SCOTUS-Watch: It's Gorsuch!

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

WTF

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Daily Mail

According to the Mail it was just a satire club to get some librul tears from his leftist teachers and classmates

Still going to be one hell of a problem in the hearings.

[Klartext89]

WTF

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Daily Mail

According to the Mail it was just a satire club to get some librul tears from his leftist teachers and classmates

Still going to be one hell of a problem in the hearings.

I guess Al Franken and Pocahontas won't vote for him now... ;-)

I sent your text to friends and I printed your text, will translate it for another friend who is interested in the topic but can't deal with so much "special language" and unknown words (if you're not following US Politics/Law closeley). Very very deep THANK YOU!

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

WTF

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Daily Mail

According to the Mail it was just a satire club to get some librul tears from his leftist teachers and classmates

Still going to be one hell of a problem in the hearings.

I guess Al Franken and Pocahontas won't vote for him now... ;-)

I sent your text to friends and I printed your text, will translate it for another friend who is interested in the topic but can't deal with so much "special language" and unknown words (if you're not following US Politics/Law closeley). Very very deep THANK YOU!

Well I will warn that a 4 - 8 AM post (my time) is probably not going to be without some grammatical problems, especially after I sliced and moved stuff around in the interim period.

[The Other Castro]

Tester on Gorsuch:

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https://www.nationaljournal.com/s/647592?unlock=PSECX37NP7LBYGR7&mref=homepage-free

[Gass3268]

Tammy Baldwin is a no

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[KingSweden]

Tester on Gorsuch:

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https://www.nationaljournal.com/s/647592?unlock=PSECX37NP7LBYGR7&mref=homepage-free

Good on him being realistic, though I'm sure NARAL will be just thrilled to hear this

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

This is an unprecedented steal for a seat in the Supreme Court. I have no reason to respect such actions. They could have given Garland a hearing AT LEAST, but no. They knew he was qualified so they just blocked him until their party could get their nominee in.

Payback for Bork sure was sweet

What does any of this have to do with Bork? When the other party controls the senate, the president doesn't always get his first choice.

Many of the biggest whiners in the Senate about the supreme court are people like Harry Reid, and Patrick Leahy who slandered Bork for political reasons. Getting screwed over on a pick was overdue justice

Not even a little bit the same thing.

It's EXACTLY the same thing, but as always it's ok for Leftists, if they do it cause the have "moral reasons" and if it is done to them it is "shameful". Hypocrisy at an unbelieveable level. If you don't want to be treated unfairly, then don't treat the other side unfairly if you are in charge. Very easy.

Therein lies the point.

The simple fact of the matter is we are heading towards greater polarization and that is especially true over Supreme Court nominees. Since the 1980's, Republicans have been aiming for a anti-Roe Majority. Since the late 1980's, Democrats have been keen to prevent this especially after Rehnquist/Scalia double appointment in 1986, there was a keen awareness that the next justice was decisive.

So Ted Kennedy, Biden and the like developed the "Borking" strategy. They took down Bork, and forced Reagan to appoint a wildcard on the issue. Republicans saw this as an affront to tradition. The President was suppose to nominate, and the Senate was suppose to confirm as long as they were qualified. There weren't suppose to be litmus tests and there weren't suppose to be the kind of character assassination that was occurring over these nominees like Bork and later with Thomas in their view.

That is why the Republicans for two decades tried to own the higher ground, by "opposing litmus tests" like Bush did in 2000 and voting to confirm nominees like RBG with wide margins. But it meant nothing, these were naive attempts to paper over the reality that Democrats were more committed to saving Roe than Republicans were at overturning it. So there was no deference. Daschle and later Reid blocked dozens of lower count appointees leaving Obama with a hefty backlog when he took office (the root cause of Obama's transforming the judicial branch lauded in an article last year before Scalia died, was directly because Democrats Garland the lower courts under Bush, especially after 2006). To a Republican, Democrats broke the rules in 1986, in 1991 and again in 2001-2008.

It didn't matter that they tried to play by the rules in the 1990's in the hopes that Democrats would return the favor. They still acted ridiculously with Bush and after Roberts and Alito was confirmed, Hillary went around saying they had bamboozled the Senate and outright lied their way onto the court. Bush won 51% of the vote, had 55 Senate seats and yet there was no sense of deference, the successful appointment of two pro-life Justices was in the eyes of Democrats, a con job.  Democrats get liberals and Republicans have to settle for moderates or it is corrupt. This plays into the narrative that "Democrats always get their way while Republicans have to take it in the chin", Ted Cruz narrative. Going further from a Republican perspective, they see Democrats as willing to go to any means necessary because in their mines it is for the cause, however noble it may be, but since Republicans are either crooked or ignorant if they go to excess in pursuit of something, it is evil.

If you go back to the statement by Biden, yes indeed he was thinking as he was speaking. But that misses the underlying point, that in 1992 Biden was not going to let Republicans secure the 4th seat or worse gain a 5th anti-Roe seat with Bill Clinton looking likely to be President. By 2016, with the establishment in ruins, no one cared to keep up appearances or play by old rules. It was either a far right movement guy like Cruz or shoot from the hip populist like Trump, war had been going on for decades and they were going to fight back. Thus very few paid lib services to avoiding litmus tests like Bush did in 2000. Most of the leading contenders pledged to appoint solid pro-life judges

I was fine with Garland, especially because it was probably the best we could get out of Obama. However, I am glad that it worked out in a way so as to keep this seat in the hands of a Conservative as it has been for 80 years and also preserving that 4th pro-life seat, to ensure at the very least that late-term abortion remains banned.

It is not the way I would have preferred it to come about, but at the same time Merkley is wrong. Despite what one thinks of Trump, he was elected in the manner proscribed by the Constitution. The evidence of involvement by foreign gov'ts to my knowledge extends only to spread of information both true and false around the internet. Democracy depends on voters being able to take information and judge for themselves what the best course is and therefore is inherently based on a sense of faith in people to make the right decisions. That doesn't change because of who is waving said information in their face. Continuing in this line of thought, the constitution affords him the right to make an appointment to a vacant seat, regardless of the circumstances that produced it. He is President, the seat is vacant, he makes an appointment.

Just like in 1968 when Earl Warren purposely retired before the elections to ensure that LBJ would name his successor and not Richard Nixon, whom he despised. This led to the nomination of Fortas who was filibustered until it was forced to be withdrawn. During the process, the first of his scandals came to light, but the origin of filibuster was anger at the political relationship between LBJ and Fortas (which was inappropriate and a violation of separation of powers) and also the rulings of the Warren Court. So inherently politicization of the process by both sides. The end result was that there was not time to name another replacement, and Nixon ended up appointing Warren Burger, who was followed by Reagan's selection of William Rehnquist and then Bush's selection of John Roberts, who at 62, is expected to remain on the court until the 2030's. Considering how that originated, is the Chief Justice a stolen seat? Liberals have not held it since and Democrats have not held it since 1953 and that is largely because of what happened in 1968.

What happened with Clarence Thomas wasn't character assassination, the man had a history of sexually harassing women and it's a disgrace that he was confirmed.

have you ever heard of Bill Clinton?

*snip*

Yes, have you ever heard of Clarence Thomas?

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

This is an unprecedented steal for a seat in the Supreme Court. I have no reason to respect such actions. They could have given Garland a hearing AT LEAST, but no. They knew he was qualified so they just blocked him until their party could get their nominee in.

And the Dems should return the favor by doing everything in their power to block Gorsuch. President Pussygrabber should not be allowed to appoint a supreme court justice during his last year in office.

[wolfsblood07]

Although I voted for Trump, I believe Merrick Garland should have been given a hearing and confirmed, unless he was not qualified.  This was Obama's pick, and the failure to give the man a hearing is a disgrace.

[(Still) muted by Kalwejt until March 31]

Although I voted for Trump, I believe Merrick Garland should have been given a hearing and confirmed, unless he was not qualified.  This was Obama's pick, and the failure to give the man a hearing is a disgrace.

-Merrick Garland is a loss. Gorsuch is a win. I like winning. I don't like losing. I like what the Senate ended up doing.

[SteveRogers]

This is an unprecedented steal for a seat in the Supreme Court. I have no reason to respect such actions. They could have given Garland a hearing AT LEAST, but no. They knew he was qualified so they just blocked him until their party could get their nominee in.

Payback for Bork sure was sweet

What does any of this have to do with Bork? When the other party controls the senate, the president doesn't always get his first choice.

Many of the biggest whiners in the Senate about the supreme court are people like Harry Reid, and Patrick Leahy who slandered Bork for political reasons. Getting screwed over on a pick was overdue justice

Not even a little bit the same thing.

It's EXACTLY the same thing, but as always it's ok for Leftists, if they do it cause the have "moral reasons" and if it is done to them it is "shameful". Hypocrisy at an unbelieveable level. If you don't want to be treated unfairly, then don't treat the other side unfairly if you are in charge. Very easy.

You're mixing together a bunch of different issues. Rejecting Obama's first choice pick would have been retaliation for "slandering" Bork or whatever other perceived slight you want to pick. Nuking the filibuster is arguably fair game in response to Reid's rule change on lower court nominees. But what the GOP did to Merrick Garland was not "retaliation" or "politics as usual." It was nothing short of a complete and total abdication of the Senate's constitutional duties.

[ApatheticAustrian]

Although I voted for Trump, I believe Merrick Garland should have been given a hearing and confirmed, unless he was not qualified.  This was Obama's pick, and the failure to give the man a hearing is a disgrace.

-Merrick Garland is a loss. Gorsuch is a win. I like winning. I don't like losing. I like what the Senate ended up doing.

that's why i am al in for killing the effing filibuster for good.

if republicans kill it now, the democratic president can finally do something instead of getting trolled by those without any kind of respect.

the filibuster is something out a nice old-school world of lords and ladies.....not fitting today.

let republicans have, other than democrats, all their spoils now....and unable to block democrats at anything the next time.

[The_Doctor]

I argue the Courts have been politicized too long. But then again, we started the road to hell with the Democratic Party. The New Dealers started with trying to swing the Court to the Left, and it should be no shock the Reaganites began to value the Courts.

But that's all water under the bridge compared to 2016.

But Merrick Garland, to me, represented a nuclear option in that a vacancy came up in February 2016 and was not filled until February 2017. While Scalia's death was highly unfortunate, the partisan reasoning to leave a Court seat open for a full year stretches political norms past their breaking point. If this is the rationale - and the fig leaf of it being an election year being exactly that - then why shouldn't an opposition party in the majority hold up a Court appointment for 2 years? 3 years? What if a Republican President had a Democratic Senate and a court vacancy occurred?

There's a stretching of political norms and there's a breaking point. Garland was a breaking point. The President nominated him. We have a duty to have a fully staffed Court. The postponing of a Court vote in the name of partisan control of the Court was in a sense going beyond mere politics and validated the "anything goes."

Robert Bork was rejected, yes. I don't like it too much but the Senate fulfilled their Constitutional duty to "advise and consent." They looked at the nomination and they rejected it. Plain and simple. Senators are not required to rubber stamp a Court nominee. They're required to use their judgment as elected representatives to evaluate nominees and give them an up and down vote. Had McConnell said "we'll give Garland an up and down vote," and they failed him, I would have been happy. Instead, the Senate refused to even give him a courtesy hearing and held the seat open for a year.

I admit, I cheered this strategy a year ago as a partisan Republican. Since then, seeing the partisan gyre that has widened with Donald Trump's election and the "anything goes" mentality of the Republican Party (and now, the corresponding response from the Democratic Party, who rightfully believe that they have to respond in kind to stay viable) has made me reevaluate how far we go to break political norms. They may not be Constitutional, or whatnot, but they undergird how we function as a republic.

Indeed, Donald Trump was elected on that basis - that anything goes, and that political norms no longer matter in the name of "winning." The name of the game is to win, even if we stop being a republic in the process and our political divisions become so intense and bitter that like Rome, we require a monarch to rule us. This is exactly - I know it's cliched - what happened in ancient Rome. Norms were slowly stripped away as partisan factionalism intensified, ending in Augustus' rule.

Returning to my original point, now that the fig leaf has been used, now every Senate majority can ruthlessly stop an opposition president by holding open an Court seat for as long as they want - without consequences. That precedent has now been set - and the Court's balance is now considered fair game and no political norms now govern how we fill Supreme Court nominations.

We've crossed a Rubicon and unfortunately, to restore it, we're going to need one party to decisively defeat the other party and restore the political norms that make this republic functional.

Trump should have bucked his base, and risked his presidency to nominate Garland in the name of restoring political norms. That he didn't is understandable but it shows that our system's norms are broken and we need to address that.

[wolfsblood07]

Although I voted for Trump, I believe Merrick Garland should have been given a hearing and confirmed, unless he was not qualified.  This was Obama's pick, and the failure to give the man a hearing is a disgrace.

-Merrick Garland is a loss. Gorsuch is a win. I like winning. I don't like losing. I like what the Senate ended up doing.

As a conservative I want to win and I want a conservative court.   But when Scalia passed away, it happened during Obama's presidency and he had the pick.  That's life.  The refusal to give the man a hearing is a tactic no conservative should condone.  It makes me sick.  When they do it to us, what the hell are we going to say?

[(Still) muted by Kalwejt until March 31]

As I've said, if the Senate is Democratic in 2020, the Dems should do whatever they want with Trump's SCOTUS pick. He'll deserve that for losing a winnable Senate.

[justfollowingtheelections]

Filibuster his a**!

[Klartext89]

Although I voted for Trump, I believe Merrick Garland should have been given a hearing and confirmed, unless he was not qualified.  This was Obama's pick, and the failure to give the man a hearing is a disgrace.

-Merrick Garland is a loss. Gorsuch is a win. I like winning. I don't like losing. I like what the Senate ended up doing.

As a conservative I want to win and I want a conservative court.   But when Scalia passed away, it happened during Obama's presidency and he had the pick.  That's life.  The refusal to give the man a hearing is a tactic no conservative should condone.  It makes me sick.  When they do it to us, what the hell are we going to say?

That weak loser mentality is the reason why Conservatives  are losing too often when it really matters. Learn to fight like Liberals do it always.

They are doing the things for 30 years. They don't need mercy, ask Miguel Estrada what he thinks about their Fairness...

[Klartext89]

You're mixing together a bunch of different issues. Rejecting Obama's first choice pick would have been retaliation for "slandering" Bork or whatever other perceived slight you want to pick. Nuking the filibuster is arguably fair game in response to Reid's rule change on lower court nominees. But what the GOP did to Merrick Garland was not "retaliation" or "politics as usual." It was nothing short of a complete and total abdication of the Senate's constitutional duties.

I don't think it would have been better to give him a hearing, smearing him there (like Liberals always do in GOP nominee hearings), filibustering him to not allow a cloture vote to succeed or voting him down eventually.

Meanwhile, I know that the Garland treatment was horrible for this man. I only have a problem with all this hypocrisy going on. The same people whining about Garland (would have) cheered when Democrats humiliated Miguel Estrada e.g., looked to assasinate Clarence Thomas, assasinated Bork, introducing the Biden rule, Obamas Senate floor speech in 2007 or 2008 etc.

My point is: Don't do to others what you don't want to be treated like in response. If you are the minority, the other side will remember how you treated her when being the majority.

And yes, Bork and Estrada are comparable to Garland, all three were defeated, one way or the other. I'm sure no one of them will tell you that the treatment he got was more unfair then what the others got.

[Virginiá]

And yes, Bork and Estrada are comparable to Garland, all three were defeated, one way or the other. I'm sure no one of them will tell you that the treatment he got was more unfair then what the others got.

The only reason you think it's comparable is because this is your "side" and you're reaching for whatever it takes to justify their actions. If your party wants to trash a nominee as payback, whatever, just do like Democrats did and confirm someone in the end. That's the difference here. We didn't steal scotus seats from you.

[ApatheticAustrian]

And yes, Bork and Estrada are comparable to Garland, all three were defeated, one way or the other. I'm sure no one of them will tell you that the treatment he got was more unfair then what the others got.

The only reason you think it's comparable is because this is your "side" and you're reaching for whatever it takes to justify their actions. If your party wants to trash a nominee as payback, whatever, just do like Democrats did and confirm someone in the end. That's the difference here. We didn't steal scotus seats from you.

yeah, i was sure, republicans would kill 3-4 candidates and then settle on a 70 year old dixiecrat from louisiana or so. they easily crushed my expectations.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

I argue the Courts have been politicized too long. But then again, we started the road to hell with the Democratic Party. The New Dealers started with trying to swing the Court to the Left, and it should be no shock the Reaganites began to value the Courts.

But that's all water under the bridge compared to 2016.

But Merrick Garland, to me, represented a nuclear option in that a vacancy came up in February 2016 and was not filled until February 2017. While Scalia's death was highly unfortunate, the partisan reasoning to leave a Court seat open for a full year stretches political norms past their breaking point. If this is the rationale - and the fig leaf of it being an election year being exactly that - then why shouldn't an opposition party in the majority hold up a Court appointment for 2 years? 3 years? What if a Republican President had a Democratic Senate and a court vacancy occurred?

There's a stretching of political norms and there's a breaking point. Garland was a breaking point. The President nominated him. We have a duty to have a fully staffed Court. The postponing of a Court vote in the name of partisan control of the Court was in a sense going beyond mere politics and validated the "anything goes."

Robert Bork was rejected, yes. I don't like it too much but the Senate fulfilled their Constitutional duty to "advise and consent." They looked at the nomination and they rejected it. Plain and simple. Senators are not required to rubber stamp a Court nominee. They're required to use their judgment as elected representatives to evaluate nominees and give them an up and down vote. Had McConnell said "we'll give Garland an up and down vote," and they failed him, I would have been happy. Instead, the Senate refused to even give him a courtesy hearing and held the seat open for a year.

I admit, I cheered this strategy a year ago as a partisan Republican. Since then, seeing the partisan gyre that has widened with Donald Trump's election and the "anything goes" mentality of the Republican Party (and now, the corresponding response from the Democratic Party, who rightfully believe that they have to respond in kind to stay viable) has made me reevaluate how far we go to break political norms. They may not be Constitutional, or whatnot, but they undergird how we function as a republic.

Indeed, Donald Trump was elected on that basis - that anything goes, and that political norms no longer matter in the name of "winning." The name of the game is to win, even if we stop being a republic in the process and our political divisions become so intense and bitter that like Rome, we require a monarch to rule us. This is exactly - I know it's cliched - what happened in ancient Rome. Norms were slowly stripped away as partisan factionalism intensified, ending in Augustus' rule.

Returning to my original point, now that the fig leaf has been used, now every Senate majority can ruthlessly stop an opposition president by holding open an Court seat for as long as they want - without consequences. That precedent has now been set - and the Court's balance is now considered fair game and no political norms now govern how we fill Supreme Court nominations.

We've crossed a Rubicon and unfortunately, to restore it, we're going to need one party to decisively defeat the other party and restore the political norms that make this republic functional.

Trump should have bucked his base, and risked his presidency to nominate Garland in the name of restoring political norms. That he didn't is understandable but it shows that our system's norms are broken and we need to address that.

I fully admit that, had Hillary Clinton won and Republicans kept the Senate, I would have advocated to not confirm any judges and justices for the entire four years.  Ending abortion is too important for that!

[ApatheticAustrian]

abortion will never be ended as long as 1) poverty, 2) stupidity and drugs/alcohol and 3) the human being as an individual with individual wishes exist.

it can only become invisible and illegal

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

NC Yankee has laid out a decent rationale for refusing to confirm Garland, or even for filibustering him if the Democrats had still held the majority, but not, I think, for what the Republicans actually did, which was to escalate this issue even further through an unprecedentedly complete humiliation nakedly intended to communicate total contempt for the president. Even if you refuse to deescalate, you should be willing to at least limit yourself to reacting proportionately.

The "Biden rule" talking point is obviously complete bullsh**t, since 1. it was never at any pointed adopted as official Democratic policy and 2. the situation never arose anyway.

[SteveRogers]

You're mixing together a bunch of different issues. Rejecting Obama's first choice pick would have been retaliation for "slandering" Bork or whatever other perceived slight you want to pick. Nuking the filibuster is arguably fair game in response to Reid's rule change on lower court nominees. But what the GOP did to Merrick Garland was not "retaliation" or "politics as usual." It was nothing short of a complete and total abdication of the Senate's constitutional duties.

I don't think it would have been better to give him a hearing, smearing him there (like Liberals always do in GOP nominee hearings), filibustering him to not allow a cloture vote to succeed or voting him down eventually.

Meanwhile, I know that the Garland treatment was horrible for this man. I only have a problem with all this hypocrisy going on. The same people whining about Garland (would have) cheered when Democrats humiliated Miguel Estrada e.g., looked to assasinate Clarence Thomas, assasinated Bork, introducing the Biden rule, Obamas Senate floor speech in 2007 or 2008 etc.

My point is: Don't do to others what you don't want to be treated like in response. If you are the minority, the other side will remember how you treated her when being the majority.

And yes, Bork and Estrada are comparable to Garland, all three were defeated, one way or the other. I'm sure no one of them will tell you that the treatment he got was more unfair then what the others got.

You might think that all of those examples involved unfair treatment of a nominee, but only one of those instances objectively amounted to making a complete and total farce out of our constitutional system of checks and balances.

[The_Doctor]

I argue the Courts have been politicized too long. But then again, we started the road to hell with the Democratic Party. The New Dealers started with trying to swing the Court to the Left, and it should be no shock the Reaganites began to value the Courts.

But that's all water under the bridge compared to 2016.

But Merrick Garland, to me, represented a nuclear option in that a vacancy came up in February 2016 and was not filled until February 2017. While Scalia's death was highly unfortunate, the partisan reasoning to leave a Court seat open for a full year stretches political norms past their breaking point. If this is the rationale - and the fig leaf of it being an election year being exactly that - then why shouldn't an opposition party in the majority hold up a Court appointment for 2 years? 3 years? What if a Republican President had a Democratic Senate and a court vacancy occurred?

There's a stretching of political norms and there's a breaking point. Garland was a breaking point. The President nominated him. We have a duty to have a fully staffed Court. The postponing of a Court vote in the name of partisan control of the Court was in a sense going beyond mere politics and validated the "anything goes."

Robert Bork was rejected, yes. I don't like it too much but the Senate fulfilled their Constitutional duty to "advise and consent." They looked at the nomination and they rejected it. Plain and simple. Senators are not required to rubber stamp a Court nominee. They're required to use their judgment as elected representatives to evaluate nominees and give them an up and down vote. Had McConnell said "we'll give Garland an up and down vote," and they failed him, I would have been happy. Instead, the Senate refused to even give him a courtesy hearing and held the seat open for a year.

I admit, I cheered this strategy a year ago as a partisan Republican. Since then, seeing the partisan gyre that has widened with Donald Trump's election and the "anything goes" mentality of the Republican Party (and now, the corresponding response from the Democratic Party, who rightfully believe that they have to respond in kind to stay viable) has made me reevaluate how far we go to break political norms. They may not be Constitutional, or whatnot, but they undergird how we function as a republic.

Indeed, Donald Trump was elected on that basis - that anything goes, and that political norms no longer matter in the name of "winning." The name of the game is to win, even if we stop being a republic in the process and our political divisions become so intense and bitter that like Rome, we require a monarch to rule us. This is exactly - I know it's cliched - what happened in ancient Rome. Norms were slowly stripped away as partisan factionalism intensified, ending in Augustus' rule.

Returning to my original point, now that the fig leaf has been used, now every Senate majority can ruthlessly stop an opposition president by holding open an Court seat for as long as they want - without consequences. That precedent has now been set - and the Court's balance is now considered fair game and no political norms now govern how we fill Supreme Court nominations.

We've crossed a Rubicon and unfortunately, to restore it, we're going to need one party to decisively defeat the other party and restore the political norms that make this republic functional.

Trump should have bucked his base, and risked his presidency to nominate Garland in the name of restoring political norms. That he didn't is understandable but it shows that our system's norms are broken and we need to address that.

I fully admit that, had Hillary Clinton won and Republicans kept the Senate, I would have advocated to not confirm any judges and justices for the entire four years.  Ending abortion is too important for that!

Speaking as a pro-lifer, the republic matters vastly more than abortion.