5 Fast Facts | USA News: Merrick Garland

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoM_w-5SulQFmfKpQkOFtwTQ3s1C6xwNtdhtnywBdeJBR8u3ZAvdU8adYjrYgZQFkSH_3Utu_p-zYNKH1ET6p6sb3xXn6XlWGtNFGwU62zJng8Hma6XvFHEKXh98usba6YuHAOkae5EOQ/s1600/US+Supreme+Court.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="US Supreme Court" border="0" height="283" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoM_w-5SulQFmfKpQkOFtwTQ3s1C6xwNtdhtnywBdeJBR8u3ZAvdU8adYjrYgZQFkSH_3Utu_p-zYNKH1ET6p6sb3xXn6XlWGtNFGwU62zJng8Hma6XvFHEKXh98usba6YuHAOkae5EOQ/s400/US+Supreme+Court.jpg" title="US Supreme Court" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Soon after his inauguration next month, President-elect Donald Trump will nominate someone to the Supreme Court, which has been hamstrung by a vacancy since the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in February. There will be public debates about the nominee’s credentials, past record, judicial philosophy and temperament. There will be Senate hearings and a vote.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">No matter how it plays out, Americans must remember one thing above all: The person who gets confirmed will sit in a stolen seat.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It was stolen from Barack Obama, a twice-elected president who fulfilled his constitutional duty more than nine months ago by <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/17/opinion/merrick-garland-for-the-supreme-court.html" target="_blank">nominating Merrick Garland</a>, a highly qualified and widely respected federal appellate judge.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It was stolen by top Senate Republicans, who broke with longstanding tradition and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/24/us/politics/supreme-court-nomination-obama.html" target="_blank">refused to consider</a> any nominee Mr. Obama might send them, because they wanted to preserve the court’s conservative majority. The main perpetrators of the theft were Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, and Charles Grassley, chairman of the Judiciary Committee. But virtually all Republican senators were accomplices; <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/03/21/us/politics/where-republican-senators-stand-on-the-supreme-court-nomination.html" target="_blank">only two</a> supported holding hearings.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Republican party line — that it was an election year, so the American people should have a “voice” in the selection of the next justice — was a patent lie. The people spoke when they re-elected Mr. Obama in 2012, entrusting him to choose new members for the court. And the Senate <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/16/opinion/in-election-years-a-history-of-confirming-court-nominees.html" target="_blank">has had no problem</a> considering, and usually confirming, election-year nominees in the past.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Of course, Supreme Court appointments have always been political, and the court’s ideological center has shifted back and forth over time. But the Senate has given nominees full consideration and a vote even when the party in power has opposed a president’s choice. That is, until this year, when Republicans claimed that though the Constitution<a href="http://www.annenbergclassroom.org/page/article-ii-section-2" target="_blank"> calls for the Senate’s </a><a href="http://www.annenbergclassroom.org/page/article-ii-section-2">“advice and consent,”</a> senators aren’t obligated to do anything. This is a bad-faith reading of that clause, even if there is no clear way to force a vote. It certainly obliterates a well-established political norm that makes a functioning judicial branch possible. As Paul Krugman <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/19/opinion/how-republics-end.html" target="_blank">wrote </a><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/19/opinion/how-republics-end.html">in his column</a> on Monday, institutions are not magically self-sustaining, and they “don’t protect against tyranny when powerful people start defying political norms.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">This particular norm is of paramount importance because the court’s institutional legitimacy depends on its perceived separation from the elected branches — <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/22/us/politics/john-roberts-criticized-supreme-court-confirmation-process-before-there-was-a-vacancy.html?_r=0" target="_blank">a fragile concept</a> in the best of times. By tying the latest appointment directly to the outcome of the election, Mr. McConnell and his allies took a torch to that idea — an outrageous gambit that, to nearly everyone’s shock, has paid off. But while Republicans may be celebrating now, the damage they have inflicted on the confirmation process, and on the court as an institution, may be irreversible.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHIpsBYs9L2DTMlBp5Ls6uKMHG6PP5nRzPH47iLYv9tlLwbydOo6PHINg-FgcUqDQ5r4_yr3Nj69XtcxA5-xhYA_h3oJHSD65p9m8j_JJGrfLiH57-Cl0B7JD22tLlfxaXyk3Mk-Sto7E/s1600/Antonin+Scalia+Death_PH09.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="267" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHIpsBYs9L2DTMlBp5Ls6uKMHG6PP5nRzPH47iLYv9tlLwbydOo6PHINg-FgcUqDQ5r4_yr3Nj69XtcxA5-xhYA_h3oJHSD65p9m8j_JJGrfLiH57-Cl0B7JD22tLlfxaXyk3Mk-Sto7E/s400/Antonin+Scalia+Death_PH09.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The slope is both slippery and steep. If Republicans could justify an election-year blockade, what’s to stop Democrats in the future from doing the same? For that matter, why should the party controlling the Senate <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-12-20/supreme-court-nominations-will-never-be-the-same" target="_blank">ever allow</a> a president of the opposing party to choose a justice<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-12-20/supreme-court-nominations-will-never-be-the-same">?</a> Indeed, in the weeks before the election, Senate Republicans were threatening, with the encouragement of leading conservative thinkers, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/07/opinion/a-coup-against-the-supreme-court.html" target="_blank">never to confirm anyone</a> to fill the vacancy if Hillary Clinton won.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Can anything be done to repair the harm? One step — as obvious as it is unlikely — would be for Mr. Trump to renominate Mr. Garland. Conservatives will scoff, but they know he is as qualified for the job as anyone in the country. When Mr. Garland was floated as a possible choice for the Supreme Court in 2010, Orrin Hatch, the senior Republican senator from Utah, called him a “consensus nominee” and said there was <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-hatch-idUSTRE6456QY20100506" target="_blank">“no question”</a> that he would be confirmed with bipartisan support. That’s partly why Mr. Obama nominated him this time, and also why Mr. McConnell denied him a hearing — he knew he couldn’t prevent a Senate vote once Americans saw an eminently qualified and reasonable jurist testify on live TV.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">At the very least, Mr. Trump could follow President Obama’s example and pick a centrist — someone who commands wide respect and operates within the bounds of mainstream legal thought. That would be an appropriate gesture from a man who lost the popular vote by more than 2.8 million votes and will enter office with the <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/199352/trump-transition-approval-lower-predecessors.aspx" target="_blank">lowest approval</a><a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/199352/trump-transition-approval-lower-predecessors.aspx"> ratings</a> in recent history.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The shameful, infuriating actions of the Senate Republicans won’t be ignored in the history books. In a desperate effort to keep a conservative majority on the court, they rejected their own professed values of preserving American institutions. There’s little hope that they will come to their senses now, but they and Mr. Trump have the power, and the obligation, to fix the mess they created.</div><br />Source: <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/24/opinion/sunday/the-stolen-supreme-court-seat.html" target="_blank">The New York Times</a>, The Editorial Borad, December 24, 2016<br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">⚑ | Report an error, an omission; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: <a href="mailto:deathpenaltynews@gmail.com">deathpenaltynews@gmail.com</a>.</div><br /><table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="4" style="background-color: white; border-collapse: collapse; border: 0px solid rgb(255, 204, 0); color: black; text-align: center; width: 100%;"><tbody><tr>   <td><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: right;"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/WebDPN/" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL4sspwgGptzvuHVklum5TwxKppRN-lIC5TN8RLZFq_B4ZOtBrX1ssXPNKQ6XpSyQFRJRtVQN45HMkpt3VX0JtOW0TovwxZAurG-AV6gh98IAXo7Ip6QlpkZr9WrM3_m943Mwy-gGxBAY/s1600/Find+us+Facebook.jpg" /></a></div></td>   <td><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/WebDPN" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiULIPEaT_P6oIauxAZd17XRRxljesDLS7iIjdQXT7Xct99uHeohx4IYmiAB6S044gTjMDGSy50sL2vDzOyPZ-3vJj9zwcYQ2rgzJh9v1-QDiunKAQtLLLqJ83s38qN3HABxGIC8GsIOD0/s1600/Find+us+twitter.jpg" /></a><span id="goog_1427852018"></span><span id="goog_1427852019"></span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/"></a></div></td>  </tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><b>Opposed to Capital Punishment? 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The Stolen Supreme Court Seat

Soon after his inauguration next month, President-elect Donald Trump will nominate someone to the Supreme Court, which has been hamstrung by...

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhc43GKgsYq-I6vGT5-te_WaIR-sKbg9J0xslQmc9EyChWUPsJVSCfkaEFypntmQkmNNmLIyuU-OQ_S2ea-LXn8bNKoqc_MWMyi2jxHp9AWoDXTQ5a3vZEuQROAxsb9dB9IlDECEzwzDEI/s1600/SOL.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="262" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhc43GKgsYq-I6vGT5-te_WaIR-sKbg9J0xslQmc9EyChWUPsJVSCfkaEFypntmQkmNNmLIyuU-OQ_S2ea-LXn8bNKoqc_MWMyi2jxHp9AWoDXTQ5a3vZEuQROAxsb9dB9IlDECEzwzDEI/s400/SOL.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Donald Trump is set to inherit an uncommon number of vacancies in the federal courts in addition to the open Supreme Court seat, giving the president-elect a monumental opportunity to reshape the judiciary after taking office.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The estimated 103 judicial vacancies that President Obama is expected to hand over to Trump in the Jan. 20 transition of power is nearly double the 54 openings Obama found eight years ago following George W. Bush’s presidency.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Confirmation of Obama’s judicial nominees slowed to a crawl after Republicans took control of the Senate in 2015. Obama White House officials blame Senate Republicans for what they characterize as an unprecedented level of obstruction in blocking the Democratic president’s court picks.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The result is a multitude of openings throughout the federal circuit and district courts that will allow the new Republican president to quickly make a wide array of lifetime appointments.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">State gun control laws, abortion restrictions, voter laws, anti-discrimination measures and immigrant issues are all matters that are increasingly heard by federal judges and will be influenced by the new composition of the courts. Trump has vowed to choose ideologues in the mold of the late Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, a conservative icon — a prospect that has activists on the right giddy.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">“I’m optimistic he’ll come at this right out of the gate,” said Carrie Severino, chief counsel and policy director of the Judicial Crisis Network, a conservative group that has opposed many of Obama’s court choices.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">“Every president can expect to make a huge impact,” Severino added. “[Trump] is unique in having campaigned really hard on this issue — the significance of the courts, and of the Supreme Court in particular.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Supreme Court vacancy created by Scalia’s death in February was a motivating issue for many conservative voters, especially evangelical Christians, to turn out for Trump. Senate Republicans refused to hold even a hearing on Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland, the chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, for the Scalia seat.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Democrats accuse Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, of intentionally denying Obama’s nominees a fair hearing and running out the clock in hopes that a Republican would succeed him, as Trump has.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Twenty-five of Obama’s court nominees were pending on the Senate floor, after having been approved out of the committee with bipartisan support, but did not get a vote before the Senate ended its two-year term before the holidays, according to White House spokesman Eric Schultz.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">“Republican tactics have been shameful and will forever leave a stain on the United States Senate,” Schultz said. “Republican congressional dysfunction has now metastasized to the third branch of government, and that is not a legacy to be proud of.”</div><br /><b><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-to-inherit-more-than-100-court-vacancies-plans-to-reshape-judiciary/2016/12/25/d190dd18-c928-11e6-85b5-76616a33048d_story.html" target="_blank">Click here to read the full article</a></b><br /><br />Source: The Washington Post, Philip Rucker and Robert Barnes, December 25, 2016<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">⚑ | Report an error, an omission; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: <a href="mailto:deathpenaltynews@gmail.com">deathpenaltynews@gmail.com</a>.</div><br /><table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="4" style="background-color: white; border-collapse: collapse; border: 0px solid rgb(255, 204, 0); color: black; text-align: center; width: 100%;"><tbody><tr>   <td><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: right;"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/WebDPN/" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL4sspwgGptzvuHVklum5TwxKppRN-lIC5TN8RLZFq_B4ZOtBrX1ssXPNKQ6XpSyQFRJRtVQN45HMkpt3VX0JtOW0TovwxZAurG-AV6gh98IAXo7Ip6QlpkZr9WrM3_m943Mwy-gGxBAY/s1600/Find+us+Facebook.jpg" /></a></div></td>   <td><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/WebDPN" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiULIPEaT_P6oIauxAZd17XRRxljesDLS7iIjdQXT7Xct99uHeohx4IYmiAB6S044gTjMDGSy50sL2vDzOyPZ-3vJj9zwcYQ2rgzJh9v1-QDiunKAQtLLLqJ83s38qN3HABxGIC8GsIOD0/s1600/Find+us+twitter.jpg" /></a><span id="goog_1427852018"></span><span id="goog_1427852019"></span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/"></a></div></td>  </tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><b>Opposed to Capital Punishment? 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Trump to inherit more than 100 court vacancies, plans to reshape judiciary

Donald Trump is set to inherit an uncommon number of vacancies in the federal courts in addition to the open Supreme Court seat, giving the ...

5 Fast Facts | USA News

The Stolen Supreme Court Seat

Trump to inherit more than 100 court vacancies, plans to reshape judiciary

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