Too bad the reality of Obama's appointments don't fit your world view. Neither Kagan or Sotomayor are considered extreme (like a Ginsberg or Thomas/Scalia), and both passed with 65+ votes, if I remember correctly. The big sea change in the DC Court - when Obama appointed 4 justices all at once during the nuclear-option debate - resulted in no real major change there, and a fairly non-partisan court.
It's amazing how many people have been saying this exact same thing since the early '90s at least. Yet life goes on, and life is good. Best of luck with your windmill tilting.
for a sense of the stakes, there are four justices on the court right now that would uphold a handgun ban
Who will Thomas concur with now? I hope Obama doesn't make the same mistake as he did with Kagan and nominate someone who was involved in lower court decisions and will thus have to recuse him/herself from cases that reach the SC. This is of course not an indictment of Kagan's fitness to be a justice - I just want to make sure 9 judges are always present (especially given that the conservative justices always refuse to recuse themselves even when a clear conflict of interest is present). From a quick google search, the longest vacancy for a SC Justice was a year (during the administration of John Tyler). So the Republicans may very well try to hold out any approvals until the next administration. It may depend on what the decisions of the lower courts were for the cases that are on the docket - my understanding is that in the case of a tie vote, the lower court's decision stands. Getting away from the politics of all this, I would love to see someone nominated who went to a law school other than Harvard or Yale. However, given that Obama is a Harvard alumnus, I think the chances of that are nil. EDIT - Apparently the quote I attributed to Scalia was not accurate - EDIT
When it comes to the Supreme Court, gun politics is the least of our worries. There are far greater threats to our democracy and freedom going through the courts than pew-pew politics.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is ruling replacing Scalia until a new president is chosen: I didn't think they had the balls. This is good news.
I'm more than happy to watch the Repubilcans make even bigger fools of themselves trying to block Obama here. It will backfire on them and they will lose independents asap. Best news is that there will never be a justice as "hard" as Scalia. The Repubs lost one of their most important weapons.
So the possibility exists of a President Trump nominating Ted Cruz to fill the role. He would be a strong choice to uphold the constitution.
This x13045812537819278501202543 Pubbies will go obstructionist in the run-up to the election, independents will flock to the left, and they'll lose the Presidency once more. Then another liberal will get nominated to the court anyway. America marches forward. Tick tock.
Yep, 3 years ago the American people empowered Obama to make this appointment before he leaves office.
justice scalia is dead... why not? its not like he is a lame duck waiting for his successor to move into the white house. obama still has 1/8th of his term left. is there precedent for leaving a seat vacant for almost a year simply to wait out the current president? and i would not be so confident that a republican would be the one filling the seat anyway.
Both Bernie and Hillary (plus the Democratic members of Congress) need to hammer this point home repeatedly when discussing this topic. I would even frame it by saying "The Founders intended...."
Sad news for his family. Great news for America. Well it looks like government by the 5 old conservative men is about to end.
Only if one group decides to circumvent the constitutional powers of the current president, sure. Have fun justifying the block of this gentleman, for instance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sri_Srinivasan Have you checked your FAX machine for your talking points about him yet? DC values? Link him to Obama, I guess?
False choices are so hilarious. The American people elected the Senate. They represent our voices in this process.
