Supreme Court Religions

The Supreme Court formally begins its session on October 5th. Due to a special session, Justice Sonia Sotomayor has already taken her place as the 112th Supreme Court Justice. Of the nine Justices, six are Catholic, two are Jewish and one is Protestant. In fact, the Protestant Justice, John Paul Stevens, is also the oldest, and is rumored to be ready to step down, so it’s possible a year from now the Supreme Court could consist of only Catholic and Jewish Justices.

For a list of Supreme Court Justices through history and more, visit the iWeblists website.

Longest Serving Senators

With the death of Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, it’s interesting to note that he was the third longest serving senator. It’s also interesting to note that the two serving longer are both recent senators, one still serving.

Robert Byrd of West Virginia is still serving. He joined the senate in 1959 and has been serving for over 50 years.

Strom Thurmond of South Carolina served in the senate for almost 47 1/2 years, serving until January, 2003. He was 100 years old when he retired. He died later that year.

Ted Kennedy became a senator in 1962 and had been a senator for just under 47 years.

Here are more facts about the current senate, including each senator’s first year in office.

Longest-Serving Senators

I read frequently that Ted Stevens had been the longest continuously serving Republican Senator in history. So for now, who is the oldest and longest running of each party?

Stevens served from 12/24/68 to 1/3/09, for a total of just over 40 years.

At this point, there are three Democratic Senators that have served longer than that. Robert Byrd of West Virginia has served longest, since 1959. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts has served since 1962 and Daniel Inouye of Hawaii has served since 1963. The longest-serving Republican Senator currently in office is Dick Lugar from Indiana, who has served since 1977.

The oldest Senator is Robert Byrd, born in 1917, over 90 years old. The oldest Republican is the fifth oldest Senator. That’s Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, born in 1930.

Here’s a link to more information about the current Senate. And here’s a link for other useful lists on a variety of topics.

House of Representatives – By State

There are 54 new Congresspeople in the House of Representatives. The following 20 states didn’t have any changes in their representatives:

• Alaska (1 representative)
• Arkansas (4)
• Delaware (1)
• Georgia (13)
• Hawaii (2)
• Indiana (9)
• Iowa (5)
• Massachusetts (10) (All Democrats)
• Montana (1)
• Nebraska (3)
• New Hampshire (2)
• North Dakota (1)
• Oklahoma (5)
• Rhode Island (2)
• South Carolina (6)
• South Dakota (1)
• Vermont (1)
• Washington (9)
• West Virginia (3)
• Wisconsin (8 )

California’s 4th district had two changes, though the party was the same, and other than that, the remaining 52 districts reelected the incumbent.

In addition to California, Kentucky, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Oregon, Tennessee, Utah and Wyoming had new people, but the parties remained the same. So that means that 29 of 50 states look exactly the same by party.

Of the 54 new representatives, 33 are Democrats and 21 are Republicans:

• 26 switched from Republican to Democrat
• 5 switched from Democrat to Republican
• 17 stayed Republican
• 6 stayed Democrat

New Mexico has three seats, and all of them are newly elected, with two seats changed from Republican to Democrat.

Here’s a list of the 2009-2010 House of Representatives.

Election Facts

Of the 50 states plus The District of Columbia, only two states split their electoral votes: Nebraska and Maine. All other states are winner-take all. Nebraska this year awarded one vote to Obama and four to McCain.  This is the first year in 44 years that Nebraska has awarded an electoral vote to a Democrat.  It is also the first year Nebraska’s votes were actually split. Electoral Votes per State are here.

President-Elect Obama will be facing difficult odds in 2012. The last time that voters re-elected three consecutive presidents to a second term was all the way back in 1820, when James Monroe was elected to a second term after two terms for Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.

John McCain had the odds against him in this election. The last time a President left office and was succeeded by a member of his own party was when Ronald Reagan was succeeded by George H. W. Bush. Before that, we go all the way back to the 1928 election, when Herbert Hoover succeeded Calvin Coolidge.

More Presidential facts.

Supreme Court Appointments

Now that a Democrat is going to be President for at least four years, the issue of Supreme Court appointments changes. So which Supreme Court Justices may retire over the course of the next four years?

The oldest Supreme Court Justice is John Paul Stevens, born in 1920. Even though he was appointed by President Ford, he’s one of the more liberal Justices on the court. Second oldest is Ruth Bader Ginsburg, born in 1933 and appointed by President Clinton. Anthony Kennedy and Antonin Scalia were both born in 1936.

The longest-serving Justice is John Paul Stevens, at 33 years, followed by Antonin Scalia at 22 years and Anthony Kennedy at 20 years.

More information about the current Supreme Court and Justices throughout history.

Expelled Senators

With Senator Ted Stevens’ conviction yesterday, and that fact that he continues to run to keep his Senate seat, the question arises: How many Senators have been expelled from the Senate? It takes a two thirds vote of the Senate to expel a Senator. This has been done 15 times, but not a single Senator has been expelled since 1862. 14 of the 15 were expelled for supported the Confederates. William Blount was the 15th, expelled in 1797 for treason.

Since 1862, expulsion proceedings were begun for 13 Senators, the most recent being Harrison Williams, Democrat of New Jersey in 1982 for involvement with Abscam, and Robert Packwood, Republican of Oregon in 1995, for sexual misconduct. Both resigned.

Here is more information about the current Senate and Senators.

Vice Presidents Who Became Presidents

There is some concern out there about the possibility that Sarah Palin may become the next President due to unfortunate circumstances. So how often has that happened?

There have actually been 14 Vice Presidents who became President. In five cases, the Vice President was elected after the President’s term ended. (Interestingly, prior to 1988 when George H.W. Bush was elected, the last time this occured was in 1836.) In four cases, the President was assassinated, in another four cases, the President died of natural causes, and in one case the President resigned.

In addition, there had been some discussion about the possibility of Sarah Palin resigning from the Republican ticket for President. That has only happened once in modern times. The one case of a Vice Presidential candidate dropping out of the race was in 1972, when Thomas Eagleton withdrew as the Democratic nominee with George McGovern, replaced by Sargent Shriver. Eagleton’s resignation from the ticket was related to questions about his mental health. Of course, McGovern lost the election to Richard Nixon.

For interesting lists about Presidents and the U.S. Government, visit the iWeblists US Government pages.

#	Vice Pres.	Method of Succession	Prior President	Year
1	John Adams	Elected	George Washington	1789
2	Thomas Jefferson	Elected	John Adams	1797
3	Martin Van Buren	Elected	Andrew Jackson	1836
4	John Tyler	Death	William Henry Harrison	1841
5	Millard Fillmore	Death	Zachary Taylor	1850
6	Andrew Johnson	Assassination	Abraham Lincoln	1865
7	Chester Arthur	Assassination	James Garfield	1881
8	Theodore Roosevelt	Assassination	William McKinley	1901
9	Calvin Coolidge	Death	Warren Harding	1923
10	Harry Truman	Death	Franklin Roosevelt	1945
11	Lyndon Johnson	Assassination	John F. Kennedy	1963
12	Richard Nixon	Elected	Served under Dwight Eisenhower (1953-1961)	1968
13	Gerald Ford	Resignation	Richard Nixon	1974
14	George H.W. Bush	Elected	Ronald Reagan	1988

Presidential Election “Firsts”

Of course everyone knows that Barak Obama is the first African American Presidential nominee from a major party, and that Sarah Palin is the first female Vice Presidential nominee from the Republican party.

There are some other interesting facts. While not firsts, they haven’t happened in a long time. For example, this is the first election since 1952 that the existing President or Vice President wasn’t running for election. In 1952, Eisenhower ran against Stevenson. During that election, Truman was President and Alben Barkley was Vice President. Since then, the existing President or Vice President was always a nominee. Here are more details about Presidential Tickets.

Another “recent first” is that the last time a current Senator was elected President – which will almost surely happen in 2008 – was back in 1960, when John F. Kennedy was elected President.

Since 1900, the Democratic Party has won 12 Presidential Elections and the Republican Party has won 15.

Popular vs. Electoral Vote

In keeping with the “Presidents” theme due to the upcoming conventions, I thought I’d touch on another misconception some people have about past Presidents. Many people think George W. Bush was the first President to lose the popular vote (to Al Gore in 2000) but win the electoral vote. In fact, there were four times that the President did not win the popular vote.

However, in the first case, he didn’t win the electoral vote, either. That was in 1824 when John Quincy Adams won the election. There were four candidates, and all received a significant number of electoral votes, so no candidate won a majority. The President was selected by the House of Representatives.

The other three Presidents who lost the popular vote were Rutherford Hayes in 1876, when he beat Samuel Tilden, Benjamin Harrison beating Grover Cleveland in 1888 (Cleveland won in 1884 and 1892), and of course George W. Bush beating Al Gore in 2000.

Further details can be found at our new page Presidential Election Results.