PN-G bamatex

When, exactly, did Rubio advocate for central planning? I'm pretty sure my two hardcore Rand Paul-supporting, super Libertarian, economics grad student best friends wouldn't be going for Rubio since Rand dropped out if he was a central planner. Oh, that's right, he's not. That's just another dirty, *untrue* tagline Cruz supporters like to throw around.

Dude, I don't even like Kool Aid. I haven't "drank" anything. I didn't decide to "settle" for Rubio this past week, or this past month, or even this past year. I knew I would be voting for Marco Rubio one day when I watched his victory speech after winning his Senate seat while I was still a senior in high school back in 2010. I posted on this very site in 2012 that if Mitt Romney didn't win, Marco Rubio would be the next President of the United States. I stand by that now. My mail in ballot was sealed in its envelope with the box beside Rubio's name filled in days before the South Carolina primary even took place. My support for Rubio isn't engendered by the fact that he's a conservative candidate for president that's actually electable, it's merely bolstered by it. I agree with Marco on more issues than any other Republican candidate. I knew that when this race first started, but took the ISideWith policy test anyways just to quantify it. I agreed with 96% of his policy positions. Furthermore, I disagree with your contention that he won't do anything to slow the rate of spending. Marco cut the built in bailout fund for health insurers out of Obamacare. That's more of a cut than Ted Cruz has ever come close to passing. Where the border's concerned, that evil, unpalatable "Gang of Eight" bill included massive increases in the number of Border Patrol agents on the southern border - a part of the bill Marco continues to campaign on now. Cruz has never proposed a single piece of legislation that would do anything to shore up border security. Oh, and about the Cruz campaign firing that guy, they never fired Dan Gabriel or their high-ranking fundraising official that got caught cheating on a law school exam. I wonder why that is? Oh, that's right, because it wouldn't yield a PR boost.

On the contrary. I'll refer you to my previous post on this very subject. And that was before the video accusing Rubio of insulting the Bible, or the photoshopped picture with Obama, or the fake Facebook page impersonating Trey Gowdy that said he was no longer endorsing Marco.

No, I get your point. I do. I'd bet very, very good money that I'm a lot more involved in politics than you are. I know that head-to-head polls aren't always the best long term indicators of a candidate's success. What are good indicators, though, are favorability polls, in which Ted Cruz comes in ahead of absolutely nobody but Donald Trump, while both Marco Rubio and John Kasich post numbers that are, not surprisingly, as good as or better than the two potential Democrat nominees among general election voters. And if you'll notice, I didn't pick any "squishy," moderate candidate. I picked Marco Rubio, whose conservative bona fides are every bit as strong as Ted Cruz's (arguably stronger in certain areas). If I was going for "squishy" candidates, Ted Cruz would be my man. I mean, how could I pass up on this face?

I hate to break this to you, but you are every bit as delusional as Ted Cruz himself if you think he's the new Ronald Reagan.

Back to the thread's original question.... No, Donald Trump cannot beat Hillary Clinton, and I seriously, seriously doubt Ted Cruz could either. Trump can't even beat Sanders, and Cruz has a coin flip's chance. All of the polling indicates that this party has (barring disaster) two sure things right now: Marco Rubio and John Kasich. If this party has any sense left at all, Marco Rubio will be the nominee in November. Otherwise, y'all better get ready for four more years of a Democrat in the White House.

Jeb and Marco are from the same state. That's a common occurrence between candidates from the same state. Ted Cruz got a big fundraising boost from Rick Perry's donors when he dropped out. Though if you're really concerned about money.... [Hidden Content] ... you might want to see this.

Well, Bush dropped out and Kasich stayed in. I guess I called that one bass ackwards.

Bob Dole showed regret over his endorsement of Bush in an interview today. I think when the South Carolina results are final and Bush isn't even in the top half, the donors are done with him.

Did they really put Livingston back in our district?

I disagree. Every poll out of South Carolina I can think of has put Kasich in the bottom half among the current GOP contenders. The most recent one, released today, put him in last place with 7% of the vote. If those numbers hold up, I think Kasich is out for sure after South Carolina. The question will be what Carson and Bush do.

It depends on how quickly the other candidates in the race drop out, in my opinion. If Carson, Jeb and Kasich all drop out after South Carolina, my thoughts are that Rubio supplants Trump as the first place contender and that Cruz gets a mild boost as well. I also think that the moment we know for certain that Trump's no longer in the lead, the appeal of a candidate who bases everything on his reputed success and knack for winning at whatever he does collapses. If, on the other hand, too many candidates stay in for two long, Trump's chances of being the nominee go up dramatically. Now, which case is more likely? I just don't know. Jeb seems obsessed with his candidacy, and he's got a lot of money sitting around. I don't think he's got a chance in heck of winning the nomination, but I do think there's a good chance he'll ride this thing out until the very end for no other reason than that he's so attached the family legacy and doing what his father and big brother did before him. I think there's a good chance Kasich drops out after South Carolina. As for Dr. Carson, I really just don't know. Of all the anti-establishment candidates, there's a good argument to be made that Carson's is the most unorthodox in terms of how his campaign is run. It's certainly the hardest to read. No move or decision his campaign makes, in my opinion, comports with standard campaign practice in any way. What you would normally take as a sign of his campaign being over is really just him going home to get a change of clothes. That's just the story of the Ben Carson campaign. That said, as hard as it is to figure out what Carson will do next, one thing is for certain: the longer he stays in, the longer he's a thorn in Cruz's side. When the moment comes and Carson does finally drop out, I fully expect him to endorse someone other than Cruz, and that's going to really shake up an evangelical GOP base that Cruz is already having trouble getting through to.

... and maybe I was onto something when I put Nikki Haley, who was previously expected to endorse Jeb Bush, on Rubio's short list.

Well, I guess I have to take Mike Lee off of Cruz's short list for VP picks now.

All fair points. In truth, there's no way of knowing. But, I'll add this food for thought: watching the the social media war so far this year, the two GOP campaigns that have, in my opinion, generally made the best use of social media have been the Cruz and Paul campaigns. For all his trouble getting millennial support, there are massive Facebook groups dedicated to bringing together evangelical voters for Senator Cruz on Facebook. They've definitely focused on that element of their campaign.

This was released by the Rubio campaign's South Carolina Facebook page this afternoon. Obviously, there's no proof that the Cruz campaign had anything to do with it. That said, a similar Facebook attack on the Rubio campaign happened in Iowa right before the caucus there took place, and I can't think of anyone else who stands to gain anything from taking votes from Marco and giving them to Ted, except maybe the Democrats.

I'm not the expert on this, so take what I say with a grain of salt. But I've talked about it a lot with a friend who did finance for one of the presidential campaigns (not the one that was a student here last semester), and this is how I understand it. Super PACs are, by law, required to be separate from the campaign, and are not allowed to coordinate with the campaign. In reality, though, the line of separation often isn't as absolute as it's supposed to be. It's not uncommon to see people who once worked on the campaign working on the PAC, or who once worked on the PAC taking a position with the campaign, or a top campaign donor founding or holding some kind of leadership position in the PAC, or people who worked with the candidate or a top-ranked campaign official in previous capacities taking a position with the PAC, or something of the like. In my opinion, PACs are often just there to do the dirty work the campaigns don't want to be directly tied to. If Candidate A wants to be positive, often times the negative attack ads against Candidates B and C will be run by one of the PACs that support Candidate A, instead of by Candidate A's campaign itself. This isn't always the case, but it happens a lot. The PACs try to complement the campaign strategies. PACs do often take massive donations from companies. The whole reason PACs exist is to absorb the corporate donations that the campaigns themselves can't take because of federal campaign spending limits, so it's not unusual for them to take donations from companies. What stands out to me here is that a "high number" of companies are backing this PAC, but it's raised virtually no money; it's the second worst PAC in terms of fundraising of any of the major GOP candidates. That means lots small donations are coming in from lots of companies, as opposed to large donations coming in from a smaller number of companies, as is usual with PACs. That raises my suspicions about what's going on. Are there just a bunch of mid-sized and small corporations backing Cruz, or are people using shell companies to channel donations to the PAC? I don't know, but I would find it odd if a guy whose wife works for Goldman Sachs, who took out loans from Goldman Sachs and Citibank to finance his original Senate campaign and who I personally know is recruiting former officials with major financial institutions to both donate to and staff his campaign is getting a bunch of small corporate donations as opposed to a few big ones. Where CNN's concerned, while I understand suspecting bias, CNN can't change the facts, just the way it presents them. At the end of the day, a pro-Cruz PAC with some peculiar characteristics still had an ad attacking Rubio pulled off the airwaves by media group's legal department. As for who I support, I've said openly that I'm a Rubio fan in prior posts. My mail-in ballot is already filled out and waiting for me to drop it off at the post office with the box beside Rubio's name filled in. He's my candidate. But that's really beside the point. I didn't vote for Cruz in the Republican Senate primary back in 2012. I voted for Dewhurst, in part because I felt Dewhurst had proven himself a capable, policy-oriented legislator during his tenure as Lieutenant Governor, and in part because even back then, I had my own reservations about Cruz, a Bush administration official suddenly turned Tea Party conservative. Since Cruz took office, he's only really done one thing in the Senate that I find praiseworthy, which was defending gun rights after Sandy Hook. Other than that, his term in the Senate, in my (admittedly unpopular on this site) opinion, has been an abysmal failure. Frankly, the only reason I think conservatives have trouble finding blemishes on Cruz's record is because there really isn't that much of a record to find blemishes on. It is completely void of policy achievements. In that sense, he's a conservative Senator Barack Obama circa 2008. Like Obama during his four years in the Senate, Cruz has passed no major legislation, has proposed no real legislative solution to any of the country's pressing problems, and has no objective success to his name. Literally all he's done is filibuster until he was blue in the face, force a government shutdown, change his positions on various issues the moment controversy cropped up around them (another one of Obama's real talents), voted to make massive cuts in defense spending and criticized every element of the national leadership at every available opportunity (something Obama was quite skilled at as a senator as well, though Obama was never as aggravated or direct and played nicer with his own party). Cruz's sole policy initiative was the amendment he proposed to the immigration reform bill, which he now distances himself from as an attempt to kill that same bill, another Cruz claim I find hard to believe having watched Cruz during the debates for that very amendment. And despite not even trying to get something done, he still has the audacity to attack other candidates for trying to find solutions and actually getting things done. I get being anti-establishment. Four years ago, I wasn't particularly happy with the Republican establishment, myself. I still consider myself to be outside the party mainstream, even though it's moved much closer to where I stand than it used to be. On that note, in terms of policy alone, I align more with Cruz than any other candidate except Rubio. But there's a difference between being anti-establishment and being outright obstructionist. Cruz is the latter, and it seems apparent to me that he's assumed that role for no other reason than to lay the groundwork for a campaign for the presidency that rests on that very persona. Throw in suspect campaign practices, and I just plain don't trust the guy. It's for that very reason that despite agreeing with them less, I would vote for Bush, Kasich, and Carson all before I would vote for Cruz if Rubio weren't in the race. As much as I dislike Donald Trump, if it were between he and Cruz, I would still have reservations about voting for Cruz. And if Cruz (or Trump, for that matter) gets the nomination, I may, for the first time in my life, consider supporting someone other than the Republican candidate for the presidency. Above all else, that's the part that really concerns me. Me, a millennial that's been a Republican literally all his life, being put in a position where I have to entertain the possibility that Gary Johnson could get my vote. I'm not the only one facing that decision. The GOP has more support among millennials right now than I think it's ever had. The economy sucks, recent college graduates are looking for jobs to pay off all this student loan debt and the social progress fatigue the country had in the late seventies is setting back in. I've personally been surprised at how many people my age have expressed openness to voting for a GOP contender. Rubio and Kasich both have surprising amounts of millennial appeal, and Rand, as we all know, was almost exclusively supported by millennials. Jeb's even managed to get a little of it despite his last name. About a week ago, I was shocked when I gave a Hispanic UT law student a ride home and he, who I would characterize as a moderate, told me out of the blue that if Rubio got the nomination, he'd vote for him in a heartbeat. The number of ostensibly anti-GOP students saying things like that has actually thrown me off; I'm not used to having somewhat popular political opinions among others in my generation. But we're at a point right now where two of the three frontrunners for the GOP nomination would squander every bit of that millennial support. I go on Facebook, Twitter or GroupMe (that's a group messaging app) right now and almost every political meme I see from another millennial is aimed at one of three people: Trump, Cruz and Hillary. I go to arguably the most conservative major law school in the country (I realize that comes as a surprise in reference to UT; understand that I'm referring to the law school, not the undergraduate campus, where the political climate is very, very different). The UT chapter of the Federalist Society, the organization for conservative lawyers and law school students, is the second largest in the country, behind only Harvard, a law school with three times as many students as UT. The ratio of conservative and liberal law school students, at least in my class, has almost reached parity. UT publishes the nation's most prominent conservative law review, the Texas Review of Law & Politics, and the Federalist Society chapter here has more members than the American Constitutional Society, its liberal counterpart. The only law school in the country that's arguably more conservative is the University of Chicago, which is really more libertarian than anything else because it takes a hardcore economic approach to everything, and which also happens to be the alma mater of our current dean. Needless to say, I come into contact with more conservative law students on a daily basis here than I would anywhere else. Of all of those conservative students in my 1L class whom I interact with regularly (probably 35-40), only one of them supports Ted Cruz (this isn't the one that worked on the Cruz campaign and got kicked out of UT; I'm not counting him here), and he openly admits that his support is at best lukewarm. Only two are going for Trump, and I feel fairly certain they're just doing it to get on everyone else's nerves. The rest all support Rubio and Kasich, with a few Jeb Bush fans and a fair number of libertarians still trying to get over Rand dropping out. I shake up old GroupMe conversations among my friends at Alabama, which is where I went to undergrad and happens to be one of the most conservative public universities in the country, and the distribution is the same. You look at Cruz's millennial outreach page on Facebook, and he's got less than 3,000 likes. I've seen candidates for student government get more likes than that. It's the worst millennial outreach effort of any of the major candidates except Donald Trump. This general disdain among millennials for Cruz, in my experience, hasn't been over his platform positions; his platform isn't worlds apart from Rubio and bears some similarities to Paul, both of whom enjoy varying degrees of popularity among millennials. It comes down to his personality - the smug smile, the squeamish voice, the condescending tone, the presumptuousness, the unworkable attitude in the Senate and the reputation for suspect tactics practiced by his campaign and its affiliates. This likability problem isn't limited to millennials, either. Cruz has banked his entire campaign on winning evangelical and Tea Party voters, basing the strategy in a study done by the RNC after Mitt Romney lost suggesting that several million such voters stayed home in 2012. The thinking in the Cruz campaign is that if they can organize a grassroots effort to get those voters, they can win the primary and the general election. The problem with that strategy is that (1) there's not enough voters out there who fall in those categories to win with them alone, (2) Cruz has so over-leveraged himself with that specific element of the GOP that he's got no crossover appeal, and (3) he doesn't even do that well among those voters. The fact that there aren't enough evangelicals to carry the Cruz campaign alone is exactly why he didn't win New Hampshire and why he's not in first place in South Carolina right now. It's also evident in the polls pitting him against Democrat nominees in a general election. In addition to making a play for millennials that's failed in epic proportions, Cruz also tried to make a play for libertarians in the last days of the Rand Paul campaign. He did such a poor job that Rand's wife called him "two-faced," and, after Rand had already dropped out, Ron Paul went on a speaking tour not to urge libertarians to vote for anyone specifically, but instead to urge them to vote for anyone but Ted Cruz, echoing Iowa's governor in the days leading up to the Iowa primary. Cruz can't seem to get a single endorsement from any elected Republican official except a handful of Congressmen and Texas state officials. Nobody in the Senate - not even close Cruz friends and, in the past at least, political allies Mike Lee and Jeff Sessions - has endorsed Ted Cruz. And perhaps worst of all, despite his almost singular focus on evangelicals, Cruz can't even win a majority among them. In Iowa, the most evangelical-dominated state in the first four GOP primary states, Cruz only won 26% of evangelical voters. Trump, who is perhaps the worst candidate for evangelicals of all time, and Rubio, who hasn't emphasized his evangelical bona fides nearly as much as Cruz has, both came within five points of Cruz's lead. One of the other longtime evangelical candidates in this race, Rick Santorum, endorsed Marco, not Ted, upon dropping out of the race, and the other major evangelical player in the GOP race, Ben Carson, is caught in the middle of a blood feud with Cruz over Cruz's dirty tactics. All of this leads me to believe that Cruz's status as a frontrunner is purely a function of the GOP field being so jam-packed; if it weren't for so many other candidates being in the race and slicing up other voting bases within the party so many ways, I don't think Cruz would be a serious contender. I come to that conclusion before even beginning to take into account my own experiences with Cruz campaign officials. So, long story short, when I boil this down to the facts, I don't see a "consistent conservative" or a strong presidential candidate. I see a candidate with no real record, no real experience, a reputation for brinkmanship behavior and inflammatory rhetoric, a serious likability problem, no crossover appeal to speak of and problems getting support even within his own base. He's got electability issues, favorability issues, consistency issues, personality issues, and if I'm being totally frank, authenticity issues. I see him as neither capable of winning the presidency, nor the right person to be president.

One of the things I noticed at the end of the debate Saturday night was that when the candidates were all shaking each other's hands, Carson didn't shake Cruz's. Instead, the two just looked at each other. Cruz gave his normal grin and Carson gave the closest thing I've ever seen to a look of contempt on Ben Carson's face. I thought that was a telling moment. Then I saw the article below and realized exactly why Carson had that look on his face: [Hidden Content] In addition to this article, which contains the voicemails the Cruz campaign left on the phones of Cruz supporters in Iowa the night of the caucus, I also came across another I found interesting: [Hidden Content] I've heard of campaigns sending cease and desist letters for "slanderous" political ads before. I've never heard of a television station's legal counsel considering the letter's accusations substantive enough to take the ad down. What that means is that whatever it is the Cruz PAC's political ads said about Rubio in the ad, the station taking the money for the ads thought they were far enough off the mark - far enough beyond the normal embellishment you see in political ads - to invite too much risk of a lawsuit. That's pretty eye-opening. Throw in the fact that the Cruz PAC that created the ad, perhaps ironically named "Stand for Truth," is having its donations funneled to it through "a high number of companies" - a move that I can only guess is designed to obscure the identities of the actual donors - and things just get that much more suspect, in my opinion. Donald Trump is just about the last person on earth I want to agree with right now. But he's onto something here.

He's just now getting on your nerves?

The porn star thing is, in my opinion, just plain funny. You have to acknowledge the humorous irony in a porn star appearing in a prominent commercial for one of the leading evangelical candidates in the presidential race. As an indicator of the kind of candidate Cruz is, though, I don't find it that substantive. The ad was probably proposed by some firm of advertising consultants, approved by the Cruz PR staff, and then contracted out by the ad firm to a studio to make, which contracted with talent agencies to find actors. The Cruz campaign itself was more than likely three degrees of separation removed from the screening process for actors and actresses. That said, I've said in this thread before and will repeat now my reservations about the Cruz campaign. I know staff for the Cruz, Rubio, Sanders, Clinton and now defunct Paul campaigns very well. I consider some of them dear friends, and I consider some of the others to be the kind of people that are exactly what's wrong with American politics. With regard to that latter group of people, I don't believe the Cruz campaign has a monopoly, but I believe it has more than its fair share of the market.

You're right. I didn't include the clause about exceptions. Because it's not relevant. In your hypothetical, Congress isn't exercising its power to create exceptions to the constitutional requirement that the Supreme Court have only appellate jurisdiction over the specified types of cases, it's effectively ignoring that constitutional rule. If your proposal were approved under that exceptions clause, it would expand the definition of an exception to the extent that exceptions could, from that point on, altogether dispense with the rules they apply to. The purpose of an exception is to allow for limited deviations from a general rule in specific circumstances as deemed necessary by the body empowered to make those exceptions, not to undermine or simply do away with the rule altogether. Imagine if we used such a broad approach with the other part of that clause, which has to do with regulations. If Congress can regulate the high court's proceedings with respect to those types of cases, can it extend the meaning of regulation to the extent that it bans the high court from hearing those kinds of cases? Would that not undermine - indeed, altogether implicitly abrogate - the constitutional requirement that the Supreme Court have appellate jurisdiction over those types of cases? Such a proposition would be absurd. So too is the case with its "exception" counterpart. The application of Congress's power to regulate in this context is, in principle, no different than the application of the power to create exceptions you advocate for in that post. On an aside, I'm glad to see you finally went and looked up the text I cited to. I applaud the improvement. Is this for real? It's hard to say that nobody else on this site knows for a fact that I am who I say I am given that I've been posting here since I was a sophomore in high school, not to mention that I'm a site moderator, that I've met some of the users on this site in person, and that I'm related to two of them, one of whom also happens to be a moderator.

I can see you didn't look up the text of the sections of the Constitution I cited. I apologize for assuming you had the wherewithal to research the portions of the Constitution I cited for yourself. I suppose we'll have to do this the old fashioned way. Constitutionally, Congress does not have the right to withhold pay from a Supreme Court justice or any federal judicial appointee. Article III, Section 1 of the Constitution states, in no uncertain terms, that "[t]he Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts... shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services, a Compensation, which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office." So, no, Congress cannot, by simple majority vote, choose not to pay the justices. In whatever appropriation Congress makes, it is required by the text quoted above to ensure that each of the justices receives pay commensurate with or in excess of the salary appropriated to them in previous budgetary acts. If Congress wished to reduce the justices' pay, it would require a constitutional amendment altering that clause in some way, which would require Congress to propose such an amendment with a two-thirds vote of both houses, and would then require the approval of three quarters of the states, per Article V. That's correct. You said that Congress could "get rid" of SCOTUS justices, specifically that Congress could "with a simple majority vote [to] set membership on SCOTUS at 1." And I showed how such a move would not be, as you put it, "in complete agreement with The [sic] Constitution," citing all of the relevant language thereof. Since you failed to look that language up for yourself, I will make the text plain here. Article I, Section II of the Constitution states unequivocally that the House "shall have the sole Power of Impeachement," and is complemented by Article I, Section III, which gives the Senate "the sole Power to try all Impeachments," requires "the Concurrence of two thirds of the Members present" to reach a conviction, and limits "Judgment in Cases of Impeachment" to a select few sentences, of which "removal from Office" is expressly listed. The power to remove any federal appointee from office, much less a Supreme Court justice, is not enumerated anywhere else in the Constitution, and is not authorized by the Constitution under any other circumstances. Therefore, your contention that Congress could "with a simple majority vote [to] set membership on SCOTUS at 1" is flatly unconstitutional unless, as I pointed out in my original post, Congress voted to create a statutory limit on the number of justices on the high court, which would be unenforceable if Congress were to enact it today because of the constitutional provisions herein outlined and would not become enforceable until the number of justices was naturally reduced to that number by deaths, retirements, impeachments and removals (which have never happened) and, presumably, presidential appointments to the bench that went unconfirmed by the Senate - a process that would almost certainly take decades and that would likely prove unsustainable given the volatile nature of Congress. As your various statements apply to the lower judges, I explained how that would not only be a horrific idea in terms of policy implications, I also argued that it would be unconstitutional. Once again, seeing how you've failed to look up the relevant provisions of the Constitution which I cited in my post, I'll proceed to use the explicit language of the Constitution. You argue that the one provision of the Constitution you cite on this matter gives Congress discretion to establish lower courts altogether. I tell you that this provision is perhaps better characterized as giving Congress discretion not to set up lower courts, but rather in how to set up those lower courts. To reiterate what I stated in my previous post while paraphrasing Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution, "[t]he judicial Power [of the federal judiciary] shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority;—to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls;—to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction;—to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party;—to Controversies between two or more States;— between a State and Citizens of another State,—between Citizens of different States,—between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects." This has always been interpreted to mean that these ten types of cases may only be heard in federal courts; the state courts have no power to hear them at all (except for under very limited exceptions in a very limited set of circumstances under one of these categories, for the record). Article III, Section 2 goes on to say that in "all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party," - in other words, only two of the those ten types of cases - "the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction," and that in "all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction." This means that in regard to the other eight types of cases mentioned in Article III, Section 2, the state courts are expressly barred from taking action, and the Supreme Court may not be the first forum in which they are litigated, effectively requiring that these cases be litigated in a lower federal court. These provisions, taken in tandem, effectively mandate that Congress set up some system of lower federal courts, and effectively limit Congress's discretion under "Inferior Courts" clause of Article I, Section 8 which you earlier quoted to how lower courts are set up under the Supreme Court and how many of those courts are established, foregoing the question of whether they are constituted or not altogether. This is basic textualism. Antonin Scalia would agree with this. I am so glad you brought up President Obama's legal education. More on that later. In the meantime, checks and balances would hardly be effective against a single Supreme Court justice in whom, under your hypothetical scenario, all of the judicial power of the federal government would be vested. The job of the judiciary is to interpret the laws which Congress writes and the president executes. A well versed judge - indeed, any well versed lawyer - is very, very good at playing with legal interpretation. It doesn't matter how Congress writes its laws, or how the president intends to execute them; their powers of interpretation are wholly subservient to those of the judicial branch, which is charged with that duty by its mission and its very nature. When a law is interpreted a particular way by the highest court, Congress can do little to alter it besides either repealing the law or wholly redrafting it in some way. The potential for abuse of that power is normally curtailed by the presence of multiple justices on the Supreme Court, who naturally hold each other accountable since no individual justice can set court dogma unilaterally and the weight of an opinion is dictated by the number of justices which join in it. That said, in your hypothetical, there aren't multiple justices on the Supreme Court. Indeed, there aren't even multiple appointees in the entire federal judiciary. If your plan was somehow implemented, there would be nobody within the judicial branch capable of holding the single Supreme Court justice accountable by any means. Furthermore, we've established that this justice can't be arbitrarily removed (i.e., removed for carrying out his duty to interpret the laws, even if done poorly or selfishly) or have his pay docked, and that the only checks the president and Congress really have over the judiciary under the Constitution are limited entirely to their respective powers of appointment, confirmation, impeachment, and trial and removal through the impeachment process. This is why I say that having the full power of the judiciary manifest itself in a sole Supreme Court justice would be the closest thing to a monarchy you could possibly have in the United States. You are correct. Barack Obama was a constitutional law professor. And as a constitutional law professor, Barack Obama knows both the canons and the history of constitutional interpretation very, very well. That is why he knows, just as well as I do and hopefully (though I doubt) just as well as you do, that the history of constitutional interpretation on the Supreme Court has been, overwhelmingly, a history of the construction of the Constitution to justify, not to strike down, federal laws and executive actions. Nine times out of ten, when reviewing a federal act of some kind, SCOTUS upholds it, and Barack Obama knows that. That is why he is expertly pushing the boundaries of what's constitutional in American jurisprudence; he knows that if he throws out executive order after executive order that falls right in the middle of the gray area between explicitly constitutional and explicitly unconstitutional, he's going to win more court battles than he loses, and expand the powers of the presidency more often than not. Luckily, we have a much more conservative court now than in years past, and he hasn't been as successful as previous presidents in doing this (one of the reasons, on a philosophical aside, that I favor a strong court over a weak one as you apparently desire). But, it's unforeseeable how long that luck will hold, which makes it all the more important that a Republican win the White House in 2016. Since my academic status has apparently been brought into question, I suppose I'll reiterate here what most longtime users on this board already know. I am currently a law student at The University of Texas School of Law. This semester, I'm taking a constitutional law class under Professor Sanford Levinson, one of the nation's most widely renowned constitutional scholars, who received his Juris Doctor at Stanford and his Ph.D. in Government at Harvard. He's previously taught at Yale, the nation's most prestigious law school, and authored a number of books on constitutional law. This is my third constitutional law class; my two previous constitutional law classes were taught by one of Levinson's former students, who received his Ph.D. in Government Affairs at UT.

If it's Rubio (which I think is most likely and who I'll personally be voting for next month barring disaster), you can just about bet the house Kasich will be the VP selection. There's a possibility Nikki Haley or Suzanna Martinez might get it, but I don't see Rubio passing up on a popular Governor of one of the most important swing states in the race and a running mate whose long list of accomplishments over three decades in politics can almost immunize him from attacks over experience. If it's (God forbid) Trump, I have no idea who ends up as the VP pick. It wouldn't surprise me if Kanye West was his running mate. If it's Cruz, he'll need to recruit someone from one of the more moderate factions of the party to appeal to independents, and it's probably best if that someone's from a swing state. Rubio would be the first person I'd make the offer to, because Rubio's more than conservative enough to keep the base happy while still bringing a surprising amount of appeal to independents given his political leanings. Rubio also can't run for reelection to the Senate at this point, so he might be desperate enough to take it if he really wants to stay in politics. If Rubio shot it down, Kasich would be my next offer. Experienced, accomplished and also from an important swing state, though he's significantly more moderate and may upset some portion of the base. That said, I'm really not sure he would take it either. I think Cruz's only real options are Mike Lee or Jeff Sessions, and I'm not sure either of them bring him any real help in the race. Lee would probably be more palatable to independents and generally does well in favorability ratings, but he's from a deeply red state and doesn't have the appeal to independents of a Rubio or a Kasich. Sessions is in the same boat and doesn't have the favorability ratings. While we're at this, on the other side of the aisle.... If it's Hillary, the smartest move she could possibly make is to pick up one of the two Castro brothers (the San Antonio ones, not the Havana ones). I'd go for Joaquin, but I'd also take who I could get if I were in her shoes. That said, it's Hillary we're talking about, and she's locked in a showdown for the nomination she didn't really expect. It would not surprise me at all if she made some deal somewhere with someone for a big-time endorsement and gave up her right to choose her own running mate in the process. It could literally be anyone of any significance in Democratic politics. If it's Bernie, it wouldn't really surprise me to see Elizabeth Warren end up on the ticket, and that would certainly be his smartest move. It would smooth over the ruffled feathers of the party's feminists, who will not be happy over Hillary's loss, it will shore him up against attacks over age and being out of touch and it will attach him to a bright, young, energetic, female senator with a lot of populist appeal that will nicely complement his own. The only drawback is that she, like Bernie, is from a deeply blue New England state, but she might be able to overcome that if she plays on her Oklahoma and Texas roots. If it's not Warren, he might do well to pick one of the two Castro brothers, but I suspect Bernie's too ideologically inclined to pick one of the party's more moderate members. But, I don't know who is other options would be.

You'll have to forgive me for not seeing your other "explanations" in other threads. I so rarely get the time to post any more that I don't pay as much attention to the board as I used to. Thus, I haven't seen any of them. In any case, I have to hand it to you. I have seen some crazy posts on this site over the years, and in particular in this section of the site. Yours absolutely takes the cake. Let's start with the number of justices. You say that Congress has the power to limit the number of justices with a simple majority vote. You could not be more incorrect. The only manner in which Congress could vote to do anything with regard to the number of justices on the bench is by voting not to confirm an appointment of the President to the high court, in which case only the Senate has a say (see Article II, Section 2), or by voting to impeach and remove a justice from the court, in which case the House would first be required to vote to impeach and the Senate would then be required to try and convict a justice of something before removal could take place (see Article I, Sections 2 & 3). There is no part of Article I, which delineates the powers of Congress, that by any stretch of the imagination gives Congress the power to unilaterally and arbitrarily reduce the number of justices on the Supreme Court with a simple majority of votes in either or both houses. The most Congress could constitutionally do is set a statutory limit on the number of justices that can sit on the high court, but if that statute limited the number to anything less than the nine justices who are on the court right now, it would be an unenforceable statute until the number of justices naturally came down to meet the limit due to retirements, deaths or impeachments and removals, the last of which has never happened in our entire history. So, to put it simply, your proposal to reduce the number of SCOTUS justices is not only radical and arguably absurd, it's patently unconstitutional. Now that we've established that Congress does not have the power to reduce the number of SCOTUS justices at will, let's discuss your plan to get rid of all of the lower federal courts. To put it simply, that would be an absolute, unmitigated disaster. There are two angles I can take with this: the policy angle, and the constitutionality angle. I'll start with the policy angle. There are certain areas of law in which the states have little to no say. Some of those areas of law have been completely usurped by the federal government by statute. I'll assume for the sake of argument that if we're getting rid of all the lower federal courts like you want us to, we're returning those subjects to the states. That said, most areas of law where the federal government has original jurisdiction were not usurped from the states by statute, they were delegated to the federal government by the Constitution itself. Examples include bankruptcy, immigration and naturalization (see Article I, Section 8), and cases involving any state and citizens of another state, citizens of different states, any two states, US citizens and foreign nationals, the maritime industry, the federal government or any agent thereof as a party to the case, treaties, foreign governments and international law (see Article III, Section 2). Tens of thousands of such cases are filed in federal district courts every single year; last year alone, more than 270,000 civil cases - just civil - were filed in federal district courts. If you have your druthers, a single court would be responsible for adjudicating every last one of those cases. That would bring the entire federal judiciary to a screeching halt, which would in turn have massively detrimental economic and political effects. You might as well tell the American people justice is dead at that point. Furthermore, if you could shut down all the lower courts and the Supreme Court could somehow find a way to handle all those cases, all of American justice would be in the hands of nine people as opposed to the 874 federal judicial appointees we have today. Not only does that reduce the thoroughness with which justice would be doled out, it severely curtails the ability of the courts to assess the ramifications of how the law is applied and make adjustments as necessary, and concentrates an immense amount of power - quite literally all of the power to determine what the law means - in the hands of just nine people. If, on top of that, Congress were to reduce the number of SCOTUS justices to one as you desire through attrition or some means that's actually constitutional, that power to interpret all of the American body of law would be even more focally concentrated in the hands of just one man, who would be entitled to serve until retirement, conviction for a crime or death. That, in my opinion, would be as close as you could possibly get to a having a monarch under the United States Constitution. That brings me to the argument over the constitutionality of what you're proposing. The Constitution mandates that the Supreme Court have original jurisdiction over only two of the areas of law constitutionally reserved to the federal judiciary; over all the others, the Supreme Court is required to have only appellate jurisdiction, which means that the Court can't hear or decide the case first, it can only review the findings of a lower court (see Article III, Section 2). So, in effect, the Constitution mandates that Congress set up some system of lower courts to hear these cases, because it prohibits state courts from hearing them, and prohibits the Supreme Court from being the first to hear them, effectively rendering your proposal unconstitutional on its face. Now, with all of that said, I have to get back to reading my constitutional law textbook because, ironically enough, I have my constitutional law class in the morning.