As I predicted, Barack Obama intends to pressure the Senate to overhaul the Supreme Court. He reportedly intends to do so by nominating a “closet liberal” who has “no track record” on any major issue.
Leftist media of all stripes are pushing for hearings “deserving of a vote”. The candidate will be paraded in front of
The Judiciary Committee with their photogenic family and would lie under oath that they are open to any significant judicial issue. And, by the way, you can be sure that before being elected, the nominee will assure the Justice Department and Barack Obama that they will be conscientious and reliable pawns in carrying out the Obama agenda.
We’ve seen this before with Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor. Remember how they claimed to be “open” on issues like ObamaCare and the Second Amendment.
It wasn’t just Kagan and Sotomayor who became mindless puppets of the Obama agenda. In McDonald’s, which didn’t involve the question of whether the Second Amendment is an individual right, Sotomayor, Ginsburg, and Breyer were so “eager to attack” in their hatred of guns that they baselessly argued in their dissent that Heller’s case should be reversed.
In other words, the only “job qualification” that every Obama nominee for the Supreme Court has met is being a pathological liar.
Fortunately, we who led the fight against Loretta Lynch’s nomination for attorney general made her toxic enough that we were spared another battle over her, even though she was reportedly Obama’s first choice.
So let’s start with two preliminary observations:
First, since when is it a prerequisite to becoming a Supreme Court justice that a candidate be so inexperienced and superficial (and/or dishonest) that he claims to have no experience or opinions on any relevant issue?
Second, as the process gets underway, don’t assume that Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer won’t try to “destroy” the vote. They would only need to dismiss four RINOs to do so. And you can be sure that the pressure in Illinois, Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New Hampshire (as well as Maine) will be waning. This, by the way, despite the fact that Harry Reid, when he “destroyed” the Senate in November 2013, claimed that his illegal actions did not extend to the Supreme Court.
Here’s a rundown of the latest group of losers and liars who have been elected to life positions:
Patricia Millett (from DC Circuit) (dead on arrival):
Millett is only on the bench because Harry Reid broke Senate rules in 2013 and pushed through her nomination by fewer than 60 votes (56). If Obama wanted to groundlessly poke a stick in the eye of furious Republican senators, Millett would be his choice.
Paul Watford (from Ninth District) (dead on arrival):
In 2012, when Senate Republicans held only a minority of seats in the Senate, Watford was pushed through with the support of just 9 GOP members (Alexander, Snowe, Murkowski, McCain, Brown, Collins, Graham, Kyl, Lugar). Four of those members are no longer in the Senate; at least two were removed because of such votes. In particular, opposition to Watford has focused on his opposition to the death penalty and his opposition to Arizona’s anti-immigration laws. In the 9th District, he voted to overturn Arizona’s law automatically denying bail to undocumented immigrants.
Ketanji Brown Jackson (from DC Circuit):
Jane Kelly (from the Eighth District):
It’s probably telling that both candidates combined their Harvard law degrees with careers as public defenders.
A notable example of Jackson poking her head out of her hole came when she criticized the D.C. Department of Corrections for failing to provide “reasonable accommodations” to a deaf inmate. Because D.C.’s efforts to comply with the ADA were only “tentative,” Jackson ordered, in essence, that the prison pay restitution to the offender.
Kelly has given more than 30 speeches but has refused to share them with the Judiciary Committee, saying they came from “carelessly written notes” that she threw away. At a time when Hillary Clinton will be defending herself with the same “I don’t know anything,” that excuse may be a bit too forceful.
Sri Srinivasan (from DC):
The White House bills Srinivasan as a “moderate,” but those who have studied his background have called him “a left-wing Ruth Bader Ginsburg” or, more charitably, “somewhere between a Kennedy and a Souter.” Asked which recent Supreme Court member most resembled him, Srinivasan said he didn’t know enough about the court to answer that question—an obvious lie.
Srinivasan was a member of Al Gore’s legal team in 2000, and one of his two published writings attacks voter ID cards.
His views restrict free commercial speech (an compelling comment on his potential approach to Citizens United), allow the government to make decisions based on race and gender (an compelling comment on his approach to quotas), and allow the Department of Labor to administratively impose wage and hour requirements on home care providers (an compelling comment on his approach to “enforcement action”).
Merrick Garland (from DC Circuit):
Garland was a clerk to William Brennan, and before being nominated to the court by Clinton, his notable service was in the Justice Department under Janet Reno.
The bottom line: It’s not that anyone on Obama’s miniature list is a “moderate.” Rather, they are puppets who have consistently lied under oath before the Senate Judiciary Committee (a federal crime under, among other things, 18 U.S.C. 1001) and falsely claimed to have no opinion on any crucial issue—positions that, in saner times, would disqualify them from THEIR CURRENT positions.
But let’s not kid ourselves: If McConnell and Grassley were to back down and allow this sham trial to continue, the media would portray them as saints.
The inescapable conclusion is that the sooner Senate Republicans make it clear that “Nothing to see here, people!” the less painful it will be for them.
