{"id":13686,"date":"2016-03-24T14:47:58","date_gmt":"2016-03-24T14:47:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=13686"},"modified":"2016-03-24T14:47:58","modified_gmt":"2016-03-24T14:47:58","slug":"listen-to-the-vp-senators-about-doing-your-job","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=13686","title":{"rendered":"Listen to the VP, senators, about doing your job"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Vice President Joe Biden is going to lecture the U.S. Senate on something about which knows a thing or two.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Biden will deliver his message<\/a>\u00a0in remarks at Georgetown University.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

That, of course, is pure malarkey.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

How does Biden — who served in the Senate for 36 years before being elected vice president — figure in this?<\/p>\n

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

It’s been McConnell’s call to obstruct this nomination.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n\n

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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\u00a0in remarks … Continue reading Listen to the VP, senators, about doing your job<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,13,14],"tags":[412,540,849,2505,6063,3099,4209,5051],"class_list":["post-13686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-legal-news","category-national-news","category-political-news","tag-antonin-scalia","tag-barack-obama","tag-capitol-hill","tag-joe-biden","tag-merrick-garland","tag-mitch-mcconnell","tag-senate-gop","tag-us-senate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13686"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13686\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13688,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13686\/revisions\/13688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}