Posted on 02/16/2016 11:28:12 AM PST by Kaslin
It is a measure of the stature and the significance of Justice Antonin Scalia that, upon the news of his death at a hunting lodge in Texas, Washington was instantly caught up in an unseemly quarrel over who would succeed him.
But no one can replace Justice Scalia.
He was a giant among jurists. For a third of a century, he led the conservative wing of the high court, creating a new school of judicial thought called "originalism."
But originalism is not conservatism, which, in the judicial era that preceded Scalia, often meant court decisions that "conserved" the radical social revolution Earl Warren's court had imposed upon us.
Scalia believed in going back to the founding documents of the republic and discerning from them the original meaning and intent of the framers.
He would look at the purpose of the authors of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and post-Civil War amendments, and conclude that it was an absurdity to discover there, or read into them, a constitutional right to have an abortion or to marry someone of the same sex.
The words Scalia used to ridicule such nonsense did as much to discredit majority opinions as did his dissenting votes.
I remember being called into the office of White House Chief of Staff Don Regan, 30 years ago, to be informed that the judge whom Ronald Reagan would name to replace William Rehnquist, who had been named Chief Justice, would be U.S. Appellate Court Judge Antonin Scalia.
Regan was grinning at me as he made the announcement, and I let out of a whoop of victory. Since Nixon days, some of us had argued for naming an Italian Catholic to the high court. Yet, all six of Nixon's nominees, and the only nominee of Gerald Ford, were WASPs.
Scalia's death removes the court's most brilliant mind and most colorful member. Personable, witty, acerbic, a fine writer, he used his opinions, mostly dissents, not only to make his case but to skewer the majority opinion.
And while Sen. Mitch McConnell may be faulted for not waiting a decent interval after Scalia's death to declare that the Senate will not confirm any Obama nominee to succeed Scalia, the majority leader's position is exactly the right one for the party.
Some of us in the Nixon campaign of 1968 still recall how Chief Justice Earl Warren, fearing his old antagonist Richard Nixon might be elected, offered his resignation to LBJ in June of 1968, but contingent on Senate confirmation of a successor. The fix was in.
Johnson nominated Justice Abe Fortas, a crony, to succeed Warren and Judge Homer Thornberry of Texas, another crony, to fill the Fortas seat. Nixon, urged by his old friend William Rogers, Ike's attorney general, stayed out of the battle. Some of us did not.
Senate Republicans, led by Bob Griffin of Michigan and including John Tower, Howard Baker and Strom Thurmond, held up the vote on Fortas, until they had enough support to sustain a filibuster and run out the clock. In October, Fortas threw in the towel.
The following spring, President Nixon named U.S. Appellate Court Judge Warren Burger to succeed Earl Warren as chief justice.
The GOP Senate majority should follow the example of that gutsy Senate Republican minority of half a century ago. The window for any Supreme Court nominees should be slammed shut -- until 2017.
Republicans should tell our "transformative" president that his days of transforming America are over, that he will not be remaking the court into a bastion of the left after his departure, and that, while he has the right to nominate whom he wishes, the U.S. Senate will exercise its right to reject any nominee he sends up. If the court will then face many 4-4 decisions for the next year, so be it.
Given the divisions on the court and balance of power, and the disposition of liberal justices to impose upon the nation an ideology that would never be embraced democratically, the Republican Party is almost duty-bound to oppose any Obama nominee.
What kind of Supreme Court do the American people wish to have? That is a question to be decided in 2016 -- not by a lame-duck president, but by the American electorate in November.
Does the nation want an activist judiciary to remake America into a more liberal society, as Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor would like to see it remade?
Or do the American people want a more constitutional court that returns power to the people and their elected representatives?
Let's have it out.
Republicans should tell the American people that when they vote in November they will be deciding not only the next president, not only which party shall control Congress, they will be deciding what kind of Supreme Court their country should have. Which is as it should be.
If the GOP can't win this argument, they have lost the country.
No way. Just having to show and sit through oral arguments would cut into his golf game. Plus, he’d be stuck in D.C. 7 or 8 months of the year. Just not his bag.
“Well that arrogant pos occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave obviously does think there is.”
And his dimwitted supporters now think so as well.
That would be indeed a nightmare. May God help this nation if this comes true
Or more likely have recess appointment after recess appointment. We could do away with the lifetime appointment by default.
All politics is cheap. This just happens to be nakedly so. What else do you expect? If Obama were to name someone relatively “moderate,” and the Senate were to confirm, that would alter the balance of the Court. If a Dem wins the presidency in November, same thing. This is the only shot there is: “delay, delay, delay,” and hope the GOP candidate prevails in November. Call it desperation, or cheap politics, but it’s the only game in town if you don’t want the make-up of the Court to change.
My moneys on by the end of the month.
Apparently from that pic, liberals can’t even look into a camera.
The thought of it is still scary, and I wouldn’t put it past him.
Is there any requirement that the number should be nine?
Exactly
If our children were truly being educated-—I would agree. And so it has to be——but the real crime in all of this, is the fact that a mind like Scalia’s is so unique and “rare” today, and we have a VAST majority of young “socialists”, ideologues, who actually believe that slavery and sodomy is “good”.
That flip of 2000 years of worldview is because of the destruction of our “education” system by the Marxist, Fabian, Humanist takeover in the 30s-—where they have literally programmed and indoctrinated millions of children through Leftist irrational curricula, for their goose-stepping takeover of our Constitution and churches.
If we can’t put back on court a man like Scalia, then we are doomed and you can kiss our Constitution “good-bye” because people like Justice John Roberts are bought and paid for by the sodomite, psychopaths like Kissinger and Soros and the super elite bankers, who control all the money and all our institutions anyhow. They create and fund and make billions on all the wars they create and drool over—including the killing and massacre of the young virile males, and women and children. The paychopaths revel, like Merkel, in the chaos and misery they force on good, Christian, happy people-—even tribal cultures, although those are so much easier to destroy and control and pervert, so the “glory” is in the demise of Christian cultures.
Actually, the Leftists have the majority of the Court now, with the Marxist Kagan nomination-—so I guess we are doomed anyhow, since they can create any unconstitutional, irrational “Just Law” they want now, (as they did—totally antithetical to the Constitution) and there is NOTHING we can do about it, without a blood-filled Revolution.
Just by law. It's been as low as six and as high as ten.
Remove Kagan and turn it back to seven.
I don't see Obama going off into a quiet retirement like Bush did. But I don't think we have to worry about him running the UN or on the Supreme Court. The only former president to be appointed to the court was William Howard Taft and that was the job he had wanted all his life, far more than the presidency.
ANY nominee 0dunga puts forth should be interrogated by Congress Republicans and put to the 'Constitution test' in the most strict terms. Start by putting the race and gender factors aside and target their TREASONOUS IDEOLOGIES and expose their HATRED for America and our Constitution.
Behind the soft, articulate manner of Loretta Lynch hides a BIASED RACIST POLITICAL ACTIVIST who is UNABLE to interpret our Constitution and apply the law WITHOUT BIAS.
You said it.
I don’t think he would ever be in the minority.
The other four Libs would follow him in lockstep.
There is no constitutional requirement as to the number of justices.
We started with 6. The number fluctuated over the years, rising to as many as 10 and finally settling at 9.
Maybe we should set the number back to 7 and let attrition take the number down.
Maybe we should wait until a true conservative take charge in the White House and raise the number to 11.
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