Category Archives: national news

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It’s wrong now … and was wrong then

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Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., expresses his dismay at Russian Vladimir Putin leader granting asylum to American secrets leaker Edward Snowden, at a news conference at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, Aug. 1, 2013. Defying the United States, Russia granted Edward Snowden temporary asylum on Thursday, allowing the National Security Agency leaker to slip out of the Moscow airport where he has been holed up for weeks in hopes of evading espionage charges back home. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

I believe it was that great fictional Native American sidekick — Tonto — who said to the Lone Ranger, “Two wrongs don’t make a right.”

Thus, it amuses me when I hear critics of this blog and others take note of Democratic U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer’s declaration in 2007 that the Senate shouldn’t approve any of President Bush’s Supreme Court appointments.

They bring that up to — more or less — justify a statement by Republican U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell to do the same thing regarding the vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court.

If Schumer can make a wrongheaded declaration then it’s OK for our guy to do it, they seem to suggest.

Schumer was wrong then and McConnell is wrong now.

Neither man has distinguished himself on this matter of constitutional authority and presidential prerogative.

So, Schumer’s assertion in 2007 got past me. He absolutely was wrong to say what he said. The U.S. Constitution gives presidents the authority to make appointments to the federal bench and I’ve long given deference to the presidents’ prerogative on these issues. If the president nominates a qualified individual to these posts, then the Senate should grant the appointee a fair hearing — and then vote.

George W. Bush was re-elected in 2004 with voters knowing he would appoint conservative judges to the federal courts. His final Supreme Court appointment came in 2006 when he selected Samuel Alito. Thus, Schumer’s ill-advised admonition a year later became a moot point.

It doesn’t give Senate Majority Leader McConnell any license to erect barriers to the current president doing what he was re-elected to do.

 

 

 

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Mitch McConnell: chief obstructionist

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Mitch McConnell declared out loud and in public shortly after Barack Obama became president that his top priority would be to make Obama a “one-term president.”

His wish went unfulfilled when the president won re-election in November 2012.

Now that McConnell is the Senate majority leader, he’s made another pledge. He is going to oppose the president’s next appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Does he know who the president will nominate? No. Does he have any inside information on Obama’s short list? Again, no.

But without the faintest idea who the president will select, the Senate’s leading Republican is going to obstruct the president. He vows to prevent the president from doing what the Constitution empowers him to do. For that matter, he and other Republicans are going to prevent the Senate from doing what the Constitution requires of that body.

Obama is going to nominate someone to replace the late Antonin Scalia on the U.S. Supreme Court. He’s entitled to put someone forward. The Senate also has the power to consent to the nomination.

There’s much that boggles the mind about the eruption that has occurred since Scalia’s untimely death. I cannot quite rank them in order, but McConnell’s declaration that he intends to block any nomination to be considered must rank near the top.

Yes, the stakes are huge. The president is a liberal/progressive politician who likely will select someone who is a good bit to the left of the man who led the Supreme Court’s conservative movement. Thus, Senate conservatives are vowing to protect their court majority — as best they can — by seeking to hold up this confirmation until after the November election. Their hope is that a Republican will win the presidency.

We have a president with one year left in his term. As they say, elections have consequences. A majority of Americans re-elected President Obama understanding full well how he would fill a vacancy on the highest court in the land if he was given the chance to do so.

He now has that chance.

Meanwhile, the nine-member high court has been reduced to eight members. The even split among the justices could produce some tie votes on key cases yet to be argued before the court.

This is not good governance.

 

 

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Election-year vacancies . . . all the rage

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As long as we’re talking about filling a Supreme Court vacancy during an election year . . .

Republican senators don’t want to consider a potential nominee who’ll be offered by President Obama. They want the next president to send someone for their consideration. Barack Obama is a “lame duck,” they say.

The last lame-duck president to send a nominee to the Senate was Ronald Reagan. The Senate confirmed Anthony Kennedy to the Supreme Court in 1988.

So, you might be asking: Is it a common occurrence for the president to send a Supreme Court nominee to the Senate during an election year, lame-duck status or not?

I looked it up. Here’s what I found.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt nominated Frank Murphy, who was confirmed in 1940.

Dwight Eisenhower recommended William Brennan; the Senate confirmed him in 1956.

Richard Nixon sent two nominees to the Senate during an election cycle: Lewis Powell and William Rehnquist; the Senate confirmed them in 1972.

Let’s go back a bit farther. William Howard Taft nominated Mahlon Pitney, who was confirmed in 1912. Woodrow Wilson nominated Louis Brandeis and John Clarke, both of whom were confirmed in 1916.

This election-year moratorium nonsense being promoted by the likes of Senate Mitch McConnell and other Republicans should be revealed for what it is: a cheap political ploy to deny a Democratic president the opportunity to fulfill his constitutional duty.

Granted, all the examples I cited here — except for President Reagan’s nomination of Justice Kennedy — do not involve “lame duck” presidents.

The phoniness of McConnell’s desire to block any attempt by Obama to fill a vacancy created by Justice Antonin Scalia’s tragic death is transparent and obvious, given what has transpired in the past 100 years.

How about allowing President Obama to do the job to which he was elected twice to perform?

 

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Who’s ‘lawless’ now?

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Donald J. Trump went on one of his stream-of-consciousness riffs today at a press conference in South Carolina.

In the midst of his 45-minute press conference, the Republican presidential primary frontrunner answered a hypothetical question about what he would do as a governor regarding immigrants.

He wouldn’t let them into his state, Trump said, ignoring the concern from many experts who say that immigration is a federal issue and that governors don’t have the authority to deny someone from entering their state.

Then he said, “I don’t care what the rules and regulations say.”

He would work around them as a governor to make it so difficult for immigrants seeking to enter his state that they would want to go somewhere else.

There you have it.

He doesn’t care about the law. He’ll do what he wants.

I believe that’s the definition of “lawlessness.”

 

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Take a bow, Sen. Marzian

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Mary Lou Marzian is my newest political hero.

She is a Kentucky state senator who’s seeking to make a point about male legislators getting into women’s private lives.

Marzian, a Louisville Democrat, has introduced legislation in Frankfort that would require men seeking to have notes from their wives if they want to obtain prescriptions for medication to correct erectile dysfunction.

Can there be a stronger statement than that?

Marzian’s legislation likely won’t ever see the light of day. I do admire her guts, though, in making a statement on behalf of women who believe the government should not dictate to them on one of the most deeply personal issues possible: whether to take a pregnancy to full term.

In so many cases we have men making these decisions. Sen. Marzian’s bill makes a significant statement on behalf of women who have grown weary of men deciding how women should control their bodies.

 

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Sen. McConnell then . . . and now

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A colleague and acquaintance of mine has shared an item on social media that I’d like to share here.

It comes from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell who in 2005 made a fascinating point about defending the right of presidents to make appointments to the federal judiciary.

It states:

“The Constitution of the United States is at stake. Article II, Section 2 clearly provides that the President, and the President alone, nominates judges. The Senate is empowered to give advice and consent. But my Democratic colleagues want to change the rules. They want to reinterpret the Constitution to require a supermajority for confirmation. In effect, they would take away the power to nominate from the President and grant it to a minority of 41 Senators.”
“[T]he Republican conference intends to restore the principle that, regardless of party, any President’s judicial nominees, after full debate, deserve a simple up-or-down vote. I know that some of our colleagues wish that restoration of this principle were not required. But it is a measured step that my friends on the other side of the aisle have unfortunately made necessary. For the first time in 214 years, they have changed the Senate’s ‘advise and consent’ responsibilities to ‘advise and obstruct.'”

Interesting, yes?

Well, 11 years later, the majority leader himself is proposing to “advise and obstruct” by seeking to delay a presidential appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court until after the November general election that, McConnell hopes, will produce a Republican president.

Well, Mr. Majority Leader, has Article II Section 2 of the Constitution changed?

 

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Unanimous picks loom as favorites for high court

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Politics rules on Capitol Hill. It swings both ways, influencing both political parties.

Consider what might be about to happen.

President Barack Obama, a Democrat in the final full year of his second term and final term, is likely to name someone to fill a vacancy created by the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

The U.S. Constitution grants him the authority to do so. It also grants the Senate the authority to approve anyone nominated to the court.

The Senate is controlled by Republicans.

Democrats and Republicans don’t like each other much these days. Republicans really dislike the Democrat in the White House and the feeling appears to be quite mutual.

What’s the president going to do about this high court vacancy?

One theory getting kicked around in the hours and days after Scalia’s death is that the president could name an appellate judge who’s already been approved by the Senate. One name has emerged as a possible favorite, Judge Sri Srinivasen, an Indian-American who was approved unanimously the Senate before he took his federal appeals court seat.

He’s apparently thought of as a moderate. He doesn’t lean far left. He surely doesn’t lean far right. He shoots straight down the middle, according to a number of legal experts.

So, will this fellow breeze through the confirmation process as he did when the Senate considered him for a lower court?

OK. You can stop laughing.

Republicans are vowing to deny the president any action on a pending nomination. They want to wait until after the November presidential election in which they hope a Republican wins the White House.

Democrats will have none of that. They want the president to make a nomination and they want the Senate to vote on it. Quickly.

Why not select someone who’s already been vetted by the Senate? Would a judge like Sri Srinivasen be just as qualified to sit on the Supreme Court as he is on a lower court?

Well, in my version of a perfect world, it would seem like a natural for the president to find a moderate judge who’s already been approved. Except that he would be succeeding a towering figure of the judicial conservative movement.

Scalia led what has been called a “conservative renaissance” on the Supreme Court. Anyone — regardless of credentials, standing among peers or legal brilliance — is going to be run through a political sausage grinder.

Politics. Sometimes it’s downright ugly.

And sometimes it doesn’t serve the nation well.

 

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Confusion has a strangely familiar Texas feel to it

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Antonin Scalia’s tragic death in far West Texas has taken on an air of weirdness that somehow only seems possible in this state.

The U.S. Supreme Court justice — the senior member of the nation’s highest court — died in Marfa while on a hunting vacation.

How did he die? It seems that a justice of the peace issued a cause of death without ever seeing the late justice’s body. There also was a significant amount of time before anyone was able to contact a JP to make the pronouncement in the first place.

As the Washington Post reported, Justice Scalia’s life was one of order, process and decorum. The hours after his sudden and shocking death have been an exercise in confusion and chaos, the Post reported.

These rather startling circumstances bring to mind some of the criticisms that have been leveled at this level of Texas jurisprudence — and I use the term loosely.

It’s that justices of the peace are empowered to make these declarations with little or no actual medical training to do so. We put this responsibility in the hands of elected politicians who, as often as not, are laypeople with little or no formal training in the law, let alone in medicine.

What’s worse in this instance is that the JP allegedly made the call in absentia. How in the world does someone do that? How is it possible that the death of a member of the United States Supreme Court can be handled so sloppily and be the subject of so much confusion?

Only in Texas, it seems, is such a thing even remotely possible.

I am sensing an investigation into the madness that ensued after Justice Scalia’s death is in order.

 

 

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Get ready for the biggest fight of all

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The fight over immigration?

Or the Affordable Care Act?

Or budget priorities?

How about gay marriage?

All of those battles between President Barack Obama and the U.S. Congress are going to pale in comparison to what’s coming up: the battle to find a suitable nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Justice Antonin Scalia’s sudden and tragic death Saturday has caused political apoplexy in both sides of the divide in Washington.

Democrats want the president to nominate someone sooner rather than later. Republicans want the nomination to wait until after the election, with the hope that one of their own will occupy the White House beginning Jan. 20, 2017.

President Obama indicated last night he’s inclined to move forward, to nominate someone and to insist on a “timely vote.”

He is correct to insist that he be allowed to fulfill his constitutional responsibility and that the Senate fulfill its own duties.

One of the Republican candidates, Sen. Marco Rubio, said last night that no one has been appointed during an election year. He’s half-right. President Reagan appointed Anthony Kennedy to the high court in 1987; a Democratically controlled Senate confirmed him in 1988, which certainly was an election year.

Consider this, though: Justice Kennedy succeeded another GOP nominee, the late Justice Lewis Powell (picked by President Nixon). Kennedy’s appointment and confirmation did not fundamentally change the balance of the court.

This vacancy is different. By a lot.

Justice Scalia was a towering figure among the conservative majority that serves on the court. Whoever Obama selects surely will tilt to the left.

Therein lies the fight.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, said the vacancy should be filled after the election, adding that the “American people deserve a voice” in determining who sits on the court.

He could not be more off base. Yes, the voters deserve a voice. However, they spoke decisively about that in November 2012 when they re-elected Barack Obama as president.

Indeed, elections have consequences. There can arguably no greater consequence than determining who gets to select candidates to sit on the nation’s highest court.

The president — whoever he or she is — has a constitutional responsibility to act on a timely manner when these vacancies occur. Moreover, the Senate has an equal responsibility to vote up or down on anyone nominated by the president.

I’ve long believed in presidential prerogative — and my belief in that has never wavered regardless of the president’s party affiliation.

So, let’s mourn the death of a distinguished and, in the president’s words “consequential” justice. Then let us allow the president to do the job allowed by the Constitution and then let us demand that the Senate do its job by voting on whoever the president selects to fill this critical court vacancy.

 

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What, precisely, does ‘original intent’ mean?

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U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio tonight paid glowing tribute to the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

The praise came while Rubio was taking part in the Republican presidential debate.

He said something that struck me as, well, fascinating. Rubio said Scalia’s legal brilliance was rooted in his belief that the U.S. Constitution is not a “living document,” but that the Constitution should be interpreted precisely as the founders intended.

I don’t believe for one second that Justice Scalia wanted to roll back the advances that came about in the many years since the founders wrote the Constitution — in the late 18th century.

However, if Rubio’s praise of Scalia is to be taken literally, it seems fair to wonder: Does he believe the founders were right to deny women the right to vote, or that African-Americans should be enslaved?

Of course he doesn’t.

However, we can see the discrepancy — in my view — in the debate over whether the Constitution is a living document. The argument of those who favor the so-called “original intent” of the founders breaks down.

Why? Because of the many reforms approved in the 200-plus years since the Constitution was ratified, the document does indeed evolve as our nation has evolved.

It’s alive, man.