On Wednesday, the left-leaning public policy group Center for American Progress Action Fund announced it had dug through the congressional record and found at least 24 instances throughout the majority leader’s 31 years in the Senate of the Kentucky Republican arguing for a vote on a president’s judicial nominee.
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“It’s embarrassing that for 85 years, the United States let products made with forced labor into this country, and closing this loophole gives the U.S.an important tool to fight global slavery”, he said.
White House press secretary Josh Earnest said last week that it was an “approach” the president now regrets. One would have to go back more than a century to find a scenario where a president’s nominee for the Supreme Court was confirmed by the opposition party in the Senate when the vacancy occurred during an election year.
As the Washington Post report notes, the Senate did “unanimously” approve Sandoval to a federal district judgeship in 2005. Just because a president says an appointee is qualified doesn’t mean he or she is.
A man acquainted with the talks said that while Sandoval told Reid he had not settled on a definite choice on whether he would acknowledge a Supreme Court nomination, he would permit the reviewing procedure to push ahead.
The two-term governor is being considered for the Supreme Court.
Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), to tout 1.3 million petition signatures urging Republicans to take up President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court justice nomination.
“I seek judges who approach decisions without any particular ideology or agenda, but rather a commitment to impartial justice, a respect for precedent, and a determination to faithfully apply the law to the facts at hand”, said president.
Sandoval met on Monday in the US Capitol for about 30 minutes with Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada, and Reid asked him whether he would be interested in being considered for the high court job, according to the source, who asked not to be identified. Among the members of the panel is Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz, and the Texas senator has vowed to block any nominee. The death of the conservative Scalia leaves the court evenly split, 4-4, between justices who typically vote with its liberal and conservative factions. The American people focus.
At the same time, Obama said he is also mindful that there will be cases that reach the Supreme Court in which the law is not clear.
“I suspect it is only the first of many stores that speculation on potential Supreme Court nominees”, Earnest told reporters during a Wednesday press briefing.
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Republicans pointed to a 1992 speech by Vice President Joe Biden, then the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, in which he said that in a presidential election year the Senate should “not consider holding hearings until after the election”.
