Tag: Merrick Garland

The Story: In a press conference on Thursday, January 7, President elect Joseph Biden announced that he will appoint Merrick Garland, a Judge on the...

“But when nine out of 10 districts in the Congress are totally uncompetitive because they’ve been drawn in such a way that the politicians actually choose their voters, rather than voters choosing their politicians, in a very naked, transparent, and inarguable way, that election is rigged,” Buttigieg told a crowd of mostly Northeastern University students on their Boston campus Wednesday, referring to the effects of partisan gerrymandering. The South Bend, Indiana mayor — who is expected to officially launch a Democratic presidential campaign on April 14 — said a similar rational applies to the way the country elects its presidents. Buttigieg is hardly the only 2020 contender in the Democratic primary field who supports nonpartisan redistricting and getting rid of the Electoral College. And unlike his competitors, the 37-year-old mayor says those reforms need to include a restructuring of the Supreme Court. “The number of Supreme Court justices has already changed,” he said, referring to the Republican-controlled Senate’s unprecedented blockade of Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland in 2016. “They changed it to eight,” Buttigieg said. “And then they changed it back after they won.” Buttigieg says arguments that Democrats are introducing the idea of so-called “court packing” often ignores “the extent to which the Senate has already shattered some of these norms.” Critics of the Supreme Court say the institution has recently become overly politicized — and, as a result, more conservative during the Trump administration and likely to strike down any big legislative agenda items passed by Democrats. Both of Trump’s two Supreme Court appointments were recommended to him and bred by conservative political groups. “One that I find very appealing — devil’s in the details, but it’s appealing in principle — is you have 15 justices, but only 10 of them are appointed through a traditional political process [i.e. the president and the Senate], Democrats and Republicans,” he said. For example, Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Republican majority leader, recently labeled the sweeping government reform bill passed by House Democrats, which would end partisan redistricting in federal elections, as a Democratic “power grab.” “Unfortunately, if your side stands to lose from a more representative system, then it may look to you like the other side is gaining power,” Buttigieg told reporters Wednesday before his appearance at Northeastern.

WASHINGTON — Outraged House Republicans sued President Barack Obama in 2014 for spending billions of federal dollars without congressional approval — and won. Now many House and Senate Republicans could side with President Trump for doing what they saw as a grave abuse of power by Mr. Obama — circumventing an unwilling Congress in a spending dispute. The power of the purse is paramount for Congress. The president can veto spending bills if he is dissatisfied, but is not supposed to rewrite them or defy Congress and spend money in ways it did not approve. Many in both parties now say that the presidential decision to act unilaterally and fund construction for a border wall via an emergency declaration would establish a dangerous new model, encouraging presidents thwarted by Congress to simply cite such a crisis to spend dollars however and wherever they pleased. “We have a crisis at our southern border, but no crisis justifies violating the Constitution,” said Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida. Accepting the declaration would represent another weakening of the authority of Congress in a steady ceding of power to the executive branch — a trend that Republicans have said they want to reverse and that they railed against when Mr. Obama used executive orders to act on issues such as immigration and health care. “I’m just saying that the Republicans should have some dismay about the door that they are opening, the threshold they are crossing.” Ms. Pelosi has a point. The border wall case is somewhat different because the White House is using its declaration of an emergency as a justification for steering federal dollars to the wall against the wishes of Congress. For the president to declare an emergency now would be an unprecedented subversion of Congress’s constitutional prerogative.” Like the health care dispute, the emergency declaration is virtually certain to end up in court and also be challenged in Congress.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) published an op-ed on Tuesday that slammed the incoming Democratic majority in the House of Representatives for being too partisan. It didn’t go over very well. In a piece posted on the Fox News website titled “Will Dems work with us, or simply put partisan politics ahead of the country?” McConnell gloated that a “unified Republican government” led to “a period of historic productivity” over the past two years. Twitter then reminded McConnell of his long track record of obstructing President Barack Obama, including his successful blockade of Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland: Merrick is only one, albeit an important, data point. McConnells outrageous obstruction goes back much further. He tried to block and delegitimize every action taken during the Obama presidency. Blocking 82 of Obama’s nominees.Refusal to bring up a protect Mueller bill to the Senate floor.Setting your prime goal at the outset of his election: making Obama a one term president. I don’t expect them to capitulate to your bullying, either. Mine will kick in the day your successor is sworn into the Majority Leader position. https://t.co/O9Kgup9JPO — ?????Bunicula????? (@BuniculaTv) November 14, 2018 If you’re feeling bipartisan-y, I suggest you start with supporting the bipartisan legislation to protect Mueller.

The Story: Here is a hypothetical but not especially remote question: if a Supreme Court Justice retires in January 2020, will the seat be held...

The Story: Here is a hypothetical but not especially remote question: if a Supreme Court Justice retires in January 2020, will the seat be held...

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Saying that “it’s time to face the consequences of my actions,” Judge Merrick Garland admitted on Thursday that he cheated at Scrabble one time, in 2003. Garland, who recently informed the Senate Judiciary Committee that he was “still available” to be confirmed as a Supreme Court Justice, choked back tears as he confessed to the “disgraceful” Scrabble incident. “In late 2003, I was playing a game of Scrabble with my wife and Googled a word while she was off using the bathroom,” Garland said. “I deeply regret my behavior, which was reprehensible and inexcusable.” Garland revealed that the word he Googled, “muzjiks,” all but sealed his victory in the Scrabble contest. “Although this was the only time I have ever cheated at any word game, I believe it disqualifies me to sit on the United States Supreme Court,” he said. “Therefore, I hereby withdraw my name from all future consideration.” Chuck Grassley, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said that Garland’s confession vindicated Republicans’ decision not to grant him a single meeting when he was Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee. “This revelation confirms our darkest suspicions about Merrick Garland,” Grassley said. “It looks like we dodged a bullet.”

BETHESDA, MARYLAND (The Borowitz Report)—Saying that he would like to help the Senate Judiciary Committee “in any way I can,” Judge Merrick Garland announced on Monday that he is “still available” to be confirmed as a United States Supreme Court Justice. “I haven’t heard from anyone on the Judiciary Committee,” Garland said. “But I just want to let them know that I’ve let bygones be bygones if they’d like to confirm me now.” The judge said that he was “not surprised” that no one from the White House has called about his availability for the Supreme Court job. “I’ve been reading that Woodward book,” he said. “It sounds like things can get pretty hectic over there.” Garland noted that, when he was first nominated to the Supreme Court, no Republican senator agreed to meet with him, but added, “Maybe they can find some time in their schedules now.” “After what they’ve been going through for the past couple of days, the Republicans might want to give old Merrick another look,” he said. “I’m clean as a whistle.”

We must safeguard Iowa’s courts by resisting efforts to inject politics into the judicial selection process. When politics drives the selection of judges, our courts lose their impartiality. In states that elect judges, like Illinois, political parties or interest groups choose and fund candidates. That is not a fair and impartial justice system. Iowa does judicial selection better. Iowa’s merit selection system ensures accountability and transparency. While judges are nominated by a commission and chosen by the governor, voters have the final say. In 2010, three Iowa Supreme Court justices were removed in a retention election. In other states, and at the federal level, the judicial selection process puts politics first. Not in Iowa.

Opinion editorial Modal Trigger From the left: Dems botching SCOTUS politics Democrats still carping over Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s refusal to allow a vote on Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland in 2016 “need to look in the mirror,” suggests Bloomberg’s Al Hunt. Their party “set the stage for their powerlessness to affect the court choice” by trying to block Neil Gorsuch, “and their reaction just deepens their political anguish.” Recall also that in 2013, Democrats “paved the way for McConnell’s gambit” by changing the rules to allow majority-vote confirmation of court choices. Now they’re “compounding their past miscalculations by making today’s fight almost exclusively about abortion,” hoping to persuade Maine Republican Susan Collins to vote no. But that’s “delusional,” says Hunt: She “will not be the 50th vote against a Trump nominee.” Political scribe: New York’s unions face bleak future The immediate repercussion of the Supreme Court’s Janus ruling that public-sector workers who don’t join a union can’t be forced to pay dues-like fees will be a blow to some unions’ finances. But Crain’s New York’s Greg David says “the real impact will play out over several years.” Private-sector unions may represent more New Yorkers, but “the real strength of organized labor here comes from the public sector, where a little less than 70 percent of employees belong to unions,” twice the national percentage. The key question: “whether the unions will lose members who joined only because they were going to have to pay dues whether they did or not.” The Manhattan Institute’s Daniel DiSalvo predicts union membership in New York will drop by 15 to 30 percent. If true, “union clout in the state will recede dramatically.” Nikki Haley: UN issues ridiculous report on US poverty The United Nations has issued a harshly critical report (based on a single researcher’s trip to just four states) on poverty in America, accusing the US of working to “punish those who are not in employment.” UN Ambassador Nikki Haley at National Review calls it “patently ridiculous” for the UN to spend its resources “studying poverty in the wealthiest country in the world, a country where the vast majority is not in poverty, and where public and private-sector social safety nets are firmly in place to help those who are.” The report even calls for “ ‘decriminaliz[ing] being poor’ (never mind that nowhere in America is it a crime to be poor).” Says Haley: “When the UN wastes American tax dollars, like it did on this unnecessary, politically biased and factually wrong report, we’re going to call it out for the foolishness that it is.” Obama official: Abolishing ICE is not a serious proposal “Abolish ICE” may make for “a good rallying cry on the left,” but former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson says demanding abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement “is about as serious as the claim that Mexico’s ‘gonna pay for the wall.’ ” It “provides President Trump with a useful weapon for bludgeoning Democrats politically” — and “a good portion of the American public will listen to him.” Fact is, “the outright abolition of ICE would compromise public safety.” Politically, calls to do so can only damage “any remaining prospect of bipartisan immigration reform.” This, he says, “is one of the things Americans hate about Washington: that politics has become the ends, not the means.” Economist: People are returning to the labor force Nine years after the end of the Great Recession, observes Evan Kraft at The Hill, “the US economy has achieved an unemployment rate comparable to the boom period of the late 1990s.” Better still, “some 600,000 people rejoined the labor market last month actively looking for work, a sign that jobs are indeed out there, and people are motivated to look for them.” This recovery “is broad-based, with employment growing in almost all sectors of the economy.” And the increase in the labor force “confirms suspicions that we have not reached full employment yet.” Moreover, this helps explain the slow growth of wages: “If there still are people out there who answer help wanted ads, employers do not feel so much pressure to raise wages just to keep their businesses producing at the desired level.” — Compiled by Eric Fettmann