Scalia is dead. And all anyone can think is…
I laughed out loud when I heard Antonin Scalia died. My condolences, and etc. But… oh Lord what a Political Haywire Act this creates.
Next comes the situational political conviction principle, the stated belief in either the Democratic Principle that “the People” need to have their say to wait for the November Presidential election.
… which would flip if this were the Republican in office.
And, yes, it goes the other way as well. The Filibuster for the Supreme Court was left in place when the Democratic Party brass was wrangling with Bush and the Republicans over lower bench appointees.
And there are enough precedents in all directions to allow everyone to call everyone else a hypocrite. (Yes. McConnell. 1988. Lest Michael Dukakis get to pick the slot that went to Kennedy.)
And my thought jumped over to Abe Fortas for –if shaky–“precedent” on taking the year off. Of course, with Abe Fortas it was a good number of southern “conservative” Democrats who batted him down after the appropriate outrage at viewing the smut that Fortas would allow into this country of ours…
The story of Flaming Creatures and the so-called “Fortas Film Festival†illustrates that dialectic. When President Johnson nominated Justice Fortas to replace Chief Justice Warren in 1968, Fortas’s opponents investigated his record, hoping to justify a filibuster. Among other things, they discovered Jacobs v. New York, in which Fortas alone voted to reverse obscenity convictions for showing Flaming Creatures, an obscure art film that featured a transvestite orgy. Senator Thurmond presented the Fortas Film Festival, showing Flaming Creatures and other films to several other senators and convincing them to join the filibuster.
The games commence. I think? Obama has popular opinion on his side in asserting “Here’s my nominee” — and the Republican majority will have to swallow the unexpected shift to a 5-4