After the untimely death of Antonin Scalia, it quickly became apparent that President Obama was about to break the noble American tradition of not nominating a new Supreme Court justice in an election year. The Senate is required to advise and consent.
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Obama has insisted he will fulfill his constitutional responsibility and send a nomination to the Senate.
Outside, fans of the former justice created a small memorial at the bottom of the court steps, leaving two jars of applesauce, a package of paper bags and a pile of fortune cookies – a nod to his biting dissents a year ago in the court’s gay marriage case and its ruling rejecting a challenge to President Barack Obama’s health care law.
However, if Obama does nominate someone who recently passed a confirmation vote for a federal district court with near unanimity, the obstructionism would be painful in its ugliness and disregard for the U. S. Constitution, which numerous Republican obstructionists often claim to love.
The family of late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia take their seats as Supreme Court justices stand for a private ceremony in the Great Hall of the Supreme Court in Washington on February 19, 2016.
“I think that hearing would end up very politicized”, the Texas senator said. In the final year of a presidency, it is common for vacancies that arise on the Supreme Court to await the outcome of the next election. If you think back on that seventh-grade history class, you’ll remember that in 1921, former President William Howard Taft was appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
“Nowhere in [the Constitution] does it say the Senate has a duty to give presidential appointees a vote”, Reid said at the time. Obama’s nominee could change the court’s balance of power.
“Any president’s judicial nominees should receive careful consideration”.
When the president’s plan was announced yesterday, the decision drew criticism from both Republicans and Democrats; why, people wondered, would Obama not go to the funeral of one of America’s chief legal icons? How can we be respected in a civilized world if we are governed by political hooligans?
GOP leaders believe the fight over the late Justice Antonin Scalia’s successor will energize each party’s base while independent voters will be divided on the subject, making the issue a wash in November’s elections. Obama also called McConnell.
People are bundled up, as they wait in line outside the U.S. Supreme Court Friday morning on Capitol Hill under cloudy skies and temperatures in the 30s.
Besides all the conspiracy theories about Scalia’s death, I am baffled by the speed at which the Republican leadership started condemning Obama for even letting the word “nominate” enter his brain.
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William O. Ritchie, former Washington, D.C., Police Department’s head of criminal investigations, stirred things up on Facebook: “You have a justice of the peace pronounce death while not being on the scene and without any medical training opining that the justice died of a heart attack”.
