Category: SCOTUS

Rush Limbaugh: Skip the Senate Hearings And Go Straight To A Vote On Trump’s SCOTUS Nominee

Posted on by Rusty Weiss

Rush Limbaugh toyed with the idea that Senate Republicans skip the confirmation hearings for President Trump’s next Supreme Court nominee.

Limbaugh, a conservative radio host, mentioned the idea during his Monday broadcast.

He believes whoever the nominee is, Democrats will be planning to drag their name through the mud, just as they did with other Republican presidential nominees.

“I want the Judiciary Committee — I think it’d be great if it were skipped,” suggested Limbaugh.

“We don’t need to open that up for whatever length of time so that whoever this nominee is can be Kavanaughed or Borked or Thomased,” he added. “Because that’s what it’s gonna be, especially when it’s not even required.”

RELATED: FBI Agent Who Discovered Hillary’s Emails On Anthony Weiner’s Laptop Claims He Was Told to Erase His Own Computer

Rush Limbaugh Explains Why Republicans Should Skip SCOTUS Hearings

Aside from noting that the next nominee to the court will have their lives turned upside down by Democrats, Limbaugh believes there is no requirement dictating hearings must be held.

“You know, I mentioned that the Judiciary Committee does not have to do its thing. It’s become a tradition, but it’s not a requirement,” he explained.

“Why not just blow up another tradition? Because, I’ll tell you, that’s how we’re gonna maintain the ones that matter,” continued Limbaugh.

“They have to be defeated. This Supreme Court seat has to be confirmed, it has to be named and confirmed before the election.”

The United States Senate website on nominations states that the practice was not initially common:

“In the 19th century, the Senate referred few nominations to committees. Since the mid-20th century, committee referral has become routine and most nominees testify at Senate hearings.”

Article II, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution alludes to the “advice and consent of the Senate” being required.

The president “shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the Supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for…”

The Senate site notes that this section though, “has inspired widely varying interpretations” of its meaning.

RELATED: AOC, Pelosi Hint Impeachment Should Be Considered To Stop Trump Supreme Court Selection

SCOTUS Process Was Always Going to Come Back to Haunt Dems

If holding confirmation hearings in the Senate is nothing more than a tradition, we see no reason for President Trump not to ‘blow it up.’

For two reasons:

1. Democrats are already threatening to blow up the process by using impeachment – a process reserved for ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’ – as a means to stop Trump’s nominee.

2. Is there any doubt that the resistance party would take any action necessary the moment they have power again? Please.

In 2017, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell triggered the so-called ‘nuclear option’ after Democrats filibustered the nomination of  Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch.

Doing so abolished the 60-vote requirement for nominees, something the Democrats themselves instituted for other judicial nominees under the leadership of Harry Reid in 2013.

And McConnell warned him not to do it …

“You’ll regret this, and you may regret this a lot sooner than you think,” McConnell warned from the Senate floor.

Gorsuch, and later Brett Kavanaugh, were both beneficiaries of the ‘nuclear option’ being invoked.

It will certainly come into play with Trump’s selection to fill the vacancy left by the passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

We have Democrats to thank for the controversial tactic. Now Limbaugh wants to see Republicans toss out another archaic tradition. Should they do it?

The post Rush Limbaugh: Skip the Senate Hearings And Go Straight To A Vote On Trump’s SCOTUS Nominee appeared first on The Political Insider.

What Ginsberg Said Four Years Ago About Filling A SCOTUS Vacancy During An Election Year

Posted on by John Hanson

While liberals continue to circulate and praise the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s “fervent wish” that her seat isn’t filled until after the November election, they have not been as eager to share what she thought about filling vacancies to the nation’s highest court before the 2016 presidential election.

When the GOP blocked former President Obama’s pick of Merrick Garland to fill the late Antonin Scalia’s seat through Republican-controlled Senate, Ginsburg instructed them to proceed with reviewing the nomination.

RELATED: AOC, Pelosi Hint Impeachment Should Be Considered To Stop Trump Supreme Court Selection

Most Democrats Believed The 2016 SCOTUS Vacancy Should Have Been Filled Before The Election

“That’s their job,” Ginsburg said to The New York Times. “There’s nothing in the Constitution that says the president stops being president in his last year.”

Then-President Barack Obama said basically the same thing in 2016.

“When there is a vacancy on the Supreme Court, the president is to nominate someone, the Senate is to consider that nomination'” Obama said. “There’s no unwritten law that says that it can only be done on off-years.” That’s not in the Constitution text.”

Biden Said In 2016 That Not Appointing A SCOTUS Justice Could Result In A ‘Constitutional Crisis’

Not surprisingly, 2020 Democratic nominee Joe Biden is now saying filling Ginsburg’s vacant SCOTUS seat should wait until after the election, though in 2016, the then-vice president believed that blocking Garland might result in a “constitutional crisis.”

Hillary Clinton also believes the nomination process should wait – but that’s not what she necessarily thought about Garland’s appointment four years ago.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said before the 2016 election, “Every day that goes by without a ninth justice is another day the American people’s business is not getting done.”

 

The Republican National Committee shared a video on Sunday with examples of what Democratic leaders were saying in 2016 about filling a seat during an election year.

 

Cruz Agrees With Biden (Four Years Ago) – Failure To Nominate A Justice Could Lead To A ‘Constitutional Crisis’

Sen. Ted Cruz – similar to Democrats in 2016 – worries that an eight-member court hading into the election could pose a “constitutional crisis.”

“Democrats and Joe Biden have made clear they intend to challenge this election,” Cruz said Friday on Fox News “Hannity.”

“They intend to fight the legitimacy of the election,” he said. “As you know, Hillary Clinton has told Joe Biden ‘under no circumstances should you concede, you should challenge this election.’”

RELATED: Trump Fires Back After Obama Says He Shouldn’t Fill SCOTUS Vacancy

“And we cannot have Election Day come and go with a 4-4 Court,” Cruz told Sean Hannity.

“A 4-4 Court that is equally divided cannot decide anything,” the senator continued. “And I think we risk a constitutional crisis if we do not have a nine-justice Supreme Court, particularly when there is such a risk of … a contested election.”

The post What Ginsberg Said Four Years Ago About Filling A SCOTUS Vacancy During An Election Year appeared first on The Political Insider.

David Frum: Don’t assume McConnell has the votes to confirm

Posted on by Aldous J Pennyfarthing

Last night and this morning, I felt like crawling into a hole for the next 40 days or so. And not a deep hole. I didn’t have the energy or joie de vivre for a deep hole. It would have been a shallow hole. Barely a hole at all. Really, I would have just lay down in the dirt until my DNA fused to the worms’ and slugs’ and grasses’ much more upbeat genetic material.

But I’m a more resilient guy ever since I got into therapy and on antidepressants (I recommend both if you’re struggling). And this morning a friend sent me this Atlantic story from former George W. Bush speechwriter and confirmed NeverTrumper David Frum.

He makes some excellent points (one of them being, don't swallow your tongue in abject, pants-shitting fear just yet):

What McConnell did in 2016 was an assertion of brute power, and what he proposes in 2020 is another assertion of brute power. And so the question arises: Does McConnell in fact have the power he asserts?

The answer may be no, for four reasons.

Do tell, David Frum:

The polls do not favor Susan Collins, Cory Gardner, or Thom Tillis—senators from Maine, Colorado, and North Carolina up for reelection this cycle. Yet these competitors may not be ready to attend their own funerals. They may regard voting against McConnell's Court grab as a heaven-sent chance to prove their independence from an unpopular president—and to thereby save their own seats.

Lisa Murkowski of Alaska has also made skeptical noises, and even Lindsey Graham of South Carolina may flinch. He faces an unexpectedly tough race this year, and he is extra-emphatically on the record vowing not to support a Supreme Court confirmation vote in the later part of a presidential year.

Frum also asks if Trump can find a woman nominee (Trump almost needs to nominate a woman to replace the legendary RBG, lest his female support erode even further) at the 11th hour who will be viewed as moderate enough by the senators who could be thinking of defecting.

Any last-minute Trump nominee will face a gantlet of opposition in the Senate, a firestorm of opposition in the country, and probably a lifetime of suspicion from the majority of the country.

Can McConnell and Trump find an appointee willing to risk all that for the chance—but not the guarantee—of a Supreme Court seat? Specifically, can they find a woman willing to do it? The optics of replacing Ginsburg with a man may be too ugly even for the Trump administration. And if they can find a woman, can they find a woman sufficiently moderate-seeming to provide cover to anxious senators? The task may prove harder than immediately assumed.

In addition, Yertle the Asshole’s hypocrisy on this issue is so egregiously off the charts it might create a mutually assured destruction scenario in which Democrats (assuming Biden wins and Dems retake the Senate) feel justified in packing the court by, say, adding two more justices.

But a last-minute overreach by McConnell could seem so illegitimate to Democrats as to justify radical countermoves should they win in November: increasing the number of appellate judges and Supreme Court justices; conceivably even opening impeachment hearings against Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

McConnell may want the win badly enough to dismiss those risks. But many conservative-leaning lawyers in the country may be more cautious. And their voices will get a hearing in a contentious nomination fight—not only by the national media, but by some of the less Trump-y Republican senators. This could be enough to slow down a process that has no time to spare.

I think Frum makes some great points, and anything that will keep me from reaching for the shovel is welcome news right now.

So let’s breathe, and keep fighting on.

A Democratic Senate has never been more important. Make it so.

“This guy is a natural. Sometimes I laugh so hard I cry." — Bette Midler on Aldous J. Pennyfarthing, via Twitter. Find out what made dear Bette break up. Dear F*cking Lunatic: 101 Obscenely Rude Letters to Donald Trump and its boffo sequels Dear Pr*sident A**clown: 101 More Rude Letters to Donald Trump and Dear F*cking Moron: 101 More Letters to Donald Trump by Aldous J. Pennyfarthing are now available for a song! Click those links, yo!

It’s time to get in Good Trouble to preserve the legacy of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Posted on by Mark Sumner

Of course we’re crying. A woman who held us all up for so, so long has finally laid down her burden after the literal fight of a lifetime. We’re hurting. We’re afraid. We miss her already. 

But Republicans are already celebrating the death of pioneering Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as an opportunity. Donald Trump is calling on Republicans to act quickly to confirm whatever nominee he puts forward. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is contemplating whether a no-witnesses impeachment can be topped with a no-hearings confirmation. Ted Cruz is thinking about nothing except what he won’t be wearing under that black robe. Tom Cotton is speeding through his collection of KKK-approved all-white handkerchiefs mopping up all of the drool. And Josh Hawley is … probably shooting something.

There is absolutely no doubt that the GOP will now engage in the Hypocrisy Olympics, working hard to master the art of the 180-degree turn and racing to put Trump’s nominee across the line in record time. But a mere willingness start a hell-in-a-handbasket assembly line may not be enough to put another butt in Ginsburg’s seat on the Court before it even has a chance to cool. Democrats are not about to roll over. This is a fight worth having.

2020 may have robbed us of both Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Rep. John Lewis, but it’s time to get in Good Trouble. And there are multiple ways to fight.

“From where I sit, Ruth Bader Ginsburg's dying wish was not that McConnell would do the right thing. She knew he wouldn't. It was that we would FIGHT LIKE HELL to preserve her legacy.” — Elie Mystal, The Nation

Hillary Clinton has offered a three-part plan for fighting against the rapid replacement of Justice Ginsburg: 

1) Win over GOP Senators on principle.

There are dozens of Republicans who barely finished articulating why there could not be a nomination for a Justice during an election year. Not only did many of them voice this in 2016, some of them have continued to do so over the last four years in the most adamant terms; terms that having included things like “even if this was a Republican president.” It’s included telling America to “use my words against me” if they didn’t hold true to this claim. It may seem that there are no Republicans left willing to stand up for any principle, especially one they created out of convenience in the last election cycle, but that feeds right into the next point.

2) Pressure GOP Senators in tight re-election bids.

There are definitely Republicans in red states who will feel like falling in line behind Trump and McConnell is the only option. But there are also those—like Susan Collins—who are already finding that standing too close to Trump is leaving them with radiation burns. Push them. Make this an issue. There’s absolutely no doubt that, no matter who Trump nominates, it will be some Federalist Society-approved ultraconservative, ready to tear down everything Justice Ginsburg accomplished and paint the nation in a shade of industrial repression gray. Make it clear that anyone voting for Trump’s nominee—anyone who even supports a vote on Trump’s nominee—is supporting the reversal of every gain made under Ginsburg. 

3) Use procedural obstacles in the Senate.

There are not nearly as many obstacles here as there used to be, because the idea that the Senate runs on rules has been simply discarded by McConnell—who regularly discards the idea of regular order to simply do as he pleases. Still, there are some shreds remaining. To start with, Democrats must refuse  a continuing resolution so long as there is any threat of McConnell forwarding a nominee. Unless there is a binding agreement—an agreement that goes way beyond McConnell’s word—shut it all the #$%@ down. In addition, Democrats must deny the Senate unanimous consent. Not just unanimous consent on the nomination, but on everything. The Senate has less than two weeks of scheduled sessions in the remainder of the year. Democrats need to deploy every possible roadblock to scheduling hearings, holding hearings, bringing a nominee forward, scheduling a vote … these are delaying tactics, and there’s little doubt that McConnell will run over them all. Only, if the polls start to show that Americans aren’t happy about the nominee or the process, McConnell might start to lose some of these procedural votes.

And Americans are already not happy.

In Times/Siena polls of Maine, North Carolina and Arizona released Friday, voters preferred Mr. Biden to select the next Supreme Court justice by 12 percentage points, 53 percent to 41 percent. In each of the three states, Mr. Biden led by just a slightly wider margin on choosing the next justice than he did over all.

According to that poll, the desire to see Biden pick the nominee is actually higher than the base support for Biden. This could very well mean that the importance of this issue gets driven home to Republicans up for reelection in a very visible way.

But if any of the above is going to happen, it’s also going to have to happen in the streets, on the phones, and in every forum where Democrats—and everyone else—can make it clear that the legacy of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg must be preserved at all cost. She carried us this far. Now we have to carry her dream.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s body isn’t even cold and Mitch McConnell is dancing on her grave. This is war. Dems have powerful weapons. Now is the time to use them.

— Rob Reiner (@robreiner) September 19, 2020

Will Republicans stand by their own statements, or join McConnell in the most profound hypocrisy?

Posted on (Updated by Mark Sumner

Four years ago, Mitch McConnell infamously refused to consider the nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court. Instead, McConnell twisted a never-employed 1992 comment from Joe Biden into a “rule”: Nominees to the Court should not be considered in the year before an election. There was absolutely no justification, in law or in practice, for this rule, and while Republicans trotted out statement after statement claiming that they were following some sort of “tradition,” the truth was that McConnell invented this faux tradition whole cloth. 

Even before Donald Trump, McConnell recognized the fundamental flaw in the American Constitution—at too many points, it counts on the participants in the process of government to act with a sense of honor and commitment to the nation. The authors of that document assumed that commitment to country, and a fair dose of public pressure, made it unnecessary to cross every “T” on the to-do list. They did not contemplate the kind of men who were perfectly willing to ignore a president’s nominee to the Court, or to dismiss an impeachment without hearing a single witness. They didn’t contemplate the depth of partisanship that would make these cowardly actions something Republicans would celebrate and encourage.

Like Donald Trump and William Barr, Mitch McConnell saw that the rules as written gave him the power to grab hold of the process of democracy and strangle it. But McConnell wasn’t alone in the fantasy he spun in 2016; a long line of Republicans joined him in fabricating claims and statements, and went before the nation under the pretense of a rule that never existed. It’s clear—it’s long been clear—that McConnell is unconcerned about being caught in his lies. He’s a happy hypocrite, unconcerned with either public scorn or the verdict of history. After all, he expects the nation he’s creating through corruption of the judiciary to write that history. The questions now are: Who will join him, and can they be stopped?

As McConnell spun his rule straight from his nethers, Republicans in 2016 did the same thing that Republicans have long demonstrated as their primary attribute: They fell in line. And if falling in line required lying about Senate rules, the Constitution, or history, they were willing to go there, even if the lies were obvious. Mother Jones has compiled a list of Republican senators who, four short years ago, engaged in chest pounding over the wrong, wrong, wrongness of voting on a Supreme Court nominee in an election year. FactCheck.org has also compiled a set of statements made by Republicans in 2016—and after—that definitely need to be on the lips of every reporter, and constituent, who speaks to them from now until January. Finally, Cosmopolitan put together such a list back in February of 2017, for the express purpose of holding Republicans true to their own statements.

Of course every list is headed by McConnell.

Morning Joe put together a montage documenting Mitch McConnell's shameless flip-flop about the appropriateness of filling a SCOTUS seat in a presidential election year pic.twitter.com/Czc6dmPGbS

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 29, 2019

John Cornyn (from his own website): “I believe the American people deserve to have a voice in the selection of the next Supreme Court Justice, and the best way to ensure that happens is to have the Senate consider a nomination made by the next President.”

Ted Cruz:  “It has been 80 years since a Supreme Court vacancy was nominated and confirmed in an election year. There is a long tradition that you don’t do this in an election year.”

Marco Rubio: “The Senate is not moving forward on it until after the election. Senator McConnell, the majority leader, has already made that clear. And I agree with that. There’s been precedent established over 80 years that, in the last year, especially in the last 11 months, you do not have a lame-duck president make a lifetime appointment to the highest court on the land.”

Also Marco Rubio: “Number one, I don’t think we should be moving on a nominee in the last year of this president’s term—I would say that if it was a Republican president."

Lindsey Graham: “If an opening comes in the last year of President Trump’s term, and the primary process has started, we’ll wait to the next election.”

“I want you to use my words against me. If there’s a Republican president in 2016 and a vacancy occurs in the last year of the first term, you can say Lindsey Graham said let’s let the next president, whoever it might be, make that nomination." pic.twitter.com/quD1K5j9pz

— Vanita Gupta (@vanitaguptaCR) September 19, 2020

Cory Gardner: "I think we’re too close to the election. The president who is elected in November should be the one who makes this decision." (This statement was made in February 2016, 10 months before the upcoming election. Gardner at first said he would consider a nominee for Obama, before McConnell forced Gardner to recant.)

Jim Inhofe: “It makes the current presidential election all that more important as not only are the next four years in play, but an entire generation of Americans will be impacted by the balance of the court and its rulings. I will oppose this nomination as I firmly believe we must let the people decide the Supreme Court's future.”

Chuck Grassley: “Following the death of Justice Scalia, as Americans were beginning to cast their votes for the next President, I said that we’d move forward with the next President’s nomination to the Supreme Court, regardless of who won. The President has made his selection and that’s what we’ll do."

Also Chuck Grassley: “A lifetime appointment that could dramatically impact individual freedoms and change the direction of the court for at least a generation is too important to get bogged down in politics. The American people shouldn’t be denied a voice.”

Still more Grassley: Grassley invited Merrick Garland to a breakfast meeting, not to consider him as a candidate, but to ”explain why he will not hold hearings.”

Joni Ernst: “We will see what the people say this fall and our next president, regardless of party, will be making that nomination.” 

Thom Tillis (from his own web site): “The campaign is already under way. It is essential to the institution of the Senate and to the very health of our republic to not launch our nation into a partisan, divisive confirmation battle during the very same time the American people are casting their ballots to elect our next president.” 

Ron Johnson: “I strongly agree that the American people should decide the future direction of the Supreme Court, by their votes for president and the majority party in the U.S. Senate.”

In 2016, Susan Collins called for public hearings on Merrick Garland and praised the nominee. This was, of course, pre-falling in line.

Ditto for Lisa Murkowski, who at first supported holding hearings, only to come back and “revoke” her support after a conversation with Grassley. “Senator Murkowski respects the decision of the chair and members of the Judiciary Committee not to hold hearings on the nominee.” 

As a special bonus, here’s Ted Cruz—not just proclaiming that there should be no vote before the election, but warning about how Merrick Garland is exactly the kind of nominee you could expect … from Donald Trump: "Merrick Garland is exactly the type of Supreme Court nominee you get when you make deals in Washington D.C. A so-called ‘moderate’ Democrat nominee is precisely the kind of deal that Donald Trump has told us he would make—someone who would rule along with other liberals on the bench like Justices Ginsburg and Sotomayor. We cannot afford to lose the Supreme Court for generations to come by nominating or confirming someone that a dealmaker like Donald Trump would support ... I proudly stand with my Republican colleagues in our shared belief—our advice and consent—that we should not vote on any nominee until the next president is sworn into office. The people will decide. I commend Mitch McConnell and Chuck Grassley for holding the line and ensuring that we the people get to exercise our authority to decide the direction of the Supreme Court and the Bill of Rights.”

If You Are Thinking About Voting For Biden In 2020, Read This First

Posted on by Wayne Dupree

I don’t think former vice president and current Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden will win in November, but let me predict what the Democrats will do if they win the White House and Congress in the fall.

They will enact hate speech legislation making it a crime to publicly utter hate speech. How bad can that be, you might ask? Well, it will be a crime to criticize or question affirmative action. To suggest that the culture of the ghetto has something to do with the problems of the ghetto.

To suggest that the racial disparities in incarceration might be due to crime rates, all that will be a crime. Only officially approved speech about race will be permitted. To encourage the Supreme Court to get with the program, the Democrats will haul out an old favorite and threaten to pack the Court. That will be the new normal.

MORE NEWS: Snoop Dogg Decries Black Conservatives As ‘The Coon Bunch’ In Instagram Post

ONE PARTY RULE

Democrats will aggressively pursue “one-party rule” by co-opting the election system. “Mail-in ballots for every registered voter” even though 358 counties in this country have more registered voters than people of voting age. Voter fraud will become rampant and the Democrats will establish one-party tyrannical rule.

They will co-opt the Judicial system by adding two liberal judges to SCOTUS so that NOTHING they want will be deemed unconstitutional.

We will become a communist vassal state of China.

TEARING DOWN HISTORY

Tearing down statues is not a metaphor.  The cancel culture warriors aim to expunge the very ideas that those people bequeathed to us.  The devaluation of Confederate generals is not the goal of this movement. If it were, statues of Washington, Grant, Teddy Roosevelt, St Junipero Serra, and other members of our founding fathers would not even be considered for outrage.

But Candidate Joe wants the normal of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Lyndon B. Johnson, Martin Luther King Jr, Barack Obama, and Rosa Parks.  Does he not understand that without the ideals and the system if the government left to us by those men whose memory he wants to be erased there would have been no Rosa Parks, LBJ, Obama, or King.

MORE NEWS: Shootings In New York City Skyrocket By 205% After The NYPD Disbands ‘Anti-Crime’ Unit 

And if the nihilists succeed, there never will again.  The best that I can say for Candidate Joe is that he is a fool!

FULFILLING CAMPAIGN PROMISES

I have serious doubts that Joe Biden is going to deliver on many of his promises for his purported version of normal. I just can’t see this man as someone who cares about social justice or the economic inequities in this country. Even a guy who is more honest like Obama has flipped flopped so many times on gay marriage.

All politicians lie, but Biden is the type of guy who will tell the truth to the center-right or his Wall Street friends rather than the left so honestly there really isn’t a good reason to vote for Biden even if you care about social justice.

Remember, incumbents are hard to vote out and you will be stuck with Biden for eight years.

THE CLEAR CHOICE IS TRUMP

President Trump’s four years have been filled will 92% negative coverage by the media, consistent illegal leaks of classified information from U.S. government employees, an unscrupulous coup attempt by the outgoing administration and its FBI/CIA/DNI/DOJ leaders, a corrupt Special Counsel investigation, and a phony impeachment.

MORE NEWS: Charlie Daniels Was A Fierce Culture Warrior Who Took Conservatism To The Heartland

And yet, during all of this, the President worked tirelessly to bring us a roaring economy, renewed U.S. manufacturing, rebuilt military, energy independence, reduced illegal entry at the southern border, record low unemployment rates and more. Imagine what he could have done if he hadn’t had to fight his own government to do what’s right for the American people.

The Deep State still exists, and we need four more years for him to defeat it.

HERE’S A STARK REMINDER

A serious reminder to those of you voting a mere four months from now; for many years, many of us fought or served as a shield to save you from the murderous socialist slave states, and if you blunder into becoming one under the Democrats, there will be nobody to bail you out.

WAYNE’S RECOMMENDATIONS

 

The post If You Are Thinking About Voting For Biden In 2020, Read This First appeared first on The Political Insider.

Trump, right-wing evangelicals want the Supreme Court as an election issue, left says ‘bring it’

Posted on by Joan McCarter

You might say the Trump campaign and evangelical right are playing right into the progressives’ hands with the new chatter about Trump agitating for a Supreme Court nomination before the election. Trump believes he could shore up the rabid base and get back older voters and (get this) women with a new Supreme Court justice, particularly if he chooses a woman. Because we are ready to have a fight over the Supreme Court, one that would leave a lot of Senate Republicans very bruised.

Trump is raging, apparently, about Chief Justice John Roberts, who helped deliver three big defeats in the past weeks on Dreamers, LGBTQ rights, and abortion. "So far, we’re not doing so well," he told the Christian Broadcasting Network last week. "It says, look, you've had a lot of losses with a court that was supposed to be in our favor." The Supreme Court is supposed to be his, and do his bidding. It's not so much that he cares about all these evangelical issues, but dammit, he's not supposed to be thwarted by his court.

He's also hearing from the right-wingers regularly that he has been wronged. Like from Mike Huckabee, who tweeted that Roberts has "stabbed the American people in the back" and should "Resign Now." American Conservative Union chairman Matt Schlapp says: "If it were up to me, I'd start impeachment proceedings against John G. Roberts Jr. […] If he's not going to be impeached, he ought to resign and run for Congress." Interesting to see the right embrace impeaching judges, huh? There're one or two who might make good candidates for the left. Like Brett Kavanaugh, who lied his way through two different sets of confirmation hearings on his way to the SCOTUS.

Progressive groups are pushing to have the Supreme Court become a key election issue. They’ve created a new nonprofit advocacy project: Supreme Court Voter. It's kicking off with a $2 million digital advertising blitz in Arizona, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. "We can’t afford any more Brett Kavanaughs, or our court will be his court," one ad says over an image of Trump. "The future of the Supreme Court is on the line." Members from Demand Justice, American Federation of Teachers, NARAL Pro-Choice America, Voto Latino, the National Women’s Law Center, and Justice Democrats comprise the advisory board for the effort, and it's boosted by the participation of Sen. Elizabeth Warren. "The Supreme Court Voter project gives us a chance to mobilize progressives, stop Donald Trump's takeover of our courts and create a fairer more equal and just America," she said in a statement for the project’s debut.

Organizers of the project have done polling through Hart Research Associates, finding "overwhelming concern" from progressives and independents about more Trump Supreme Court justices. "The prospect of him being able to put one or two more justices on the Supreme Court is really a powerful image and scenario as a motivator for people to really care about this election,” said Guy Molyneux, senior vice president at Hart. He added that Kavanugh is especially "powerful as a symbol for a liberal audience of what is wrong with the court." Take that, Susan Collins.

Which takes us back to Trump wanting another Supreme Court fight before November, which so far McConnell is welcoming. Should an opening occur (and there're rumors from the right that Justice Samuel Alito is looking at retirement), Trump is going to want to nominate a fire-breathing, evangelical, far-right activist. McConnell says he'll fit that nomination in—in less than three months before the election—after adopting the supposed rule that a Supreme Court nomination couldn't be considered in an election year when Barack Obama was president.

If Trump and McConnell want to have that fight—at the same time Trump is arguing before the Supreme Court that the entire Affordable Care Act should be overturned! In the middle of a pandemic!—bring it. We'll take that fight.

You want to make the Supreme Court a fight for 2020, Moscow Mitch? You got it

Posted on by Joan McCarter

Moscow Mitch McConnell is clutching his phony pearls, shocked, shocked that Sen. Chuck Schumer would dare politicize the Supreme Court. Yes. Mitch McConnell. The McConnell who stole a Supreme Court seat from President Barack Obama and called it, "One of my proudest moments." The same McConnell who refused to allow an FBI investigation into credible allegations of sexual assault against Brett Kavanaugh, the Supreme Court nominee who had perjured himself, repeatedly, before a Senate committee.

In case you missed the brouhaha, Schumer spoke at an abortion rights rally at the Supreme Court Wednesday following the arguments in the latest abortion case, one that threatens the court’s integrity if it reverses a decision made just four years ago that protects access to abortion.

Enough of this. Please give $1 to our nominee fund to help Democrats and end McConnell's career as Senate majority leader.

Schumer riffed off of the threat Brett Kavanaugh made to Democratic senators during his confirmation hearing. "You sowed the wind," Kavanaugh snarled at the senators, and "the country will reap the whirlwind." He accused Democrats of "a calculated and orchestrated political hit fueled with apparent pent-up anger about President Trump and the 2016 election," and even said that his hearing was "revenge on behalf of the Clintons," since he was on Kenneth Starr's team during the Clinton impeachment. So what Schumer said Wednesday echoed Kavanaugh's words back to him. "I want to tell you, Gorsuch. I want to tell you, Kavanaugh," Schumer said, "You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You won't know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions."

Was the last sentence impolitic? Sure. Schumer admitted as much. Was it threat to Gorsuch and Kavanaugh directly? No. Of course not. It was Schumer telling it like it is: These justices played politics and paid lip service to respecting precedent to get on the court, and they are political actors now. But cue McConnell and his plastic pearls. This was a "threat," McConnell said, a "Senate leader appearing to threaten or incite violence on the steps of the Supreme Court" and "astonishingly, astonishingly reckless and ... irresponsible."

Yeah, right. And what did McConnell say when the occupier of the Oval Office he is enabling attacked Judge Gonzalo Curiel for his Mexican heritage? Or Judge James Robart as a "so-called judge." Or Supreme Court Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who he says should recuse themselves from "anything having to do with Trump or Trump related."

Where was McConnell's concern for the independent judiciary then? Yeah, invisible. McConnell did not say one word in defense of those judges, in defense of an independent judiciary, because he doesn't believe in it. He is more than happy to turn as much of the federal judiciary into Trump courts—TRUMP courts—as he possibly can. It doesn't matter if the judges he installs are unqualified or incompetent or raging extremists and white supremacists. All the better, in fact, for McConnell's vision for our republic.

McConnell is playing with fire here. If this court, now with Neil Gorsuch—the guy he installed by stealing a seat from President Obama—and Brett Kavanaugh—the accused sexual assaulter and perjurer—decides to overturn four-year-old precedent on abortion? If that happens, McConnell's majority is done. Which, by the way, was what Schumer was talking about at the Supreme Court Wednesday. It's what he said on the Senate floor Thursday morning: "The fact that my Republican colleagues have worked, systematically, over the course of decades, to install the judicial infrastructure to take down Roe v. Wade—and do very real damage to the country and the American way of life—that is the issue that will remain."

McConnell wants this fight? He's got it.

It’s Chief Justice Roberts’ chance to be apolitical and impartial: Democrats need to make him do it

Posted on by Joan McCarter

Senate Republicans are making it very clear: the John Bolton bombshell that Donald Trump personally told him he was withholding congressionally mandated funds for Ukraine for his own political gain is nothing new. They knew it all already and it doesn't make a difference, so what? So there's no reason at all they need to hear directly from Bolton.

There's one person though, that shouldn't be thinking "so what": Chief Justice John Roberts. After all, he is the chief justice of the United States. He is supposed to be the one guy ultimately in charge of the rule of law for the whole land. He, as law professors Neal K. Katyal and Joshua A. Geltzer and former Republican Rep. Mickey Edwards argue, is the one person who could go over the Republicans' heads and order subpoenas from Bolton or any other witness who should testify. That's if Roberts doesn't want to go down in history as the chief justice who presided over the biggest sham of an impeachment trial for the most criminal president the nation's ever had. House impeachment managers need to put him to that test.

It's pretty simple. The House managers, Rep. Adam Schiff and team, can ask Roberts to issue the subpoenas. The lawyers explain that the impeachment rules in effect "specifically provide for the subpoenas of witnesses, going so far in Rule XXIV as to outline the specific language a subpoena must use—the 'form of subpoena to be issued on the application of the managers of the impeachment, or of the party impeached, or of his counsel.'" Furthermore, the rules provide that "the chief justice, as presiding officer, has the 'power to make and issue, by himself,' subpoenas." It would take a two-thirds vote of the Senate to overturn his decision to subpoena witnesses or documents. Republicans don't have 67 votes.

So far, Roberts has simply sat in the presiding chair and done nothing except to respond to Susan Collins' vapors and tell both sides to be nice to each other. That's just the way he wants it, undoubtedly. But he has a job, one the framers of the Constitution laid out clearly.

"The framers' wisdom in giving this responsibility to a member of the judiciary expected to be apolitical and impartial has never been clearer," write Katyal, Geltzer, and Edwards. The House managers need to make him do that job.

Four Supreme Court justices give Trump a big gift, punt on hearing Obamacare case

Posted on by Joan McCarter

In case anyone is wondering if Chief Justice John Roberts will be assisting in having a fair and transparent impeachment trial of Donald Trump, look to what just happened at the Supreme Court on behalf of Trump: The justices denied a request by House Democrats and Democratic state attorneys general to expedite the Affordable Care Act case, a denial Trump's Department of Justice requested. It takes four justices to deny consideration of a case, and while we don’t know who those four were, it's a pretty safe bet that they looked to Roberts for guidance, if indeed he wasn't leading the conservatives in this.

They could still grant a hearing later in the year, and hear the case in the fall, when they could withhold a decision until next year, well after the election. Don't forget: Trump has argued that the entire law needs to be struck down on the specious grounds that the individual mandate penalty in the law was zeroed out by his tax scam of 2017. The Trump case has been panned by legal scholars left and right, but the extremely partisan Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit agreed with an even more partisan federal district court judge that the mandate was unconstitutional. The 5th Circuit, however, played its own bit of politics in remanding the case to that judge to consider what parts of the law might still stand. Since that judge, Reed O'Connor, already ruled once that the entire law should be tossed, it's not going to be a huge surprise when he decides he was right all along.

But that will likely be months away, now that we're actually in an election year and no Republican wants to rely on Trump to come up with a replacement plan for Obamacare. That's exactly what he'd have to do, and they all know it. Health care is going to be one of the major issues—if not the issue—of the 2020 election. This case is still going to loom over it, with or without a Supreme Court decision, because Trump is arguing that the entire law be tossed. That includes protections for 130 million people with pre-existing conditions. It includes coverage for people up to age 26 on their parents’ plans. It includes no limits on what insurance has to cover in a person’s lifetime in the event of a medical catastrophe. It includes affordable premiums for millions of people who were previously uninsured. And it includes the Medicaid expansion that's covered more millions.

But for now, the denial of consideration takes the worst of the pressure off of Trump, which seems to be what Roberts and crew want most. So don't expect any heroics from Roberts on behalf of the country and Constitution during this impeachment trial.