Gorsuch Confirmation Hearings

[Lord Jim]

Thank God for the way that outrage over the treatment of Merrick Garland drove millions of people who otherwise wouldn't have turned out to show up at the polls to vote for Hillary Clinton, propelling her to the Presidency...

Oh wait...

[BoSoxGal]

How many tens of thousands of votes won Trump the electoral college victory? How many millions more voters supported Clinton?

[Long Run]

No it fucking is not a vindication of the refusal to consider Garland.

The strategy was indeed vindicated -- it worked. As Jim notes, the R's paid no price for stonewalling Garland, and they ended up with a new justice much more to their liking (although it is impossible to know how this all works out in the long term).

[Lord Jim]

How many tens of thousands of votes won Trump the electoral college victory? How many millions more voters supported Clinton?

How many Obama voters from 2008 and 2012 in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin couldn't be arsed to show up for Hillary Clinton, costing her the election?

[BoSoxGal]

Actually, many of them DID vote - for Trump. Because he's going to bring their jobs back.

[ex-khobar Andy]

Long Run - the first definition of 'vindication' from a Google search:

vin·di·ca·tion
ˌvindəˈkāSH(ə)n/
noun
the action of clearing someone of blame or suspicion.
"I intend to work to ensure my full vindication"
proof that someone or something is right, reasonable, or justified.
"the results were interpreted as vindication of the company's policy"

So, for example, the exclusion of Garland was right? Or was it reasonable? Or was it justified?

I don't think we want to open the 'ends justify the means' Pandora's box.

[Long Run]

Well, that is one definition, and even by that definition, the R's strategy was justified as it proved wrong the critics who said they would get a less desirable judge than Garland. Further, going old school, my Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, includes " 3 (b)(1) CONFIRM, SUBSTANTIATE (2) : to provide justification or defense for : JUSTIFY" . . . and "(4) to maintain a right to". The R's were criticized for their strategy and told it would not work, that if Clinton won, there would be a more left-leaning judge. However, their strategy was confirmed, and was justified based on the results.

If it works for the Times editors . . . they may have many faults, but not knowing how to use words isn't one of them. Speaking of Google, plug in "strategy was vindicated" and there will be loads of articles that use that term to mean "the strategy was proven effective" without implying any moral judgment of the strategy itself.

[ex-khobar Andy]

I have just read McConnell's piece in the WaPo. Unfucking believable. Actually it isn't, sad to say.

I would paste it below but I don't want to get my hands dirty. Here's a link. Wear gloves. I will give you three guesses for two words he does not mention. Here's a clue for the slower ones among you: one of them is Garland.

WaPo opinion

[Burning Petard]

I followed the link and read it. Read some of the comments that followed. Not much beyond flaming anger, expressed by supporters and opponents of McConnell. I did see evidence for all politicians' faith in the short memory of voters. I saw no reason for hope.

But that does not mean I have no hopes.

snailgate

[Econoline]

When you cannot win the game by playing by the rules, so you change the rules so that you can win...

Most people don't think of that as "winning"; most people think of that as "cheating".

[Guinevere]

I have just read McConnell's piece in the WaPo. Unfucking believable. Actually it isn't, sad to say.

I would paste it below but I don't want to get my hands dirty. Here's a link. Wear gloves. I will give you three guesses for two words he does not mention. Here's a clue for the slower ones among you: one of them is Garland.

WaPo opinion

I can't. Thanks for the warning.

[BoSoxGal]

I got two paragraphs in and was ready to throw my iPhone through a window so I quit.

McConnell is scum.

[Lord Jim]

When you cannot win the game by playing by the rules, so you change the rules so that you can win...

Most people don't think of that as "winning"; most people think of that as "cheating".

What a superb description of what Senator Slime pulled in 2013...

Oh wait, I forgot the rules:

Democratic filibusters Good; Republican filibusters Bad...

Democrats change the rules, Good; Republicans change the rules Bad...

There's more than enough hypocrisy and faux self-righteousness to go around...

[Guinevere]

When you cannot win the game by playing by the rules, so you change the rules so that you can win...

Most people don't think of that as "winning"; most people think of that as "cheating".

What a superb description of what Senator Slime pulled in 2013...

Oh wait, I forgot the rules:

Democratic filibusters Good; Republican filibusters Bad...

Democrats change the rules, Good; Republicans change the rules Bad...

There's more than enough hypocrisy and faux self-righteousness to go around...

And again you refuse to acknowledge the facts I posted above. The rules were changed because your party was extraordinarily obstructive, and refused to do it's job. I suppose given how they acted towards Obama's judicial nominees, the fact that they refused to hold a hearing for Garland shouldn't have been a surprise. How naïve of we Democrats. How repulsive of the Republicans.

[Guinevere]

Here's another perspective from the WaPo:

Yurtle McTurtle broke America

[Lord Jim]

a time for bare-knuckled brawls.

But this particular "bare-knuckle brawl" resembles this on the Democratic side:



Here's the guy that the Democrats tried at the last minute to portray as a "right-wing extremist" in order to try to cover up the fact that whole reason for the filibuster was to satisfy a political base that was still having a hissy fit over Merrick Garland:

Within days of Judge Neil Gorsuch’s nomination to the Supreme Court, Senators Charles Schumer and Richard Blumenthal announced that they could not vote to confirm Gorsuch unless he could establish two things: that he was in the “judicial mainstream” and “independent” of party loyalty and the President who nominated him. As Schumer put it, “The burden is on Judge Neil Gorsuch to prove himself to be within the legal mainstream and, in this new era, willing to vigorously defend the Constitution from abuses of the Executive branch.”

During his confirmation hearings, Judge Gorsuch did just that, demonstrating to the nation that he is one of the most qualified, mainstream, and independent judges in the country today.

Judge Gorsuch’s record speaks for itself. During nearly eleven years on the Tenth Circuit, he participated in more than 2,700 cases. Of those, 97% were decided unanimously. He voted with the majority 99% of the time.

And what of the remaining 1% where Judge Gorsuch issued a dissent? Was he “outside the mainstream” there? In those 36 cases, he dissented roughly evenly from opinions written by judges nominated by Republican and Democratic presidents.

Breaking the numbers down even further, the statisticians at Nate Silver’s 538 recently found that when it came to immigration and employment discrimination cases, Gorsuch was in the ideological center of the Tenth Circuit and significantly more “liberal” than seven of his more conservative colleagues.

Put simply, if Neil Gorsuch is not in the mainstream, the entire Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals is out of the mainstream. But in fact, the Tenth Circuit is an ideologically balanced court, with 7 active judges nominated by Democratic presidents and 5 active judges nominated by Republican presidents. It is an ideologically centrist court of appeals, and Neil Gorsuch sits at its center.

Yet some senators continue to express “serious concerns” that Judge Gorsuch is outside the “mainstream.” At a press conference on Wednesday afternoon, Senator Schumer insisted that by nominating Judge Gorsuch, “President Trump didn’t go to the mainstream.”

As Inigo Montoya said, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

Perhaps “mainstream” means deciding cases so that the most sympathetic party always prevails or in conformance with the Democratic-party platform. But to even state such a definition is to refute it. That definition would obviously violate Senator Schumer and Blumenthal’s second test of “judicial independence.”

And on that count, Gorsuch has demonstrated that he is his own man. It was no surprise when he told Senator Blumenthal and the nation that criticism of his fellow judges was both “disheartening” and “demoralizing.” When asked what he would have done had President Trump asked him to overturn Roe v. Wade, or any other precedent of the Supreme Court, he told the Senate that he would have simply “walked out of the room.” And when asked whether he could rule against the Trump administration, he said emphatically that he could do so “without hesitation” because “no man is above the law.”

It is this commitment to judicial independence and the rule of law that has garnered Gorsuch an historic level of praise from across the ideological spectrum.

Neal Katyal, the former acting Solicitor General under President Obama who introduced Gorsuch to the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he possessed a “resolute commitment to the rule of law and the judiciary’s independence.” Dennis Hutchinson, a University of Chicago Law Professor and self-professed lifelong Democrat, observed that “Judge Gorsuch's record is one of acute skepticism toward complacent exercises of executive power.” David Frederick, a Supreme Court advocate and member of the Board of Directors of the left-leaning American Constitution Society, observed that “He has ruled for plaintiffs and for defendants; for those accused of crimes as well as for law enforcement; for those who entered the country illegally; and for those harmed by environmental damage.” And Harvard Law Criminal Law Professor Alan Dershowitz observed that “I don't think it would be fair to call him an extreme right-wing ideologue; that doesn't seem to fit what I know about him.”

Thirty-six active members of the Supreme Court Bar wrote on his behalf, citing his ability to be “fair-minded.” Six former Solicitors General under four different Presidents described him as “highly respected and admired by his colleagues appointed by Presidents of both parties and law clerks of all political stripes.”

And the American Bar Association, after an exhaustive study of his background and record, gave him their highest rating of “Well-Qualified” for the position of an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. When asked during the hearings last week whether Gorsuch was in the “mainstream,” representatives from the ABA testified that if there was a quality end of the stream, Gorsuch “is fishing in it.”

If Neil Gorsuch is not in the mainstream and not independent, nobody is. This may be why in a recent Rasmussen poll, a majority of American voters said that opposition to Gorsuch is driven more by politics than by genuine concern about his judicial thinking. As Senators Schumer and Blumenthal and their other colleagues consider whether to vote for Judge Gorsuch in the coming weeks, I would respectfully suggest that they put politics aside and vote for a judge who has precisely the qualities they said they are looking for.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articl ... 33509.html

Good luck convincing anyone outside of the hardcore Democratic base that a man with that record, and that list of legally accomplished bipartisan supporters is an "out of the mainstream Right-wing activist judge"...

Given his record, the argument that if the Democrats would try to block Gorsuch's nomination, they would block any Republican nomination, (unless they got to pick the nominee themselves, as Schumer suggested) is an entirely valid one, and it's the reason that not one single Republican, (despite a number of them having strong misgivings about it ) would vote to oppose the nuclear option over a nominee of this high quality.

(In fact Schumer himself strengthened this argument early on when he indicated he'd be perfectly happy to have the seat unfilled for the next four years...)

Had the Democrats waited for a nominee where they could more credibly make this "out of the mainstream argument" they might very well have peeled off a few Republican votes to oppose the nuclear option, but they were so hell bent to throw this temper tantrum to satisfy their base, they chose not to do that.

And now they will never have the possibility...

And to top it all off, after having joined together to try to sink a highly qualified nominee who the record shows to be indisputably in the mainstream of American jurisprudence, they have the nerve to wax indignant about McConnell and the GOP for refusing to roll over for their purely partisan effort...

Cry me a river...

[Econoline]

When you cannot win the game by playing by the rules, so you change the rules so that you can win...

Most people don't think of that as "winning"; most people think of that as "cheating".

What a superb description of what Senator Slime pulled in 2013...

Oh wait, I forgot the rules:

Democratic filibusters Good; Republican filibusters Bad...

Democrats change the rules, Good; Republicans change the rules Bad...

There's more than enough hypocrisy and faux self-righteousness to go around...

If the Republicans had waited until November 2021—or until the Democrats' *82ND* filibuster of a Trump nominee—before exercising the nuclear option, *THEN* the situations would be comparable.

If the Democrats had refused to hold hearings on a Bush SC nominee for a year before Obama took office, and then still not considered the Bush nominee but waited for Obama to nominate someone else, *THEN* the situations would be comparable.

Otherwise, NO...there is absolutely NO moral equivalence between Reid's actions and McConnell's actions.

[Lord Jim]

If the Democrats had refused to hold hearings on a Bush SC nominee for a year before Obama took office...

The only reason they didn't is because a vacancy didn't come up; it was certainly their announced intention:

Schumer in 2007: Don't confirm any Bush Supreme Court nominee

Sen. Chuck Schumer said in July 2007 that no George W. Bush nominee to the Supreme Court should be approved, except in extraordinary circumstances, 19 months before a new president was set to be inaugurated.

"We should not confirm any Bush nominee to the Supreme Court, except in extraordinary circumstances," Schumer, a New York Democrat, said in prepared remarks to the American Constitution Society, a liberal legal organization.

Schumer cited ideological reasons for the delay.

“We should reverse the presumption of confirmation,” Schumer said, according to Politico. “The Supreme Court is dangerously out of balance. We cannot afford to see Justice Stevens replaced by another Roberts, or Justice Ginsburg by another Alito.” During the same speech, Schumer lamented that he hadn’t managed to block Bush’s prior Supreme Court nominations.

Notably, when he made his remarks in 2007, Bush had about seven more months remaining in his presidential term than Obama has remaining in his.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2016/02/14/flash ... z4dlCXhZjS

Karma's a bitch Chuck...

[BoSoxGal]

Precisely, Econo!

I'm trying not to be too upset about Gorsuch himself considering all the platitudes LJ cited, as well as the fact that he's replacing Scalia.

But it's outrageous that we didn't get Garland, a perfectly well qualified CENTRIST judge, when it was OUR party's president in office when the vacancy occurred. Gorsuch should be replacing the next exiting justice, however he or she exits.

I certainly hope LJ isn't defending the theft of the seat rightfully belonging to Obama to fill; it was unconscionable for McConnell to block Garland from hearings and a vote. It was an indefensible act. The lowest point in modern American politics. Period.

[Econoline]

If the Democrats had refused to hold hearings on a Bush SC nominee for a year before Obama took office...

The only reason they didn't is because a vacancy didn't come up; it was certainly their announced intention:

Schumer in 2007: Don't confirm any Bush Supreme Court nominee

But in reality It. Didn't. Happen. Hypothetical vs. The Real World: hypothetical loses every time.



P.S. Schumer wasn't Senate Majority Leader in 2007.

P.P.S. The Senate had already confirmed three Bush SC nominees in 2007.

P.P.S. Schumer never proposed that the Senate not even consider a (hypothetical) Bush SC nominee.