I think it would be better for national comity for there to be no nomination until next year. However, as Obama and Biden are already previously on record of saying election year - even late election year - nominations are
just fine, I'm not that bothered by the prospect either. It isn't hardball or power politics. It is jostling over what the rules should be, including going forward. Married couples, business associates, neighbors, churches, and all levels of government do this all the time. It's not a terrible thing.
I'm noting that we have a New York Times interview with Ginsburg where she gives her opinion on late-in-term court appointments:
ReplyDeleteGinsburg also talked about the Senate's obligation to move forward with President Barack Obama's nomination of Judge Merrick Garland for the open seat on the Supreme Court.
"That's their job," she said, according to the Times. "There's nothing in the Constitution that says the president stops being president in his last year." [1]
We only have hearsay to indicate that her view might have changed - the documented opinion was done with full knowledge that Trump had been elected.
I've thought that I might say in conversation that it would dishonor her well-documented views, if Trump were not to make an appointment and the Senate were not to bring that appointment to vote -- but I suspect I'll fall back to my default of not intentionally upsetting people.
[1]https://www.pennlive.com/news/2016/07/justice_ruth_bader_ginsburg_ca.html
I think it would be better for national comity for there to be no nomination until next year.
ReplyDeleteThat ship sailed at least four years ago. Maybe twelve. I think a case could be made for almost a quarter century (1994).
The news was barely out before Democrat leadership, including Ginsburg's family, were gaslighting anybody who remembers history prior to 20 January 2017 as well as threatening new and continued violence if their demands were not met.
They need to learn that winning elections in California, New York, and carefully gerrymandered Congressional districts does not mean you get to control the country, and I hope the War Turtle teaches that lesson good and hard.
October 23, 1987
ReplyDeleteI remember listening to part of the confirmation hearings. What Kennedy's grandstanding complaint boiled down to was "You can't follow statutory law if it conflicts with my politics." Biden was, if anything, even more dishonest.
(I'd been worried about physics funding, and looking into maybe switching to something that paid better, so I'd been recently reading more about law than the average bear and knew the context.)
It's all hardball, and the
ReplyDeleteTRUMP of DOOM (to Dems) is pitching very, very FASSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSST. Bummer for them.
A far distant echo, from B.H. Liddell Hart's 1924 book on Scipio Africanus:
ReplyDelete" We have to wait until 192 B.C. before we hear of him again, and once more the incident is an illuminating example of his generosity and breadth of view. In the seven years since the peace after Zama, Hannibal had been turning his genius into new channels- the restoration of Carthage's prosperity and the improvement of it's administration. But in this labour he incurred the hostility of many of his own countrymen. In his efforts to safeguard the liberty of the people he stopped the abuse of the judicial power - an abuse which recalls the worst days of Venice. Similarly, finding that the revenue could not raise the annual payment to Rome without fresh taxation, he made an investigation into the embezzlement which lay at the root of this faulty administration. Those who had been plundering the public combined with the order of judges to instigate the Romans against Hannibal. The Romans, whose fear of the great Carthaginian had not faded, had been watching with envy and distrust the commercial revivial of Carthage." ....
Pardon for a lengthy bit to read, but more in it than 2 hours of anything Hollywood can throw.