He is only one voice of nine. But as was said last night, the GOP now owns every SCOTUS 5–4 decision that favors corporations over people, money over principle, and manipulation over equal protection under the law.

That’s not very reassuring!

We all expected this. The only question for me is whether or not Gorsuch is an improvement on Scalia. My verdict is “don’t count on it”.

I know this was always the expected outcome but it doesn’t make it less upsetting.

I’m not a fan of John Roberts but he has actually done the right thing a few times (upholding Obamacare).

And the Supreme Court is a little different. Now he is part of a team and even if there is a majority on his side he still has to hear shit from the others when he fucks up. And there is the whole concept of the court in the first place. The plan was to give them a job for life so they wouldn’t need to be ideologically pure to pander to their base. He is now free to hopefully follow the Constitution.

And another thing is no normal person has ever heard of him before three months ago. Now he will be a household name. That adds some pressure to not go down in the history books as a monster. He should think about the reputation his name bestows on his children.

Do you really want your daughter to be known as the woman whose father shifted the demand curve for coat-hangers? Hi Emma and Belinda Gorsuch if you are reading this.

@johnpowell thanks for making me chuckle.

Well. He is replacing another conservative judge.

True. He is replacing Scalia, and has a business friendly 1950s approach toward prevailing legalisms. But Gorsuch DOES have the intellectual heft to discern the merits in a powerful argument. There is at least one Justice on the current court embarrassingly deprived of such gifts.

This is just another reason for progressives to do the hard work they have just started to do of organizing at the local level in order to change government from the bottom up the way the Tea Party did. Protests are fine but they are not enough. Federal elections are important but so are local elections. I am sensing a strong backlash against Trump and hope that it will continue and bring about real change. Warren in 2020!

It’ll all be fine. Now, drink your milk and go to bed.

In principal I’m not happy about the confirmation, but mostly because the Republicans stole this one. Nevertheless, Gorsuch is on the Supreme Court now and in practice I don’t expect he’ll be any worse than what we’ve had for the past several years (for whatever that’s worth).

@Darth_Algar something @Brian1946 pointed out to me, which I hadn’t even thought of, is that Gorsuch’s effective replacement of Antonin Scalia will merely maintain the 5–4 ideological split. So as you said, it probably won’t be any worse than what we’ve had for the past several years.