Tag Archives: Ruth Bader Ginsburg

legal news, national news

Merrick Garland haunts this hearing

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Merrick Garland is very much alive and well but his “ghost” floated throughout the hearing room today as a congressional hearing commenced on an appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee welcomed another federal judge, Amy Coney Barrett, as she began her confirmation hearing to the U.S. Supreme Court. She would take the seat occupied by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died in September.

Garland’s role in this drama? Well, he once got nominated to the high court by President Barack Obama. Another justice, Antonin Scalia, died in February 2016 while on vacation in Texas. President Obama wanted to nominate a successor. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell wasted no time in declaring his intention to block that effort. Why? Because the voters had a right to be heard before a SCOTUS nomination would be considered by the Senate.

We had a presidential election in 2016. Obama couldn’t run again. It turned out that Donald Trump would win the election. So, Trump got to select someone to succeed Scalia; he chose Neil Gorsuch.

The hypocrisy between then and now is stunning in its scope.

We were 10 months away from the previous election when a vacancy occurred. Now, we’re just 22 days before the next election. Don’t Americans have a right to have their voices heard before the Senate considers a nominee to succeed Ginsburg? Of course we do.

Except that Republicans who at the moment hold the majority of Senate seats are pushing full speed with the Barrett hearing.

Most astonishing of all is the comment that Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham made in 2018. He said then that if an opening occurs during Donald Trump’s term as president and the “primary season has begun,” the Senate should hold off until after the election before considering a possible replacement.

Graham said we could hold his words against him. Fine. Many of us are doing that, Mr. Chairman.

Amy Coney Barrett wouldn’t be my choice to join the court. I much prefer a jurist in the Merrick Garland mold: moderate, center-left in philosophical judicial outlook. Garland, though, never got the courtesy of a hearing, let alone a Senate vote, that appears to be in store for Judge Barrett.

It’s all because the Senate GOP majority played politics with the judicial nomination process in 2016 … and is doing so once again right now.

Shameful.

national news

Due diligence anyone … anyone?

(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Who needs due diligence when you have a power-hungry hypocrite in charge of a U.S. Senate confirmation process?

That’s a rhetorical question, of course. Due diligence is as important as it always is when considering whom to seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. That ain’t stopping Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell from unleashing the confirmation hounds on a nominee Donald Trump intends to send to the Senate upon the death of the iconic Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Let’s see how this goes. The presidential election is 46 days away. Trump hasn’t yet pitched a name at the Senate. He will do so quickly, or so we are led to believe. McConnell said the Senate will receive the nominee’s name, the Judiciary Committee will conduct a hearing and then the Senate will vote on the nominee … before we decide the presidency and before we decide who sits in the Senate!

How in the name of legislative due diligence is that supposed to happen?

Two Republican senators, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, say the Senate should wait until after the election. Yeah … do ya think?

A number of Republicans might lose on Election Day. Martha McSally of Arizona, Cory Gardner of Colorado, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Collins, and possibly even McConnell in Kentucky are prime targets for defeat. How does a lame-duck Senate session vote, therefore, on a Supreme Court nominee when several of the body’s members won’t be there to stand before their constituents?

Let us not forget how McConnell stonewalled President Obama’s pick to succeed the late Justice Antonin Scalia in early 2016, with McConnell saying that the president didn’t have the right to make an appointment during an election year. We’ve got that now, only magnified by an untold factor given the closeness of the next election!

Back to my point: How also does a Senate do the kind of due diligence required to thoroughly examine the quality of the person nominated by the president to serve as a member of nation’s highest court?

My view is that it cannot. The Senate must not steamroll a nominee to the Supreme Court in a fashion that screams political expediency.

Mitch McConnell’s hypocrisy is on full and inglorious display.

He sickens me.

national news

Honor RBG’s ‘most fervent wish’

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

“My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed.”

So it was stated by the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in a note she dictated to her granddaughter just a few days before her death.

I am saddened beyond measure to hear of Justice Ginsburg’s death. It was not a surprise, given her lengthy bout with cancer. However, her passing now sets up a political battle the likes of which we have seen.

I am having trouble wrapping my noggin around all the ramifications. To wit:

  • Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says Donald Trump will be able to get a Senate vote on the person he nominates to succeed Ginsburg. But wait! He said the opposite in 2016 when Justice Antonin Scalia died. President Obama wouldn’t get a Senate hearing on who selected in an election year. The vacancy was held for more than 400 days. We have 46 days until the next election this time.
  • Does the Senate leader have the chops to hold the GOP caucus together? One Republican senator, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, has said already the process should wait. And what about the handful of GOP senators who are set to lose their re-election bids this fall? Do they vote on a nomination in a lame-duck congressional session? Is it right for them to vote, then leave office only to have the next SCOTUS justice getting a lifetime job?
  • How does McConnell justify the hypocrisy of denying one president the chance to select a justice while fast-tracking another president’s selection?

I have declared my belief in presidential prerogative. I have stated that presidents have the right to nominate their court choices. Were I to stand firmly on that principle, then Donald Trump deserves to nominate a SCOTUS justice just as much as Barack Obama did.

However, I cannot swallow the hypocrisy that Mitch McConnell exhibited in 2016 by denying Merrick Garland a hearing and a vote to succeed Antonin Scalia on the high court. McConnell squandered any moral authority on this issue.

So, I want to echo the wish expressed by Justice Ginsburg as her life slipped away from her.

Let us conduct a presidential election and then swear in the president before proceeding with a nomination battle for the Supreme Court. If the stars align properly, that president will be Joseph Robinette Biden Jr.

national news

Politics intersects with principle

I hate it when this happens, when principle runs headlong into partisan political interests … such as when presidents might be handed an opportunity to make a key appointment.

I refer to the U.S. Supreme Court and to Donald J. Trump.

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died suddenly in early 2016, creating a vacancy on the high court. President Obama, serving his final full year in office, then nominated Merrick Garland to succeed the brilliant conservative jurist. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell slammed the brakes on that effort, saying that the Senate wouldn’t confirm an appointment from a lame-duck president in an election year.

Many of us — including me — raised holy hell. We argued that presidential prerogative allowed Obama to make that appointment. We argued on the principle that the Constitution granted him the authority to act. I also argued that McConnell was playing a shameful game of politics with this principle. The 2016 election occurred, Trump got elected, Garland’s nomination was tossed aside.

Here we are, four years later. Another Supreme Court justice, liberal icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg, revealed recently she is battling liver cancer. I now am asking myself: What happens if she can no longer serve on the court? Does Donald Trump deserve the same sort of presidential deference many of us in the peanut gallery said was due Barack Obama?

With gritted teeth and a tight jaw, I have to say: yes, he does.

Let me be crystal clear. I do not want Justice Ginsburg to leave the court until well after the November election. There’s a decent chance at this moment that Trump is going to lose to Democratic nominee Joe Biden. It is my fondest political hope that Justice Ginsburg can continue to serve on the court, can continue to write opinions and can be a full partner in the court’s deliberations. It also is my hope that should she decide to retire from the court that she can wait until after President Biden takes his oath of office in January and then is free to nominate someone of his choice.

However, if fate takes the court in another direction, I will be saddened beyond measure at what is likely to transpire as Trump wages war against those in the Senate who will fight to stall any confirmation process until after the voters have their say at the ballot box.

Yes, occasionally politics can be based on high principle. I fear that politics and principle might be pointed in opposite directions in this most volatile election year.

national news

No, Mr. POTUS, justices need not recuse themselves

Donald John Trump hasn’t yet read the U.S. Constitution, let alone the part that declares that the federal judiciary is supposed to operate free of any political pressure or interference from another “co-equal” branch of government.

You see, the current president has declared that Supreme Court Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg need to recuse themselves from any cases involving the president. Why? He says they’re biased against him.

Please pardon me for saying this, but we all have our bias. Judges take oaths to administer the law fairly and without prejudice. Their oath does not scrub the bias from their minds or their hearts, any more than it does for any other high-ranking office at any level of government.

As long as we’re talking about bias, should those justices who agree with the president philosophically recuse themselves from any case brought by those parties that might oppose him? Of course not! The framers intended for the federal judiciary, including the highest court in the land, to be free of political pressure, coercion or intimidation.

Therefore, Donald Trump’s call for Justices Sotomayor and Ginsburg to recuse themselves from any future case involving the president’s administration is laughable on its face. Except that I ain’t laughing. Nor should anyone who values the distinct separation of powers among the three branches of government slap their knees while they guffaw hysterically.

That separation is spelled out categorically in the U.S. Constitution.

The president of the United States needs to read it.

national news

Next SCOTUS vacancy could cause a major eruption

Photograph by Fred Schilling, Supreme Court Curator’s Office.

I will not pussyfoot around this issue.

If Donald J. Trump is handed another opportunity to nominate someone to the U.S. Supreme Court, particularly if the nominee would succeed one of the court’s liberal justices, all the battles we saw during his two prior confirmation efforts will pale in comparison.

Justice Neil Gorsuch was Trump’s first appointment. He succeeded a conservative icon on the court, the late Antonin Scalia. Justice Brett Kavanaugh was Trump pick No. 2. Kavanaugh succeeded Anthony Kennedy, who retired. Scalia leaned hard right; Kennedy was also a conservative, but voted on occasion with the liberal wing of the court.

The current court comprises a 5-4 conservative majority, which appears to more solidly conservative with Justice Kavanaugh sitting in place of Justice Kennedy.

The latest justice to come into public view has been Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who has been battling health issues lately. She has suffered from cancer; she has fallen at home; she recently was hospitalized for chills and fever. Justice Ginsburg is back home and will be back at work at the court soon.

Ginsburg vows to stay on the job. I pray that she is able to outlast the presidency of Donald Trump.

If not, though, then we had best settle in for the proverbially bloodiest political battle we will have witnessed since, oh, 1991 when President Bush nominated archconservative Clarence Thomas to replace ultraliberal Thurgood Marshall on the highest court in America.

You can rest assured that Donald Trump will do nothing to enrage the hard-right base that clings to its support of the president. He will select someone who adheres to that far-right philosophy, thus cementing the court’s conservative majority possibly for generations.

The framers established a lifetime appointment process for the federal judiciary ostensibly to remove politics from the judicial branch of government. Sadly, that notion has not held up over the centuries since the founding of our republic.

If the current president is handed another opportunity to select a justice to the Supreme Court, you will see what I mean.

I guarantee it.

national news

Principled stands occasionally rub us the wrong way

If one is going to argue a point on principle, then fairness dictates that the principle must stand no matter whose policy is the subject of the discussion of the moment.

With that, I have to declare that my vigorous opposition to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s decision to play politics with President Obama’s authority to appoint a Supreme Court justice compels me to make a declaration that is going to anger some readers of this blog.

It is that Donald Trump deserves to be treated fairly if the time comes for him to make a SCOTUS nomination during the heat of a presidential campaign.

I heard the news about Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s hospitalization over a fever and thought what many of you thought as well: What if she can no longer serve on the nation’s highest court? I hate harboring macabre thoughts, but realism requires us to recognize that the justice is 86 years of age and has been battling cancer.

OK, that said, she also is a noted progressive jurist appointed to the high court in 1993 by President Clinton. She is the second-most senior tenured justice on the court, behind archconservative Justice Clarence Thomas, appointed in 1991 by President George H.W. Bush.

The politics gets stickier than pine bar on a baseball bat.

Conservative icon Antonin Scalia died suddenly in early 2016. President Obama wanted to nominate Merrick Garland to succeed him. Garland is known as a judicial moderate who tilts a bit to the left. McConnell intervened. He said under no circumstances should Obama, a lame duck, should be allowed to fill that vacancy. He blocked Obama’s choice in the Senate, which has confirmation power.

Many of us went ballistic. I was one of millions of Americans who were enraged at McConnell’s power play. How dare he interfere with the president’s constitutionally granted authority? He wanted to wait for the 2016 election to play out before handing the matter over to the next president. It was a raw partisan act and it was wrong.

I argued the point on the principle of presidential authority taking precedence.

So, here we are today.

Another president is in office. Donald Trump has selected two high court justices already. If he gets a chance to select a third one in the event that Justice Ginsburg retires or … well, you know … then he gets to nominate a justice to succeed this progressive icon.

We all know what the reaction will be. It will mirror the reaction that erupted in progressive circles when Scalia died and Garland got the nomination. Only this time conservatives will argue that the president deserves to have his nominee seated; progressives will seek to block it, perhaps in the manner that McConnell did.

It would be as wrong to block Trump as it was to block Obama.

The more reasonable — and principled — option would be for Democrats to regain control of the Senate after the 2020 election. Then the Senate could exercise its appointment power when a conservative justice’s spot on the court is vacated. Voters also can kick Trump out of office, presuming he survives the pending impeachment and Senate trial, and elect someone who will forgo the ultra-right-wing agenda favored by the incumbent.

Given my own often-stated bias, I take no pleasure in making this declaration. I feel I must … in the name of principle.

In the meantime, I intend to pray real hard for Justice Ginsburg’s good health.

national news

Former Fox News talker shows hideous side

Bill O’Reilly is a cable news has-been, but he still commands a substantial audience of true believers who hang onto the crap that flies out of this guy’s pie hole.

Such as what came from his Twitter account today: Justice Ginsburg is very ill. Another Justice appointment inevitable and soon. Bad news for the left.

Hmm. Let’s ponder that one briefly.

Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has just had some cancerous nodules removed from her lung. She is recovering. Doctors believe they got all of it; they also believe the cancer hasn’t spread.

Does the former Fox News talking head say a thing about Justice Ginsburg’s recovery, wishing her well? No. The no-spin phony talks about “bad news” coming to political progressives.

The man knows not a lick of shame. He is utterly lacking as well in class, decorum, decency, sympathy, empathy, kindness.

This individual makes me sick.

I just had to get that off my chest.

legal news

Will the SCOTUS pick adhere to the RBG Rule?

I’ve been hearing some chatter in recent days about the RBG Rule, named after Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

President Clinton nominated Justice Ginsburg to the high court in 1993 and she promptly made one thing clear: She would not comment on any question that she believed could compromise the integrity of a decision she might make in a future court hearing.

Her intention was to avoid revealing how she might rule.

The RBG Rule has stood the test of time over the past 25 years.

Donald J. Trump is set to select someone to succeed Justice Anthony Kennedy, who is retiring at the end of this month after 30 years on the Supreme Court.

Here’s my hope for the next pick: He or she should make the same pledge that RBG made in 1993. What’s more, liberal members of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, which will consider the merits of this nomination, should honor that nominee’s pledge … if the nominee makes it.

There likely will be plenty of grist to pore through once the president reveals the identity of his nominee. I keep hearing that all the finalists the president is considering have considerable judicial experience and have developed lengthy and clearly defined paper trails that reveal much about their judicial philosophy.

Should whoever gets nominated be forced to answer how he or she would vote on, say, Roe v. Wade, or on the president’s travel ban, or on affirmative action, or campaign finance?

This nomination is likely to proceed to a relatively swift up/down vote on confirmation, despite the concerns of many that we ought to wait for the midterm election to determine the Senate composition. The Senate majority leader insisted on the completion of an election prior to considering someone to replace the late Antonin Scalia, right?

If the Senate is going to plow ahead with a confirmation process to determine who succeeds Justice Kennedy, then the RBG Rule needs to stand.

legal news

Court brings cause for concern

Oh, brother.

Donald J. Trump is predicting he could get to fill as many as four seats on the U.S. Supreme Court.

How does that grab you? I’ll tell you the unvarnished truth: It scares the ever-loving bejabbers out of me.

The president already has picked Justice Neil Gorsuch for the highest court in the land; he replaced another conservative, Antonin Scalia, who died suddenly a year ago in Texas. Justice Anthony Kennedy is reportedly considering retirement. Who’s next? Might it be Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg? Try this one on for size: Justice Sonya Sotomayor.

Trump could swing court balance

That’s four of them. Kennedy is considered a “swing vote” on the court; Ginsburg and Sotomayor are part of the so-called “liberal wing.” Ginsburg’s health reportedly has been getting more frail over the years. Sotomayor, one of the court’s younger members, suffers from Type 1 diabetes, which could inhibit her ability to continue.

What might occur? Trump will get to appoint justices who’ll swing the court so far to the right that it could scare a whole lot more Americans than just yours truly.

I don’t know about you, but I’m going to send good-health vibes to Justices Kennedy, Ginsburg and Sotomayor. We need them on the highest court in the land to maintain some semblance of balance and reason.