Joined: 02-24-2012 Posts: 17,329
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delta1 wrote:
Another brick in the wall separating the average American citizen from the federal government...and a departure from the intent of the Constitution...
I'm aware of nothing at all in the Constitution which states there must be a 60 vote majority to win Senate confirmation of a SCOTUS nominee. I didn't like it when Reid did it and I don't like it that McConnell did it. But, lets call a spade a spade. Gorsuch was as mainstream as any justice now sitting on the court. The Dems were pissed that the GOP didn't grant Garland a hearing. But lest we forget history: [i] Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) who, while serving in 1992 as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, delivered a sprawling, 90-minute floor address that included a call for halting action on Supreme Court nominees in an election year.
Were there a vacancy, Biden argued, Bush should “not name a nominee until after the November election is completed,” and if he did, “the Senate Judiciary Committee should seriously consider not scheduling confirmation hearings on the nomination until after the political campaign season is over.”
“Senate consideration of a nominee under these circumstances is not fair to the president, to the nominee, or to the Senate itself,” he continued. “Where the nation should be treated to a consideration of constitutional philosophy, all it will get in such circumstances is partisan bickering and political posturing from both parties and from both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.”
Biden, as vice president, has called in recent days for the Senate to take up the nomination Obama promises to make to replace Justice Antonin Scalia, who was found dead Feb. 13 in Texas.[/h]Of course when he was Vice-President he attempted to walk back his words.“To leave the seat vacant at this critical moment in American history is a little bit like saying, ‘God forbid something happen to the president and the vice president, we’re not going to fill the presidency for another year and a half,’ ” he told Minnesota Public Radio on Thursday.
Biden said Monday in a statement that the 1992 speech pertained to “a hypothetical vacancy” and that the excerpt Republicans highlighted was “not an accurate description of my views on the subject.”It's a shame that one forgets what one's own party did in the past while condemning the actions of a party with which one disagrees.
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