Age of Supreme Court Justices:
Five conservatives: Avg. age 61, Median age 63
Four liberals: Avg. age 71, Median age 71
You may think that #Kavanaugh replacing Kennedy (who was considered the "swing vote" on the Supreme Court) will result in a major shift to the right. Yet it's worth noting that Kennedy - in the courts last term that ended in June - voted consistently with conservatives /1
/2
The court made 63 decisions in its last term. Of those, 19 were 5-4 rulings. "Swing vote" Kennedy voted with conservatives (Roberts, Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch) 14 times. He voted with the liberal justices (RBG. Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan) zero times (SacBee analysis) ##
Some historians say this will be the most conservative Supreme Court since the 1930s - when justices drove Franklin D. Roosevelt crazy w/their steady opposition to his New Deal programs. FDR tried to "pack the court - expand it beynd nine members, which met with howls of protest
Philosophically speaking, there are now five votes that could view things like Roe v. Wade, affirmative action and certain rights of criminal defendants as unconstitutional (among other things)

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More from @WestWingReport

Oct 9, 2018
Working on a new project concerning the electoral college. Worth remembering how delusional @realDonaldTrump is about his win. He claimed it was a “landslide,” in fact, he boasted in a Feb. 2017 news conference, it was “the biggest electoral college win since Ronald Reagan.” /1
/2
.@RealDonaldTrump got 306 electoral votes, the biggest EV win in (drumroll) 4 years. Not since Obama way back in 2012 has a POTUS racked up so many EVs. Obama got 332. In 2008? 365. So if Trump calls his 306 a “landslide,” what does he call Obama’s bigger back-to-back margins?
/3
In percentage terms, Trump won 57% of the electoral college, ranking 46th out of 58 elections. In terms of popular vote margin, he ranks 47th out of the last 49 elections. Yet there are those who automatically believe - and never question - his claims of a "landslide" ##
Read 4 tweets
Oct 7, 2018
On This Day, 1942: President Roosevelt vowed to try Nazis for war crimes. Learning of atrocities against Jews in Nazi-controlled Europe—the Holocaust—FDR said “the ringleaders responsible for organized murder” would be held accountable /1
Roosevelt died before World War II ended, of course, but the Nuremberg Trials—a series of military tribunals—prosecuted 22 top Nazi officials. Roosevelt was later criticized by some for not doing more to stop the direct extermination of Jews /2
/3
Critics said FDR could have bombed railroad tracks that led to death camps, but FDR thought the fastest way to stop the Holocaust was to win the war as quickly as possible—by bombing Germany itself (Here: reconaissance photo of Auschwitz w/smoke from burning bodies)
Read 5 tweets
Oct 1, 2018
A commander-in-chief alright: On this day in 1794, President Washington led troops into the field - to put down the so-called "Whiskey Rebellion" - an uprising by Pennsylvania farmers who refused to pay a tax on whiskey /1
/2
The Whiskey Rebellion showed the power and ability of the new federal government to suppress violent resistance to its laws.
Arguably the greatest former president America has ever had - Jimmy Carter - was born on this day in 1924. He was the 39th president, serving between 1977-81. Naval Academy grad, engineering officer on a nuclear submarine, Georgia Gov., Nobel Peace Prize winner, humanitarian /1
Read 7 tweets
Sep 27, 2018
With war looming in Europe, Pres. Roosevelt wrote to Adolf Hitler on this day in 1938, to express concern about Nazi threats to seize a part of Czechoslovakia called the Sudentenland. Hitler publicly ridiculed FDR, but soon grabbed the Sudentenland -and then Czechoslovakia itself
Had Lee Harvey Oswald been able to get a visa to travel to either Cuba or the Soviet Union in the Fall of 1963, he would not have been in Dallas on Nov. 22. Here: his application - on this day in 1963 - to visit Cuba, which was rejected by the Castro regime
On This Day, 1964: Ten months after President Kennedy's assassination, the Warren Commission released its 889-page report to the American people. It said that a lone gunman, 24-year old Lee Harvey Oswald, was solely responsible for the president's murder /1
Read 4 tweets
Sep 25, 2018
On This Day, 1894: Grover Cleveland pardoned bigamists, adulterers and polygamists. The move was directed at Mormons who had previously engaged in such activity—considered illegal by the U.S. government
Headlines This Day, 1957. President Eisehower's respomse to efforts by officials in Arkansas to maintain segregation
Read 5 tweets
Sep 25, 2018
Big day on the history front. We'll start in 1789, when President Washington signed the Judiciary Act—creating the Federal Court system. Article III of the Constitution established a Supreme Court, but the authority to create lower federal courts was left to Congress /1
The Judiciary Act established not only the structure and jurisdiction of the federal court system, but also created the position of attorney general.
"Black Friday" stained the reputation of Ulysses S. Grant - thanks to his brother-in-law, who teamed up with two men to corner the gold market. They forced prices up, but when the president found out, he ordered the Treasury to sell the government's gold - causing prices to crash
Read 11 tweets

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