Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

where i stand:

GOP spreading its do-nothing insanity to Supreme Court

If this wasn’t such serious business, the 2016 political season would be the best comedy on television.

Alas, choosing the president — the person to lead not only the United States but the rest of the world — is the most important job that we, as citizens of this already-great country, have.

And the nominating, advising and consenting to the next justice of the United States Supreme Court is also one of the most solemn and meaningful responsibilities that those whom we elect— the president and members of the Senate — are required to fulfill. That is, if you read the Constitution.

Alas, the very people who brag about carrying the words of the Constitution in their pockets, close to their hearts and not far from their brains, are acting as if that great governing document of our country only applies some of the time and, then, only when it serves their narrow political interests, no matter how detrimental such a practice is to the body politic.

I have been reluctant to discuss the gravity of a Supreme Court appointment in the same space and at the same time as the horror show that is the quest for the Republican presidential nomination, but, unfortunately, one is threatening to consume the other. So speak I must.

If I understand Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell, the plain words of the Constitution that require the advice and consent of the Senate to confirm (or reject) the president’s nominee actually mean that duly elected senators can ignore that responsibility with impunity. I think he got this one wrong.

Instead, a tortured political position that suggests that eight months — the time left until the November elections — is insufficient to hold hearings and vote on the president’s nominee is doing more than just torturing the American people.

It is doing great and probably lasting damage to our democracy.

If you need proof, just look at the presidential-nominating process. It is a direct response to Congress’ (read: Republicans’) do-nothing response to everything. The people are sick and tired of nothing happening, and now Senate Republicans want to spread their insanity by infecting the Supreme Court.

If it is true we a have a system of checks and balances that requires three separate but equal branches of government, the process our Founding Fathers came up with to populate the third equal-but-unelected branch of government is the combination of presidential nomination and Senate consent.

That was the only way they could assure the country that the Supreme Court would be nonpolitical and focused entirely on the meaning and construction of the Constitution and the laws of the United States. It was the only way they could assure the people of this country that at least one branch of government was not only on the side of the people, but that the justices would do their jobs in the most dispassionate and nonpolitical way possible.

And ever since that document was written, politics has played a part.

But this time it is different. No sane American believes for a moment that the Senate can’t do its job in the next eight months. No responsible American believes that President Barack Obama’s term ends in March 2016 instead of January 2017, which means it is his job to nominate a justice to the Supreme Court. And no citizen who has read or understands our Constitution will argue that a Supreme Court without its proper number of justices can speak in a manner that makes it an equal partner in our democracy.

If there is to be sanity, it will have to be imposed on the elected class of the Senate, and that can only be accomplished if the citizens of this country stand up and demand constitutional fealty.

But here is the part that makes no sense.

I don’t care if you are a liberal Democrat, a conservative Republican or anything in between, it just so happens that the president’s nominee, Merrick Garland, sounds exactly like the kind of jurist everyone should be happy with on the highest court in the land. He is not too far left or too far right; he is driven and ruled by his love of the law.

As for the crazy litmus tests that the right and left wish to impose, there is scant evidence either way, which means he will use his considerable intellect rather than any political considerations to decide cases of great moment.

No one knows who will win this next presidential election, but whoever it is, I suspect the next president’s nominee will not be as palatable to all sides as Judge Garland.

Assuming what I am saying is accurate — and it is — why on Earth would the Republicans want to stall this process?

Why, indeed!

Brian Greenspun is owner, publisher and editor of the Sun.

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