Will the Dems attempt to block the Roberts nomination?

[LionPride]

What do you think?

To me, one of the most important, if not the most important, functions of a President is to nominate Supreme Court justices. These folks get life time appointments to the bench and are often there for a long time during several presidential administrations.

I like this nomination. Roberts is known as a brilliant legal mind, has argued 39 cases before the high court, and has been a federal judge for 2 years. Of course he's conservative, so the Democrats will obviously cry foul, even though they voted for him to a federal bench on a vote of 97-3 or something close to that.

However, keep this in mind. How many of you remember the Breyer and Ginsburg nominations? Pretty uneventful if I remember correctly. How many of you remember the Clarence Thomas nomination and the circus made around that?

The Democratic leaders are already greasing the skids for a long fight and possible filibuster over this nomination, even though they struck a deal to give the Presidents nominations an up or down vote. Let's see if they stick to that.

[once a runner]

How are the Dems going to filibuster when they need 60 votes and there are only 44 of them? That woud require 16 Rep. to jump ship to join the Dems. If 16 Rep. side with Dems, then you must admit there is probably something wrong with the nominee. It seems as if it would be easier to get just 7 of the Rep. to reject the nominee.

It's been 75 years since a president whose party was controlled by the Senate, that the president's nominee was rejected. And that president was Herbert Hoover.

I'm sure the Dems will fuss and look for skeletons in the closet, but that's politics. Ultimately, unless this guy does have some shady past (which does not appear to be the case), he will be nominated.

In the last 35 years, only 2 out of 11 nominees have been nominated by a Democrat (both by Clinton in his first term). There hasn't been a lot of opporunity for the Rep. to object. At that time, Clinton's popularity was doing very well and I don't think anyone wanted to risk their own political career by vociferously denouncing his choices.

[Goodwill]

It will be a circus.

[TheAnalyst]

I think you have it backwards OAR. You need 60 votes to prevent a filibuster, so 5 Dems would have to jump over, which is likely. I don't think you will see a filibuster on this one, but anything is possible.

[Pale Rider]

Of course the Dems will try to block it. That's what they do. Look for the "nuclear option" to take effect. That will put an end to all this filibuster crap.

[LionPride]

Here's some interesting links to back up why I think this is going to get ugly....

http://www.legalaffairs.org/printerfriendly.msp?id=632

I thought this passage was interesting (especially Schumer's comments).

As a general rule, a President will nominate individuals that broadly share his ideological views, but in order for nominations to be successfully confirmed he will usually exercise some restraint. Nominees with political views widely perceived as extreme will likely fail to be confirmed by the Senate. There are five likely sources of Supreme Court Justices: the federal Appeals Court, state courts, the executive branch, members of Congress, or an academic. On the current Court, seven Justices previously served on federal appellate courts, two were state trial and appellate judges, three were full-time law school professors, three held full-time positions in the federal executive branch, and one (outgoing Justice Sandra Day O'Connor) was an elected state legislator.

The President makes a nomination to fill a vacant seat of the Court, which must be confirmed by a simple majority of votes in the United States Senate, although the nomination can be filibustered. Detailed background checks by the FBI will take place. It is the role of the Senate Judiciary Committee to analyse the suitability of nominees. It will call the nominee and witnesses for questioning. Current Senate Judiciary Committee member Charles Schumer of the Democratic Party has said "All questions are legitimate. What is your view on Roe v. Wade? What is your view on gay marriage? They are going to try to get away with the idea that we're not going to know their views. But that's not going to work this time.” [2]. However, Republican member Orrin Hatch has said "I don't think nominees have to answer certain questions. They don't have to answer questions about how they are going to vote in the future. They don't have to answer stupid questions. They don't have to answer argumentative cases." [3] The Committee will vote on whether to recommend the nominee or not, and then the matter is passed to the floor for debate and a vote. The Standing Committee on Federal Judiciary of the American Bar Association will assess the nominee "solely to professional qualifications: integrity, professional competence and judicial temperament."[4] The Committee consists of fifteen federal judges (not Supreme Court justices). It will offer a rating for the nominee - "well qualified", "qualified" or "not qualified". Other interest groups are often involved in the confirmation process, such as groups supporting or opposing the perceived judicial philosophy of the nominee. The nominee's personal life will also be subject to much scrutiny. Most recently, Douglas H. Ginsburg's nomination was withdrawn after he admitted he had used marijuana, and during Clarence Thomas' confirmation hearings, there was much scrutiny over allegations of sexual harassment of former colleague Anita Hill.

The above text was taken from this website: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Co ... ted_States

I also heard on the radio Charles Schumer's remarks that this "isn't the federal bench. It's a new ball game. A justice can make law......" What? Since when could a justice make law? At least now the Dems are finally admitting that is THEIR way in trying to change the law of the land - through the courts and not the legislature. This is not an exact quote, but it gives the jist of it. And I heard the DIRECT QUOTE from Schumer's mouth on the radio. I looked for it on the net to appease flea"you called me a name"flicker, but the quote isn't out there yet. BTW - where is flea? Is he spending all his time looking for that name I called him?

[LionPride]

Here's a portion of a recent article written by Thomas Sowell that I thought was interesting, and somewhat on this topic.

"Senator Leahy has said: "The two most activist judges we have right now are Justice Thomas and Justice Scalia, who have struck down (my emphasis added) and thus written laws of their own in place of congressional laws more than anybody else on the current Supreme Court."

One of the major functions of the Supreme Court for more than two centuries has been to strike down acts of Congress, the President, or the lower courts when any of these exceed the authority granted to them by the Constitution. Calling this "judicial activism" is playing games with words and befogging the real issues.

When Justices Scalia and Thomas enforce the limits set by the Constitution, that is not writing "their own new laws," no matter what Senator Leahy claims.

Those who are writing their own new laws are people like Justice John Paul Stevens, who arbitrarily expanded the Constitution's authorization of government taking of private property for "public use" to allow the taking of private property for a "public purpose" -- which can be anything under the sun.

It is one thing to allow the government to take land needed to build a military base or a dam and something very different to allow the government to bulldoze people's homes to turn the land over to a private developer to build casinos or shopping malls."

Click here to read entire article

[LionPride]

Ah the battle is heating up on this confirmation.........

It seems that Mr. Schumer's comments are meant to unite the parties, right? :roll:

"Something has to give," said Schumer, who is on the Judiciary Committee. "If the nominee does not want to answer questions, then we need more documents. If there is a moratorium on documents, then we need the nominee to answer questions more forthrightly and we need more time to ask those questions."

So I did a little research on the other nominations, especially Ginsburg and Breyer.

http://www.nysun.com/article/17351
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1446850/posts

Turns out that neither of these nominees would answer questions on why they would judge a case either..........

I especially liked this comment from Ted "Hiccup" Kennedy in the NY Sun link (above).

And Justice O'Connor, whom Mr. Roberts has been nominated to replace, testified at her hearing in 1981: "I feel that it is improper for me to endorse or criticize a decision which may well come back before the Court in one form or another and indeed appears to be coming back with some regularity in a variety of contexts." At that time, Senator Kennedy was on her side. "It is offensive to suggest that a potential Justice of the Supreme Court must pass some presumed test of judicial philosophy. It is even more offensive to suggest that a potential justice must pass the litmus test of any single-issue interest group," said the Massachusetts senator.

I wonder how "offensive" Mr. Kennedy is going to get in this one.......

[LionPride]

Just to keep this topic alive (and because nominating a Supreme Court justice is important to me), Click Here To Read what some far left groups have resorted to.

Now, go to this link, view the ad, and tell me NARAL isn't accusing Roberts of being the same as those who blow up abortion clinics.

This ad features a woman injured in the 1998 bombing of an abortion clinic, and suggests a link to her injury to an amicus brief that Roberts filed in 1991. The ad then goes on to say that Americans should oppose a nominee "whose ideology leads him to excuse violence against other Americans."

Ann Coulter said it best when she said these groups wouldn't support anyone Bush nominated unless that nominee performed an abortion on the Senate floor, preferrably a partial-birth abortion.

[flybynight]

can the demorcrats use the philibuster thing, or will the nuclear option will come in to play, or am i thinking about something different?