Thanks.
The President “is to nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to appoint . . . judges of the Supreme Court.”
Nothing different than what is in the Constitution. Redudant and not clarifying.
These fading words on a yellowed document reveal that what a handful of U.S. senators are doing today is a constitutional travesty.
Nice theatrics.
“It is not likely,” he wrote, “that [the Senate’s] sanction would often be refused where there were not special and strong reasons for the refusal.”
And it hasn't happened often. The advice and consent clause covers a whole bunch of Presidential nominations. It's literally thousands of political appointees today. Out of the thousands of political appointees, how many have been filibustered.
The advice and consent clause, Hamilton continued, was intended to provide a check upon a president who would, say, appoint his brother, or engage in favoritism, or reward family connections or personal benefactors—nothing more.
Family? You mean like JFK nominating his brother as Attorney General? Notice that here the author drops using quotes. That would be because it's not a direct quote. Clever little bugger. Hamilton didn't say "nothing more". He's taken the constructionist argument to the point of absurdity; he's put words in Hamilton's mouth, that Hamilton didn't say.
They just do not like what these judges believe.
Well, yeah. The Repubs blocked Clinton's nominations because they didn't like the beliefs of those judges and the Demos block the Bush's nominations because they don't like their beliefs. That's the story this round. In the other piece you had, Frist thought it was to do with recrimination, which is different than ideology. So let's throw around a few accusations and see what the masses grab onto.
There's no revelations here.
The Senate is debating this week whether to change its rules so that a simple majority could confirm a judge. That would prevent nominees from being filibustered.
Now wait a minute, I thought filibustering was a "Constitutional travesty". So they're proposing that the "Constitutional travesty", for other nominations, e.g, ambassadors, stand?
This filibuster should offend us for another reason. America’s founders, informed by their Christian understanding of the Fall...
I don't quite know what this means, but I'm curious. "the Fall" like in Autumn...No. "The Fall", like in the Fall of Adam and Eve. Did Adam/Eve try to filibuster against being sent from the Garden of Eden?
I think I've pretty well covered Chuck's article. If there's some major point that I've overlooked, let me know.
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