Thank you for your contribution

Post #394,149 by rcareaga 9/5/14 7:24:49 PM Reply	Thank you for your contribution Posner has been described as the profoundest American legal thinker after Learned Hand never to reach the Supreme Court, but you, mmoffitt, have shown him up in a sentence! "Gratitude" does not begin to convey our response to your clarification.
Post #394,151 by Another Scott 9/5/14 8:25:25 PM Reply	He does have his critics though... I agree that he's generally very sharp. He's also written a lot. I read his book on Clinton's impeachment. I remember it as being interesting and well written, but wishy-washy. He doesn't say whether or not he thinks Clinton should have been convicted or not. Here is a response by Posner to a scathing review by Ronald Dworkin, and Dworkin's reply. I'm ashamed to say that I said "Yeah!" when the House vote crossed the line to impeach him. (I was walking Colleen through the neighborhood while they were taking the vote, listening to the vote on the radio.) Yes, Clinton lied and obstructed the investigation and several other things. Yes, he was stupid not to keep his pants zipped, and maybe he assaulted Willey and Jones and others. But, impeachment is a political process. It's not a trial in the normal meaning of the word. Clinton was hounded for years and years by the opposition party and a prosecutor who had no limits. Just about anyone (except Obama, though they've tried and tried to dig something up on him) would have crossed the line somewhere in reaching the presidency or when questioned about it later. If every president were subjected to the continual investigations and so forth that Clinton endured, then every President could be impeached as he was. Since the Republicans have no sense of proportion when it comes to political disagreements any more, it was probably a mistake for the Supreme Court to say that Clinton could be sued while he was in office: In his concurring opinion, Breyer argued that presidential immunity would apply only if the President could show that a private civil lawsuit would somehow interfere with the President's constitutionally assigned duties. Yeah, how'd that work out? :-/ She had the right to sue him, but there's no reason why Jones' suit couldn't have waited a few more years (she said the assault took place in 1991 but didn't file until 1994). If (more likely when) another civil suit against a sitting president is filed, perhaps the Supreme Court will reconsider their reasoning in that decision. Our government could be ruined by too-casually removing a president from office. Posner should have been able to make a decision on where he stood on the issue. FWIW. Cheers, Scott.
Post #394,155 by boxley 9/5/14 9:08:55 PM Reply	Congress would not have voted to impeach unless they were sure that he would not be convicted in the senate. Dog and pony show all the way. Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free American and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 59 years. meep
Post #394,156 by Another Scott 9/5/14 9:15:08 PM Reply	Dunno. I think the only thing that held them back was finding something to charge him with. Similarly with Obama. It doesn't matter whether they'd get a conviction in the Senate or not. But, yeah, nobody was talking about Gore (or Biden) taking over... But it's ancient history. We shouldn't forget it, but there's no need to relive it. :-) Cheers, Scott.
Post #394,174 by boxley 9/6/14 3:35:47 PM Reply	chatted with some of the participants after the fact the phrase wouldnt impeach if he was standing with a smoking gun over the body of a dead woman while being serviced by a young boy, is a reasonable paraphrase by a republican senator who was there at the time Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free American and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 59 years. meep
Post #394,177 by Another Scott 9/6/14 5:05:39 PM Reply	One of the five? 'pedia: The trial in the United States Senate began right after the seating of the 106th Congress, in which the Republicans began with 55 senators. A two-thirds majority (67 senators) was required to remove Clinton from office. Fifty senators voted to remove Clinton on the obstruction of justice charge and 45 voted to remove him on the perjury charge; no Democrat voted guilty on either charge. [...] The five Republican senators who voted against conviction on both charges were John Chafee of Rhode Island, Susan Collins of Maine, Jim Jeffords of Vermont, Olympia Snowe of Maine, and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania. The additional five Republican senators who voted "not guilty" only on the perjury charge were Slade Gorton of Washington, Richard Shelby of Alabama, Ted Stevens of Alaska, Fred Thompson of Tennessee, and John Warner of Virginia. Thanks. Cheers, Scott.
Post #394,178 by boxley 9/6/14 5:12:38 PM Reply	One of the additional five Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free American and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 59 years. meep
Post #394,181 by Another Scott 9/6/14 5:41:21 PM Reply	Uncle Ted voted Aye on obstruction ... A few more votes would have been enough, nicht wahr? He didn't have to be convicted on both to be removed. 50/55 = 91% of Republicans voted to convict and remove him for the obstruction of justice charge. Counter-factuals are always hard. Johnson only made it by 1 vote. Getting that last vote is likely to be very hard in almost any case one can imagine. Sure, Democratic Senators weren't going to vote to remove him. That doesn't lessen the importance or decrease the severity of the Republican Senators' actions. Something's very messed up when a political party treats a vote at an impeachment trial as just another political battle because they know they'll lose. And it seems weird to say after-the-fact that Clinton wouldn't be removed even if ... when the commenter was someone who voted for removal. :-/ But Uncle Ted was a bit of a weird character anyway ("... it's a series of tubes!!!11" ;-) FWIW. Cheers, Scott.
Post #394,159 by Ashton 9/5/14 11:56:03 PM Reply	Masterful standoff; two equally skilled legal-logic-antagonists Twenty Years! ..as tarantulas in a bottle. Anyone who cares to read The Problematics of Moral and Legal Theory will find in it my responses to Dworkin’s criticisms—for there is nothing of substance in the review about our philosophical disagreements that he has not published before and I have not replied to before. I shall merely record my incredulity at his claim that his brand of moral philosophy, what I call “academic moralism,” is of “growing importance…in American legal education” (p. 52), and at his charge that I think philosophy has nothing to say about issues of fault, intent, causation, meaning, and responsibility in the law. He must know that I have used philosophy both in my academic writings and in my judicial opinions to illuminate those issues. But the branches of philosophy on which I have drawn are epistemology, philosophy of science, and philosophy of action, rather than moral or political philosophy, concerning which I indeed have profound reservations. I point out in Problematics that the preachments and the practices of academic moralists often don’t coincide. This review, in which we see Dworkin the academic moralist steering by a wobbly moral compass, is more evidence for the point. Richard Posner Chief Judge US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit; Senior Lecturer University of Chicago Law School ..and in this area near the neck of the bottle: Ronald Dworkin replies: Judge Posner says that my review of his two books was a personal attack, that it went beyond the boundaries of fair comment, that it was unethical of me to have reviewed his books at all, that I steer by a “wobbly moral compass,” that my review was “pervasively inaccurate and misleading,” that my “errors” show “a lack of familiarity” with the record and “the intricacies of federal criminal law and procedure,” and that for many years he has been challenging my “pretensions as a constitutional scholar and public intellectual.” This carpet-bombing was apparently provoked by my doubts about whether his book, An Affair of State, violated the canons of judicial ethics, and I shall begin by defending those doubts. I shall then comment, one by one, on the “particulars” he offers to support his charge of pervasive inaccuracy. He contests only a relatively few of the complaints I made about his own legal arguments and judgments in my review and its appendix, but I must comment in some detail on the arguments he does make. It is disturbing that though his challenges are delivered with great confidence, they are all, with one partial exception, based on serious misreports of his books or my review, or on fresh legal mistakes. A tad reminiscent of Wittgenstein's Poker? (Even the snide.. is dialed-in, in proper scale to the momentary nit being picked!) {sigh} How a one--aimed towards Academia longs for a single, Authentic Mr. Chips amidst the inter-Ego-nicine Gladiators. File this under category: Fine points for those in a career dedicated to the making, defining, disassembling and refining of mountains of such [bits] as may be reassembled into a fabric with an (any) Conclusion: the winner being the One whose--ultimately digital--decision favors. (Reason! is, of course intermixed along the way--demonstrating that each is capable in that higher-realm too, sorta--but when sweet-Reason is employed as a condiment.. well, you can't make a Meal of it, can you?) I calls it a Tie. En fin: cui bono?

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