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Senate GOP lines up with Trump to quickly fill court seat

43 Comments
By LISA MASCARO, ZEKE MILLER and MARY CLARE JALONICK

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Let’s nominate a bible-thumping LADY who will overturn Roe v Wade (supported by about 70% of the voters) and take away health insurance from about 20 million people during a pandemic.

Not to mention, be a party to the greatest act of Hypocrisy in modern history.

But that’s ok, Amy - three names; were going to win the presidency and the Senate. Then we’re going to eliminate the filibuster and name 4 new members to SCOTUS. And when we do, your opinion will count as much as the trolls on JT.

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The anti-progressive Americans led by aging baby boomers like Trump and McConnell financed by the Kochs and others in the global far right including the religious far right are trying to push the US back to the mythical 1950s when their failing memories considered America was 'great'.

1950s: separate but 'equal' discrimination allowed; corporations allowed to pollute at will; women discriminated against, etc etc etc.

What country anywhere at any point in history improved by regressing to any point in the past.

3 ( +6 / -3 )

Part of taking part in political discourse means admitting you might be wrong (unless you’re a Senator named Graham). I’ll start; given that Biden raised ONE HUNDRED SIXTY MILLION DOLLARS in the 36 hours after RGB’s death m, maybe Citizen’s United wasn’t such a dumb idea after all.

2 ( +4 / -2 )

Bring it on! At last we can glimpse a silver lining to the dark cloud of Trumpism: the collective suicide of the GOP and the end of this interminable nightmare for a generation!

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Trump will have appointed 3 Conservative Justices to the Supreme Court when this is done.

That will impact the court the next 20 years.

The court is one of the institutions were my trust in their wisdom is nearly absolute, even when I disagree with the law they are ruling about.

The US Federal system is setup with 3 different time horizons for the different checks and balances.

The President and House are short-term. They are the "now" answers to questions. House and President want stuff done "now, now, now."

The Senate is medium-term with more control over a little bit longer periods. Senate wants stuff done in a few years, if it doesn't have to be completely now.

The Supreme Court is for the long-term. Their rulings impact Americans for hundreds of years. Even getting a case to the Supreme Court usually takes years to work through local, state, US courts and appeals before getting to the Supreme Court, which can reject to hear a case. There rulings have always considered the long term impacts and aren't always what the House and President would want.

Kinda a genius system designed for the 1700s, really. Far from perfect, but still doing pretty good considering that politicians get to tweak many of the rules they follow.

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Imagine if the Republicans had acted as quickly and with such conviction when Covid was starting out as they are with filling the Supreme Court vacancy.......

-2 ( +5 / -7 )

No spine, no surprise!

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TheFu, I like the way you outlined that, I had not thought of is quite like that.

I will say I have less faith in the Supreme Court than you and have for a decade but as you say not perfect but typically comes up with what the law seems to support.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

No one is falling in line. The republicans simply recognize the constitutional right the president has to push through with another nominee. Not only that, even Joe Biden recognizes the importance of getting this done quickly as he attested to back in 2016. If anything, the dems are the ones exploiting the late justice’s death for political gains.

It is a matter of Republican dishonesty. The US Constitution is silent on the matter of nominating Supreme Court justices in an election year. When Mr. Obama had a Supreme Court vacancy to fill with 8 months to go before election Mitch McConnell and the rest of the Senate Republicans all said whomever won the election should choose the next Supreme Court Justice and refused to hold hearings for Mr. Obama's nominee to the bench. They all claimed then that was the principled thing to do. Now when the same situation presents itself to those same Senators under a Republican President all of their high and mighty principles from 2016 about allowing the winner of the election to chose the next justice are abandoned and suddenly it is all right to confirm a new judge less than three months before the election. They are proclaiming they have the votes to confirm before anyone is even formally nominated much less having held any hearings. This is all about the raw exercise of power and nothing else. It was never in 2016 or today about any sort of high principle. They are utterly dishonest and without shame. But what they are doing will prove highly destructive in the long term and I will predict some Republicans will live to regret what they are doing.

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Apart from downvoting, no one on the left says anything about this statement from Justice Ginsburg:

Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the president filling SCOTUS seats in election years, 2016: "That's their job. There's nothing in the constitution that says the president stops being the president in his last year. Eight is not a good number for a collegial body that sometimes disagrees"

-2 ( +3 / -5 )

If my nation demands I do something or prohibits me from doing something because it offends some silly Christian rule then I guess I am going to become a deliberate law breaker for the first time in my life. No court is going to chain me to the rules of a religion I do not adhere to and want to be free from. Nobody and no government has the right to force adherence to a religion. Many do but it is always wrong. I wonder if the Evangelicals and their Republican poodles understand how corrosive to civil society imposing religious rule on a diverse society that includes every religion under the Sun and lot of disbelievers who want no part of any religion? The first six Presidents of the US were not Christians. They were Unitarians and Diests who rejected Christian dogmas. The nation was formed in part to prevent the occurrence of religious rule. We shall see how this all turns out but I have a bad feeling this is leading slowly and inexorably to a major upheaval in the US.

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Senate GOP lines up with Trump to quickly fill court seat

Yet another slanted headline on JT. If Republicans fill Ginsburg’s seat the day before the election it will take longer than the time it took for the confirmation of Ginsburg herself during the Clinton administration. The timeline isn’t especially hurried

But that’s ok, Amy - three names; were going to win the presidency and the Senate. Then we’re going to eliminate the filibuster and name 4 new members to SCOTUS. 

Then when Republicans take back control they will add 5 new members. Every Dem escalation will be met with a corresponding escalation from Republicans. The Dems started all this with Bork and Thomas. Even after these outrageous attacks on these two jurists Republicans kept voting for Dem nominees. It took way too long but Republicans finally grew a spine and stopped letting Dems force moderate conservatives from Republican presidents while waving through extreme Progressives through naively believing that presidents have a right to their nominee. Those days are finally over. Come on down Amy Coney Barrett.

-2 ( +3 / -5 )

@u_s__reamer: Bring it on! At last we can glimpse a silver lining to the dark cloud of Trumpism: the collective suicide of the GOP and the end of this interminable nightmare for a generation!

That’s the spirit. Go out there and beat Trump this November and feel the quiet satisfaction of revenge served cold. I will sit back for the next 15 years and watch most every retrograde Leftist program and policy get unraveled by a 6-3 conservative Supreme Court majority. Even the jelly spined Chief Justice will not be able to rescue the Lefts anti-American, anti-Constitutional agenda from being tossed into the dust bin of American history. Go get’em tiger!

-2 ( +4 / -6 )

A parade of shame.... Hear any of them in 2016 trying to parse their opposition by saying; "but if the Senate and the WH are from one party, then it's OK"...

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley of Iowa: “Given that we are in the midst of the presidential election process, we believe that the American people should seize the opportunity to weigh in on whom they trust to nominate the next person for a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina: “As I have repeatedly stated, the election cycle is well underway, and the precedent of the Senate is not to confirm a nominee at this stage in the process. I strongly support giving the American people a voice in choosing the next Supreme Court nominee by electing a new president.” 

Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina: “It is essential to the institution of the Senate and to the very health of our republic to not launch our nation into a partisan, divisive confirmation battle during the very same time the American people are casting their ballots to elect our next president.”

Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas: “It has been 80 years since a Supreme Court vacancy was nominated and confirmed in an election year. There is a long tradition that you don’t do this in an election year.”

Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida: “I don’t think we should be moving forward with a nominee in the last year of this president’s term. I would say that even if it was a Republican president.”

Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado: “I think we’re too close to the election. The president who is elected in November should be the one who makes this decision.”

Sen. Mike Lee of Utah: “We think that the American people need a chance to weigh in on this issue, on who will fill that seat. They’ll have that chance this November, and they ought to have that chance.” 

Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania: “With the U.S. Supreme Court’s balance at stake, and with the presidential election fewer than eight months away, it is wise to give the American people a more direct voice in the selection and confirmation of the next justice.”

Sen. John Thune of South Dakota: “Since the next presidential election is already underway, the next president should make this lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court.”

Sen. John Cornyn of Texas: “President Barack Obama has exercised his authority to nominate someone to fill the vacancy, but the Senate has an equal authority to determine whether to proceed with that nomination. I believe the American people deserve to have a voice in the selection of the next Supreme Court justice, and the best way to ensure that happens is to have the Senate consider a nomination made by the next president.”

What a bunch of spineless, feckless hypocrites....that's your today's Repub Party...

2 ( +5 / -3 )

The anti-progressive Americans led by aging baby boomers like Trump and McConnell financed by the Kochs and others in the global far right including the religious far right are trying to push the US back to the mythical 1950s when their failing memories considered America was 'great'. 

But it’s perfectly fine to appoint a liberal political activist justice that wants to erode religious freedom and silence any dissent to the liberal atheist orthodoxy. Marxists feel that strangle-holding conservative opposing points of view isn’t violating the Constitution for people they disagree with. For a group of people that hate America so much, why are they here? Why don’t they move to Cuba?

What country anywhere at any point in history improved by regressing to any point in the past

But Democrats threatening to usurp the political process by wanting to pack the courts? Democrats need to invest more in tissues, they can’t stop this from happening and that’s it. I yield the floor.

-3 ( +2 / -5 )

Ruth Bader Ginsberg last year.

Her recorded wish. I agree Democrats should honor it, she’s speaking directly to her party.

https://youtu.be/6pkwfITbEuM

"If anything would make the court look partisan," she said, "it would be that — one side saying, 'When we're in power, we're going to enlarge the number of judges, so we would have more people who would vote the way we want them to.' "

That impairs the idea of an independent judiciary, she said.

"We are blessed in the way no other judiciary in the world is," she noted. "We have life tenure. The only way to get rid of a federal judge is by impeachment. Congress can't retaliate by reducing our salary, so the safeguards for judicial independence in this country, I think, are as great or greater than anyplace else in the world."

-RBG July 24, 2019

-1 ( +3 / -4 )

Let’s all spend a moment to mourn the passing of the giant that Willard Mitt could have been instead of the midget he actually is.

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@PTownsend: The anti-progressive Americans led by aging baby boomers like Trump and McConnell financed by the Kochs and others in the global far right including the religious far right are trying to push the US back to the mythical 1950s when their failing memories considered America was 'great'.

You do know that Trump is going to nominate a woman don’t you? What kind of misogynist from the 1950’s elevates a woman to the Supreme Court? Hmm.

-2 ( +3 / -5 )

trump said he would appoint a lady to fill in the position.

I think Lindsey Graham would fit that description perfectly!!!

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A parade of shame.... Hear any of them in 2016 trying to parse their opposition by saying; "but if the Senate and the WH are from one party, then it's OK"...

Frustrating I know. I remember when Schumer and the gang were insistent that Merrick Garland get a vote. Then I remembered Robert Bork and could not help but laugh.

-3 ( +3 / -6 )

It is safe to say that both sides are playing hardball politics here. You can easily find quotes from former President Obama on how important it is to let presidents make appointments even in their last year in office. Same with former VP Biden, even with the late Justice Ginsberg herself. Let's just accept that hypocrisy is not the exclusive territory of one side or the other and move on.

The key point isn't whether it is moral to appoint a justice at this late date. The issue is whether or not it is within the constitutional power of the President to do so, and the power of the Senate to confirm the president's choice. Anything else is a waste of energy and mental stress.

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Immoral, hypocritical, unethical, treacherous. Send these Republican henchmen back to Moscow or wherever they come from.

0 ( +3 / -3 )

Bork got a vote. They voted no. October 23, 1987.

And deservedly so. his legal views were from the mid-1800s.

Garland got no such vote.

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Lincolnman, you dont seem to see the irony in the Dems now reversing themselves from what they fervently espoused in 2016.

Hillary, Obama, Biden, etc etc and Ginsburg herself all were decisively in favor of the sitting president having the right to choose a new supreme court justice at any time during the presidential term. What changed?

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This is about religion and making sure the religious right can shut down anything they dislike in the courts,

No, no one wants shut down anything, but to liberals what justification does anyone have to kill a “full term child?”

Immoral, hypocritical, unethical, treacherous. Send these Republican henchmen back to Moscow or wherever they come from.

To a former Communist nation? I think it’s the opposite party that needs to go.

0 ( +3 / -3 )

Bork got a vote.

And got Borked in the process. Look what Dems did to him.

Garland got no such vote.

Because the GOP led Senate was under no obligation to hear from a questionable candidate that they weren’t politically sure about. Ask yourself this, if Democrats controlled the Senate, you think they would have hearings or appoint any Republican Presidential SC pick in all honesty?

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with all due respect, who the hell supports full term abortion?

Well, if Republicans are trying to block THAT and Democrats are not supporting it then why would they have a meltdown about a conservative being put on the bench?

-1 ( +2 / -3 )

so many liberal tears, could fill up a bucket.

btw Romney still cant be trusted. he only agreed to vote on the pick. He can vote "no" and his statement is still true.

-2 ( +1 / -3 )

I pity whoever has to go thru this process.  Its going to be nasty.

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Repugnant hypocrites. The GOP is leading our country back to the Stone Age.

Total BS. The GOP is following the Constitution. By the way, here's a tweet from Chuck Schumer in Feb. 2016:

"Attn GOP: Senate has confirmed 17 #SCOTUS justices in presidential election years. #DoYourJob"

Oh my!

0 ( +3 / -3 )

I pity whoever has to go thru this process. Its going to be nasty.

Yeah, but after Trump's nominee is confirmed, we'll have another awesome video like this one:

Van Halen "Kavanaugh"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Txn0UPHJlE

-2 ( +1 / -3 )

Yes, in 2016 Dems wanted to confirm, the republicans insisted that it is 'tradition' to wait until after the election.

So, either admit you stole the seat from Obama, or you are hypocrites.

Dems have no choice except to try to play by your arbitrary 'rules' since playing fair is off the table with these corrupt immoral and evil Republican Senators.

It is repulsive to be calling Dems hypocrites because they are calling your bluff.

You will get your seat. And all of us non billionaires will suffer for years to come. The consequences of this supreme court will not only target the 'libs'

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Kurumazaka, Its you who is spinning this. Again, why the Dem turnaround from 2016?

-3 ( +2 / -5 )

Funny thing is, if Mitch hadn’t pulled his Garland stunt and everything else remained the same, y’all would still be looking at a 5-4 majority right now without the destruction of society. Well done, Mitch

Good point. Garland was always considered to be a centrist and a good bipartisan choice. He would have appealed to both sides and could swing either way on his decisions. He also was well-known for minimal dissent as well.

In any case, I really don't see how confirmation of the next SCOTUS can occur in such a short time, especially with senators being busy with campaigning in their own elections. Due process in the vetting of nominees need to be done accordingly and cannot be rushed. There is a process that needs to be followed and if Trump does anything to cut corners, he risks destroying the public's trust in government and sets a deadly precedent for the future.

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Stacking the courts won’t be easy, even Biden is unwilling to commit to that as well as Feinstein, if they did that, the next time around Republicans would do the same, it’s another scare empty scare tactic by the left. Not going to work.

Ginsburg, who got herself in trouble criticizing candidate Donald Trump in 2016, this time was critical not of any particular Democratic contender, but of their proposals to offset President Trump's two conservative appointments to the court.

"Nine seems to be a good number. It's been that way for a long time," she said, adding, "I think it was a bad idea when President Franklin Roosevelt tried to pack the court."

-RBG 7/24/19

0 ( +3 / -3 )

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