Obama Could Attempt to Bypass Senate and Appoint Garland to SCOTUS


President Obama is willing to do whatever it takes to install leftist Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court without Senate confirmation. Some of his Democrat toadies are testing the waters to see if certain bogus legal theories will gain traction, and Barack will do whatever he must to circumvent the congress and the will of the people.

Democratic bravado at being able to break Republican resolve over Obama’s Supreme Court pick has proven to be nothing but bluster. White House allies spent millions of dollars and made a full-court press for three weeks, which Sen. Chuck Schumer had confidently claimed would break Senate Republicans and force confirmation of Garland, who currently serves on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

Yet Democrats’ efforts have fallen so flat that liberal newspapers have had no choice by to publish statements such as “Senate Republicans hold fast against Garland after two weeks of Democratic fury” (Washington Post), “On blocking SCOTUS pick, GOP establishment & anti-establishment conservative groups are united” (New York Times), “Prospects for Garland dwindle as two GOP senators revoke support for hearings,” (New York Times), “Meetings but no movement on Garland nomination,” (Roll Call).

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley is meeting with Garland for breakfast—for the sole purpose of explaining to the nominee face-to-face that Grassley will not hold a single hearing on his nomination or allow a committee vote, because Grassley has concluded that, pursuant to the Biden Rule first announced by Joe Biden in 1992, the next president should fill the seat left vacant by Justice Antonin Scalia’s death.

Last week, Obama returned to the University of Chicago where… he again lectured the law students, condemning Republicans’ refusal to vote on Garland’s nomination, alleging that our democracy “can’t afford that.”

Yet in 2005 and 2006, then-Senator Obama filibustered President George W. Bush’s judicial nominees, including trying to keep the Senate from voting on the Supreme Court nomination of Samuel Alito. The Senate finally confirmed Alito in January 2006, overcoming Obama’s efforts to block that confirmation vote.

Increasingly desperate to take control of the Scalia seat, Democrats are now resorting to extreme legal arguments.

Common Cause is a stridently liberal advocacy group. One of its board members, Gregory Diskant, is now arguing that the Constitution empowers Obama to appoint Garland to the High Court without any vote in the U.S. Senate.

Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution provides that the president “shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint … Judges of the supreme Court.”

For 227 years, each of the 112 justices to serve on the Supreme Court—along with thousands of federal judges on the lower courts—was confirmed by a vote of the Senate as the exclusive means by which the Senate exercises its power of “advice and consent.”

But according to a Washington Post op-ed authored by Diskant, the Appointments Clause of the Constitution grants the president two separate powers, one to “nominate,” and the other to “appoint.”

Diskant claims that when the Senate does not vote up or down on a judicial nominee for a “reasonable amount of time,” which Diskant believes for some conveniently arbitrary reason to be 90 days, “It is altogether proper to view a decision by the Senate not to act as a waiver of its right to provide advice and consent.”

So long as the Senate was given a “reasonable opportunity to provide advice and consent,” Diskant argues that senators forfeit their constitutional power, so Obama can unilaterally appoint Garland to a lifetime position on the nation’s highest court.

This argument is strikingly similar to Obama’s argument regarding his own recess-appointment power. He argued before the Supreme Court he has power to fill vacancies during recesses of the Senate—including those for federal courts—at any moment when there is not a sufficient number of senators on the Senate floor to conduct business.

In other words, Obama argued that on almost any night at 3AM in the morning, he could set his alarm clock to wake up, and fill any vacancy among senior executive-branch positions, or any federal court.

In NLRB v. Noel Canning, the Supreme Court in 2014 unanimously rejected Obama’s position with a 9-0 ruling. The Court held that the power to appoint is jointly held by the president and the Senate. Only the president can put forward a name, and only the Senate can install that nominee in office.

One of the biggest prizes of the Obama presidency would be the tipping of the Supreme Court to a perpetual left tilt, and the president is a past master of ignoring the well established rules, laws, and precedence in order to push the nation to the left. He is shameless when working these types of scams, and he will lie to the public and and try to explain away his lawless actions. And sadly, the Democrat party will support him and work along with the main stream media to implement this unfair and illegal plan. He is the affirmative action president, in office because of his skin color, and we will be paying a price for mistakenly electing him for many years after the end of his presidency.

Source: breitbart.com

 



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