Obama Nominates Merrick Garland For Supreme Court (usatoday.com)

According to the New York Times, President Barack Obama has nominated Merrick B. Garland as the nation's 113th Supreme Court justice, choosing a centrist appeals court judge for the lifetime appointment and daring Republican senators to refuse consideration of a jurist who is highly regarded throughout Washington. Like Antonin Scalia, Chief Justice John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Garland comes from the powerful D.C. Circuit court. The president said Judge Garland is "widely recognized not only as one of America's sharpest legal minds, but someone who brings to his work a spirit of decency, modesty, integrity, even-handedness and excellence. The qualities and his long commitment to public service have earned him the respect and admiration from leaders from both sides of the aisle." Mr. Obama said it is tempting to make the confirmation process "an extension of our divided politics." But he warned that "to go down that path would be wrong." Mr. Obama demanded a fair hearing for Judge Garland and said that refusing to even consider his nomination would provoke "an endless cycle of more tit for tat" that would undermine the democratic process for years to come. Merrick B. Garland will serve in the seat vacated by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in his sleep while on a hunting trip near Marfa, Texas.

Comments

Anti-gun nutcase

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.nationalreview.com/...

Here's hoping the Republicans keep this psycho out of the Supreme Court, the last thing we need is another liberal zealot like Kagan

Re:Anti-gun nutcase

[jtroy92]

The author of that article, chief legal counsel of the right-wing Judical Crisis Network, is basing her argument against Garland on two cases:

1. NRA v Reno

The Brady Bill directs the feds to run criminal background checks on would-be gun purchasers. To avoid a de-facto national gun registry, though, the checks need to be destroyed after the sale completes. They were originally destroyed immediately after the sale finalized, but Janet Reno changed the rules to retain the checks for 6 months, ostensibly for two reasons: to police the government (so that unauthorized checks against random non gun-purchasers by corrupt officials could be caught) and to guard against gun purchases made under stolen identities.

Garland’s opinion was that if the law required the records destroyed immediately, Congress would have specified a timeframe. Given the ambiguity of the law, had Garland imposed a timeframe on the government he would have been legislating from the bench. So his ruling was the conservative one. After the case, Congress always had the chance to specify a timeframe for destroying the checks but never did. When Ashcroft came in, he canceled the 6 month thing.

2. Heller v DC

This was a challenge to a DC handgun ban. First, a three-judge panel declared the ban illegal due to the 2nd Amendment, upending more than 200 years of jurisprudence. Given the weight of the ruling, Garland, along with three other judges including arch-conservative A. Raymond Randolph and uber-liberal David Tatel, voted for a rehearing with the entire DC circuit weighing in instead of just this 3 judge panel. In a 6-4 vote, a majority of the circuit decided to not rehear the case, and so the panel’s judgement stood. Garland never gave an opinion on the case, he only voted for the entire circuit to rehear it. So did Randolph, but the Judicial Crisis Network lawyer conveniently leaves out this fact. According to the JCN author, one of the three other justices was a liberal, Tatel, and that's all the proof she needs to brand Garland as an anti-gun nut.

So that’s the extent of all this chatter about the 2nd Amendment: how long the government is allowed to hold onto criminal background checks in the absence of clarity from Congress, and Garland's vote that the full circuit and not a 3-judge panel should hear a case with far-flung consequences. All the 2nd Amendment talk is nothing but hyperbole and spin, but what else would you expect from National Review?

BTW, uber-Republican Orrin Hatch advocated for a Garland nomination to the Supreme Court in 2010. Here's what he said just last week:

“The president told me several times he’s going to name a moderate [to fill the court vacancy], but I don’t believe him. [Obama] could easily name Merrick Garland, who is a fine man. He probably won’t do that because this appointment is about the election. So I’m pretty sure he’ll name someone the [liberal Democratic base] wants.”

So even in the words of dyed-in-the-wool Republicans, Garland is a moderate.

Re:Mr. Obama?!?

[tnk1]

It is appropriate to refer to a person in print in the first instance by their full title, but afterwards as Mr. or Ms. X.

Just like if you met Queen Elizabeth and had more than a few words with her, you'd start with "Your Majesty", but afterwards you'd just refer to her as "Ma'am". Trundling out the whole honorific is just a waste of print/breath after that point.

Re:American people should have a voice

[Anonymous Coward]

Unedited video of Biden

The GOP is following the Biden rule, that a president should not be allowed to nominate a Supreme Court justice the last year of their term until elections are over. Watch the video, he is fairly straightforward and clear. They are saying nothing else but that. Of course they can bring up Obama's filibuster of Alito, or how they stopped Bork based on political ideology not based on competence.

Decades of bad behaviour by the DNC can no longer be swept under the rug in the age of YouTube.

Re:Mr. Obama?!?

[hey!]

Actually I know the answer to this one. The formal etiquette forms of address technically apply only to communications addressed to the person in question. You follow them if your are speaking or writing to that person. If you are writing about them you follow the rules prescribed by the publication's style guide, which are chosen for both clarity and to establish a consistent in-house feel.

For example, if you look at Associated Press articles on the current US president, the first reference in the article will use the president's full name ("President Barack Obama addressed the UN..."). Subsequent references to the president will simply use the president's last name ("Obama said...). The submitter uses the house style of the New York Times (and many other papers): First reference is "President Barack Obama" (or sometimes "President Obama") and subsequent references are to "Mr. Obama". This style only applies to news at the Times; opinion pieces sometimes affect different styles to show different levels of deference and formality.

Re:American people should have a voice

[amiga3D]

I can make the case that it is their duty to represent their constituents interests in Congress. Most Republican congressmen have constituents that don't like the Presidents choices and haven't now for the last 8 years. They get to send people up to Washington D.C. to stymie his agenda which they feels threatens their way of life and their freedom. Most of the mayhem with Trump this election cycle is that the Republican voters are fed up with the way their representatives have knuckled under to the President's agenda and failed to avert the damage he's doing. Given that feeling it is the best interest of those representatives to not allow another non-conservative justice appointment. I can pretty much guarantee that if they do allow it there will be a lot of freshmen Republican Senators soon to follow. You might disagree with this and I'm okay with that. All I really care about is that my Senators not allow another liberal justice and I think they got my e-mails.

Re:Why doesn't the Senate consider him carefully

[mdsolar]

The State Department handled that because the President never appoint an administrator for the Economic Regulatory Administration which would normally handle cross border pipelines. It took the State Department a while to get up to speed on regulatory issues.

Maybe

[Solandri]

Here's the thing. The nominee has to be approved by a majority of the Senate (and contrary to the rhetoric I've been hearing, every Supreme Court Nominee rejected by the Senate in the last 100 years has been a Republican nominee; so it's the Democrats who haven't been shy about shooting down nominations).

The Republicans hold a 4 seat majority in the Senate. The Senators up for re-election this year came in during the Tea Party wave in 2010 - Obama's first mid-term election. Consequently, a disproportionate number of them are Republicans. There are 24 Republicans up for re-election and only 10 Democrats. They Republicans need to win 21 of 34 seats to keep the Senate.

Right now, 13 of those Republican seats are considered safe, 4 are likely to be re-elected. That's 17. 3 are leaning Republican which would only get them up to 20. And there are 3 toss-ups. So there's a very real possibility the Democrats could take the Senate, or we have a 50/50 split with the tie-breaking vote cast by the Vice President (which right now is more likely to be a Democrat).

As we get later in the year, if the polls begin to clarify the Senate and Presidential races going in the Democrats' favor, expect a change of heart from the Republican leadership. They will take a centrist justice over a hard-left liberal nominated by a Democrat President and approved by a Democrat senate.

Re: American people should have a voice

[Dorianny]

The nation wasn't designed to have senators directly elected by the people. The senators were supposed to represent the states. Thanks the the idiotic 17th amendment we now have basically two houses of Representatives with different constitutional duties. And the states have no representation. That's why the SC nomination process is so fucked up.

Instead of representing the states legislative majority which chose the senators prior to the 17th amendment they now represent the people of the state directly. I say that is how it should be in a representative democracy

Re:I hope...

[advocate_one]

In this case the candidate is anti-2nd amendment, so he doesn't belong on the court.

But he's not as pointed out earlier in this discussion...

Re:Sharp legal mind?

[ooloorie]

Scalia wasn't the worst, but he did bring lots of politics and social engineering to the table as well.

Re:Tepid, pathetic

[XxtraLarGe]

* Doubtless a practicing Christian

Yeah, doubtless...

Re:American people should have a voice

[naughtynaughty]

The US Supreme Court ruled in Hurst v Florida (Jan 2016) that juries, not judges must determine a sentence of death. It is no longer legal in any jurisdiction of the US for a judge to sentence someone to death.

Re: American people should have a voice

[Notorious G]

As someone who did time in the military and has held security clearances for 2 different governments, I can 100% confirm this. If I had done what Hillary did, the very least that would happen would be my getting stripped of the security clearance and perp walked to the doors by security personnel with a very clear directive that I never come back and I will never work in a secure environment again. The unvarnished truth is that if I had been actively circumventing security procedures and knowingly exposing classified information, as Hillary very obviously did, my perp walk would have gone from the building's front door to the back of a police cruiser and the indictment would be the following day at the latest. It is a gross miscarriage of justice that she has not been indicted.