That’s my point - this is expected to be appealed, so it isn’t the final word.
Do you see what I see?
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Apparently not - I am not even sure it made enough sense to be wrong. Stranger seems to be laboring under the misapprehension that the Senate is obligated legally or morally to hold hearings on whoever a (Democratic) President nominates, and that isn’t the case.
I’m still not sure how this all helps set up Walker as dictator of Wisconsin. And I don’t think Democrats in Wisconsin are going to be able to explain it, since they seem to lose their collective minds (if any) on the topic of Walker. The Dems lose the election, call a special election and then run the same candidate against Walker. And lose by an even wider margin. They swallow unhesitatingly a Facebook hoax about Walker hiring armed thugs to target Democrats in the last election. And there was that deeply amusing threadabout how, not only can Walker not get re-elected (ahem) but was heading for indictment and prison time based on some lies they told themselves about a case that multiple judges told them had no basis. Now it’s Kim Jung-Walker who is cancelling elections to rule by the Führerprinzip.
Barring an emergency stay it is the word right now. Have you some source that states that a stay from a higher court has been requested pending an expected appeal. Without such they need to follow the law expeditiously.
Now of course “need” is a relative thing. What good is law if those in power can chose to ignore it and there is no consequence for so doing?
As a non-Wisconsinite, it seems to me that Walker did not hold a special election when any logical reading of the law reads indicates intent that special elections should be held unless vacancy opens up after a certain date in an election year. I know nothing about Walker personally and how Dems or Republicans generally behave doesn’t matter.
Of course there are over 200 years of precedent where the president’s nominee was given hearings and the nomination was considered, excepting cases where the nomination was withdrawn (like Bush’s utterly insane pick of Harriet Miers).
Republicans should be warned that paybacks are hell and should the Dems win the Senate this year, Dumb Donald will not have any picks granted hearings.
I hope not. A 5 minute hearing long enough to enter, “This is a laughably inept candidate; try again.” sure. But should democrats be the majority, we should prove that unlike republicans we take the role of government seriously.
This is really quite simple. The governor is required by the state constitution to hold elections. He’s refusing to hold them. Refusing to hold constitutionally-required elections is pretty much the textbook example of despotism.
The Senate Judiciary Committe was not created until 1816, and it was not until 1868 that a Senate Rules change (pdf at link) that the committee began having hearings on most (two thirds) of the judicial nominees. Hearings did not become public until 1916. No nominee appeared at his own committee hearing until 1925. And the full Senate, acting without committee hearings, continued to deal with nominations occasionally up until 1941.
It used to be commonplace to approve nominees without even needing hearings. That’s not what happened with Garland. And even in the rare instances where prior Senates rejected a nominee, they still held a vote. That’s also not what happened with Garland. Garland was nominated by the legally-elected sitting President, and not one single Senator voted against his approval. By the Constitution and by two centuries of precedent, he should be sitting on the Supreme Court right now.
But certainly if the Dems take over the Senate, they will be entirely within their rights to refuse to consider any nominee. Whether that is a good strategy or not if a seat held by a liberal Justice becomes vacant is a different consideration.
Well no, because the US is not a democracy. It’s a republic. We elect people who we want to govern. And we have checks and balances in place to spread the power around. The power to grant or withhold consent to a Supreme Court nominee is a check on the power of the President and the Supreme Court. If we don’t like the way the Senate is behaving, we elect different Senators. If we don’t like the rules the Senate sets up, we amend the Constitution to put our own rules in place. But there isn’t any obligation right now to hold hearings. If you want one, that has to be created and put into place.
This is a semantics disagreement, and I’ve always found it to be a ridiculous one. There are plenty of usages and definitions of “democracy” under which the US, or aspects of the US, qualify, and the same goes for republic, and even for capitalism and socialism (the US has many capitalist characteristics and some socialist ones).
He at least should have had a hearing so the public can hear exactly why Garland was unsuited for the Supreme Court seat that the President nominated him for. Instead, we got a backroom decision to block the nomination without any public hearing and a rationale that makes little sense and is in contravention to the previous 200-odd years of judicial appointments. Maybe there was some legitimate reason to deny the nomination (e.g. Garland juices puppies and papayas into a drink he likes to call the “Pupaya Smoothie”), but the public has had no chance to hear it.
For our next trick, we’ll hold elections but suppress all other viable candidates. It is all very kulturny, just like Vlad [DEL]used to[/DEL] do[es].
Why do conservatives fall back on this nonsense meme to justify inexcusable behavior?
It’s true that the preferred word in the 18th century was republic, with democracy having a narrower application. But in the past 200 years democracy has broadened its meaning because of what the country became. As Richard Hofstadter said, American doesn’t have an ideology: it is an ideology. America became the dictionary definition of a democracy. And the ideology of America - democracy - precludes one-party rule, no matter how often politicians try to side step that truth.
It’s called cognitive dissonance and it takes years of careful study to immitate the language and style of Sean Hannity or Bill O’Reilly. This is no three card monty game that Shodan picked up last week. Show respect for the skills!
Please read some history on the matter. It has been absolutely beaten to death in discussions on this site with extensively referenced histories. Even one of my cites in the post you are responding to lists how the nominees were (or were not) dealt with disposed of by the Senate. Voted up. Voted down. Tabled and ignored. Senate downsized Supreme Court rather than act on nominee. Nominee declined to be seated after confirmation. Nominee died. Senate Ignored. And so on.
The Senate has, from time to time, simply ignored a nomination sent to them by the then-sitting president.
