Friday had been a good day.
My wife Andrea had the day off. She, our daughter Randie and our dog Rosie piled into the car for a very rare excursion for all of us to leave the ol' Fortress of Ineptitude together.
We had a defacto picnic of sorts in our car and then went to a sprawling park for a long walk. It was a new place for Rosie to explore and we all enjoyed some lovely weather that was not hot and not humid for a change.
That afternoon, I spent some time on Twitter where one of my tweets was liked by a celebrity. (More about that in Wednesday's post.) We were sitting down to dinner Friday evening when our various phones sent us a news alert that cast a shadow on our otherwise very good day.
Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had died.
Ginsburg's passing at age 87 due to cancer is cause for sadness.
It is also cause for fear. This opens up one more damn thing to worry about in Washington.
The opening of a Supreme Court vacancy with about six weeks to go before the presidential election is going to kick up a shitstorm of controversy, vitriol and acrimony.
When Justice Antonin Scalia died in February 2016, the body was barely cold when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced that the Senate not hold any hearings on any person that President Barack Obama would nominate to the Supreme Court. McConnell's excuse was there was a war on a presidential election on and voters should weigh in on this selection via the fall election.
Which was a bullshit argument. But damned if McConnell didn't stick by it then, refused to give any hearings to Obama's nominee to the court which left Scalia's empty seat open to be filled by (shudder!) Donald Trump.
And damned if McConnell isn't going to stick by his bullshit argument now. McConnell made a distinction at the time that his stance only applied when the president and the Senate were controlled by different political parties.
Which is a bullshit caveat to a bullshit argument.
But let's take, for a moment, the bullshit argument at face value for a moment. If as McConnell put it that voters should weigh in on a Supreme Court selection via the fall election, why should it matter what parties the President and the Senate belongs to?
McConnell undermines his own argument by making party affiliation of the President and the Senate a consideration. McConnell is making it clear that he does not give one single damn fuck about the voters having a voice in choosing the next Supreme Court justice.
If the point is to give voters a voice in a presidential election year on who sits on the Supreme Court, it does not matter one damn bit who the respective political parties in control are.
It is as it is with all things involving Mitch McConnell about nothing more than political power for his own benefit and his own ego.
Sure enough, once more before the body of the dead justice was cold, McConnell moved swiftly to vow that Trump’s nominee to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court will be put to the Senate floor for a vote.
In 2016, Sen. Lindsey Graham made the same bullshit argument to hold off on hearings for the next Supreme Court justice until after the presidential election.
But unlike McConnell, Graham did not make the same distinction that this only applies depending which party is in power.
Roll the clip, please!
Now we have Graham on video saying that if a Republican wins the presidency in 2016 and there is a Supreme Court opening in the last year of their first term, wait until after the election to fill it.
Graham reiterated that position as late as October 2018: “If an opening comes in the last year of President Trump’s term, and the primary process has started, we’ll wait to the next election.”
Which we all know probably does not mean a damn thing. We've had all sorts of recordings and tweets and more to hold Donald Trump and his snivelling sycophantic supporters to account and it never seems to make a difference. I fully expected Graham will weasel out of his comments with some pedantic parsing of language to give him free run as Chairman of the Senate Judicial Committee to hold hearings on whatever Federalist approved right wing nut job that Trump wants to appoint to Supreme Court.
And Graham has lived down to my expectations, tweeting that he would support Trump “in any effort to move forward regarding the recent vacancy created by the passing of Justice Ginsburg.”
As Joseph Welch, special counsel for the U.S. Army, said to Senator Joseph McCarthy on June 9, 1954, I would also say to Lindsey Graham as well as to Mitch McConnell: “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?”
I will save you the suspense of guessing what that answer may be: no, they have no sense of decency. They believe only in what is expedient to obtain and retain political power. The ruthless pursuit of power makes no allowances for decency.
It is certainly indecent that men of such naked ambition are the ones charged with finding a replacement for Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a woman of uncommon character and selflessness, a woman who fought not for her own power but for those without power, without agency, without a voice.
Alas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, why did you have to leave us now? I know you were in pain and you fought long and hard against the cancer that was claiming you piece by piece. Your trials are over and may you rest in peace.
Down here on Earth, no peace yet. The trials are only just beginning.
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