ESTRADA’S REVENGE

Largely as a result of unprecedented Democratic obstructionism in the United States Senate, President Trump has yet to staff many executive positions in his administration or fill many judicial vacancies. This afternoon comes word that the Republican majority has finally altered Senate rules to reduce debate time on most presidential nominees by reducing post-cloture debate. They have done so by exercising what the media refer to as the “nuclear option” — what should probably be known as the Harry Reid option — under which a Senate majority changes the Senate rules.

In order to understand the meaning of this particular procedural change, please read Thomas Jipping’s explanation at NR’s Bench Memos. Jipping’s explanation incidentally exposes Amy Klobuchar’s utter dishonesty about it. Despite her reputation, as we have frequently pointed out, Klobuchar is just like all the rest. If she or any other Democrat were to become president, Republicans should be hard pressed to explain any vote in favor of the president’s executive and judicial nominees.

Who deserves the most credit for the change? One explanation you are guaranteed never to find on CNN, MSNBC, or in the newspapers they follow is the one advanced by Senator Tom Cotton with characteristically meticulous scholarship. In the video below, Senator Cotton recalls some ancient history relevant to this particular change (below). Whether we need go back quite this far, the credit certainly belongs to the man Senator Cotton singles out. Thank you, Senator Cotton.

Remember the timeline. After the 2000 elections there was a Republican President an a 50-50 senate, 51-50 with Cheney. Then Schumer talked Him Jeffords into leaving the republicans, giving democrats control.

Then the democrats expected to gain seats in the 2002 midterms. But the republicans regained control.

So Schumer had to come up with something else to stop conservative judges - the filibuster.

And here we are.

Schumer has indeed been the malefactor behind these strategies.

Miguel Estrada was Bush43's nominee for Attorney General. He would have been the first Hispanic AG in the nation's history and was seen as an inroad to GOP outreach for Hispanic voters. The Democrats smeared him viciously, including claiming that he "wasn't Hispanic enough" to be considered the first Hispanic AG.

The delays were so long and the smears so vicious that Estrada finally removed his name from consideration after months of twisting in the wind.

Destroying Estrada was entirely political and all to prevent the GOP from claiming a token before the Dems could do it.

The following changes my view of Justice Elena Kagan [Kagan and Estrada are life-long friends]. It re-affirms my view of the poisonous snakes in The Swamp.

In May 2010, Estrada wrote a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee in support of President Barack Obama's nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, Elena Kagan, as Estrada and Kagan have remained friends since meeting as students at Harvard Law School. In his letter, Estrada strongly commended Kagan for appointment to the court as "an impeccably qualified nominee" possessed of a "formidable intellect" and an "exemplary temperament."

While openly recognizing that her views on judicial role and Constitutional interpretation are "as firmly center-left as my own are center-right," Estrada went on to insist that "one of the prerogatives of the President under our Constitution is to nominate high federal officers, including judges, who share his (or her) governing philosophies."

In 1999, Kagan had been nominated by President Clinton to serve on the D.C. Circuit — the same court Estrada was later nominated to. At that time, Kagan was kept off the circuit court because Republicans—the majority party in the Senate—refused to give her a hearing or a vote, though she was not subjected to the filibuster later used by Democrats to block Estrada's nomination.

Likewise, at her confirmation hearing on June 29, 2010, before the Senate Judiciary Committee, when asked by Senator Lindsey Graham whether she believed that Estrada was qualified to serve on an appellate court, Kagan responded affirmatively and added that she believed Estrada was qualified to serve on the Supreme Court as well.

Kagan then told Senator Graham that she would welcome the opportunity to put this belief in writing after her hearing. When questioned by Senator Coburn the following day, she reaffirmed her position, saying that she "...would have voted for him".

In July, 2010, in follow-up to her promise to Senator Graham, Kagan wrote a letter expressing her belief in Estrada's "superlative" qualifications for appointment to "any federal court," whether to the federal appellate or to the U.S. Supreme Court. In her letter, Kagan commended Estrada as "a towering intellect" with "a prodigious capacity for hard work," also remarking that "no one I know is a more faithful friend or a more fundamentally decent person".

Estrada may have been technically correct that Kagan was “qualified” for SCOTUS as described, but the decisions that she reaches and rulings are in flagrant violation of the spirit and word of the Constitution in almost every instance.

Temperament, intellect and qualifications don’t matter if they’re going to take a sledgehammer to the Constitution and impose their own personal agenda.

I bitterly disagree with Estrada’s point that any President should be given carte blanche to put a person on the court that resembles their ideology. That must be halted where said individual seeks to illegally and willfully dismantle the rule of law and the Constitution.

A left-winger cannot serve in any judicial capacity because their oath to uphold the Constitution is a falsehood (and same goes for virtually any office - but at least in the case of the legislative, they are legally permitted to pass new laws or repeal old ones, so long as they are not unconstitutional - although again, that tends to get in the way of their agenda).

“A left-winger cannot serve in any judicial capacity because their oath to uphold the Constitution is a falsehood (and same goes for virtually any office - but at least in the case of the legislative, they are legally permitted to pass new laws or repeal old ones, so long as they are not unconstitutional - although again, that tends to get in the way of their agenda).”

This should be engraved on a tablet of slate and then glazed.

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