Why are you judges so sensitive about what they say when they have life tenure?
Scalia says everything he has to say is in the opinions, and it's fine for people to "paw over" the opinions, but he doesn't need to be there while us animals do that.
And here he is on cameras in the Supreme Court:
Basically, his point is the public would get "educated" if they'd look at the video the right way, which is watch all of the arguments on all of the cases, including all the really boring things about ERISA and so forth. But since the video would end up in edited sound bites, that would not be educational, and therefore we shouldn't be allowed to get our hands — should I say paws? — on it.
My position, you may remember, is that video would impose some accountability on the Justices, who do, as Lamb noted, have life tenure and may very well stay beyond the point of competency. Obviously, the written opinions aren't much good in this regard, since the Justices have excellent help writing the opinions.
"We believe the public interest is best served by live television coverage of this particular oral argument," Lamb wrote. "It is a case which will affect every American's life, our economy, and will certainly be an issue in the upcoming presidential campaign."
Lamb added that "a five-and-a-half hour argument begs for camera coverage." He said that "interested citizens would be understandably challeged to adequately follow audio-only coverage of an event of this length with all the justices and various counsel participating."
Justice Antonin Scalia criticized the idea of televised Supreme Court proceedings during a recent appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee. "For every ten people who sat through our proceedings, gavel to gavel, there would be ten thousand who would see nothing but a 30 second takeout from one of the proceedings" he said, "which I guarantee you would not be representative of what we do." Scalia added that such soundbites would leave viewers with "a misimpression" of Supreme Court operations.
We already have the soundbites! And audio clips are played on radio and TV all the time. And we have text transcripts, from which we select quotes. So what is Scalia talking about? Perhaps it's that more people will pay attention if there is video, but how dare he hold his position of power and argue that his work should be monitored by fewer people? I think the real reason is that the Justices don't want us to see how they look as the sit for hours listening to arguments. They'd look grumpy and drowsy and puffy and wrinkly. They'd have to wear makeup. But even with makeup, they'd be far less camera-ready than the talking heads we're used to seeing on camera.
I've blogged a few times about the Supreme Court going on TV:
In "Where is the 9,000-foot cow?"/"What do you think about Satan?"/"What did James Madison think about video games?," I disagreed with Justice Ginsburg who noted some weird questions that Justices have asked at oral arguments and used them as a reason to exclude TV. Yeah, we'd be able to make hilarious YouTube videos splicing together things that sound ridiculous ripped out of context. But it's important in America to make fun of people who wield power. If you can't take it, you don't deserve the power. Judges may like us to think that they merely humbly channel the power that inheres in the law, so there's no point in looking at them as if they have a will of their own. We'll be the judge of that.
In "Why Congress should impose TV cameras on the Supreme Court," I said I thought TV cameras would put healthy pressure on the Justices who cling to their positions — which they hold for life under the Constitution — as they advance into old age.
So, I've been in favor of Supreme Court TV for a long time. Is it a good idea for the first televised argument to be the most momentous one? I'd say no, which is why I would recommend that the Court bring the cameras in now and make video the norm, before the big 5-and-a-half-hour Obamacare extravaganza.
Al Gore concession in 2000 election Bill Clinton 1987 press conference where he says he will not be a candidate in 1988 Barack Obama 2004 convention speech George W. Bush announcing the capture of Saddam Hussein Ronald Reagan and Gorbachev summit in late 1987. Clarence Thomas testifying that he did not watch Anita Hill testifying. Bill Clinton grand jury testimony Dan Quayle and Murphy Brown Medal of Freedom Award to Margaret Thatcher George H.W. Bush inviting Dana Carvey to the White House where he impersonates Bush 1992
It's the third party debate, but only Ralph Nader and Chuck Baldwin are showing up. No Bob Barr or Cynthia McKinney. Quick, can you name all their parties? Anyway, it's on C-Span2 at 9 ET.
We were watching a brief clip yesterday, but here's the longer version, courtesy of Hot Air. Watch the whole thing. A man named Frank asks a question about law school credentials that sets Biden off. Biden spews a list of claimed achievements — some of which turn out to be false — and — this is I want to focus on — concludes with a windy oration about how what this country needs is a Democrat with great powers of oration.
I'm picturing the young Barack Obama, watching this on C-SPAN and a light bulb goes on over his head:
Here's the text of that last part:
It seems to me if you can speak, you're at a liability in the Democratic Party anymore. It seems to me you've all become heartless technocrats. It seems to me that you forget that what happens is we've never as a party, we have never as a party moved this nation by 14-point position papers and 9-point programs.
It seems that when we got involved in the civil rights movement, Frank, nobody asked Martin Luther King what his legislative agenda was. He marched to change attitudes. When the women's movement started, it had not moved with a constitutional amendment. They marched to change attitudes.
And this party better understand full well that it's about time that we change our attitude and we begin to change the attitudes of Americans about what their responsibilities are to the poor, about what their responsibilities are to other people, and about what our responsibility in the world is, and that requires changing attitudes.
But Frank, I promise you'll see my 15-point plans and 19-point position papers and you'll be able to make a judgment when Gary Hart and I stand there — who knows more about foreign policy, Gary or me? — and when you see that Dick Gephardt and I stand there, you'll be able to make a judges about whether Dick Gephardt or I know more about economic policy.
But ultimately, Frank, this country needs a leader, and leaders change attitudes about people, and it's the ironic twist that in the wake of Ronald Reagan that the only one thing he knew how to do was the one thing that is now being... the currency of which is in fact now being devalued so much.
Maybe this was the moment when Barack Obama first envisioned his path to the presidency, first saw how he might be the one who could, like Ronald Reagan and Martin Luther King, use the power of speech to change attitudes.
That C-SPAN clip was recorded on April 3, 1987, and in September of 1987, there was some conspicuous apologizing for the factual misstatements he made. The chronology works: Obama entered law school one year later, in the fall of 1988.
Here was Biden, prescribing what the party needed but crumpling when challenged about his law school — the solid but not prestigious Syracuse University College of Law. Obama then went to Harvard, a law school no one can dare disrespect, where he would pick up the credentials that would hush the Franks of this world.
In the fall of 1988, Obama saw the Democratic Party lose with a man who looked for all the world like the heartless technocrat Biden had warned us about:
Did Biden inspire Obama back in in 1987-88? Maybe Biden knew he did, and he was thinking about that — thinking about himself — when he enthused awkwardly about "the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy."
Now, Obama enfolds him, and everything comes full circle. The planets align. What was once so wrong is now all right.
ADDED: A commenter doubts that Obama would have seen this video back in 1987. Did people sit around watching C-SPAN back then? I remember the phenomenon of the "C-SPAN junkie" from the 80s. Don't you think Obama is the kind of person who'd have watched "The Road to the White House," that endless feed of presidential campaign events, which was already on in those days? Here's a NYT article by Andrew Rosenthal from October 1987:
C-SPAN's Spotlight Brings Quiet Corners of Campaigning Into View
Bruce Babbitt subscribed to it to help him learn how to look better on television. Tom Rath, adviser to Senator Bob Dole in New Hampshire, uses it to observe campaign rivals with a degree of intimacy unheard of in previous elections. And it played an important role in the disintegration of Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr.'s campaign.
The Washington-based Cable Satellite Public Affairs Network, once known primarily as ''the network that dares to be boring,'' has found new prominence and respect in the 1988 Presidential election season.
C-SPAN still is not considered so influential on the course of the campaign as newspapers and the major networks. But some political operatives believe its blanket coverage has started to change the rules of campaigning, bringing television into areas once shielded from general view and exposing candidates to minute analysis by their opponents and the press....
The power of C-SPAN was dramatically illustrated last month toward the end of Mr. Biden's campaign. Nan Gibson, C-SPAN's press coordinator, says that after publication of newspaper articles about a speech in which the Senator had lifted the family history of a British politician, she received scores of calls from reporters interested in the network's tape of Mr. Biden's remarks.
The major networks' news programs televised the C-SPAN tape in their coverage of the story, and another C-SPAN tape contributed to a subsequent Newsweek article that told of how Mr. Biden, at a New Hampshire campaign event, had misstated his academic record.
''Reporters are using us as a video archive,'' Ms. Gibson said. ''They can't be everywhere at once, so they can watch from here.''...
The network ... has greatly expanded its campaign reporting, mostly through a weekly program, ''Road to the White House,'' on which C-SPAN's political editor, Carl M. Rutan, is host....
''C-SPAN brings everything that the candidates are doing into the people's living rooms,'' said Phil Roeder, executive director of the Iowa Democratic Party. ''It's the high-tech version of retail politics,'' the style of one-on-one personalized campaigning deemed mandatory for success in Iowa and New Hampshire.....
At small campaign events, C-SPAN crews attach a wireless microphone to the candidate's clothing and use a shotgun microphone to reach everyone else. The object, Mr. Rutan said, is to record every word the candidate says and every gesture he makes as he shakes hands, kisses babies and drinks coffee....
But the presence of C-SPAN cameras, political operatives said, also forces candidates to be more careful about such things as efforts to tailor their remarks for different parts of the country. Mr. Rutan, C-SPAN's political editor, said that after Mr. Biden's experience, campaign aides were more wary.
''In the past, candidates have been able to go where they want and maybe stretch the truth just a little bit,'' he said. ''Suddenly what they say in a small Iowa town is on the record, just as if they had said it at the National Press Club in Washington.''
In 1987, C-SPAN was teaching some crucial lessons about the future of political campaigning, lessons taught at Joe Biden's expense, and I'll bet Obama was watching, learning, and — for Joe Biden — empathizing.
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