But this election is more than just keeping the nuclear codes out of the tiny, tiny hands of the manic man-child we know as Donald Trump. It's also about Americans demanding more from our government other than politicians more intent on playing political power games than actually doing anything for the people they've been elected to serve. And on that subject, it is once more the duty of this blog to point out that...
Yes, Sen. Ted Cruz, Republican from Texas, former candidate for the Republican presidential nomination AND a semi-sentient blob of mayonnaise in human form, has recently pushed himself back to the forefront of our awareness and it has to do with the Supreme Court.
Stop! Flashback time!
- Supreme Court Justice Anthonin ("Big Tony") Scalia dies, leaving a vacancy on the Supreme Court.
- What is the standard operating procedure for when something like this goes down? The President nominates someone to fill the spot and the Senate votes yea or nay on the nominee. Sounds simple enough. Been done lots of times.
- However, Senate Majority Leader and King of the Frog People Mitch McConnell within minutes of Scalia's death makes it clear that the Senate will not vote on any nominee that President Obama should decide to put forward. This is based on the idea that a President in the final year of his final term of office should not be nominating people to the Supreme Court; the people should have a say in that, meaning the nomination should await the election of the next President. (Of course this argument ignores the say the people had in the matter in 2008 and 2012 when Obama won those elections.)
- Ted Cruz along with other Republicans immediately pile on to support this position. Cruz actually cites historical precedent for ignoring nominees in a President's final year in office, a precedent that is not justified by any actual facts. This is particularly annoying as Cruz once served as a clerk on the Supreme Court so he should know the Court's history. Well, he does but he doesn't care. He has a point to make. Why should a little thing like facts get in the way of a point?
- Of course the real reason behind all this was not only to undermine Obama at yet another turn because that's how Mitch, Ted and the gang roll but also to roll the dice that a Republican would win the Presidency and the Senate would get to confer on a more conservative appointee than whatever that liberal, communist, America hating fascist Muslim would put forth. (Obama would go on to nominate Merrick Garland and damned if the Senate Republicans have stuck to their guns and refused the man a hearing. Even though Garland's record as a lawyer and a judge has more in common with Republican policies than Democratic positions. But that's neither here nor there. Obama wants him so the answer is "no".)
- Instead of getting Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio or even (shudder!) Ted Cruz, the Republicans got Donald Trump as their nominee. Now Donald has gone on record that he will appoint justices that are pro 2nd amendment and would overturn Roe V. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision from the 1970s that gave women the right to have an abortion if they choose. And that all sounds good to the hard right of the Republican party but precious else Donald says sounds good or even makes sense. The upshot is that it looks like Democratic nominee and America's trying to hard to be your cool aunt Hillary Clinton is going to be the next President.
- Please remember that in order to stay ahead of an insurgent Bernie Sanders from the Democratic Party's far left, Hillary Clinton had to move to the left and adopt for progressive policies as part of her campaign platform. In order to play nice with the progressives like Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren who got her here, the chances are that Hillary Clinton's nominees to the Supreme Court will likely be more liberal than Obama's.
Whew!
So it seems that the Republicans' strategy of refusing to hold hearings on Obama's nominee has backfired on them.
Senate Republicans can continue to ignore the Merrick Garland nomination on the grounds that the next Supreme Court nominee should come from the next President but now wind up with an even more liberal nominee.
OR...
They can go ahead and vote on Garland after November 8th (assuming Clinton wins) and totally repudiate their earlier stated position that the next Supreme Court nominee should reflect the will of the people via the people's choice for the next President of the United States.
Yep, these game playing Republicans have well and truly screwed themselves, haven't they?
Except...
No less than Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) actually said that Senate Republicans had a duty to reject anyone Hillary Clinton should nominate. In other words, obstructionism as usual, but instead of fucking with the black guy, they're now going to fuck with the woman instead.
McCain's office later tried to walk back these comments to seem less obstructionist. But this is where Ted Cruz comes back in.
Ted Cruz's view on this is, essentially, do we need a 9th Justice at all? Cruz notes the Supreme Court has a long history of not having 9 Justices.
Once again, I must remind you that Ted Cruz once served as a clerk on the Supreme Court and he damn well should know his history.
But we also know that Ted Cruz is, well, you know.
A lying fuck bastard.
C'mon! Let's go check
Article III of the United States Constitution does not specify the number of justices. The Judiciary Act of 1789 called for the appointment of six justices, and as the nation's boundaries grew, Congress added justices to correspond with the growing number of judicial circuits: seven in 1807, nine in 1837, and ten in 1863.
In 1866, at the behest of Chief Justice Chase, Congress passed an act providing that the next three justices to retire would not be replaced, which would thin the bench to seven justices by attrition. Consequently, one seat was removed in 1866 and a second in 1867. In 1869, however, the Circuit Judges Act returned the number of justices to nine,where it has since remained.
In the 227 years since the Supreme Court was established, the Court has had 9 (or more Justices) in all but 50 of those years. 78% of the time of the Supreme Court's existence, the court has had 9 positions for judges vs. 22% with less than 9. I'm not sure how anyone can think 22% of time constitutes a "long history" but really, it doesn't matter, does it? What does matter here is that Ted Cruz and those like him are not about getting anything done for the American people. It's all about power, getting it, holding on to it, even at the expense of the people these so called political leaders are supposed to serve. And Ted Cruz with his sanctimonious false sincerity remains the worst of the bunch. Yes, the story remains the same...
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I think before the election finally catches up to us, I'm going to roll out a new edition of Broken News. So look for that to go live on the blog Friday.
Until next time, remember to be good to one another.
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