It’s the most they can do without a Senate majority.
You’ve been given Schumer’s statement in context. Why do you continue to read it out of context? Or is there some other reason why you think Schumer would do this?
Bork was exceptional in his desire to turn back the clock on civil rights.
Yes this worked but I don’t think it benefits the country no matter which side does it.
Didn’t that judge get a vote? Isn’t that different than what we have here?
It doesn’t matter how non-equivalent it is, it will still be held up as an equivalence.
Yeah, I think we do.
I think the Bork nomination would be like Obama nominating Ruth Bader Ginsburg with a Republican senate. But at least Bork got a hearing and a vote.
How do you figure?
Unless you consider the advise and consent requirement to be a rubber stamp, all they owe the President is a vote. Not a confirmation.
Bork was not confirmable by a Democratic senate. Garland didn’t get hearings because he was confirmable by the senate.
Which rules do I wish to skirt?
Which rules am I applying to Republicans that I am not applying to Democrats?
That’s fine but its still unprincipled and against the fairly clear intent of the constitution that the president gets to nominate to SCOTUS and the senate can accept or reject that nomination.
They didn’t vote.
They didn’t even consider.
Voting no is acceptable. It has to be unless the advise and consent requirement is meant to be a rubber stamp.
Refusing to vote at all. refusing to even consider a nominee? That’s different.
Its like the difference between apples and blow jobs.
Bork got rejected by a Democratic senate, Reagan was naïve to nominate him in the first place. You can be upset about the chicanery (particularly feminists and pro-choice folks) on the left to bring about that rejection but the senate did its job in that case. Here, they did not.
As a general principle, the scorched earth approach to SCOTUS nominations in the modern era started with Bork and Democrats have nothing to be proud of. But the senate did its job. Not so in the case of Garland.
No of course not as long as you are fulfilling your constitutional responsibilities. The filibuster is an artifact of the senate. Its what helps make it the world’s most deliberative body. But the senate can get rid of it according to its own rules.
Not considering a supreme court nominee at all might not be as inflammatory as the bork hearings but one represents the senate doings it job in a partisan manner and the other represents the senate abrogating its job in a partisan manner.
There are a load of swing state Republicans that can’t stand the fallout of voting against someone like Garland. They needed the cover of a leadership from safer states to prevent them from voting at all.
I think he s saying that he likes the talking filibuster much much better. Some filibusters are much more offensive, especially the secret kind where you just tell your party leader that you want to filibuster and don’t even have to identify yourself.
I no longer believe the word impossible has any meaning. So yeah, anything is possible. I think that when President Ivanka nominates Judge Posner to the Supreme Court, Senator Chelsea Clinton from the great state of Cuba will lead a gang of 14 to stop the nomination and cause President Ivanka to nominate Attorney General Kardashian instead.
[quote=“Fotheringay-Phipps, post:177, topic:773297”]
Hmm … I’m getting this sort of feeling that you might yourself be a liberal …[/qote]
Not according to the “liberals” on THIS board. According to them, I’m either a flat out conservative or a concern troll.
But, yes, I identify as a liberal because that’s where the facts and my conscience leads me.
You mean like Citizens United, or Heller, or Crawford v Marion County?
Bork’s views on civil rights alone was enough to justify people voting to reject him. Combine that with his view on abortion and there was almost no other possible outcome.
I agree. I thought wrongly.
Still not sure what constitutes “for cause” in that context. My understanding was that “for cause” did not include failure to accede to the demands of the subject of the investigation, even if he IS your bosses boss. I thought it included things like “misconduct” and “incompetence”, not things like “getting too close to the truth”
We won the Voting Rights Act at the ballot box several times, but a majority the Supreme Court decided they didn’t like what Congress did.
Political accountability of folks like Susan Collins and Mark Kirk.
This idea that the Senate didn’t do it’s job because they did not hold a hearing is a windmill. You and others may believe in your heart of hearts that the senate is required to have a hearing and they are being derelict in their duty, failing to perform something they have an obligation to perform, but no matter how many times this issue is raised it will fail. It fails because the senate does not have this duty, a hearing is not required, it’s not new ground they are treading on, and the ultimate outcome would be essentially the same.
Saying the senate didn’t do its job with Garland is simply wrong. The senate decides what its job is.
I was in high school during the Bork hearings and when I heard Bork very academically explain why private businesses should be able to deny service to blacks, his opposition to the voting rights act, etc., I don’t think the smearing was necessary.
But yeah, Ted Kennedy made Biden look like the smart guy in the room.
My quoted words had nothing at all to do with Schumer’s past statements. I was making a prediction about a hypothetical future situation. It was a guess. Perhaps Schumer will surprise me and play the role of gentlemanly statesman and graciously give Trump’s SCOTUS nominee a hearing and a vote in 2020, but I doubt it.
My reason for thinking it is that Democrats would be furious if he did. They see the Garland non-hearing as a dirty Republican trick, and would push him to do the same to Trump, if they could. This very thread started out with this:
No, the Constitution decides what their job is. The entire point of a constitutional form of government is that the constitution includes their job description. The senate works for the American people. They are our employees, we hire them at the ballot box and we fire them at the ballot box. Senators (like most employees) have duties. Those duties include giving advice and consent to the president when they nominate judges. The senate might not get fired for dereliction of its duties but they are derelict all the same when they fail to provide advice and consent.
It doesn’t have to be hearings, hearings are just a media spectacle. A useful one in the case of supreme court confirmations because it gives us an opportunity to get acquainted with a federal appointee for life who wields more power than any single senator or congressman. It doesn’t have to be hearings, it has to be advice and consent. It can be just about anything but it ought to end with a vote.
"Mr. Bork’s dismissal of the special prosecutor was challenged in a suit filed by Ralph Nader, the consumer advocate, among others. On Nov. 14, 1973, Federal District Judge Gerhard A. Gesell ruled that the dismissal of Mr. Cox, in the absence of a finding of extraordinary impropriety as specified in the regulation establishing the special prosecutor’s office, was illegal. "
So yeah, the firing of Cox was illegal. I don’t know if the ruling would have stood up on appeal (I think it probably would have) but at the only court to consider the issue decided it was illegal.