Good day all. When Donald Trump is sworn in on the 20th, one of the first things he will have to do is appoint a new supreme court justice to replace the late Antonin Scalia.
Justice Scalia, who passed away last year, was a staunch constitutional originalist and conservative. His vote was one of the votes that upheld the 2nd Amendment rights of Americans with the Heller decision in 2008. He has also tended to lambaste the “More liberal” members of the court over their tendency to legislate from the bench.
When Justice Scalia passed away, the Progressives saw it as their chance to basically amend the Constitution without bothering to go through the actual amending process. When President Barack Obama, who’s previous picks made Vladimir Lenin look conservative, announced that his choice would be Judge Merrick Garland, the Republican controlled Senate refused to hold hearings.
This upset the Progressives no end, and in their usual manner, they held their breath and stamped their feet, demanding that Garland be appointed. The Republicans looked at his record and quickly saw that Garland never met a government regulation he didn’t like and that he considered the 2nd Amendment to not be an individual right. In other words, if a case came up, he would vote to strip the right to keep and bear arms from the people.
When it looked like Felonia von Pantsuit would win the election, the Progressives quieted down. They assumed that once she was sworn in, the Senate, even if the Republicans managed to maintain control, would cave in as usual and confirm Garland, or whoever she chose to nominate. Just prior to the election, there were a few spineless RINO’s who did say it was time to confirm Garland, the reasoning being that Felonia’s choices would be far worse. Luckily, Felonia von Pantsuit lost and we will have Donald Trump as president, and he’s already released a list of potential nominees.
This has set the Moonbats to barking loudly. One of the ideas they came up with was to have Barack Obama appoint Garland to the bench as a recess appointment. This would be possible as Congress formally goes out of session for a minute until the new congress comes into session. The Washington Times explains how this might happen:
President Obama will have one last chance to force Judge Merrick Garland onto the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday — but it’s a legal gamble and one that has so many pitfalls that even those who say he could get away with it believe it isn’t worth the fight.
Mr. Obama’s moment will come just before noon, in the five minutes that the Senate gavels the 114th Congress out of session and the time the 115th Congress begins.
In those few moments the Senate will go into what’s known as an “intersession recess,” creating one golden moment when the president could test his recess-appointment powers by sending Judge Garland to the high court.
Considering just how petulant Obama has become since it sunk in his legacy is about to be tossed into the trash, shoving Garland onto the Supreme Court is something he might try. It would also be a massively bad idea.
The move would be a legal gamble under the high court’s last ruling in 2014 on recess appointments. That 9-0 decision overturned a handful of Mr. Obama’s early 2012 picks, saying the Senate was actually in session when the president acted, so he couldn’t use his powers.
That ruling also said, however, that there’s a difference between appointments made during the annual yearlong session of Congress, dubbed “intrasession,” which Mr. Obama used in 2012, and picks made at the end of the year, after Congress adjourns, which are known as “intersession.”
Basically, Obama will have a minute or so to appoint Garland to the court. He would be on the court for up to a year. After a year, Garland’s term would expire and then President Trump could appoint a replacement. What sort of damage would be done by Garland and the Progressive majority on the court is anyone’s guess.
William G. Ross, a law professor at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama, said Mr. Obama would have the power to elevate Judge Garland. But he said it would be “politically unwise and damaging to the prestige of the court.”
“It would exacerbate acute political tensions that have roiled the transition process and promise turbulence from the very start of the Trump administration, and it would contribute to the growing public perception that the court is unduly political,” Mr. Ross said.
And when has that ever stopped King Putt? The ruling that has stymied Der Fubar was written by Justice Breyer. This was in regards to Obama’s attempt to declare that he decided when congress was out of session and had attempted to make several recess appointments that had been blocked by the Senate. Breyer had this to say in his opinion.
Justice Stephen G. Breyer, writing the controlling opinion in that 2014 case, acknowledged Roosevelt’s move, though he called it an anomaly.
Breyer was referring to president Theodore Roosevelt who used a similar break to appoint 168 people that needed to be confirmed, and he wasn’t interested in waiting for the Senate to act, if they did at all.
He said there’s a general presumption that recesses need to be at least 10 days for a president to flex his recess powers, though he left open the chance for an emergency.
And that’s the loophole the Progressives want Obama to use.
Some scholars say the 10-day rule in his opinion is “dicta,” or nonbinding verbiage that doesn’t constrain the courts. Activists suggest Judge Garland could test the boundaries of unusual circumstances that Justice Breyer left open. The consensus, though, is that Mr. Obama would be making a mistake to test it that theory.
“I think it’s fair to use the word stretch. I don’t know why he would try this. It would backfire,” said Louis Fisher, a scholar in residence at the Constitution Project who served for decades as Congress’ top expert on separation-of-powers issues.
He said Mr. Obama’s 9-0 loss in the 2014 case should still be stinging someone who earned his law degree from Harvard University and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago.
“Does he want to go down that road again?” Mr. Fisher said.
Allow me to answer this for you. Obama doesn’t care. As of now, his goal is to inflict as much harm as he can on the United States and President Trump. Putting Garland on the bench would allow him to have some chance of “Protecting his legacy” from Trump and the Congress.
There are a number of cases coming up this year, dealing with Obamacare, regulatory overreach and outright suppression of people’s rights since they aren’t “Politically correct.” If Garland ruled in favor of the Obama administration, even if it were out of office, it could be several years before another case came up and allowed the court to overturn it, if they would even try. (The court loves precedent) Then there is the little matter of Garland’s time on the court. It wouldn’t be very long at all.
Perhaps most problematic for Mr. Obama is that recess appointments have a shelf life. Even if he succeeds in putting Judge Garland on the bench, the appointment would expire at the close of 2017 — and could end even earlier if the Senate confirms a full-fledged replacement named by Mr. Trump.
I’m not up on the procedures here, but I have little doubt that if the Senate has the opportunity, they will confirm President Trump’s choice damn quick.
Worse yet for Mr. Obama, Judge Garland would lose his seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit — oftentimes dubbed the second-most powerful court in the country. That means the president would be trading a lifetime of Judge Garland for less than a year of Justice Garland.
Hmm, you know, it might almost be worth it, provided they can get him of the Supreme Court bench in a few weeks. No, I don’t think it’s worth the risk.
William G. Ross said Mr. Obama might try instead to fill some of the five dozen other empty federal court judgeships that are vacant. They too would only be limited to a year’s tenure as recess appointments, but Mr. Ross said it’s possible the Senate might vote to confirm at least some of them to lifetime tenure.
Actually, I think it very UNLIKELY that the senate would confirm any of the judges Obama appointed in this manner. I also think it very unlikely that President Trump would put any of those judges up for confirmation in the first place. Why? You can bet your bottom dollar that anyone Obama appointed in that manner would be just like Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader-Ginsburg. She hates the Constitution and thinks it should be replaced with something a lot more “Progressive.”
Honestly, I don’t see Obama trying this. It could backfire very badly as they say, leading to even greater devastation for the Democrats in elections to come. No, it’s all over Bozo Obama. In a few short weeks, he will be on a bus out of town.
Thatisall
~The Angry Webmaster~
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“Honestly, I don’t see Obama trying this. It could backfire very badly as
they say, leading to even greater devastation for the Democrats in
elections to come” this assumes that zero give a crap about the democrat party. He is a muslim sleeper and the democrats were his ride, he has no loyalty to anything even a little bit American. It would be risky for Garland himself though because I doubt that he’d even get the year and then he wouldn’t even be a judge. I’m hoping that Garland has a sense of self preservation., he’d be giving up a lifetime federal judgeship.
Garland might also want to consider what could happen if a gun control case came up and he and the other “Judicial Progressives” used it to not only overturn Heller, but to say that the right to keep and bear arms is a collective right belonging to the state.
He had better eat dessert first since dinnertime might be a bit chancy.
Now if Felonia had won, I think Garland would have been pulled and she would have put someone even worse in place. She did say her goal was to suppress the 1st and 2nd amendments.
I really don’t think the founders foresaw the possibility that the supreme court could become a threat to our liberty…..Sad! And I think you’re right, he’d probably need to hire a food taster. 🙂