Justice Scalia, dead at 79.
Dear so-called GOP Senate majority; if you never deliver any other thing, you had better come through on this.
More tomorrow/Monday.
UPDATE: There’s hope:
Thin hope, but hope nonetheless.
UPDATE II: The NARN Curse? Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II, Terry Schaivo and now Scalia, all initially reported dead moments after the NARN goes off the air (after discussing them) on Saturday.
UPDATE III: Sean Davis of the Federalist:
“If Donald Trump wants to end this race tonight, he’ll vow that his first act as president will be appointing Ted Cruz to the Supreme Court.”
There’s something to that. As I noted today while the NARN was on the air, the sole reason I’d vote for Trump if nominated is because of the chance that Scalia or Kennedy would leave the court. Knowing that Scalia would be replaced by a solid conservative justice – as Cruz would be – would calm my conscience greatly.
Conservatives boast their respect for the Constitution. It will be interesting to watch them thwart it by denying the president the right to nominate a replacement for Justice Scalia.
No one will deny Obama the right to nominate whatever far-left “living document” justice he wants. If the Congressional GOP leadership can grow a pair and exercise their rights per the “advise and consent” clause, his nomination will go nowhere.
It will be interesting to watch them thwart it…
…by serving as a check and balance.
If Senate Republicans block a liberal appointee to the Supreme Court, this has the potential to inject this issue into the Presidential campaign. And it will work both ways. You can bet that Ted Cruz will be running on a platform to replace Scalia with more and more Scalias. This could finally be the election that brings the Supreme Court into national focus much more (it has not been mentioned so far in any of the presidential debates I’ve seen).
“Conservatives boast their respect for the Constitution. It will be interesting to watch them thwart it by denying the president the right to nominate a replacement for Justice Scalia.”
It is Obama, not the senate, who has time and again had his unconstitutional, undemocratic power grabs slapped down by the SC,
Whatever the GOP does, I am sure it will pass constitutional muster.
I imagine team Obama is feverishly looking into bypassing the senate in some unconstitutional manner to see if they can ram an ideologue down the throat of the country. It doesn’t matter to them if its constitutional. It only matters if it gets the job done.
We are talking about a president who believes that he, not the senate, can determine when the senate is in session. He has been stomping on separation of powers for seven years, and mocking and insulting the senate. Fuck him.
I suppose we could just wait for Clinton to nominate Obama for the SCOTUS.
“I suppose we could just wait for Clinton to nominate Obama for the SCOTUS.”
Then so be it.
Perhaps Obama could just call on all the good will he has built up with the senate over the years, ask for a return on the favors he has granted to GOP senators.
You reap what you sow.
The NARN Curse? Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II, Terry Schaivo and now Scalia, all initially reported dead moments after the NARN goes off the air (after discussing them) on Saturday.
Terry Schiavo died on a Thursday.
I remember the Schiavo decision. The line between life and death is not sharp, in some cases, and the decision end the life of another (for want of a better term), especially passively, is painful. No one wants to be involved in something like that. My sympathies go out to everyone involved. The older you are, the more likely it is that you will find yourself at that terrible point where you have to make a decision you don’t feel equipped to make morally or emotionally.
But it was chilling to watch the way the media and especially the left media turned Terry Schiavo into a non-person. The media consistently took the side of Schiavo’s husband (who had since partnered with, and had a child with, another woman) against Terry Schiavo’s parents. The media cheerleaded her death ghoulishly.
People wonder how, in the past, whole cultures engaged in premeditated murder of innocents. You make them objects instead of persons. Only persons can be innocent. Only persons have a right to be treated like persons.
Reaping what you sow . . .
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Bork
SCOTUS Justice Henry Baldwin died 4.21.1844 and was replaced by Robert Cooper Grier (a staunch adherent of “stare decisis”) on 8.4.1846 after a new president (Polk) had been elected, so stonewalling a nominee isn’t unheard of.
I’m pretty sure more than 300 days is enough time to devote plenty of attention to the matter. The President gets to nominate Justices and Mr. Obama is still president. If you have respect for someone’s Constitutional Law prowess then you should respect how the constitution actually works.
The Constitution gives both the President and Congress important roles in picking a new Justice.
But I do understand (at least intellectual) that hypocrites find it psychologically imperative to find hypocrisy everywhere.
Emery on February 13, 2016 at 7:36 pm said:
If Senate Republicans block a liberal appointee to the Supreme Court, this has the potential to inject this issue into the Presidential campaign.
Good. It should be.
By the way – for the record, I’d much prefer the Senate to vote down every single Obama nominee than merely run out the clock.
NYT research says the longest period from nomination to reject/affirm decision is 125 days so that means 2 maybe 3 nomination windows before election day. So vote down the first nominee in the last week of june and the second nominee in the third week of october.
Between now and July 1st is the tough part – after July 1st the senators up for reelection will be out campaigning and not much will happen in the Senate with any speed.
I read some pundit yesterday who said that if the GOP blocks Obama’s nominee, this will give Hillary a tool to use to drive out the base.
But it seems to me that the leverage is the other way. Obama, or Hillary, would replace a respected conservative stalwart with a far left liberal (I’ve see Obama’s wish list). By holding out and not approving a nominee (no one can stop Obama from nominating anyone) the GOP has a tool to motivate their base to elect the GOP presidential candidate AND keep the senate in friendly hands.
Unless the nominee is Trump. He’d probably nominate his wife. Or maybe Bobcat Goldthwaite, I hear he’s looking for a gig.
There could be a compromise. Ancient biddy Ginsberg steps down and Obama gets a free pass on her replacement, but the Scalia seat stays open til next year.
Of course, there would have to be some level of trust between McConnell and Obama that plan to work.
Obama can nominate whomever he wants. Of course the FBI is pretty tied up with the Clinton investigation, and wont be able to issue a background check until sometime next year, and the House is booked too. Maybe the next Pres will clear up some of the extrainious matters and the hearings can start in JUNE OF 2017.
LOL. Emery is our proxy for every thimble headed lefty out there twisting in the wind. We laugh, because its funny!
The President gets to nominate Justices and Mr. Obama is still president.
Lol. Do some more Emery!
Does anyone seriously believe that if the situation were reversed, and we were looking at a last year, lame duck GOP prez trying to appoint a conservative SC justice to replace a liberal SC justice, the Dems would stand aside and not block?
Or that the media would support the blocking move just as they will condemn the GOP for not allowing Obama’s lame duck appointment?
Nope. We’d hear about checks and balances, and that this is the way the constitution is supposed to work.
The GOP doesn’t have the votes to “vote down every nominee”. All it takes is a few squishes like Kirk, Collins, Murkowski, and I’m sure a few others to turn and vote for an Obama nominee.
“Mr. SCOTUS Nominee, do you support the Heller decision as established law?”
“Yes, but I can’t comment on future cases”.
“Well good enough for me. I’ll vote to confirm. The president is entitled to his nominees.”, every Squish GOP Senator.
Barry can nominate anyone he wants……….but I’m certain there will be HELL to pay for any GOP Senators that vote to confirm.
MBerg says: “I’d much prefer the Senate to vote down every single Obama nominee than merely run out the clock.”
Let the Republicans be so sharp they cut themselves. Let them reject one qualified candidate after another for purely ideological reasons. There is a good chance that Obama will be followed by Clinton and a Democratic Senate. What a way to rally the voters.
Let them reject one qualified candidate after another for purely ideological reasons
Payback’s a Bork.
What a way to rally the voters
Or…not.
Emery is counting on the public school’s finest to get outraged about a branch of government most don’t even know exist.
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/01/19/supreme-court-justice-judge-judy.html
Baaahahahahaaa! You leftist twerps are so screwed.
Even Hugh Hewitt — the voice of the moderate GOP establishment — sez block. He goes further and says vote out any GOP senator who does not block.
Obama has done enough damage to this country already. We now know what a Carter second term would have looked like.
By attempting to block a nomination for over a year Republicans may be making a major strategic blunder. Not by forsaking the constitutional high ground which in reality never means much to them despite all the talk about the sanctity of the constitution. No the problem is much more fundamental. They are putting the Supreme Court on the ballot with all that implies in terms of the hot button issues of overturning Roe, civil rights, immigration reform, union rights, environmental protections, money in politics. It’s hard to imagine a menu of issues more calculated to bring out the Democratic constituencies of ethnic minorities, women, millennials, affluent educated whites. And what happens when turnout is high? Democrats win. And the Republicans have 24 senators up for re-election.
“By attempting to block a nomination for over a year Republicans may be making a major strategic blunder.”
Does anyone think the Democrats made a major strategic blunder when the Senate changed from majority Democrat to majority Republican?
In President Obama’s 1st year the Senate started as 55 ‘D’ plus 2 ‘I’ who caucused with the Democrats. Today it’s majority Republican. Must have been a mo-fo of a major strategic blunder. Or was it a series of major strategic blunders?
Chuck Schumer disagrees with Emery:
http://hotair.com/archives/2016/02/15/video-schumer-insists-that-lame-duck-president-should-not-get-supreme-court-pick/
By attempting to block a nomination for over a year Republicans may be making a major strategic blunder.
The GOP lost the Presidency in 2012 and 2008, and got shellacked in 2006 mid-terms, in large part because they presented very little alternative to the Democrats.
The GOP majority giving in to our idiot president would be the real strategic blunder.
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Emery’s argument is the same one Liberals trot out for every outrage.
You better not oppose the President’s budget or he’ll shut down the government and the media will make sure voters blame Republicans.
You better not oppose the President’s amnesty plan or he’ll do it by executive order and the media will make sure voters blame Republicans.
You better not oppose the President’s court-packing scheme or he’ll do it by recess appointment and the media will make sure voters blame Republicans.
They’re playing the timid like a fiddle (looking at you, John Boehner).
You know what? Just once, I’d like to hear Republicans say “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.”
Trump would do it.
The one argument that Emery is not making is that, if the positions of the parties and the president were reversed, the Democrats would consent to a lame duck, GOP president replacing a liberal SC justice with a conservative SC justice.
Emery thinks that the GOP should allow Obama to appoint Scalia’s replacement because they are the party that says it adheres to constitutional principles.
But it is also the constitutional duty of the congress approve or disapprove a budget. Yet whenever the congress says it refuses to spend the money the president wants to spend, Emery gets the vapors. Then, it is irresponsible to refuse to pass a budget of the president’s choosing. The GOP can’t shut down the government, according to Emery, that would be irresponsible.
Emery, go ahead and assemble your hoard of fellow wankers, tree huggers, ghouls, child molesters, buggerers, reprobates, moochers, border jumpers, pin heads and dweebies.
When Real Americans realize the last vestiges of our constitutional rights are at stake they will turn out in their millions. I relish the challenge.
I really do not think eTASS can twist and tie himself into a tighter Gordian knot after being p0wned over and over. But is sure it fun to watch him try.
My take here is that McConnell needs to really emphasize what the Constitution says; if the Senate’s role is to advise and consent, let’s do that, and if Obama puts forth a nominee that is not what the GOP has been elected to vote for, that consent will not be forthcoming.
And the idea of Obama–overturned 9-0 by the SC how many times–being a good arbiter of judicial temperament is really pretty funny.
“And the idea of Obama–overturned 9-0 by the SC how many times–being a good arbiter of judicial temperament is really pretty funny.”
Obama was a part-time lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School. He didn’t teach constitutional law, he taught civil rights law, which is focused on the 14th amendment. The 14th is notoriously poorly written. The goal of civil rights lawyers is to use the 14th amendment to push a particular agenda on a country that would never approve that agenda with actual votes.
The 14th was passed by congress using methods that would make a democrat shudder. The southern states were blackmailed into accepting it. This may have been justice, but it also resulted in the creation of a poorly conceived and poorly written document that has been used in ways its authors would never have approved.