{"id":20765,"date":"2017-04-04T00:38:14","date_gmt":"2017-04-04T00:38:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=20765"},"modified":"2017-04-04T00:38:14","modified_gmt":"2017-04-04T00:38:14","slug":"senate-readies-for-nuclear-attack-on-rules","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=20765","title":{"rendered":"Senate readies for ‘nuclear’ attack on rules"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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All this hubbub over whether to deploy the “nuclear option” to get a Supreme Court justice confirmed has my head spinning.<\/p>\n

My emotions are terribly mixed.<\/p>\n

Here is where we stand:<\/p>\n

* The U.S. Senate Committee has recommended that Neil Gorsuch be confirmed to the Supreme Court; the panel voted along partisan lines. Republicans voted “yes,” Democrats voted “no.”<\/p>\n

* Democrats are set to filibuster the Gorsuch nomination as payback to their Republican “friends” for blocking an earlier appointment, again on partisan grounds.<\/p>\n

* Senate rules require Supreme Court nominees to\u00a0garner at least 60 votes. Republicans at this moment don’t have enough votes to reach the 60-vote threshold — and break a Democratic filibuster.<\/p>\n

* Republicans, thus, are pondering whether to “go nuclear” and change the rules to allow only a simple majority to approve a high court nominee.<\/p>\n

Ohhhh<\/em>, what to do?<\/p>\n

We’ve already stipulated that Democratic senators don’t want Gorsuch seated if only because of the steamroll job GOP senators did on Merrick Garland, whom Barack Obama nominated to the court to succeed the late Antonin Scalia.<\/p>\n

Why the emotional conflict?<\/p>\n

I happen to believe in presidential prerogative. I believe the president’s selection deserves greater consideration than the Senate’s constitutional right to reject an appointment, particularly if the appointee is “well qualified,” as the American Bar Association has determined about Gorsuch.<\/p>\n

But my belief in presidential prerogative is tempered a good bit by the outrage I share with Democratic senators over the way Republican senators stonewalled Garland’s nomination, how they played politics by saying the next appointment belonged to “the next president.”<\/p>\n

They were as wrong as they could be in denying President Obama the right to select someone, who I feel compelled to add is every bit as qualified to serve on the high court as Neil Gorsuch.<\/p>\n

Should the Republican majority throw its weight around once again by engaging in that so-called “nuclear option” and change the rules to suit their own agenda?<\/p>\n

Let me think for a moment about that one.<\/p>\n

No. They shouldn’t!<\/em><\/p>\n\n

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All this hubbub over whether to deploy the “nuclear option” to get a Supreme Court justice confirmed has my head spinning. My emotions are terribly mixed. Here is where we stand: * The U.S. Senate Committee has recommended that Neil Gorsuch be confirmed to the Supreme Court; the panel voted along partisan lines. Republicans voted … Continue reading Senate readies for ‘nuclear’ attack on rules<\/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":[540,1424,6063,6899,5051],"class_list":["post-20765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-legal-news","category-national-news","category-political-news","tag-barack-obama","tag-donald-trump","tag-merrick-garland","tag-neil-gorsuch","tag-us-senate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20765","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=20765"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20765\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20766,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20765\/revisions\/20766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}