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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 27, 2026

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Sometimes agreeing with red judges on small issues or non-partisan issues does not mean they are unbiased. You don’t need to make up the law in every case to be a partisan hack. This is akin to saying El Chapo is a good guy because he’s a good father.

If you’re going to accuse me of being biased then atleast show me a case where a conservative judge ruled in a conservative way contra the law? Hopefully they do that partially in the birthright case but I have my doubts.

I am not going to justify lying. No it is not better when judges lie to the public. If the are acting as Senators I would rather they just say I have power and I’m fucking you than claim some moral high ground that they wrote a 100 page essay to say their not fucking me.

I respect the judge who said the first amendment doesn’t apply in her courtroom. Pure I have power. I get to choose the rules. I don’t give a shit about the constitution and you’re going to jail. It’s honest. No 100 page opinion why she’s doing good work. Just pure it’s the state of NY and I win and you lose here.

Sometimes agreeing with red judges on small issues or non-partisan issues does not mean they are unbiased. You don’t need to make up the law in every case to be a partisan hack.

So because you can't win, and because you feel hurt that "the other guys did it first" (which btw is debatable really) so you want to feel justified loading your own partisan hacks on the court?

This is akin to saying El Chapo is a good guy because he’s a good father.

There are always differences in degrees. And that's just a bad analogy in general. Being a good father is some evidence of being a good guy, but so is being a drug kingpin, but those two things live in different moral categories and can be mutually exclusive. When I say a judge sometimes agrees with the other side, that is not unrelated to the question of judicial bias. It is at least some evidence about how the judge has less or more bias.

If you’re going to accuse me of being biased then atleast show me a case where a conservative judge ruled in a conservative way contra the law? Hopefully they do that partially in the birthright case but I have my doubts.

"Contra the law" is doing a lot of work. It's constitutional law, who would say they are giving an opinion against the law? Again, the one who wins will "defines" what the law means (at least until it's reversed)(and then maybe reversed again). If you take "affirmative action" as your "contra the law", damn liberals are going to cry foul about "Bush v Gore" forever. You get to set the goalpost and choose what's right based on your criteria. That's already legislating from your own personal bench.

I am not going to justify lying. No it is not better when judges lie to the public. If the are acting as Senators I would rather they just say I have power and I’m fucking you than claim some moral high ground that they wrote a 100 page essay to say their not fucking me.

Look man, the liberals can just say the same thing about you in reversed. From my perspective, the red judges are lying about "originalism" and "textualism" anyway. And certainly from the perspective of the blues, the red judges are also claiming "some moral high ground that they wrote a 100 page essay to say their not fucking [the blues]". Your accusation of interpretive word games flow both ways. Make the law and constitution less ambiguous and justices won't be able to interpret their way out of ambiguities.

I respect the judge who said the first amendment doesn’t apply in her courtroom. Pure I have power. I get to choose the rules. I don’t give a shit about the constitution and you’re going to jail. It’s honest. No 100 page opinion why she’s doing good work. Just pure it’s the state of NY and I win and you lose here.

Ok, I see, so you're more angry at what you call "lying". You rather have people give it to you in simple terms you understand "I like this so I rule in its favor, I don't like this so I rule against its favor".

I will now step back from my motte of "I really would rather people bother to lie than to not lie at all" because that was bad on my part to lead down this confusing conversation. I will step back to the bailey of "enough people believe in a lie then it becomes truth (and maybe even law)". You can load all the partisan hacks you want to get the short term rulings you want, but you definitely won't win the hearts and minds of people long term. And they will get their freedom and powers back at some point, and then what you achieved will be gone as well. And thankfully within the system of the US, this means the pendulum swings faster.

And look, what I said above stands for the blues too you know. I'm sure from your perspective the partisan hacks of the blues made plenty of short term disastrous rulings that need reversed.

The real hard work is to make laws that more and more agree with and unambiguous for judges to rule with, which means debate, which means opinions, which mean rulings that get reversed. Wow life is messy, who knew.

No. I want conservatives to be the same as liberals. They turn the SC into a fantasy world or a Senate when they want to. I want the same benefits that liberals have. When they want gay marriage they make up law. When they want Roe they make up law.

Nothing you say is going to convince me that they’re not all liberal hacks with no respect for the law. I don’t care if they’re 160 IQ and write eloquent opinions or 85 IQ and just say they did something because they wanted to. To quote The Office, “It’s the same Picture”. A prostitute is still a prostitute whether she’s giving $10 hand jobs or getting $500k a night. A partisan hack is well Ruth Ginsburg because she wrote law which is NOT her job.

And Yes making up law when you control the SC is beneficial to your side. I’m down with that since we own the court now.

At this point, you should drop the language about judicial restraint, judicial bias, and respect for the law. Your position from my understanding is: “Blues used the Court as a political weapon, so I want Reds to use it as a political weapon too.” That may be honest, but it is not a rule-of-law position, it's just power politics.

The important distinction is between “this is bad legal theory” vs “legal theory does not matter.” You can think Roe or Obergefell were badly reasoned, yet that doesn't have to lead right away to "judges should openly act like partisan legislators when our side controls the Court". Once you say “we own the Court now,” you have basically accepted the premise that the Court is just another legislature. And if that is true, then you have no principled objection when blue judges do the same thing next time, or when blues try to pack the Court.

Roe is actually a useful example here. Even if it helped liberals for decades, that was, as it turns out, temporary. Roe made the conflict more bitter, less settled, and more legitimacy-destroying. Your version of judicial nihilism would create the same problem in reverse.

So I understand the impulse for revenge, but that is what it is: revenge. It is not really about the Constitution or the rule of law anymore. It is about using the Court as a weapon because you believe the other side did it first. But there will always be people to your left and to your right, and no faction gets to bludgeon everyone else forever because that is not a stable or decent way to run a constitutional system.

It’s game theory. I prefer both sides follow the letter of the law. Once one side has defected the optimal strategy is also to defect.

Sub-optimal outcome but I do not believe the left has acted in good faith.