SCOTUS-Watch: It's Gorsuch!

[100% pro-life no matter what]

It's pretty clear that it is going to be either Sykes or Pryor.  If I had to guess, he will go with Pryor.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

Pryor probably because many conservatives would like to appointed an unabashed pro-life justice to the court and Sykes while conservative is ambiguous on the issue

What has Sykes said to make us doubt her on abortion?  Trump has already promised that the nominee will be 100% pro-life, and I have no reason to doubt him.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

Probably not Diane Sykes. Her husband, Charlie Sykes, former conservative talk show host isn't fond of Trump. He should nominate a black or Latino conservative, and see the reaction of the Far Left.

Filibuster.  Next.

Repeal of the filibuster. Next.

Bring it on.  If the filibuster is useless, let's get rid of it.  We'll just skullf*** you on every single issue the next time we have the Senate.

And the #McConnellRule will be around for years to come, of course.

I believe the last year thing was actually the Biden Rule...

[100% pro-life no matter what]

I'm getting worried about Sykes pulling a Kennedy and supporting Roe if she is confirmed.  I hope he goes with Pryor, but it seems like Gorsuch is publicly pro-life as well.  I'm not quite sure about Hardiman.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

Trump says he will announce his pick next week. The front-runner appears to be Gorsuch.

Gorsuch (from what I can tell) appears to be right of Kennedy but left of Roberts. Pro life but uncontroversial on other issues.

Honestly, *if* he's the pick, he's the one I was hoping for. Pryor and Sykes are both so out there getting a mainstream conservative like Gorsuch is a relief

I'm getting worried about Sykes pulling a Kennedy and supporting Roe if she is confirmed.  I hope he goes with Pryor, but it seems like Gorsuch is publicly pro-life as well.  I'm not quite sure about Hardiman.

It's been suggested Sykes is to the right of Pryor so I'm not sure where you're getting this idea from

Andrew Schafly put out a memo opposing Sykes saying that she had twice ruled against pro-lifers.  He expressed some concern about Gorsuch as well, but I have seen a convincing rebuttal that he would be 100% pro-life.  Remember, we thought Souter and Kennedy were going to be conservatives.  I'm for Pryor since he seems to be the only sure thing (how is it that all Democratic appointees wind up being staunch liberals, but ours go all over the place?).

[100% pro-life no matter what]

Not gonna make much difference with a Scalia vacancy. Watch Senate elections in 2018 and presidential race in 2020 for Kennedy and Ginnsberg replacement

Ginsberg will die before Nov. 2020. She might make it to Jan. 2020 though, which would make the appointment fall under the last year rule, which dems need to enforce.

I thought you supported all actions that could overturn Roe v. Wade?  Didn't you agree with me that "the ends justify the means" is justified for ending abortion?

[100% pro-life no matter what]

Forgot to update this before, but Trump tweeted the announcement will be on Thursday (though there's a pretty good chance the name will leak before then).

As in tomorrow or next Thursday?

[100% pro-life no matter what]

Crazy hypothetical:

Let's say that Scalia is replaced by Pryor or Gorsuch.  Kennedy decides to retire under a Republican president and is replaced by the other or Pryor and Gorsuch.  Then, either Ginsburg or Breyer retire and gets replaced by, say, Mike Lee.  Obviously, Roe v. Wade is history.  But, would Alito, Thomas, Pryor, Gorsuch, and Lee overturn Obergefell too?

[100% pro-life no matter what]

It's still early to sound the deathknell of Roe, considering that there are at most two sitting justices on the court who would support an outright reversal of it. That will likely soon return to three, but even if Trump gets two more chances before 2020, it's still far from certain that all three of his nominees will be that doctrinaire.

I think there are three sitting justices who would vote to overturn Roe.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

It's still early to sound the deathknell of Roe, considering that there are at most two sitting justices on the court who would support an outright reversal of it. That will likely soon return to three, but even if Trump gets two more chances before 2020, it's still far from certain that all three of his nominees will be that doctrinaire.

I think there are three sitting justices who would vote to overturn Roe.

Despite him saving obamacare Roberts has maintained a very pro-life record on the supreme court

Plus, Roberts has always seemed to side with leaving things to the states (note the part of Obamacare he struck down), and that is what overturning Roe would do.  Now, unlike Alito and Thomas, Roberts wouldn't go a step further by finding a constitutional right to life.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

Gorsuch would be better than Hardiman, because there is nothing with Hardiman to assure me that he will be pro-life.  I wish he would go with Pryor, though.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

According to FiveThirtyEight:

If he picks Hardiman, I will be really upset and maybe even tilt into "disapprove" territory

[100% pro-life no matter what]

It seems like it will be Gorsuch.  I just looked at the prediction market, and it's overwhelming for Gorsuch.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

http://ijr.com/2017/01/790802-exclusive-president-trumps-supreme-court-pick-confirmed/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=owned&utm_campaign=ods&utm_term=ijamerica&utm_content=politics

[100% pro-life no matter what]

I would guess all Republicans plus Manchin, Donnelly, Heitkamp, McCaskill, Tester, Warner, and Casey will support Gorsuch.  That's 59 votes for him.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

I argue the Courts have been politicized too long. But then again, we started the road to hell with the Democratic Party. The New Dealers started with trying to swing the Court to the Left, and it should be no shock the Reaganites began to value the Courts.

But that's all water under the bridge compared to 2016.

But Merrick Garland, to me, represented a nuclear option in that a vacancy came up in February 2016 and was not filled until February 2017. While Scalia's death was highly unfortunate, the partisan reasoning to leave a Court seat open for a full year stretches political norms past their breaking point. If this is the rationale - and the fig leaf of it being an election year being exactly that - then why shouldn't an opposition party in the majority hold up a Court appointment for 2 years? 3 years? What if a Republican President had a Democratic Senate and a court vacancy occurred?

There's a stretching of political norms and there's a breaking point. Garland was a breaking point. The President nominated him. We have a duty to have a fully staffed Court. The postponing of a Court vote in the name of partisan control of the Court was in a sense going beyond mere politics and validated the "anything goes."

Robert Bork was rejected, yes. I don't like it too much but the Senate fulfilled their Constitutional duty to "advise and consent." They looked at the nomination and they rejected it. Plain and simple. Senators are not required to rubber stamp a Court nominee. They're required to use their judgment as elected representatives to evaluate nominees and give them an up and down vote. Had McConnell said "we'll give Garland an up and down vote," and they failed him, I would have been happy. Instead, the Senate refused to even give him a courtesy hearing and held the seat open for a year.

I admit, I cheered this strategy a year ago as a partisan Republican. Since then, seeing the partisan gyre that has widened with Donald Trump's election and the "anything goes" mentality of the Republican Party (and now, the corresponding response from the Democratic Party, who rightfully believe that they have to respond in kind to stay viable) has made me reevaluate how far we go to break political norms. They may not be Constitutional, or whatnot, but they undergird how we function as a republic.

Indeed, Donald Trump was elected on that basis - that anything goes, and that political norms no longer matter in the name of "winning." The name of the game is to win, even if we stop being a republic in the process and our political divisions become so intense and bitter that like Rome, we require a monarch to rule us. This is exactly - I know it's cliched - what happened in ancient Rome. Norms were slowly stripped away as partisan factionalism intensified, ending in Augustus' rule.

Returning to my original point, now that the fig leaf has been used, now every Senate majority can ruthlessly stop an opposition president by holding open an Court seat for as long as they want - without consequences. That precedent has now been set - and the Court's balance is now considered fair game and no political norms now govern how we fill Supreme Court nominations.

We've crossed a Rubicon and unfortunately, to restore it, we're going to need one party to decisively defeat the other party and restore the political norms that make this republic functional.

Trump should have bucked his base, and risked his presidency to nominate Garland in the name of restoring political norms. That he didn't is understandable but it shows that our system's norms are broken and we need to address that.

I fully admit that, had Hillary Clinton won and Republicans kept the Senate, I would have advocated to not confirm any judges and justices for the entire four years.  Ending abortion is too important for that!

[100% pro-life no matter what]

I argue the Courts have been politicized too long. But then again, we started the road to hell with the Democratic Party. The New Dealers started with trying to swing the Court to the Left, and it should be no shock the Reaganites began to value the Courts.

But that's all water under the bridge compared to 2016.

But Merrick Garland, to me, represented a nuclear option in that a vacancy came up in February 2016 and was not filled until February 2017. While Scalia's death was highly unfortunate, the partisan reasoning to leave a Court seat open for a full year stretches political norms past their breaking point. If this is the rationale - and the fig leaf of it being an election year being exactly that - then why shouldn't an opposition party in the majority hold up a Court appointment for 2 years? 3 years? What if a Republican President had a Democratic Senate and a court vacancy occurred?

There's a stretching of political norms and there's a breaking point. Garland was a breaking point. The President nominated him. We have a duty to have a fully staffed Court. The postponing of a Court vote in the name of partisan control of the Court was in a sense going beyond mere politics and validated the "anything goes."

Robert Bork was rejected, yes. I don't like it too much but the Senate fulfilled their Constitutional duty to "advise and consent." They looked at the nomination and they rejected it. Plain and simple. Senators are not required to rubber stamp a Court nominee. They're required to use their judgment as elected representatives to evaluate nominees and give them an up and down vote. Had McConnell said "we'll give Garland an up and down vote," and they failed him, I would have been happy. Instead, the Senate refused to even give him a courtesy hearing and held the seat open for a year.

I admit, I cheered this strategy a year ago as a partisan Republican. Since then, seeing the partisan gyre that has widened with Donald Trump's election and the "anything goes" mentality of the Republican Party (and now, the corresponding response from the Democratic Party, who rightfully believe that they have to respond in kind to stay viable) has made me reevaluate how far we go to break political norms. They may not be Constitutional, or whatnot, but they undergird how we function as a republic.

Indeed, Donald Trump was elected on that basis - that anything goes, and that political norms no longer matter in the name of "winning." The name of the game is to win, even if we stop being a republic in the process and our political divisions become so intense and bitter that like Rome, we require a monarch to rule us. This is exactly - I know it's cliched - what happened in ancient Rome. Norms were slowly stripped away as partisan factionalism intensified, ending in Augustus' rule.

Returning to my original point, now that the fig leaf has been used, now every Senate majority can ruthlessly stop an opposition president by holding open an Court seat for as long as they want - without consequences. That precedent has now been set - and the Court's balance is now considered fair game and no political norms now govern how we fill Supreme Court nominations.

We've crossed a Rubicon and unfortunately, to restore it, we're going to need one party to decisively defeat the other party and restore the political norms that make this republic functional.

Trump should have bucked his base, and risked his presidency to nominate Garland in the name of restoring political norms. That he didn't is understandable but it shows that our system's norms are broken and we need to address that.

I fully admit that, had Hillary Clinton won and Republicans kept the Senate, I would have advocated to not confirm any judges and justices for the entire four years.  Ending abortion is too important for that!

Speaking as a pro-lifer, the republic matters vastly more than abortion.

Nothing that man could accomplish is more important than ending abortion.  And, the USA is in no danger, anyway.