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Charles Pierce on Gorsuch
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a54002/gorsuch-nomination-hearing/WASHINGTON—In Room 216 of the Hart Senate Office Building on Tuesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee played host to one of the most garish exercises in absurdity in which our politics have involved themselves. On the surface, the committee was conducting a hearing into the nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the United States Supreme Court. However, at its roots, the hearing was the final, concluding chapter in the attempted destruction of the presidency of Barack Obama.
When he is confirmed—and he will be confirmed, because the votes are there and the Democratic opposition is as bumfuzzled as it always is—he will stand on the highest court of the land as the living representation of a sub rosa determination taken in various caucus rooms eight years ago that the first African-American president should not be allowed to exercise the full power of the presidency. Maybe Gorsuch can live with that. He was confident to the point of being smug, and his gift for oily, pious condescension is undeniable. After all, there is great job security on the Supreme Court and the robe is certainly a nice one.
. . . the basic absurdity of this nomination—and, thus, yesterday's hearing—runs on two tracks.
The first, of course, is that he shouldn't have been nominated at all, because there shouldn't have been a vacancy to fill. The Republican legislative majorities simply decided that the previous president should not have been allowed to fill the seat left open with the death of Antonin Scalia because the previous president was a Democratic politician. And even though the previous president went out of his way to nominate Merrick Garland, the perfectly respectable and qualified centrist chief justice of the D.C. Circuit, he might as well have nominated Noam Chomsky. That political calculation was made and that political calculation held. So when Gorsuch continually recited his fairy tale about non-political judges on Tuesday, it's a wonder that Garland didn't show up with a flamethrower.
The other train to fantasyland is the one carrying Gorsuch forward from this particular president*. The long resistance to the previous president's nominee's right to a hearing ended with Donald Trump in the White House. It's perfectly reasonable to speculate that the president* sub-contracted this selection to various wingnut welfare legal institutions, which makes Gorsuch's repeated refusals to talk about issues going forward an absurdity in and of itself. . . .
When he is confirmed—and he will be confirmed, because the votes are there and the Democratic opposition is as bumfuzzled as it always is—he will stand on the highest court of the land as the living representation of a sub rosa determination taken in various caucus rooms eight years ago that the first African-American president should not be allowed to exercise the full power of the presidency. Maybe Gorsuch can live with that. He was confident to the point of being smug, and his gift for oily, pious condescension is undeniable. After all, there is great job security on the Supreme Court and the robe is certainly a nice one.
. . . the basic absurdity of this nomination—and, thus, yesterday's hearing—runs on two tracks.
The first, of course, is that he shouldn't have been nominated at all, because there shouldn't have been a vacancy to fill. The Republican legislative majorities simply decided that the previous president should not have been allowed to fill the seat left open with the death of Antonin Scalia because the previous president was a Democratic politician. And even though the previous president went out of his way to nominate Merrick Garland, the perfectly respectable and qualified centrist chief justice of the D.C. Circuit, he might as well have nominated Noam Chomsky. That political calculation was made and that political calculation held. So when Gorsuch continually recited his fairy tale about non-political judges on Tuesday, it's a wonder that Garland didn't show up with a flamethrower.
The other train to fantasyland is the one carrying Gorsuch forward from this particular president*. The long resistance to the previous president's nominee's right to a hearing ended with Donald Trump in the White House. It's perfectly reasonable to speculate that the president* sub-contracted this selection to various wingnut welfare legal institutions, which makes Gorsuch's repeated refusals to talk about issues going forward an absurdity in and of itself. . . .