Tag Archives: Joe Biden

legal news

Waiting for return of confirmation comity

There once was a time when U.S. Supreme Court nominees sailed blissfully through the confirmation process, with senators giving presidents all the latitude in the world to select the person of their choice. They asked some tough questions, occasionally, but were respectful and a bit deferential to presidential prerogative.

Not … any … longer.

President Biden is going to select a black woman to succeed Stephen Breyer on the court once Breyer retires at the end of the current court term. The president can expect a donnybrook. He might be able to find the most brilliant legal mind this side of the Magna Carta, but that person won’t be confirmed without shedding a good bit of blood as she takes incoming rounds from the Republican obstruction brigade in the Senate.

When did it come to this? I guess you could trace it to 1987, when President Reagan nominated Robert Bork to the SCOTUS. Bork was known to be a strict constitutional constructionist. He was a brilliant legal scholar, but he had some seriously offensive views about the role of women and racial minorities. His nomination went down in flames.

Then came the 1991 nomination of Clarence Thomas, whom President George H.W. Bush called the most brilliant legal mind in America. He sought to succeed the late Thurgood Marshall. Then came allegations of sexual harassment and the testimony of Anita Hill. The debate was ferocious. The Senate confirmed Thomas, but it was a narrow mostly partisan vote.

I am thinking at this moment of a nominee put forth by President Eisenhower in 1953. Earl Warren was governor of California when Ike asked him to join the court. He had never served as a judge. I wonder now how an Earl Warren nomination would fare in today’s climate. Would senators question his qualifications? Would they hold him to the same sort of careful examination that they appear ready to do to whomever Joe Biden presents? If the answer is yes, would Gov. Warren hold up?

For the record, I am glad Earl Warren served as chief justice, given that the court on his watch approved some amazing landmark rulings; e.g., Brown v. Board of Education.

I want President Biden’s first high court nominee to be judged carefully but fairly by senators. I am concerned they will respond with red herrings, specious arguments and phony concerns.

I remain committed, by the way, to presidential prerogative in these cases. Elections, as they say, do have consequences. I have been faithful to that truism with respect to whomever is in office.

So, let the process move forward. I hope for a semblance of judicial comity as the Senate ponders this most important selection.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

economic news

Morning in America dawns again

Ronald W. Reagan campaigned for re-election in 1984 as president on the theme that it was “morning in America.” By golly, it worked as President Reagan steamrolled to a smashing landslide victory, winning 49 states and rolling up an Electoral College margin of 525 to 13.

Well, guess what, ladies and gentlemen. I believe it’s “morning in America” is dawning yet again in the good ol’ U.S. of A.

Economic reports show that the Gross Domestic Product grew at a rate not seen since 1984. Unemployment is now down to 3.9%, which is about where it was prior to the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. More jobs have been added to non-farm payrolls at any time in the first year of a presidency, which is something that Joe Biden has been proclaiming for a good while.

What does this mean for the president? It means he has some grist on which to build a campaign in advance of this year’s midterm election, which will be a setup for the 2024 presidential campaign.

I am aware of the hurdles that remain. We need to rein in inflation; the Federal Reserve Board is poised to do that by increasing interest rates this year. There are some foreign-policy issues with which to deal, such as Russia and Ukraine, China’s bellicosity and threats against Taiwan, the ongoing Middle East tensions. Of course, we also have climate change … and the pandemic.

Economically, it is morning once again across the land.

The president needs to be careful to avoid hogging more credit than he deserves. I have noted for longer than I can remember that POTUSes don’t deserve all the blame nor do they deserve all the credit for swings in the economy.

The good and the bad, though, occur on their watch. Thus, they become the hero or the zero, depending on which way the economy is tracking.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

Hey, Gipper said so first!

President Biden pledged once again today to make an unprecedented appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court. He will find an African American woman to nominate to the court to succeed Justice Stephen Breyer.

OK. That’s unprecedented. I get it. However, he ain’t the first president or candidate for POTUS to make a pledge to find someone of a particular gender to the court.

Ronald Reagan did so while running for the presidency in 1980. He said a few weeks before that election he would nominate the first woman to the court. He won big that year. And in 1981 President Reagan made good on the promise by nominating Sandra Day O’Connor to the Supreme Court.

We’re good so far, right?

Conservatives then hailed the choice.

Their reaction to President Biden’s pledge? Why, he’s slamming the door shut on qualified judges; they say he is launching an affirmative action program to the court selection process; we can’t allow the president to pick someone who might not pass judicial muster, as if the person’s racial background by itself is an impediment.

The duplicity is stunning.

I am going to hold onto every confidence on God’s good Earth that President Biden is going to find a top-drawer, first-rate, learned jurist … who just happens to be an African American woman to serve on the nation’s highest court.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Awaiting SCOTUS debate

I am waiting with bated breath — yes, already! — for Senate Republicans to voice their opposition to whomever President Biden chooses to succeed Justice Stephen Breyer on the U.S. Supreme Court.

You see, we now will get to hear the objections as to why they oppose what the president promises will be a legal scholar of impeccable credentials; she will be someone with outstanding character; she will have unassailable legal credentials.

That won’t be enough to swing GOP senators over the right side of history as Joe Biden proceeds to find the first African American woman nominated for a spot on the nation’s highest court. Oh, no!

They will concoct reasons to oppose her. They will take whatever she might have said about something out of context, twist it into something no one can recognize and then declare that there is “no way” they can support such a “radical, left-leaning” lawyer to the Supreme Court.

I actually welcome that debate. Why? Because I want to know who the individuals are who cannot set their political bias aside while considering such an important choice for a lifetime appointment.

Oh, and be sure to stay alert to the accusation that Democrats in Congress and the president are somehow playing “politics” with this choice. Wait for it. That ridiculous canard is bound to surface.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news

Breyer to retire … who will join SCOTUS?

Stephen Breyer today made official what the world has known for, oh, the past 24 hours, that he is retiring from the U.S. Supreme Court at the end of the court’s term.

Now comes yet another stern test for President Biden: finding a nominee who will be seated quickly on the nation’s highest court.

The president has limited his field of choices dramatically by pledging to name an African American woman to succeed Justice Breyer. Allow me this bit of wisdom per the next nominee to join the court.

Of the names I have heard mentioned I am struck by the term “public defender” in the backgrounds of at least two prominent judges. The idea that a legal genius who has served as a public defender could join the nation’s highest appellate court is appealing in the extreme to me. One name appears to be the prohibitive favorite, as an article By Elaine Godfrey in The Atlantic has noted:

We know that his nominee will almost certainly be a woman. In 2020, then-candidate Biden vowed that he would respond to a Supreme Court opening by nominating a Black woman. Dozens of candidates are being talked about, but nearly all of the Court watchers I interviewed for this story have their money on one in particular: Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Biden’s Likeliest Replacement for Justice Breyer: Ketanji Brown Jackson – The Atlantic

I believe someone with public defender experience in her legal background brings a totally new perspective to any judicial conference that would occur when the court is considering, for example, an appeal on a death penalty case; or perhaps an appeal on a conviction that someone believes was incorrectly achieved.

Could a Supreme Court associate justice soften the hard hearts of her colleagues? It’s possible. Then again, it might not. My point though is that a U.S. Supreme Court need not be populated only with jurists who come from, say, civil law or who have experience only as criminal prosecutors.

President Biden seemingly wants to broaden the scope of the Supreme Court’s world view. Go for it, Mr. President.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Why fight this pick?

My idea of political perfection might lie in the way the president of the U.S. and the U.S. Senate conduct themselves as we seek to find a justice to the nation’s highest court.

Justice Stephen Breyer has announced his intention to retire from the Supreme Court at the end of the current court term. President Biden then will get to select a nominee to succeed Breyer.

Biden’s pick won’t swing the ideological balance of the court; it will remain a 6-3 conservative panel.

That all said, it makes sense — to me, at least — that all Biden has to do is find a qualified jurist to take the seat once the Senate confirms her. Oh, yeah; I need to mention that the president has pledged to select an African American woman to succeed Breyer.

It should be a slam dunk, right? A 100-0 vote to confirm, presuming the justice-designate is qualified and has earned the necessary chops to take a seat on the highest court in America.

It ain’t likely to work that way. We hear now from Sen. Lindsey Graham, the Republican from South Carolina who doubles as Donald Trump’s suck-up boy in the Senate, saying Biden can get a nominee approved “without Republican support.” Does that mean the GOP caucus is going sit on its hands while fabricating reasons to oppose whomever Biden selects? Sounds like it to me.

Preposterous.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

legal news, national news

A new fight in store for SCOTUS seat?

Here we go again, maybe, perhaps … but I surely hope not.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer announced today his intention to retire from the court at the end of the court’s term. He is paving the way for President Biden to nominate a successor.

Is this a big deal? You bet it is! Presidents have a chance to make a lasting impact on our judicial system that will remain far longer than their terms in office. However, let’s consider some key elements.

Breyer is one of three “liberal” justices serving on the court. A Biden appointment isn’t going to change the nine-member court’s ideological balance. Donald Trump nominated three justices during his term on the court, the last one of whom delivered the strong conservative majority that now sits on the nation’s highest court.

Progressives have been hollering for Breyer to step down for a long time. They want a woman to join the court, along with Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Amy Coney Barrett. President Biden already has pledged to nominate a woman, and she likely will be a Black woman. As NBC News reports: Biden has pledged to make just such an appointment. Among likely contenders are federal Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, former Breyer law clerk, and Leondra Kruger, a justice on California’s Supreme Court.

Is all of this a done deal? Well, consider that recent judicial appointments have been subjected to harsh partisan disagreements between Republicans and Democrats in the Senate, which has confirmation authority.

President Biden is going to move rapidly to nominate someone. Indeed, time is not his friend. The midterm election is coming up this fall, the court’s new term begins in early October and the president will need to get someone seated with whom he feels comfortable.

It’ll be a fight but let us hope is not the kind of bloodbath to which we have grown accustomed.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Biden down, far from out

Listen up, Joe Biden haters. The president is down, to be sure. Do not, though, start ringing the death knell over the presidency of the man who fought for more than 30 years to attain the highest office in the land.

I acknowledge fully that President Biden has endured a rough first year. Let me remind everyone of a couple of recent historical events.

Ronald Reagan took office in 1981 and also had a bad first year. Yes, he was shot and nearly killed three months into the presidency. Then the Republican Party got drubbed in the 1982 midterm election. President Reagan, though, got re-elected in 1984 in a smashing 49-state landslide. That’s one.

Bill Clinton became president in 1993. He, too, suffered a rough first year. Republicans seized control of Congress in 1994. Ah, but then President Clinton cruised to re-election in 1996. That’s two.

Barack Obama assumed office in 2009. He set out to pass the Affordable Care Act; Congress obliged. Then Democrats got what Obama described as a “shellacking” in the 2010 midterm election. President Obama then went on to win re-election in 2012.

I know we have had plenty of one-term presidents who never got it together. George H.W. Bush fell from a 90% approval rating to losing his re-election effort in 1992; Jimmy Carter endured inflation and a general feeling of disgust and lost in a landslide to Ronald Reagan in 1980; Donald Trump … well, you know what happened there.

President Biden is only in the “first quarter” of a long game, writes Paul Brandus in USA Today. There’s a way out of the morass, Brandus writes: The president’s biggest mistake has surprised me. He hasn’t spent enough time talking up last year’s economic achievements. “America’s economy improved more in Joe Biden’s first 12 months than any president during the past 50 years,” Bloomberg reported last month, “notwithstanding the contrary media narrative contributing to dour public opinion.”

Joe Biden has had a rocky year in office. But, folks, this is only the first quarter. (yahoo.com)

And so it might go moving ahead into the next year and the year after that. We still have that pandemic. It still is making people sick. We keep hearing that the end is in sight. Maybe. We hope.

I am going to stand with the president as he keeps fighting for the country.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

DA gets new grand jury … yes!

Fani Willis is emerging as potentially my newest political hero. She is the Fulton County (Ga.) district attorney who sought — and then received — permission to seat a special grand jury that is going to examine whether Donald J. Trump interfered with the 2020 presidential election.

Hmm. Let’s see. What do we have here?

We have a recorded conversation featuring Trump telling Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger to “find” 11,780 votes that can be credited to the ex-POTUS and possibly keep him in power. Oh, Joe Biden won Georgia’s electoral votes, but Trump harangued the chief elections officer in Georgia to find enough votes to swing it to Trump’s list of winning states.

Where I come from, that sounds for all the world like intimidation. You see, Trump told Raffensberger — a Republican who voted for Trump — to break the law. To his great credit, Raffensberger said no can do, Mr. President. Trump then threatened Raffensberger with prosecution if he didn’t comply with the Insurrectionist in Chief’s demand.

It’s all recorded, man. Raffensberger had the good sense to memorialize it for posterity. Is it legal for Trump to badger a state elections official in that manner? Is it moral? Does it make sense for Trump to, in effect, hand a prosecuting attorney — in this case, DA Willis — the proverbial smoking gun in a criminal investigation?

Willis sought the special grand jury that is going to look exclusively at the allegation of election interference. It didn’t take the state court system long to decide that a special panel is necessary to get to the truth behind Donald Trump’s effort to rig an election he said is … um, rigged.

I believe the prosecutor is onto something huge.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

International news, military news

Hoping for sanity in Kremlin

If you’ll forgive me for relying on my sometimes-wrong trick knee, but I am going to say that the ol’ knee’s throbbing is telling me there will be no land war in Europe.

Russian troops have gathered along their country’s border with Ukraine. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has been negotiating his brains out with his Russian counterpart, foreign minister Sergie Lavrov, over ways to forgo an armed conflict.

There will be sufficient economic sanctions coming from the United States and the rest of NATO in response to a Russian attack on Ukraine, if it comes.

I am going to hold out hope that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin is going to think better of his temptation to invade Ukraine. He knows that his country is a third-rate economic power fueled almost exclusively by oil. He knows, too, that European NATO forces are not going to war with Russia. Neither will the United States, nor should we enter a land war with Russian forces.

President Biden has walked back the gaffe he uttered at his press conference this past week, suggesting that a mere “incursion” wouldn’t provoke a severe response. There isn’t a damn bit of difference between an incursion and an invasion. Biden must treat them the same way. Yes, U.S. staff levels in Ukraine have been reduced in anticipation of some military action. It is better to be prepared for the worst.

Don’t let me down, trick knee

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com