Oh dudes you are so screwed if they rule in favor of the 2/3.

I live in California where our Republican minority has taken the economy hostage through the 2/3 budget vote.

I pray for you.

Stop it! Stop using the fucking phrase "At the end of the day..." It is the most useless words strung together. Whenever you say it, the next words out of your damn mouth will add nothing to the conversation.

And am I right that the argument is "You can't make this call until the legislation passes. You have to let it pass and wait for something unconstitutional to happen."

Oh yep, they are.

@ 2, saying or writing "words strung together" in place of "phrase" is worse than "At the end of the day" IMO.

I used phrase! But yes, that is wonky wording on my part. I do that a lot, but Jesus Christ I think I'm up to about 10 times Miss Hart has used the damn phrase.

She made one point on Justiciability and refuses to acknowledge any other part of it. "At the end of the day this whole thing boils down to Justiciability."

Which is both, incorrect and adds nothing!

"What if the voters enacted a crazy law that requires Santa Claus's signature to raise revenue?"

Bet Eyman is kicking himself for not thinking of that one in the first place.

@ 5, sorry, somehow I overlooked that you used the word "phrase."

I would've loved some expansion on the veto thing mentioned at the end.

Overturning a veto isn't supposed to be easy and the 2/3rds law was written for extreme clashes in policy.

It implies that making 2/3rds the norm was never intended.

@4: But he provides such great entertainment value. The best part of the proceeding was Paul Lawrence tearing into Justice "BIAW" Johnson like a con law prof stomping on the feeble arguments of an insolent 1L.

"The elephant in the room is the voters."

Is the Supreme Court calling us fat?

Rather than "...once again a number of justices seemed to content to weasel out ...", you could also say they are trying to exercise judicial restraint. There's some sort of latin legal phrase about "decide the minimum/obvious", or something like that, which many judges follow. Just because they may feel that I-1053 is unconstitutional, doesn't mean they can step outside the boundaries of the system.

"I mean it... if the justices pull this justiciability bullshit again I quit. Because it means everything I've worked for these past nine years has been a total fucking waste of time, so I'll just go out and make some real money for a change, and the rest of the state can go fuck itself."

Promises promises...

@12 It's not judicial constraint to craft a loophole in which a piece of legislation can never ever be challenged.

Everyone knows that only Santa Claus gets to decide on funding the Billionaires Tunnel.

The elves votes don't matter. Santa uses them, shredded, to keep his flying reindeer warm.

So how come the 2/3 majority stuff was never actually PASSED by a 2/3 majority? Or is hypocrisy fine?

I didn't expect them to give the case as much serious consideration as they did, so I was pleased to listen to the arguments. And I could easily see Justice Gonzalez provide the fifth vote.

Remember that this court has ducked three times, and then watch again. I thought it was almost hopeful!

As to what @13 says about what Goldy said: We could just require a 2/3 vote to fund roads in counties which don't pull their own weight. Which would let King and Snohomish basically force Eastern Washington to pull their own weight.

Hah, like that will ever happen. They like their subsidies.

If the legislature decided to violate I-1053 - and thus their oath of office - how exactly would that work?

Wouldn't declaring a tax increase as approved with 51% of the vote be basically the same as declaring it approved with 1% of the vote (as far as I-1053 is concerned)? Can the legislature just deem something as passed, regardless of the vote count?

I'm not playing devil's advocate here - I'm asking how it would work procedurally.

Free Lunch,

The presiding officer in either house can make a parliamentary ruling that something passed or failed. So, in the state senate, for example, the Lieutenant Governor (the senate's presiding officer) could declare a revenue bill to have passed by majority rules, ignoring 1053. Oddly, the AG's rep today argued that the supremes shouldn't touch this case unless the legislature first did exactly this. A peculiar suggestion, insofar as the AG's job is to defend the state's laws, including its initiatives.

Ssh, @19, that might make them do their jobs.

@15, because it didn't exist until it was passed. Duh.

@18, I don't think the Leg could legally pass something by a majority vote if the law was they needed a supermajority. And they wouldn't (and didn't) try to do so.

Sometimes you just have to bootstrap justiciability. If memory serves -- and it probably doesn't -- Bill Brennan had to convince the US Supreme Court to do some bootstrapping to reach the merits in Baker v. Carr (the "one person, one vote" legislative apportionment case). But of course, US Supreme Court justices have life tenure (barring impeachment and conviction) and aren't constantly looking over their shoulders to see whether the electorate is going to toss them out on their asses in the next election if they're unhappy with a decision. That, I think, was the real elephant in the courtroom.