Re: [OT] Our next prime minister will be Mark Carney

On 3/10/2025 3:30 PM, Rhino wrote:

On 2025-03-10 3:17 PM, BTR1701 wrote:

On Mar 10, 2025 at 12:06:16 PM PDT, "Rhino" <no_offline_contact@example.com>
wrote:
>

On 2025-03-10 1:28 PM, BTR1701 wrote:

  On Mar 10, 2025 at 6:05:28 AM PDT, "Rhino" <no_offline_contact@example.com>
  wrote:

  The Liberal leadership convention has finally chosen a new leader and,
  to the shock of almost no one, Mark Carney is the winner. (He got 86% of
  the votes from Liberal Party members, runner up Chrystia Freeland got
  less than 10%.) That means he will become our next prime minister as
  soon as Trudeau formally steps down, which is expected in the next few
  days.
>
  Carney's term as PM may well be rather brief. He's widely expected to
  call an election in the next few weeks, hoping to use a renewed interest
  in the Liberal Party to win. I sincerely hope that voters are not
  fooled: the Liberals have only put lipstick on the pig that is their
  party and will maintain all the same policies as under Trudeau with the
  exception of the much-despised carbon tax. But Carney is even more
  fanatical about Net Zero than Trudeau was and has promised to replace
  the carbon tax with something even more effective - i.e. even more
  destructive of the Canadian economy - so that we can meet his carbon
  reduction goals.
>
  But at least the odious Justin Trudeau is finally on his way out so
  we'll be spared having to endure his performative virtue-signalling.
>
  By the way, Carney has never stood for elected office before and has no
  seat in Parliament, meaning he will not actually be able to participate
  in parliamentary sessions directly. He'll have to delegate others in his
  cabinet to do the things that a prime minister usually does. There's
  precedent for this though so procedures are in place.

  Most people don't know that our Speaker of the House-- third in line to the
  presidency-- doesn't have to be a member of Congress. It's a long- standing
  tradition that the Speaker is elected from within the ranks of Congress, but
  there's no legal or constitutional requirement that he/she has to be a
member.
  They could literally elect anyone if they have the votes to do it, although
  one assumes whomever they elect would have to meet the qualifications for
the
  presidency since they would be in the line of succession.

That's interesting; I never knew that. It reminds me that I have a
similar question I've been meaning to ask for a long time: do Supreme
Court Justices have to have experience as lower court judges? Do they
even have to have law degrees? I wonder if a President could propose
someone that is just very well regarded as a wise man or woman? Could
the Senate confirm such a person or are their laws that would prevent it?

>
The president can nominate anyone as a justice. They don't need to be former
judges or justices or even lawyers. The president could nominate the White
House janitor to the Supreme Court and if he could pass Senate confirmation,
he'd be a SCOTUS justice.

 Awesome! I really like that there is no formal - and therefore artificial/arbitrary - restrictions on who can be chosen for SCOTUS. Sometimes, you encounter a person that is just plain wise who has no formal qualifications. I think someone like that could do a terrific job in the Supreme Court by simply applying common sense.
 I cringed when Justice Jackson couldn't/wouldn't answer the question "what is a woman" in a straightforward way but claimed it to be a complex question. She's the exact OPPOSITE of the kind of person who should be a Justice.
...

I don't know what context she was asked in, but it *IS* a complex question, with many arbitrary aspects that arise when you try to legislate an answer.  While most everyone agrees with easy proclamations such as "Men shouldn't compete in women's sports", actually rendering one in legal text is fraught with definitional potholes.