Actually term limits would be more successful than retirement ages.

Helen Thomas is not a pundit, she's a reporter.

i don't think helen thomas was ever classified as a pundit. and i feel like the main reason she's retiring is because she said that israelis are occupying palestine. she was already in a semi-retired state of just showing up when she could

She's been writing an opinion column for the last few years.

Her comments were indefensible, but let's not worry about needing mandatory retirement for pundits. The shelf life's getting shorter and shorter for you poor dears.

I find it amusing that she's retiring over some mildly inflammatory and honest commentary. The people who defend Israel as an exclusive place for the Jewish people without acknowledging that their bias has a militaristic or religious basis have absolutely no right to say anything about the displacement of indiginous people anywhere else.

Yes, David Broder and the other Wise Old White Men at the Washington Post need to go!

@7, they're truly the last of their decade-upon-decade kind -- in Broder's case, thank gawd. Each micro-generation will have its own pundit class that waxes and wanes from here on, for better and worse.

i heard her going back and forth with Obama last week, and she can barely articulate words now. she's awesome in theory, but this was long overdue. & no one had the nerve to call it until she was hoist by her own petard. pitiful.

I've loved Helen Thomas for decades, but it was clear that the time for retirement was overdue. I loved a few bombshells she managed to lob at Bush's press conferences, but she can barely talk in complete sentences anymore. I feel sorry for her.

Have a happy retirement, Helen. You earned it.

And politicians.

You don't need retirement ages or term limits for the Supreme Court.

Technically, the President can replace any of them, subject to Senate approval, and there's nothing they can do about it.

He can even reduce the number of Justices by fiat.

Helen Thomas is clearly starting to lose her marbles and the time has come for her to retire. Although her comments were offensive and wrong, the is a valid point in there. It's true that Israeli Jews are an immigrant population that unjustly displaced the natives (when you've been gone for 1900 years you might as well have never been there), and although they've been in Israel too long now to send them back to Europe, they need to make amends and allow the natives to return home. If you are allowed to return after 1900 years, they can return after 60.

Helen Thomas's comments were in no way offensive or egregious. On the contrary, they were a breath of fresh air in the wake of the blind pro-Israel sentiment of the past week. The creation of the state of Israel was the most short-sighted international decision of the twentieth century, and the world would be a lot better off if Jews who were escaping the holocaust had emigrated to America instead, where they are wanted and where there is (was) plenty of land.

@13 - Wait, is that true? I don't think the President can simply replace a sitting Justice without the Justice leaving office through death, resignation or impeachment.

In fact, no provision exists, other than impeachment, for removing a justice who is incapacitated and unable to serve yet unable to resign (going into a coma but not dying, for example). I guess in that situation, Congress would have to take steps to impeach the justice.

The number of members of the Supreme Court is set by Congress according to Article III of the Constitution. It was originally set at 6 and has, at different times, been 7, 9, and even 10. It has remained at 9 since 1867 despite FDR's unsuccessful efforts in 1937 to increase it to 15.

When you say the President can reduce the number by fiat, I assume you mean he can decline to replace a justice when there is a vacancy (as opposed to "firing" one). I suppose that is theoretically possible, but it wouldn't reduce the court's size (absent an act of Congress), it would just leave a vacancy until the President or his successor chose to nominate a replacement.

I disapprove of mandatory retirement on principle, be it age-related, term-related, or body-odor related.

I do, however, heartily favor of mandatorily enhanced scrutiny of anybody in possession of a deadly weapon, be it a car, a gun, or a gavel as reasonable suspicion of decrepitude increases. The older, the more entrenched, the stinkier a person in possession of lethal authority gets, the closer he should be watched.

But just because somebody is old, has served a long time, or eats too much sausage with onions should not be grounds for dismissal.

@16--My copy of Article III of the Constitution doesn't say dick about the size of SCOTUS.

The Wikipedia page states that the court's size is determined by congressional statute.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Cou…

Since, however, Article III of the Constitution mandates the service of Federal judges to be upon "good behavior."

Since the Republican Guard used the Constitution's considerable wiggle room to lower the standard of impeachment for a President to non-criminal moral turpitude, however, significant precedent exists for removal of say, Scalia and his fuckslaves Alito and Thomas, on grounds of greasy body odor.