On March 20, the Judiciary Committee of the U.S. Senate will begin a hearing into whether the Senate should advise and consent to the nomination Judge Neal M. Gorsuch of the Tenth United States Court of Appeals, which sits in Denver, to be a member of the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS).
To set the stage for that hearing it is important to remember that the SCOTUS vacancy he will fill, if confirmed, evolved from the Feb. 13, 2016 death of Justice Antonin Scalia.
After a judicious and respectful interval, on March 10, 2016 then President Barack Obama nominated Merrick B. Garland, presiding judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, the court generally considered the most eminent in the nation excepting the SCOTUS, to fill the vacant seat.
Judge Garland’s nomination never received the hearing that Judge Gorsuch will receive starting March 20, because immediately upon the nomination of Judge Garland, the Republican Senate Majority came up with a novel theory, pronounced unequivocally by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.
McConnell declared that presidential appointments to the high court in the last year of a president’s term of office should never be allowed or acted upon. McConnell thus nullified the Constitution by insisting that the Garland vacancy appointment, in fact any SCOTUS vacancy appointment made in the last year of a president’s term, should be left to the next president.
In this case that meant waiting for the president who would be elected 8 months later on Nov. 8 and would take would take office 10 months and 10 days later on Jan. 20, 2017.
Of course that is pure fiction, which is a nice way to say that it is a lie, an utter and complete lie. McConnell simply lied about this. In fact, and you can look it up — I did and you can too — 14 presidents have nominated supreme court justices in the last year of their terms as president, including six who were lame duck presidents, which is to say they nominated and achieved confirmation of new justices even after elections in which their successors to the White House had been chosen.
Nonetheless the Republicans did it because they could, because they had the votes, they had no respect for the Constitution and none at all for President Obama, whom they disrespected for eight years without cease, which disrespect came from one fact, one cause, especially from a border state racist.
They had the votes to deny Judge Garland even a hearing much less a vote on his nomination. Most of them refused even the courtesy of a meeting, a courtesy Judge Gorsuch has received from Democrats in the Senate.
On Jan. 31, President Donald Trump acted to fill the vacancy – a vacancy caused not by the death of Antonin Scalia but by the failure of the capricious, scheming Senate majority to carry out its obligation under the U.S. Constitution to advise and consent (0r not consent as is their prerogative) as to the nomination of Judge Garland. But they refused even to advise.
So the nomination of Judge Gorsuch to Judge Garland’s seat on the Supreme Court is particularly fraught and will make for great drama at his confirmation hearing.
The ranking Democratic minority member of the Judiciary Committee is Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California.
Here is what I would like her to say, here are the questions I would like her and other Democrats on the committee to ask Judge Gorsuch.
Imagine then that the rest of what you read in this is a Socratic examination that might be posed by Sen. Feinstein and/or other Democrats on the Judiciary Committee — some of who are attorneys while others, like Sen. Feinstein and the Republican chairman of the committee, Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, are not.
Let us begin: (Please go to Judge Gorsuch: Part 2)
Peeling the Onion 