When political parties treat the Constitution like a game of Monopoly, America risks losing the one thing neither party can afford: rules that survive power.
Congrats Mikey you have reached rock bottom. Yes let's leave the court alone so it can be packed with more right wing hacks bought off by your friend and the GOP. The court has to be changed and restricted. Sorry they have failed us the American people and literally serve no purpose other than stripping rights, enriching Oligarchs and protecting the Epstein class from prosecution and accountability. When you know you know
Hey Howard, is proposing impeachment of the Supreme Court Justices, rather than enlarging the number of Justices (both would be difficult), an acceptable way of reform? I have 'softened' with age. I have moved towards the center, but unequivocally left. I gotta finish my post before it's tomorrow!
“The president becomes someone to remove. …” Michael, he DOES need to be removed, come on! Look at the facts: erratic posts/memes, lies more than I change my underwear, cares only about his stupid vanity projects, surrounds himself with absolute idiots, gets us into a war that has no end in sight, denies what the sailors are going through on the USS Lincoln, blames EVERYONE ELSE for his failures and the list goes on. I know for a FACT that you’re much smarter than this.
So yea, I 100% respectfully disagree.
Oh another factoid: I have it on good authority by someone who grew up with him that he would pay kids at the playground in our neighborhood to let him win at whatever game they were playing. Cheating his entire miserable life.
Michael always was. He has tried to make us believe otherwise with his posts earlier in the year, now he has revealed his true essence. There was a reason he worked with Donald Trump for so long, it wasn't because he was trying to mentor Trump on the proper way to do business.
Looks like your showing your true colors Barbara Ann. Unblock me because you're bored? Can't see what others are writing because your other followers/accounts are being blocked???
Let's talk about the radio show. I listened to it yesterday so others did not have to. The partial truths, half lies, full lies and deception are truly impressive. I give you kudos for being a good snake handler. Let's pick one item apart. You claimed several times that there was a legit threat to trump when he was transferred to a different plane in Turkey. There was not a credible threat. Our own intelligence told this to Trump. He was told by Bibi to force him to attack Iran - that was fake news. Yet you stuck on that falsity. Oh and promoting the ballroom was lovely
Thank you, Howard, for listening to the radio show. It would only increase my depression about losing our Constitution. The Court is not supposed to accept favors and it's been compromised. The people who accepted the gifts need to go. They don't have the character for the position. That's not CHANGING the court. That's enforcing what the 9 people are sworn to do.
It certainly needs to be revamped and definitely have to have term limits. No matter who's in power Republican or Democrats the Supreme Court has been ruined by money, bribes of somesort. I don't know but by something that Trump's been able to accomplish.
Clarence Thomas should have been kicked off the Supreme Court ages ago.
You are brutal..we are living through a take over of our democracy ..And yes SCOTUS is part of it time and again. Trump moves to undo 250 years of hard work. I am not going to go into what SCOTUS has done we all know and see it . Never say you are a patriot .. you are just part of the authoritarian government now. Thanks for only thinking of yourself..poor boy who went to prison wants back with the slime.
The Supreme Court was designed to be insulated, at least to some degree, from the immediate political passions of the moment. That independence is not an inconvenience accidentally left in the Constitution. It is part of the architecture.
The Court is supposed to be the place where nine people can say “no” to the political branches; even when that answer makes presidents, members of Congress, activists, donors, or voters furious.
Imagine what happens if we turn that principle upside down.
I don't have to imagine what happens if we turn that principle upside down. All I have to do is look at our current Supreme Court to see what happens when the court cannot say "no" to the president. I wonder how MAGA would react if Elena Kagan was going on expensive vacations with Democrat billionaire donors and then ruling in their favor. If Sotomayor accepted an RV from another. If Jackson's mother's house was bought by yet another. If the Democrat majority basically said the president has no guardrails and can do whatever he pleases. If any of the Democratic justices' wives were lobbyists and they failed to recuse themselves from cases where there was a clear conflict of interest. I could go on.
No one would be asking for Supreme Court reform if it wasn't glaringly obviously necessary. And why would ANYONE be against a code of ethics for the justices? I'd think most people would be asking why it doesn't already exist!
It shakes me to the core, Michael, that you think this way. I know I have expressed this before,
that when you were in solitary confinement in prison, I truly thought you had experienced dark nights of your soul, and had something like a rebirth. OMG was I ever fooled about that!!!!
Let's not miss the actual reality going back a few years when a political entity by the name of Mitch McConnell did indeed work politically to use his power to stack a very conservative Supreme Court. I TRULY understand the contempt many of us have directed at that bought and paid for Court and why we would like to see the damage undone.
As I read your piece I realized I was actually shaking my head. This is SO easy to rebut by anyone who has been paying attention. And I believe you are VERY aware of this.
Nine unelected people with lifetime jobs can overrule Congress, nullify state laws, and reshape the rights of 330 million Americans—and answer to not one voter!! That is not judicial “independence.” It is extraordinary power with virtually no democratic check. What do you think of that? Do you think this is something that should be left alone?
Finally, FINALLY, an ethics code was adopted in 2023, but it is self-policed and COMPLETELY unenforceable. Lower-court judges can face misconduct complaints; Supreme Court justices cannot. They ALONE decide whether they broke their own rules. Absolutely absurd.
Reform would be “destroying the Court.”? Really? Or is it demanding the bare minimum?: enforceable ethics, real transparency, and 18-year terms so no justice can wield unchecked power for 30 or 40 years. With 53% of Americans viewing the Court unfavorably, pretending the institution needs no accountability is what threatens its legitimacy.
Michael Cohen, please give us a break. Where did your moral compass go?
"But when the political winds change direction, suddenly the rulebook develops a fascinating new interpretation.
The voters’ decision becomes something to obstruct. The president becomes someone to remove. Impeachment gets resurrected. The Twenty-Fifth Amendment gets whispered about. And ideas like expanding the Supreme Court suddenly become less about constitutional restraint and more about finding a way to make the institution produce the desired political outcome."
Michael, the Democrats didn't do this to the Bushes, Ronald Reagan and other Republican Presidents. So, I would have to say it is Trump. Trump has turned this Country upside down starting with DOGE, then removing immigrants-illegal and legal with the misuse of power by ICE. Trump trying to change the way elections are held that have been fair and not overrun with fraud for hundreds of years. Trump still claims he won in 2020 but the election was stolen from him. And let's not forget other things Trump is doing or encouraging to try and ensure the Republicans keep the House and Senate in November like redrawing the districts in red and purple states which is only done every ten years based on the census. So Trump and the Republicans are finding ways to produce the desired political outcome. Trump is going to rallies and insists that the Democrats never win the House or Senate ever again. Trump started a war needlessly. The JCPOA which you and Trump both call it terrible was not terrible. The agreement which the US and five other Countries agreed upon included low levels of enriched uranium and allowing inspections to ensure that they were not capable of having a nuclear weapon. Instead of destroying the agreement without a plausible agreement to replace it, he should have had something to replace it. Then there was January 6, 2021. We know what happened that day. Trump was impeached for that and rigthfully so. Under Trump, we have mostly Republican SCOTUS judges now. SCOTUS should represent all of us not one party or the other. With 9 seats, it is always going to be a little skewed. We should not have a 6-3 but more like a 5-4. And there should be either term limits and/or age limits for them too. So while you attack the Democrats, how about speaking some truth about how bad the Republicans are?????
Déjà vu seems to be ruling my reality lately. It isn't specifically about the Supreme Court. "The Senate invoked the “nuclear option” Nov. 21 [2013] and voted 52-48 to change Senate rules to provide that a simple majority of 51 votes, rather [than] the current 60, will be required to invoke cloture to end filibusters of executive and judicial nominees, with the exception of nominees to the Supreme Court."
I mention this as an example of rule-changing. It was the Democrats who changed the rule, but obviously, if/when the party in power changes, they can take advantage of the rule change. Imagine playing a board or card game. The loser then changes the rule so that next time he will win. Don't get me wrong. Our Supreme Court makes me sick. I really did have respect for them during a time when our government was functional and compassionate. Now, both the administration and the court are dysfunctional; for example, Clarence Thomas was an a**hole from the beginning. Those hearings made me physically ill. And look! He turned out to really be that a**hole. He should be in prison, sharing a cell with the Orange Menace. The slimy grifting in this administration is truly incomprehensible. My opinion is to impeach the Justices rather than enlarge the court. It's as slow as molasses with 9 people. It would only make the decisions take longer. Impeachment is a rule in place. Let's use it. Don't all of you beat me up! 😊
Of course, bipartisanship is the only way our government works. There is no ‘across the aisle’ anymore, and it’s obvious where that has gotten us. Term limits and removing the Electoral College from elections were topics in High School History class back in 1975. When it comes to ethics, I feel that it shouldn’t be necessary. I know that it must be. The corruption in government is unreal. My idealistic self dies a little more with each ethical breach by all of them. Starting with the Orange Menace and going down the line to the Congressional interns. As for my opinion, thank you for the comment. I form my opinion from reliable, I hope, information. I’ll only change if I am shown reliable information that changes it. I don’t have a problem being wrong or apologizing. But I will stick to my guns.
Michael makes some very valid points with respect to the number of Justices. I agree that the Supreme Court should not increase its numbers. I also agree with the stated opinions that we need reforms to eliminate the lawlessness of some of our Supreme Court Justices. One reform might be to see age limits implemented because as we age, our cognitive function changes. Also, as the world changes, ideas and opinions change and we need the court's rulings to change with the times. An alternative to imposing age limits would be to have Justices submit to cognitive-function testing every 5 years. I also believe in term limits for Congress. No one should be allowed to serve in Congress forever.
I ran it through Pangram and GPTZero, and both said that the post was 100% human. I'm not sure how much weight to give AI detectors, but I ran it just for shits and giggles.
I was checking Lauren Smith's post. I thought that was the post that Howard was referring to when he said it sounded like AI. I didn't run Michael's post. Sorry for the confusion. Michael's post is 100% AI according to Pangram, but ZeroGPT says 10.5% AI. The technology is too new to be reliable by my standards. When I search, I skip past AI and Wikipedia, as they are both unreliable. I'll scroll until I find a reliable source. That's why my posts take so long, lol, and are so long!
I think our posts are crossed up! We really are saying the same things. We have different ways of saying them. Although I would put myself, as I am now, on a continuum closer to the center (from the left!!) than where I would place you. Not a judgement, just an observation.
You know what Howard, I'm smart enough that I don't need to use AI for my opinions. I find your comments to be very insulting and I would appreciate it if you would present your opinions without the sarcasm.
Congrats Mikey you have reached rock bottom. Yes let's leave the court alone so it can be packed with more right wing hacks bought off by your friend and the GOP. The court has to be changed and restricted. Sorry they have failed us the American people and literally serve no purpose other than stripping rights, enriching Oligarchs and protecting the Epstein class from prosecution and accountability. When you know you know
Hey Howard, is proposing impeachment of the Supreme Court Justices, rather than enlarging the number of Justices (both would be difficult), an acceptable way of reform? I have 'softened' with age. I have moved towards the center, but unequivocally left. I gotta finish my post before it's tomorrow!
Impeachment might be easier than enlarging the court. Forgive my ignorance, but has a Supreme Court justice ever been impeached? Is it possible?
https://www.senate.gov/about/powers-procedures/impeachment/impeachment-chase.htm
They didn’t successfully impeach him, though.
“The president becomes someone to remove. …” Michael, he DOES need to be removed, come on! Look at the facts: erratic posts/memes, lies more than I change my underwear, cares only about his stupid vanity projects, surrounds himself with absolute idiots, gets us into a war that has no end in sight, denies what the sailors are going through on the USS Lincoln, blames EVERYONE ELSE for his failures and the list goes on. I know for a FACT that you’re much smarter than this.
So yea, I 100% respectfully disagree.
Oh another factoid: I have it on good authority by someone who grew up with him that he would pay kids at the playground in our neighborhood to let him win at whatever game they were playing. Cheating his entire miserable life.
Hindsight is 20/20.
Barbara - it's like a horror movie. Michael is now a vessel for the evil spirit
Michael always was. He has tried to make us believe otherwise with his posts earlier in the year, now he has revealed his true essence. There was a reason he worked with Donald Trump for so long, it wasn't because he was trying to mentor Trump on the proper way to do business.
I love this !!!! Vessel for the evil spirit.
Looks like your showing your true colors Barbara Ann. Unblock me because you're bored? Can't see what others are writing because your other followers/accounts are being blocked???
Let's talk about the radio show. I listened to it yesterday so others did not have to. The partial truths, half lies, full lies and deception are truly impressive. I give you kudos for being a good snake handler. Let's pick one item apart. You claimed several times that there was a legit threat to trump when he was transferred to a different plane in Turkey. There was not a credible threat. Our own intelligence told this to Trump. He was told by Bibi to force him to attack Iran - that was fake news. Yet you stuck on that falsity. Oh and promoting the ballroom was lovely
Thank you, Howard, for listening to the radio show. It would only increase my depression about losing our Constitution. The Court is not supposed to accept favors and it's been compromised. The people who accepted the gifts need to go. They don't have the character for the position. That's not CHANGING the court. That's enforcing what the 9 people are sworn to do.
I can't imagine listening to his show EVER...So thank you Howard.
And let me add SCOTUS does need to be expanded, revamped and have term limits!
It certainly needs to be revamped and definitely have to have term limits. No matter who's in power Republican or Democrats the Supreme Court has been ruined by money, bribes of somesort. I don't know but by something that Trump's been able to accomplish.
Clarence Thomas should have been kicked off the Supreme Court ages ago.
You are brutal..we are living through a take over of our democracy ..And yes SCOTUS is part of it time and again. Trump moves to undo 250 years of hard work. I am not going to go into what SCOTUS has done we all know and see it . Never say you are a patriot .. you are just part of the authoritarian government now. Thanks for only thinking of yourself..poor boy who went to prison wants back with the slime.
The Supreme Court was designed to be insulated, at least to some degree, from the immediate political passions of the moment. That independence is not an inconvenience accidentally left in the Constitution. It is part of the architecture.
The Court is supposed to be the place where nine people can say “no” to the political branches; even when that answer makes presidents, members of Congress, activists, donors, or voters furious.
Imagine what happens if we turn that principle upside down.
I don't have to imagine what happens if we turn that principle upside down. All I have to do is look at our current Supreme Court to see what happens when the court cannot say "no" to the president. I wonder how MAGA would react if Elena Kagan was going on expensive vacations with Democrat billionaire donors and then ruling in their favor. If Sotomayor accepted an RV from another. If Jackson's mother's house was bought by yet another. If the Democrat majority basically said the president has no guardrails and can do whatever he pleases. If any of the Democratic justices' wives were lobbyists and they failed to recuse themselves from cases where there was a clear conflict of interest. I could go on.
No one would be asking for Supreme Court reform if it wasn't glaringly obviously necessary. And why would ANYONE be against a code of ethics for the justices? I'd think most people would be asking why it doesn't already exist!
It shakes me to the core, Michael, that you think this way. I know I have expressed this before,
that when you were in solitary confinement in prison, I truly thought you had experienced dark nights of your soul, and had something like a rebirth. OMG was I ever fooled about that!!!!
Let's not miss the actual reality going back a few years when a political entity by the name of Mitch McConnell did indeed work politically to use his power to stack a very conservative Supreme Court. I TRULY understand the contempt many of us have directed at that bought and paid for Court and why we would like to see the damage undone.
Michael Cohen,
As I read your piece I realized I was actually shaking my head. This is SO easy to rebut by anyone who has been paying attention. And I believe you are VERY aware of this.
Nine unelected people with lifetime jobs can overrule Congress, nullify state laws, and reshape the rights of 330 million Americans—and answer to not one voter!! That is not judicial “independence.” It is extraordinary power with virtually no democratic check. What do you think of that? Do you think this is something that should be left alone?
Finally, FINALLY, an ethics code was adopted in 2023, but it is self-policed and COMPLETELY unenforceable. Lower-court judges can face misconduct complaints; Supreme Court justices cannot. They ALONE decide whether they broke their own rules. Absolutely absurd.
Reform would be “destroying the Court.”? Really? Or is it demanding the bare minimum?: enforceable ethics, real transparency, and 18-year terms so no justice can wield unchecked power for 30 or 40 years. With 53% of Americans viewing the Court unfavorably, pretending the institution needs no accountability is what threatens its legitimacy.
Michael Cohen, please give us a break. Where did your moral compass go?
"But when the political winds change direction, suddenly the rulebook develops a fascinating new interpretation.
The voters’ decision becomes something to obstruct. The president becomes someone to remove. Impeachment gets resurrected. The Twenty-Fifth Amendment gets whispered about. And ideas like expanding the Supreme Court suddenly become less about constitutional restraint and more about finding a way to make the institution produce the desired political outcome."
Michael, the Democrats didn't do this to the Bushes, Ronald Reagan and other Republican Presidents. So, I would have to say it is Trump. Trump has turned this Country upside down starting with DOGE, then removing immigrants-illegal and legal with the misuse of power by ICE. Trump trying to change the way elections are held that have been fair and not overrun with fraud for hundreds of years. Trump still claims he won in 2020 but the election was stolen from him. And let's not forget other things Trump is doing or encouraging to try and ensure the Republicans keep the House and Senate in November like redrawing the districts in red and purple states which is only done every ten years based on the census. So Trump and the Republicans are finding ways to produce the desired political outcome. Trump is going to rallies and insists that the Democrats never win the House or Senate ever again. Trump started a war needlessly. The JCPOA which you and Trump both call it terrible was not terrible. The agreement which the US and five other Countries agreed upon included low levels of enriched uranium and allowing inspections to ensure that they were not capable of having a nuclear weapon. Instead of destroying the agreement without a plausible agreement to replace it, he should have had something to replace it. Then there was January 6, 2021. We know what happened that day. Trump was impeached for that and rigthfully so. Under Trump, we have mostly Republican SCOTUS judges now. SCOTUS should represent all of us not one party or the other. With 9 seats, it is always going to be a little skewed. We should not have a 6-3 but more like a 5-4. And there should be either term limits and/or age limits for them too. So while you attack the Democrats, how about speaking some truth about how bad the Republicans are?????
Déjà vu seems to be ruling my reality lately. It isn't specifically about the Supreme Court. "The Senate invoked the “nuclear option” Nov. 21 [2013] and voted 52-48 to change Senate rules to provide that a simple majority of 51 votes, rather [than] the current 60, will be required to invoke cloture to end filibusters of executive and judicial nominees, with the exception of nominees to the Supreme Court."
https://www.americanbar.org/advocacy/governmental_legislative_work/publications/governmental_affairs_periodicals/washingtonletter/2013/november/filibuster/
I mention this as an example of rule-changing. It was the Democrats who changed the rule, but obviously, if/when the party in power changes, they can take advantage of the rule change. Imagine playing a board or card game. The loser then changes the rule so that next time he will win. Don't get me wrong. Our Supreme Court makes me sick. I really did have respect for them during a time when our government was functional and compassionate. Now, both the administration and the court are dysfunctional; for example, Clarence Thomas was an a**hole from the beginning. Those hearings made me physically ill. And look! He turned out to really be that a**hole. He should be in prison, sharing a cell with the Orange Menace. The slimy grifting in this administration is truly incomprehensible. My opinion is to impeach the Justices rather than enlarge the court. It's as slow as molasses with 9 people. It would only make the decisions take longer. Impeachment is a rule in place. Let's use it. Don't all of you beat me up! 😊
Of course, bipartisanship is the only way our government works. There is no ‘across the aisle’ anymore, and it’s obvious where that has gotten us. Term limits and removing the Electoral College from elections were topics in High School History class back in 1975. When it comes to ethics, I feel that it shouldn’t be necessary. I know that it must be. The corruption in government is unreal. My idealistic self dies a little more with each ethical breach by all of them. Starting with the Orange Menace and going down the line to the Congressional interns. As for my opinion, thank you for the comment. I form my opinion from reliable, I hope, information. I’ll only change if I am shown reliable information that changes it. I don’t have a problem being wrong or apologizing. But I will stick to my guns.
Michael makes some very valid points with respect to the number of Justices. I agree that the Supreme Court should not increase its numbers. I also agree with the stated opinions that we need reforms to eliminate the lawlessness of some of our Supreme Court Justices. One reform might be to see age limits implemented because as we age, our cognitive function changes. Also, as the world changes, ideas and opinions change and we need the court's rulings to change with the times. An alternative to imposing age limits would be to have Justices submit to cognitive-function testing every 5 years. I also believe in term limits for Congress. No one should be allowed to serve in Congress forever.
Sounds like an AI generated response
I ran it through Pangram and GPTZero, and both said that the post was 100% human. I'm not sure how much weight to give AI detectors, but I ran it just for shits and giggles.
Hi Dawn,
I was checking Lauren Smith's post. I thought that was the post that Howard was referring to when he said it sounded like AI. I didn't run Michael's post. Sorry for the confusion. Michael's post is 100% AI according to Pangram, but ZeroGPT says 10.5% AI. The technology is too new to be reliable by my standards. When I search, I skip past AI and Wikipedia, as they are both unreliable. I'll scroll until I find a reliable source. That's why my posts take so long, lol, and are so long!
I think our posts are crossed up! We really are saying the same things. We have different ways of saying them. Although I would put myself, as I am now, on a continuum closer to the center (from the left!!) than where I would place you. Not a judgement, just an observation.
You know what Howard, I'm smart enough that I don't need to use AI for my opinions. I find your comments to be very insulting and I would appreciate it if you would present your opinions without the sarcasm.
Thank you for your apology.
Fair enough. My apologies