Visualizing the Ideological History of SCOTUS 151
langelgjm writes "An interesting exercise in quantifying and visualizing ideological shifts, the website ScotusScores.com tracks changes in the ideological history of the US Supreme Court from 1937 to 2007. Ideological positions are quantified using Martin-Quinn scores, and the chart highlights the often-bumpy transitions (Thurgood Marshall to Clarence Thomas), as well as tendencies within each Justice's career."
Re:I like visualization (Score:4, Informative)
You can see the often-reported phenomenon of justices generally getting more liberal
No, you can't. Taking the last score for a judge minus the first score for the same judge, 18 judges became bluer by at least 0.05 and 15 became redder by at least 0.05 (six judges changed by less than 0.05 first to last).
Re:SCOTUS should not be driven by ideology. (Score:4, Informative)
The definition of "activist judge"- any judge who rules against the way I want.
Re:somewhat misleading color coding (Score:2, Informative)
Loading the graphic in GIMP, setting a grid, and using the color picker tool, I measured color saturation from both axes:
Starting with the first grid box of the blue axis (all the way to the left), and measuring the color saturation every 5 grid boxes, I got the following values: 98, 73, 43, 17.
Doing the same with red, I got the following values: 100, 73, 41, 16.
The difference seems negligible to me, especially considering some of the reds have less saturation than the corresponding blue.
Re:Going to be more changes soon (Score:3, Informative)
It's a matter of trying to shape reality. If they're "Progressive" they must be in favor of progress. If someone opposed progress, they must be bad.
Not all change is progress.
LK
Re:I like visualization (Score:5, Informative)
> Alot of Progressive Democrats through WW2 and into the 50s were happy to call themselves racist,
> and many Republicans still marginally considered themslves enlightened party-of-Lincoln
> non-racists. There was a big realignment of constiuencies around '68, and this tends to skew
> the definitional "liberal"/"conservative" meanings.
Not exactly. whne public opinon on racism turned against it the Progressives in the media, academy and the arts did a fast pivot and suddenly racism was a conservative/republican thing. The official histories were rewritten and now Republicans have ALWAYS been racists and Democrats have ALWAYS been the enlightened folk. But it ain't so.
To hear modern 'historians' tell it Lincoln was a Democrat, the labels have just swapped somehow.
Nope. Go look at old history. The Solid South was all Democrat until the late 1970's. Seriously, most Southern states didn't elect their first Republican Governor or Senator until then. All those bigots you see in the grainy newsreels turning water hoses and dogs on people, yup every last one of them was a Democrat.
Democrats hated Lincoln (the first Republican POTUS) even more than that hate Bush (the most recent Republican POTUS). So from Lincoln to Bush the Republicans have a pretty good record on the race issue. Debate all you want about other aspects of the Bush record but the diversity of his administration is not really debatable. Meanwhile Bill Clinton was hailed as the 'first black president' at the time but had a pretty darned monochome group of people around him.
And at this point the doubters will bring up Nixon and his "Southern Strategy." No. Total myth. Nixon was many bad things, stupid wasn't one of them. Go hit wikipedia and examine the election returns. Note the third candidate. Ok, remember that southern bigots HATED Republicans. Hated with a white hot hate that would never die. (the idiots dying off was the way it ended as things turned out) So you are a Southern Yellow Dog Democrat and you have McGovern, Nixon and Wallace to pick from. Oh yea, you are going to pick Nixon. Riight. We are to believe Nixon thought he could out bigot George Wallace without alienating the northern Republicans.
Note that there is ONE Kleagle of the Klan seated in the US Congress. He is not a Republican.
This should be enough to put the "Republicans are racists" myth is put in question. (It can't be 'debunked' in a slashdot post, all I can hope for is to plant some seeds of doubt. It is up to YOU to follow up and learn the Truth for yourself.) Now lets examine the other side a bit more.
As noted above, the south was almost enturely Southern Democrats. But the racism of the Democratic Party was by no means a Southern thang. It permeates the entire 'Progressive' project. Go read Jonah Goldberg's _Liberal Fascism_ to get a full exploration of the connection between today's Democratic Party, the old Progressive movement, the Communists AND the Fascists and Nazis. Yes, including the noxious ideas on race.
In this space lets let one example serve to get the curious asking questions about the accuracy of the history they have been taught. Take Hillary Clinton's 'hero' Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood. Go dig into this central figure of the Progressive movement a bit. Lets just say it isn't an accident most of their efforts were (and still are) concentrated in the areas with large 'ethnic' populations. Crazy bitch was quite open (as most of the early Progressives were) about her notions regarding culling out the fast breeding but inferior breeds.
Re:the Constitution is a Treaty (Score:3, Informative)
On what grounds do you make this claim?
The Constitution does not grant the Congress an explicitly enumerated power to regulate marriage.