He is there to follow the law, not to be some arrogant, crass know-it-all. Wait for it.
“VanDyke—a Donald Trump appointee to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals—attempted to shame his fellow judges with lewd descriptions of genitalia and ultrapartisan complaints about trans antidiscrimination laws, which he derided as ‘Frankenstein social experiments,’” according to a preview of a bonus episode on Slate’s podcast Amicus.
Co-host Dahlia Lithwick said the conservative federal judge has built a reputation “as the judiciary’s most decorum-shredding troll,” but told listeners that he “outdid himself with this dissent.” Mark Joseph Stern, who hosts the podcast with Lithwick, said he hesitated to quote the opinion because he did not want to give VanDyke “the attention he so obviously craves,” but noted it contained language he said “has no place in a judicial opinion.”
Gee, ya THINK! And they can’t get rid of him because he’s a doggone *federal* judge. If only! This is another one of those “good gods, these people still exist?” moments. I would say this even tops the senator we discussed yesterday. There’s extreme, and then there’s disgusting. He’s a damn federal judge. Suffice it to say I truly feel sorry for anyone who ends up in his court.
“Although VanDyke regularly belittles his own federal appeals court with juvenile insults, this latest shock-jock routine crossed the line from attention-grabbing performance art into outright vulgarity, prompting an unprecedented rebuke from 29 of his own colleagues across the entire ideological spectrum,” according to Slate.
Lithwick and Stern argued the episode amounted to a “grotesque Supreme Court audition.” “His trolling, however, may well draw the attention of President Trump, who was clearly the intended audience,” they concluded. But, according to Stern, such theatrics “will eventually undermine the entire project of judicial independence.”
A Supreme Court judge. Please let him NOT make it. He’s too extreme. Yes, a large part of SCOTUS is corrupt, but his histrionics have no place in a court of law. I’m not even sure if there’s a way to get him off the bench since he’s in a permanent position. Ugh.
Please do take a few minutes to read the Slate article. There’s a lot more than I quoted, and it’s quite interesting. This guy is something else, and I don’t know what the “else” is. Good grief.
See you soon!
Friends, I know everyone begs you for money. I promise that among all those asking for spare change, we are the smallest and the hardest-working. We’re a group of old, disabled people, except for one writer in his mid-50s. The rest of us are in our sixties and seventies, and this is a labor of love. All we’re asking for is the chance to keep telling the truth about Trump and help ensure democracy survives. If you can help, please do. Thank you. Ursula
IMO this is one more thing that needs reforming in our system of government. We need a way to remove federal judges if they are unfit for their post. Similarly, I think we should do away with the electoral college. Many more guardrails are needed.
We need a way besides impeaching, which is damn near impossible.
What are you thinking regarding the electoral college? I’m curious.