Now that United States Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has passed away President Obama will have to propose a successor. Of course there is the problem of the Republican controlled Senate; many of the members of that body have expressed the sentiment that they want the next President to nominate the next justice.
Those who are Conservative Republicans have expressed this desire in the most impertinent terms and made it known that they do not want President Obama to offer anyone up as a nominee. Somehow they have gotten the idea that they are the guardians of strict constitutional interpretation; IE they believe that the constitution is not a living document. Where do they get the idea that the constitution is a document that has been unchanged from the time it was ratified is beyond me. It has been modified by the addition of amendments many times and is quite open to interpretation.
It seems that this is going to be a situation of us versus them, where President Obama and his supporters will on one side and the Conservative Republicans on the other. Of course this is ridiculous because many of the previously selected justices have not always been what they seemed to be politically and many a President has unhappily found out that the person that now sitting on the court is not the person they thought they were. What a surprise! That is the problem when one only looks at one particular trait, most of the time they only look at how the justice might vote on a certain issue, instead of looking at what their whole record shows.
The United States Constitution says the following per The Hill– “[The President] shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint … Judges of the supreme Court.” The provision creates a power — and perhaps even a duty — in the president to make a nomination, but it does not give him a right to have his nominee confirmed or even considered. That power lies with the Senate.
In any case the whole argument centers on if the justice is a liberal or conservative and which party is in power (in the Senate) at the time of the nomination. So it does not really matter if the nominee is truly qualified, but what their interpretation of the constitution is and does it fit what the Senate sees as being the proper view. And to top it all there is no time limit in which to nominate and confirm someone to the Supreme Court. Isn’t that just stupid and it lets the Senate sit on a nomination until Hell freezes over!
To close out this blog all I have to say that the Senators need to stop acting like little children who have lost a baseball game and are threatening to take the only baseball home with them, but instead grow up and stop impeding the functions of the court. After all the United States Constitution has the power of the government broken up into the three branches of government for a reason and that it is so that no one branch can control the other two! Thus causing chaos and rendering the government mute.
That is my opinion- Jumpin Jersey Mike
