Amazing to listen to CNN and hear the consensus opinion to be that the GOP would be right to block a vote because a successful nominee would shift the balance of the court.

And yeah, the GOP firebrands have already decided that better to burn the Supreme Court down then to let the other side win. Which I'm sure several folks here will also endorse.. but.

Ted Cruz on Twitter: "Justice Scalia was an American hero. We owe it to him, & the Nation, for the Senate to ensure that the next President names his replacement."

(and just to expand on something from elsewhere.. I do not cheer that someone has died. I save that for people I consider truly EVIL (with a capital E). That's people like Osama Bin Laden, etcetera). Am I personally happy that Mr. Scalia will not be able to drag the court forever rightward with wrongheaded decisions? Of course. But I still hope he rests in peace.)

Dola: One would say that it already has.. a lot of the court decisions that are coming before the Supreme Court that would stand under a 4-4 tie would be reversed should Scalia have been on the court.

So much for Republicans respecting the Constitution.

Supreme Court Nomination Thread
 

Out of respect, moving discussion on the replacement of Scalia to a thread away from his death.

BTW, the odds on favorite to be Obama's nominee:

Sri Srinivasan - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Good decision, digamma :)

And the Wiki wars have already started. They should lock that page for a while.

Man you aren't kidding. That was edited since I first posted the link.

I deleted my post in the other thread since I missed the thread split, but ya, that would be the "safest" pick that would also look the worse for Republicans to hold up, since he's already been confirmed 97-0 in the Senate for the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

It's fun that he played HS basketball with Danny Manning.

At that point, especially given the time ff for elections, I could buy an argument against hearings, but there's no good reason that hearings couldn't be held with almost a year to have them.

I'm seeing a lot of stats from conservatives about how SCOTUS justices haven't been confirmed in an election year for like eighty years, but that obviously leaves out how rare the opening is. If they don't even have hearings they're arguing that a term's last year isn't legitimate.

Kennedy was confirmed in an election year, though he was nominated on November 30, 1987.

Yeah, McConnell isn't exactly going to win that argument.

I suppose the idea that maybe this is an opportunity, with the potential of the election changing the party in charge of nominations, for an agreement to create a bipartisan committee to recommend the most qualified candidates rather than the ideological litmus test we've had for ages now? Something the Republicans would agree to maintain if they won in November? Yeah, a pipe dream. Let the partisan wars begin, screw the fallout...

Major Garrett called Scalia's death a, "sorrowful moment of national unity."

Is he high?

Actually, they're right.

The Democrats are sad that there's an open spot that they can't fill
The Republicans are sad that there's an open spot that WAS filled that they can't unfill.

Ya know what's sad? That people couldn't even let him be buried before the political bickering over his replacement began.

It's because the lives of 300 million people are more important than just his.

I don't get why the nomination should wait until the next President? Obama has the office and the responsibilities of the office until January 2017.

McConnell's been working to keep Obama a one term President since January 2009. He's just being his usual dick self.

Obama chooses to fight over the Supreme Court

Haha you can tell the person who wrote this article is a shitty parent who read one parenting article while in the supermarket check-out aisle and now uses the phrase "you chose to ______" to discipline their kids regardless of whether it's applicable. I'm honestly curious on what the reaction would've been if Obama had just been completely noncommittal with regards to nominating a new justice.

Interesting.. looks like a recess appointment to the Court is an option.

Is a recess appointment to the Court an option? : SCOTUSblog

So hypothetically Cruz can run his whole campaign(if he gets appointed) from the Senate floor by doing a filibuster? And in that case finding a fellow senator as VP would enable them to run 12 hour shifts. I'd say Ben Sasse as a VP pick could happen

Interesting. And the Republicans can't say its unconstiutional, because the SC just ruled on it. It's probably going to come down to some quirk/loophole in the law because the Republicans aren't going to allow any Obama nominee past their doors.

Here's a nice writeup on what Scalia's death means for the big cases this term

http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/how...-current-term/

It made me think, what happens to Scalia's clerks? Do they stay on through the end of the term or are they out of a job sooner?

Does the Constitution say that we're suppose to not nominate a Supreme Court candidate if the current President is in his last year of office?

Also, the people did have a say when they re-elected Obama in 2012.

The logic here is astounding. We're not talking a month. It's almost a year. Using that logic, no president should ever make a nomination because there's an election just four years away.

It's ironic that this new justice will probably have more influence on daily lives than the president...exactly as Scalia warned.

I'm okay with that.

So we are all about the sacred constitution until it results in something our side doesn't like, is that it?

I think that's very true for both sides, to the extent that supreme court justices are basically thought of as casting policy votes. Like a super-legislature.

That used to annoy me a lot but I've kind of gotten over it. I think it's a good general exercise though to try to think of constitutional arguments you agree with that result in policy changes you don't like. That kind of helps "reveal" your real liberal/conservative legal philosophy, which can be completely different from you policy leanings.

What happens if the GOP successfully stonewalls until 2017, but both the White House and Senate flip? How long can this go on without a replacement?

Til the Republicans trade their "principles" in exchange for another deal.

I'm sure it's yet to come but I'm surprised I haven't heard any 'Scalia was assassinated by Obama's Muslim death squad' truthers out there yet.

The logic on the Dem side is they threaten if they take over the Senate to finally establish the super-nuclear option and remove the filibuster from judicial appointments. That way maybe they force McConnell into some kind of "better" deal now rather than whatever they might do later.

Thoughts about the politics of all this:

As far as the nomination goes, this would seem to help Clinton and Cruz.

The more people remember that the President has responsibilities that cannot be fulfilled by millions of people rising up and demanding to break up the big Wall Street banks, the more that hurts Sanders.

On the GOP side, Cruz was a Rehnquist clerk. He can--more credibly than the others--speak from a position of knowledge and authority concerning issues regarding the Court. In another thread, Jon pointed out how this helps Cruz, and I agree. He took the initiative and made it his issue, but I think that it was naturally going to become his issue anyway.

The opposition party in Congress has every right to try and prevent the President from getting his nominee through. It would, of course, be possible to nominate and confirm someone before the term ended. But I think that it is politics 101 for the opposition party to claim "let's just wait" as an opening gambit.

I think that if this had happened (an opening with a GOP Senate) during President Obama's first term, the GOP could have forced him into a moderate conservative compromise candidate--an Allyson Duncan type. First-term Obama was so obsessed with reaching across the aisle and trying to find middle ground, that he would have been willing to meet them more than halfway to show good faith.

At some point, however, the President realized that McConnell was telling the truth when he said that the GOP cared only about making him a one-term President. Now, I think that the President sees this as a great political opportunity. He does not give a flying fuck about finding a compromise candidate. He's always been at his best when he has a specific issue to fight Congress. I am not sure how he's going to play this, but I expect that he will put them in a bind of some sort, and that it will help Hillary and possibly help get Dem control of the Senate.

I have very little sympathy for the GOP Establishment. They have been crying and moaning about Cruz and Trump and their lack of control over the process. But as soon as something like this happens, Mitch McConnell (the most Establishmenty of the Establishment) comes out guns blazing and turns the rhetoric up to 11. He sends the message that any compromise or concession would be weak and capitulating. Then he wonders why the voters refuse to accept an Establishment that necessarily has to compromise and capitulate.

If the GOP wants to stop creating Trump and Cruz voters, it is going to take some time. And it is going to require rhetoric that trains the voters to see politics as the art of the possible--and not simply a zero sum game.

Go to Breitbart comments. They're all over the truth.

I once saw a sign in an auto repair shop: "you can have the work done quickly, properly, or cheaply. Pick two."

I think that's where Obama is with this pick: he can pick someone who helps Clinton, helps regain the Senate, or puts GOP Senate leadership in a bind. He gets two of three. Putting the Senate in a bind necessarily means advancing a candidate who isn't easy for the right to immediately dismiss as being the leftiest lefty who ever leftied, but a centrist or a right-leaning moderate wouldn't be a candidate whose defeat would help either Clinton or Sanders in the general, either.

He can pick someone who inspires the Democratic base to turn out in force to retain the Presidency and reclaim the Senate so they get that candidate confirmed in 2017, or he can pick someone who makes the GOP squirm. Not sure he can get both here.

But the base doesn't REALLY know these people. I think there's some potential nominees who could advance both angles. You could sell the base on Srinivasan or Watford or Kelly and those would still be ones to make the GOP squirm, given the recent vetting and votes.

Srinivasan was confirmed 97-0 and votes included Cruz and Rubio. He seems like an obvious pick although people will freak out cause he's a Hindu (or Buddhist).

There's that, but there's also the moving goalposts. He's good enough for *X*, but for *Y*? Oh, no, no, no. He's totally unqualified for *Y*.

I guarantee that argument gets broached by some of the Republicans who voted to confirm him to the D.C. court if Obama nominates him for SCOTUS.

Tom Goldstein on How the Politics of the Next Nomination Will Play Out

Union leaders a better bet, honestly. Their motive makes the Pelican Brief look quaint.

I don't doubt that argument will get trotted out, but I think it's too nuanced to fly with the public. Plus, if they start saying it's about qualifications, then they're no longer claiming Obama should wait, putting them in a bind when he nominates someone who is clearly qualified.

That's a fantastic read. Thanks for posting.

So wait. Listening to Marco Rubio, the reason he gives for not nominating in the final year of the presidency is that the president should still have to face the voters. Now, I'll give him credit for counting midterms as facing the voters, but that still means the President shouldn't nominate a justice for the last two years of a term. That's absurd.

Drudge has a headline saying Scalia was found with a pillow over his head.

Presidential races are about 18 months long and growing. The President should clearly never nominate a justice unless he's a Republican.

If he wasn't suffocated, he could have just liked to sleep that way.

I found this tidbit interesting, especially in light of all the complaints SCOTUS gets about being activist liberals...

If Obama gets a justice confirmed this year, it will be the first time in 62 years that a majority of the 9 justices have been appointed by a Democrat.