Tag Archives: Senate GOP

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Listen to the VP, senators, about doing your job

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biden

Vice President Joe Biden is going to lecture the U.S. Senate on something about which knows a thing or two.

He wants his former colleagues to do the job they took an oath to do, which is vote on whether to approve a nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Biden will deliver his message in remarks at Georgetown University.

At issue is the nomination of Merrick Garland to fill the seat vacated by the death of Antonin Scalia. Senate Republicans — many of them, anyway — are digging in on the nomination. They don’t want to consider a Barack Obama appointment, contending that it’s too late in the president’s second term. He’s a “lame duck,” therefore, the task of appointing a justice should fall on the next president.

That, of course, is pure malarkey.

Barack Obama is president until Jan. 20, 2017. He wants to fulfill his constitutional duty and he’s urging the Senate to do so as well.

Oh sure. The balance of the court is hanging here. Scalia was a devout conservative ideologue — and a brilliant legal scholar. Garland is a judicial moderate; he’s also a scholar; a man viewed widely as supremely qualified.

How does Biden — who served in the Senate for 36 years before being elected vice president — figure in this?

As vice president, he’s the presiding officer of the Senate. Of course, he votes only to break ties. He doesn’t actually run the place. That task falls on the majority leader, who happens to be a Republican, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

It’s been McConnell’s call to obstruct this nomination.

Biden, though, does have a number of friends in both parties who serve in the Senate. Is there any hope that he can get through to them? Probably not, but when you’re vice president of the United States, you have the bully pulpit from which to preach an important message to those who need to hear it.

 

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Well stated, Mr. Chief Justice

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How about that John Roberts?

The chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court has rebuked the U.S. Senate — here it comes — for playing politics with the appointment of the next justice on the nation’s highest court.

Chief Justice Roberts did not know he was doing so when he made the remarks, as they came just a few days before the shocking and tragic death of Justice Antonin Scalia.

He noted the partisan nature of the votes for recent appointees to the court. According to the New York Times: “Look at my more recent colleagues, all extremely well qualified for the court,” Chief Justice Roberts said, “and the votes were, I think, strictly on party lines for the last three of them, or close to it, and that doesn’t make any sense. That suggests to me that the process is being used for something other than ensuring the qualifications of the nominees.”

The court, of course, has a vacancy to fill. President Obama has selected D.C. Circuit Court Chief Judge Merrick Garland to fill the seat. Senate Republicans say they want the next president to make the call, denying the current president the opportunity to fulfill his constitutional responsibility.

Chief Justice Roberts, served with Garland, surely must believe his judicial colleague is as “extremely well qualified” as justices Alito, Kagan and Sotomayor — whose confirmations were approved on largely partisan votes.

Roberts is on point with his call to consider these nominations on the merits of the individual’s qualifications.

No one has heard hardly a whimper from anyone questioning whether Merrick Garland is qualified to determine the constitutionality of federal law.

The opposition is being mounted for purely political reasons.

John Roberts says such posturing should stop.

I happen to agree with him.

As the chief said in his remarks preceding Scalia’s death: “We don’t work as Democrats or Republicans and I think it’s a very unfortunate impression the public might get from the confirmation process.”

 

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Garland the perfect choice for SCOTUS … normally

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Under normal circumstances — without such historic potential consequences on the line — President Obama’s choice for the U.S. Supreme Court would be considered damn near perfect.

Merrick Garland fits the bill — to the letter.

Brilliant legal scholar; strict adherent to the Constitution; moderate judicial philosophy; meticulous writer; tremendous personal story; varied legal career in private practice and as a federal prosecutor; many years of experience on the federal bench; virtually unanimous admiration among his peers.

Then again, he’s got this particular problem that is not of his making.

He’s been chosen to the highest court in the land during an election year. That, by itself, isn’t a deal breaker. Except that Republicans who control the U.S. Senate, which must confirm the appointment, have made it one.

They’ve declared that Obama shouldn’t get to pick someone to replace the late conservative ideologue Antonin Scalia during the heat of a presidential election campaign. They want to hand that duty over to the next president who, they hope, will be a Republican.

They’ve declared that the current president doesn’t get to his job, which the U.S. Constitution says includes making appointments to the federal bench. He’s made a big choice. Garland is been named to fill some huge shoes on the Supreme Court.

His only drawback, if you want to call it that, is that he isn’t the rock-ribbed, ironclad conservative in the mold of Scalia. Oh, no. Garland is a moderate. He’s a mainstream, thoughtful jurist with a gleaming reputation for careful legal scholarship.

What, do you suppose, will be the American Bar Association’s rating of this guy, when the ABA decides to make that declaration? I’ll predict he’ll get the highest recommendation possible from the bar.

So what in the world is holding up his confirmation? It’s the obstruction of the Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, who vows to block any attempt even to conduct a confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

And to think that McConnell had the brass to say that the president is “politicizing” this pick by criticizing Republicans’ effort to block it.

The stunning lack of self-awareness here is beyond belief. It’s McConnell and his Senate lieutenants who have politicized this process by stating that the 44th president of the United States shall not have his judicial appointment even considered for confirmation.

Why? Because they hope to get one of their fellow Republicans elected president this November.

Something tells me McConnell and his gang of Senate GOP obstructionists are flirting with political disaster if they insist on continuing to play this foolish game.

 

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‘American people’ have spoken, Mr. Leader

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U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is really starting to tick me off.

He keeps harping on this idiotic notion that “the American people” deserve to have a voice in determining who the president should nominate to a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. Their voice has been heard, Sen. McConnell. It was heard four years ago when the country re-elected President Obama.

Thus, he greeted today’s nomination of an eminently qualified jurist — Merrick Garland — with his vow to block it out of hand. Judge Garland will get no hearing; Republican senators won’t meet with him; there will be no vote.

The Senate won’t do its job. It won’t follow through on President Obama’s nomination. Why? Because, according to McConnell, Barack Obama’s time as president is about up and the next president should make the appointment.

So, with that, the majority leader of the Senate has decided that Barack Obama’s second term will be cut short by nearly a year. No need to consider an appointment that the incumbent president sends to the Senate, because the legislative body’s upper chamber won’t do anything about it.

This is an outrage of the first order.

Merrick Garland is a first-class jurist. Senators thought so when they confirmed his nomination to the D.C. Circuit Court in 1997. Republicans joined Democrats in praising Garland’s credentials.

Now, though, it’s different. McConnell said today it’s not “personal.” Of course it is! He and Senate Republicans don’t want Garland to fill a court vacancy created by the untimely death of the court’s leading conservative ideologue, Justice Antonin Scalia.

Garland is not a flaming liberal. His judicial record is the model of judicial moderation. Indeed, leftists today expressed disappointment with the president over his selection of someone who is not a favorite of the Democratic Party’s liberal base.

American citizens have spoken already, Mr. Leader, about who should sit on the Supreme Court. They spoke clearly in the November 2012 general election.

Five million more Americans voted for Barack Obama than voted for Mitt Romney. Case closed.

For the Republican leader of the Senate to suggest that the president’s pick should be stalled because GOP senators don’t want him to do his job is an outrage.

 

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Who will join Cruz in stopping Trump?

cruz

Ted Cruz has a problem.

He wants to become the “anti-Trump” candidate for president of the United States. He’s seeking a way to get Ohio Gov. John Kasich to bow out. He believes he can coalesce enough “true conservatives” behind him to derail Donald J. Trump’s march to the Republican Party presidential nomination.

The junior U.S. senator from Texas, though, needs some help from his colleagues in the Senate. But as Politico reports, he is nearly universally detested by his fellow senators. And that’s just the Republicans with whom he serves.

Cruz needs to build some relationships. I don’t mean “rebuild.” He’s got to start from scratch.

He’s been in the Senate for slightly more than three years. He’s halfway through his very first term in the very first elected public office he’s ever held.

As Politico reports: “Cruz’s relationship with his colleagues is now a central paradox of his campaign: He’s openly arguing for the party to rally behind him, but Republican senators are plainly wary of going anywhere near him. Those who feel burned by Cruz in the past say he’ll come to them only if he decides it’s in his self-interest. ”

The man who leads the Senate — the body’s top Republican — once was on the receiving end of a barrage that Cruz leveled at him. Remember when the Cruz Missile called Majority Leader Mitch McConnell a “liar” in a speech on the floor of the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body?

How does McConnell put that epithet behind him? How does McConnell gather the forces to help one of their own take down this “interloper” named Trump.

Moreover, Sen. John McCain — the GOP’s 2008 presidential nominee — has taken Cruz to task in public for his intemperate remarks about a couple of fellow Vietnam War combat veterans, John Kerry and Chuck Hagel.

Finally, he’s been campaigning against the very “Washington establishment” where he works these days. He’s an “outsider,” he says.

Something tells me Cruz’s efforts to put distance between himself and his Senate colleagues ain’t going well with the ladies and gents with whom he serves.

 

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Garland gets nod; let’s act on it, senators

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BBqxe1o

I’ve written already about why I believe President Obama deserves to have his Supreme Court appointment considered by the U.S. Senate.

It’s his prerogative to appoint someone; it’s the Senate’s prerogative to approve or reject it. The Constitution lays it out there. I understand the idea of “advise and consent.”

If senators object, then they should say so on the record. The idea of obstructing a nomination by refusing to consider it is offensive on its face … at least in my view.

The president today nominated D.C. Circuit Court chief judge Merrick Garland to the high court, replacing the late Antonin Scalia.

The politics of this fight overshadows everything else. It overshadows Garland’s impeccable credentials, his immense standing among legal scholars, his compelling personal story.

Scalia was the court’s leading conservative voice. He was an ideologue. Garland is a moderate. He’s known to be a non-ideologue, but according to conservatives, well, that makes him a flaming liberal.

The court’s balance would shift with Garland joining the court.

And that’s why the Senate Republican leadership is vowing to block the nomination by refusing even to consider it. The GOP won’t even allow a hearing. Hell, GOP senators say they won’t even meet with Garland.

The Republican leadership that says it wants the next president to make the appointment.

What happens, though, if the next president happens to be, oh, Hillary Rodham Clinton? Are they then willing to put this selection in the hands of a president who could appoint a true-life flaming liberal? Or should they give Merrick Garland the hearing he deserves and cut their losses?

Garland’s intelligence and legal knowledge are beyond reproach. Even Republicans said as much when they approved his nomination to the D.C. Circuit Court. If he’s as smart and scholarly now as he was then, it makes sense — or so it seems — that he’d be a fitting choice for the Supreme Court.

The fight has been joined.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said the people should have a say in filling this court seat. Mr. Leader, the people have spoken on it — by re-electing Barack Obama as president of the United States.

 

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Is it better to deal with the ‘devil you know’?

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The word this morning is that President Obama might reveal his selection for the U.S. Supreme Court as early as, oh, Monday!

Excellent. Let’s get this going-away party for the president started.

He reportedly has narrowed the field to three men. One is an African-American, one is an Indian-American, one is a Caucasian. They’re all reportedly able individuals who’ve been confirmed to spots on lower federal appellate courts. The president said he’s going to consider someone whose credentials are impeccable. Moreover, he appears to be zeroing in on someone who’s already passed GOP muster in the Senate.

But, hey. Hold on. Republicans who control the Senate — which must approve the nominee — say they ain’t budging in their refusal to even consider an Obama selection. They want to wait until after the November election.

Here’s where it might get dicey for the Republican leadership in the Senate that is digging in its heels and refusing to do its job — which is to consider and decide whether to confirm a Supreme Court nomination.

Suppose the Republican nominee is Donald J. Trump, who the GOP “establishment” despises. Suppose the Democrats nominate Hillary Rodham Clinton, who the GOP despises perhaps even more.

Suppose, too, that Clinton wins the election in November. Suppose she wins big, as in really, really big.

Do the Republicans believe they’re going to get a more suitable nominee from a President Clinton than they would from the current president? After all, the next justice is going to replace the iconic conservative jurist Antonin Scalia, who died a month ago while on a hunting trip in West Texas.

The balance of the court is likely to change, meaning that the appointment is, shall we say, h-u-u-u-u-u-u-ge!

We might know a thing or two about how this shakes out on Tuesday, when voters in five states decide in primary elections in both parties. Clinton might be able to tighten her vise grip on the Democratic nomination. And Trump could establish himself even more firmly as the GOP frontrunner.

So, with a Clinton-Trump contest shaping up in the fall — and with Republican power brokers scared spitless at the prospect of their party being led by a demagogic know-nothing blowhard — the GOP might want to rethink its resistance to whomever Barack Obama selects for the nation’s highest court.

As someone said this morning on one of those Sunday news talk shows, it might be better to “deal with the devil you know than the one you don’t.”

Let’s all stay tuned. This week well could shake the political ground under our feet.

 

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Government is not a vacuum-sealed profession

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Ted Cruz knows as well as any of the 100 men and women who work in the U.S. Senate that politicians don’t operate in a vacuum.

The freshman Republican from Texas wants to become president. Were he to stroll into the Oval Office next January, he’ll have a serious issue to resolve.

How is he going to work with the individuals who seem to despise him?

Cruz stands alone in the Senate among those who think highly of him. Or so it appears.

As they say: The president proposes but Congress disposes. The Senate comprises half of the Capitol Building. The overwhelming consensus so far in this presidential campaign has been that Cruz — elected to the Senate in 2012 — has precious few friends and political allies in that body.

So the question persists on my mind: How does this guy expect to get a single thing done while working with a legislative body comprising individuals who can’t stand him?

Presidents don’t work in a vacuum. The most successful of them know how to legislate, know that to get anything done requires them to compromise.

Cruz keeps yapping about never yielding to the other side, never cutting deals, never forsaking his strong conservative principles.

I take that to mean that it’s going to be his way or the highway.

Strange. Isn’t that what Republicans have been saying about President Barack Obama?

 

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Little to fear from Trump? Here’s why

checks balance

I’ll admit to being one of those millions of Americans who is horrified at the notion of a President Donald J. Trump.

The horror comes not so much from whether he can achieve all the idiotic policy goals he’s set out. It comes from the idea of this guy speaking his mind in public, of having his words heard around the world by people who expect high-minded rhetoric from the head of state of the world’s greatest nation.

Yep, by golly, we’re still the top dog on Planet Earth — and whatever Trump says to the contrary is just so much horse manure.

I’m going to offer, though, a view that might put your mind to rest at least a little bit over what makes some of us afraid … very afraid.

That stuff about building the wall and making Mexico pay for it? How about the notion of banning Muslims from entering the country because of their religious faith? How about the idiotic tax plan that economists say simply will not work? Or the idea that he’ll single-handedly bring jobs back that have been lost to Japan, China and Mexico?

Trump’s not going to get any of that done without help from Congress. Who controls the legislative branch of government? Republicans, that’s who.

Yes, the very Republicans who at this very moment are working overtime, behind closed doors, sweating bullets … trying like holy hell to deny Trump the presidential nomination of their party.

Imagine what might happen, thus, if they fail in their bid to deny him the nomination. Now imagine — and this is the real stretch — Trump actually defeating the Democratic nominee to become the 45th president of the United States.

The Democrats are almost certain to nominate Hillary Rodham Clinton. Sure, she’s got baggage of her own. However, she possesses a formidable political machine.

If hell freezes over and lightning strikes multiple times in the same spot — and the sun starts rising in the west — Trump could be elected.

If that happens, do you really think he’s going to have any easier of a time getting anything done in a Congress dominated by Republicans — presuming the GOP even manages to maintain control of the Senate? And that seems like a potentially tall order in any event, given the electoral matchups involving many potentially vulnerable GOP senators.

And if Democrats take back control of the Senate competing fiercely against a Republican ballot led by Donald J. Trump, well, then Trump’s myriad cockamamie ideas become even more remotely doable.

There. Do you feel better now?

 

 

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Timing determines ‘lame duck’ status

lame-duck

I’ve noted before the importance of timing.

Perhaps it might have something — or everything — to do with the kerfuffle that’s consumed Washington, D.C., over President Obama’s upcoming attempt to fill a critical vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Justice Antonin Scalia’s untimely death created a political earthquake within minutes of the announcement that he had succumbed at a West Texas ranch. U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, master of proper decorum that he is, declared about an hour later that the Senate would block any nominee that Obama would present for confirmation.

Other Republicans, namely the candidates for president, called Obama a “lame duck” and said the task of filling the vacancy belongs to the next president — who he or she is.

A reader of this blog commented on an earlier post that the president really isn’t a lame duck. He didn’t lose re-election in 2012, the commenter noted. Given that he won, he implied, the president is entitled to fulfill all the duties granted to his office by the U.S. Constitution.

Which brings up a question: Would we be waging this political fire fight had Justice Scalia died during the first year of President Obama’s second — and final — term rather than in the final year?

Surely the president’s foes wouldn’t suggest in early 2013 that filling a critical vacancy on the court — the next pick, after all, is likely to change the philosophical balance — should belong to the next president. The court would be short a justice for the next three years … maybe longer.

As it stands now, if McConnell and Gang succeed in blocking the president’s choice for the high court, the Supreme Court could be short a member until next summer. The court adjourns in June and won’t resume its duties until October 2017.

Hey, what difference does it make, correct? So what if the narrowly conservative court is short a member for the next 18 months?

McConnell showed his hand very early during Barack Obama’s time as president. He vowed to make Obama a “one-term president.” That, he said, would be his top priority as then-minority leader.

He failed to accomplish that mission, so he’s settling for the next-best thing by denying the president the opportunity to ensure the nation’s highest judicial panel remains whole.

Timing. Sometimes it really stinks.