“The Supreme Court has organized this opportunity for the American public to travel to the Supreme Court on Friday and pay tribute to Justice Scalia”. “I expect them to do their job as well”.
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Reid added that he thought Senate Republicans were going to eventually hold hearings on a nominee, and a vote will eventually be taken on the Senate floor.
Appearing on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show” on Thursday, Biden said, “The Senate does have a right to have a say in who and what the philosophy of the nominee is”.
Sens. Dean Heller of Nevada and Thom Tillis of North Carolina this week also indicated support for allowing the Senate to consider Obama’s nominee.
Earlier, during a brief and somber morning ceremony inside the courthouse’s Great Hall, Roman Catholic priest Father Paul Scalia, one of Scalia’s nine children, delivered a prayer before the eight justices and members of the Scalia family quietly filed away. Or that which was once considered routine?
Washington (CNN)Breaking with many of her Republican colleagues, Lisa Murkowski became the first GOP senator to say a Supreme Court nominee from President Barack Obama “should get a hearing”.
O’Connor was replaced on the court by Samuel Alito, who Senate Democrats, including Obama, attempted to filibuster in 2006.
McConnell’s statement forms a bookend to the agreement reached by several Republican congressional leaders on the night of Obama’s inauguration to oppose the new president on everything he proposed, no matter what.
Obama is expected to look closely at a number of appeals court judges, including some who meet the benchmark that Biden laid out. Yet 46% want to put off a nomination until next year.
The Judicial Crisis Network, headed by a former clerk to conservative Justice Clarence Thomas, said it was spending more than $1 million on ads arguing that “next president chooses the next justice”.
It’s a strategy that could disappoint some liberals, who are pushing the White House to advance a strongly left-leaning candidate that could galvanize Democratic voters heading into this year’s election.
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“The American people are fed up with Washington politicians, and the selection of the next justice is simply too important to leave to politics as usual”, Carrie Severino, the group’s policy director and a former clerk for Justice Clarence Thomas, said in a statement.
