During his speech at the Republican National Convention last night, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R) peeked out from behind the tissue-paper facade obscuring his refusal to hold hearings on the President’s Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland.
On that sad day when we lost Justice Scalia, I made another pledge that Obama would not fill his seat. That honor will go to Donald Trump next year.
Which reminded me: Today is the 126th day since the President nominated Merrick Garland on March 16th, 2016, to fill the seat vacated by Antonin Scalia’s death. There have been zero Senate hearings since. This breaks the record for longest span of time between Presidential nomination and either approval or dismissal, previously belonging to President Woodrow Wilson’s nomination of Louis Brandeis, which ended at 125 days.
From Wikipedia:
His nomination was bitterly contested, partly because, as Justice William O. Douglas wrote, “Brandeis was a militant crusader for social justice whoever his opponent might be. He was dangerous not only because of his brilliance, his arithmetic, his courage. He was dangerous because he was incorruptible. . . [and] the fears of the Establishment were greater because Brandeis was the first Jew to be named to the Court.” On June 1, 1916 he was confirmed by the Senate by a vote of 47 to 22, to become one of the most famous and influential figures ever to serve on the high court. His opinions were, according to legal scholars, some of the “greatest defenses” of freedom of speech and the right to privacy ever written by a member of the Supreme Court.
To reiterate: In 1916, a period in American history not particularly known for its cultural enlightenment, the Senate spent the better part of 125 days arguing about—and ultimately admitting to the Supreme Court—a Jewish Social Justice Warrior.
100 years later, our Senate has yet to hold a single hearing on Garland.
Follow the rules/constitution when it works for you; the GOP way.
It is the doublespeak party.
Claim that “When Hillary lied (4) troops died” ignore Bush era lies that drug us to an unfinished war that killed hundreds of thousands of people and set the stage for entities like ISIS to fill the vacuum.
Focusing in on Hillary’s email scandal ignoring the bush era scandal involving an actual RNC lead cover-up.
Claim Obama’s era eroded our freedoms, when the Patriot Act was the largest erosion to date. We now have protest or free-speech zones — this was a bush era invention.
Claiming citizens united is pay back for “big labor”, which is a shadow of what it was. Even in it’s hay-day was the collective will of working class people (by-in-large) – much more than our current system of 500~1,000 people that matter.
The sad thing about the “trump movement” is it really just highlights how dumb (or easily lead) a swath of our populous is.
Maybe the apparent meltdown of fox news will create better food sources. I somehow doubt it.
Abdication of your constitutional responsibility in hopes that your party might be able to rail road the next 20+ years of judicial rein is tantamount to treason. We the people are the ones who should be chanting lock’em up!
The GOP is rotten – it needs to be chucked. We all deserve better.