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The Senate Should Not Act on President Obama’s Supreme Court Nomination
National Review ^ | 03/17/2016 | The Editors

Posted on 03/17/2016 8:22:17 AM PDT by SeekAndFind

With the selection of Merrick Garland, President Obama has exercised his constitutional power to nominate a justice to the Supreme Court. The Senate should now exercise its constitutional power not to act on that nominee.

Garland’s record as a Clinton-appointed member of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals since 1997, and as its chief judge since 2013, offers no reason to believe that his addition to the Court would provide anything other than a reliable fifth vote to the Court’s liberal bloc.

In 2002, dissenting from a ruling striking down the Environmental Protection Agency’s “Haze Rule,” he sought to expand the agency’s power under the already sweeping Clean Air Act. In 2007, when a three-judge D.C. Circuit panel let stand a ruling striking down Washington D.C.’s restrictive handgun law (a decision the Supreme Court upheld in D.C. v. Heller), Garland voted to grant Mayor Adrian Fenty’s appeal to rehear the case before the full court.

His record places him squarely in line with President Obama’s two other nominees, Justices Kagan and Sotomayor, and there is no reason to believe he would vote differently if confirmed.

That is, of course, the goal. President Obama has made clear that he wants to mold the Supreme Court into a rubber-stamp for his own lawless policies. Confirming Garland to the Court would entrench those policies and secure judicial imperialism’s grip on the body politic.

The Senate has no obligation to give the president’s nominee a hearing (let alone a vote), and it shouldn’t. For exercising their prerogative, Senate Republicans will be scolded as “obstructionists” whose refusal to act on Garland’s nomination constitutes nothing less than a “dereliction of duty.” But they can direct all Democratic complaints to Chuck Schumer, who in 2007 declared: “Given the track record of this president and the experience of obfuscation at the hearings, with respect to the Supreme Court, at least: I will recommend to my colleagues that we should not confirm a Supreme Court nominee except in extraordinary circumstances” (emphasis in original).

Schumer was within his rights. And the case for waiting for a new president is stronger now, in the middle of an election. The Supreme Court can conduct its business for the next year without any difficulty — there is no reason for Senate Republicans to capitulate to Democrats’ demands. They should hold the line until the next president is elected. One hopes that he or she will choose a nominee who, like Justice Scalia, will be faithful, first and foremost, to the Constitution.

In the meantime, Republicans should do everything in their power to make sure that it is President Trump, not President Clinton or Cruz, who gets to make that choice.


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Front Page News; Government
KEYWORDS: banglist; blunt; cochran; gun; merrickgarland; nra; senate; supremecourt

1 posted on 03/17/2016 8:22:17 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind

Totally agree. Trump needs to make that appointment.


2 posted on 03/17/2016 8:26:58 AM PDT by Georgia Girl 2 (The only purpose of a pistol is to fight your way back to the rifle you should never have dropped)
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To: SeekAndFind
McConnell and the Pubbies are damned if they do, damned if they don't. By not taking up the nomination, they don't back themselves into the corner. You just know the MSM will devote thousands of columns into Garland's qualifications, and turn him into another Oliver Wendell Holmes, or a white Thurgood Marshall.

If Hillary does win, and Obama pulls him for a more liberal nomination, then he'll confirm it was nothing but BS/politics all along.

That would lead to Borking the next candidate...turnabout is fair play.

3 posted on 03/17/2016 8:27:53 AM PDT by Night Hides Not (Remember the Alamo! Remember Goliad! Remember Mississippi! My vote is going to Cruz.)
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To: SeekAndFind

NR is right for the first time in about six years.


4 posted on 03/17/2016 8:30:58 AM PDT by Buckeye McFrog
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To: SeekAndFind

I went to the link, and the last sentence there is different than the one that you posted above. What happened?

“In the meantime, Republicans should do everything in their power to make sure that it is President Cruz, not President Clinton or Trump, who gets to make that choice.”

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/432897/supreme-court-merrick-garland-senate-should-reject-president-obama-nomination


5 posted on 03/17/2016 8:31:21 AM PDT by deks
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To: deks

Obviously SeekAndFind changed the article before posting it.


6 posted on 03/17/2016 8:34:47 AM PDT by FewsOrange
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To: deks

“In the meantime, Republicans should do everything in their power to make sure that it is President Cruz, not President Clinton or Trump, who gets to make that choice.”


Good catch!

BTW, Senator Cruz DOES have a say in the matter, even now. He can vote against the nominee, as everyone else should also. The Nominee is NOT a supporter of the uS Constitution. Plain and simple.


7 posted on 03/17/2016 8:37:34 AM PDT by PrairieLady2 (When you Cruz, you looze. Bye, Bye Cruz.)
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To: SeekAndFind

Merrick Garland was Jamie Gorelick’s principal deputy at the Clinton Justice dept.


8 posted on 03/17/2016 8:38:43 AM PDT by MarvinStinson
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To: SeekAndFind

Just ignore the lame duck community organizer!


9 posted on 03/17/2016 8:44:56 AM PDT by AngelesCrestHighway
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To: PrairieLady2

No, do not vote on the nominee. He is just bait for the real nominee, you engage, you give cover for the next one who will get the rubber stamp from the uniparty.


10 posted on 03/17/2016 8:44:56 AM PDT by kingu (Everything starts with slashing the size and scope of the federal government.)
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To: deks; PrairieLady2; FewsOrange

I can assure you folks that I did not change anything in the article I copied and posted.

There are cases when the poster corrected the article later after I copied it ( why would I do that when I am a Cruz supporter as anyone who see’s me defending him in these threads will see?)

I’ve even encountered cases where the TITLE was changed on the web page later after I posted it.


11 posted on 03/17/2016 8:45:06 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind

Apologies, but I find it hard to believe that NR would publish an article talking about a future President Trump.


12 posted on 03/17/2016 8:46:54 AM PDT by FewsOrange
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To: FewsOrange; PrairieLady2; SeekAndFind

It caught my eye because National Review is the magazine that had the big anti-Trump issue recently...
...........................

It’s one thing to publish an editorial denouncing Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump; any news outlet can do that, and plenty have. It’s another to get almost two dozen leading conservative thinkers to write essays arguing against the Manhattan billionaire’s nomination and agree to print them under a single banner: “Against Trump.”

That’s what the National Review and its editor, Rich Lowry, just pulled off.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/01/22/the-story-behind-the-national-reviews-big-anti-donald-trump-issue/


13 posted on 03/17/2016 8:47:22 AM PDT by deks
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To: Georgia Girl 2

National Respew referring to “President Trump?”

I would love to see the expressions on their elite faces as they typed that.


14 posted on 03/17/2016 8:49:06 AM PDT by sauropod (I am His and He is mine.)
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To: SeekAndFind

Thanks for the explanation, FRiend


15 posted on 03/17/2016 8:49:11 AM PDT by deks
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To: SeekAndFind

Yep. Websites sometimes change story titles, and even change the url to the article. Not unusual at all. Almost always the story is still there somewhere.


16 posted on 03/17/2016 8:50:37 AM PDT by jjotto ("Ya could look it up!")
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To: SeekAndFind

OK, you got me.


17 posted on 03/17/2016 8:51:41 AM PDT by sauropod (I am His and He is mine.)
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To: Night Hides Not
I sometimes wish the pubbies were capable of Borking, of getting down in the sewer to drown rats. Few creatures are as loathsome as the dead Pig Kennedy.
18 posted on 03/17/2016 2:20:25 PM PDT by Jacquerie (Article V - A Call to Convention, available at Amazon.)
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To: sauropod

The solution is that President Trump nominates Senator Cruz as an appointment to the Supreme Court.
For Trump that is a win win, he placates all of us Cruz Conservatives with the appointment, and he takes Cruz out of the equation for the next presidential election.


19 posted on 03/17/2016 2:26:46 PM PDT by 5th MEB (Progressives in the open; --- FIRE FOR EFFECT!!)
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To: 5th MEB

Cruz needs to reconvince people like me.

He’s been doing and saying anything to get elected, even if it’s not true.

If you’re going to run on being Preacher Cruz, then live it!


20 posted on 03/17/2016 6:04:09 PM PDT by sauropod (I am His and He is mine.)
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