Joe Heller for February 15, 2016

Wasn’t Scalia big on the Exact wording of the constitution? Does the exact wording say the Senate gets to tell the President when he can nominate a Justice?

THE Repubs are going back to 1960 when the Dems passed a resolution (not a law), asking/telling Eisenhower not to nominate someone since it was an election year.He ignored the resolution. Precedents, anyone?

The PRESIDENT nominates, NOT the Congress or the next President, although Congress is granted the power to approve said nomination.Considering the Repubs have consistently complained that Obama is a weak President, or has not done/ignored his Constitutional duties, they have nothing to complain about when he ACTUALLY fulfills his Constitutional mandates!

and the coward comes out! He well knows that if he said that face to face with a Republican , or anyone else for that matter, he would get flattened. So he hides behind filthy name-calling because he knows that none of us will ever see him in person

I Don’t quite understand-explain to me again why you want Hillary or Bernie to pick the new Justice.

This seat will likely remain vacant for a year. Obama will nominate a replacement but 8 years ago the Republicans vowed to block anything Obama wanted. Regardless of qualifications or what damage it does to the Republican party. It is Obama’s constitutional duty to nominate a replacement. He is the duly elected president of the United States. The Senate, of course, may block the nominations. They aren’t using their “advice and consent” role as it has been traditionally used they are just saying Obama can not nominate anyone at all.Will their plan for total obstruction be a political disaster this time? Even opposition parties have confirmed nominations of the Supreme Court within reason. Is this commitment to gridlock going to play well in the blue and purple states with tight senate races?

Liberals just love to call conservatives obstructionists.

The Democratic Senate lead by Reid blocked bills in committee because they didn’t want Obama to appear to be an obstructionist by veto.

Gridlock is there because the liberals won’t consider anything conservative. It is their liberal way or the highway and it is the conservatives fault that nothing gets done because they don’t agree with the liberal point of view.

Just make a new chair then. Too expensive to fix.

Something wrong with your news feed today that you haven’t seen how Republicans are blocking everything Obama wants including the replacement for Scalia? http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2016/02/13/senate-unlikely-confirm-obama-supreme-court-nominee/80351274/For someone who can find imaginary news about Clinton, you sure don’t look very hard on other issues.

The constitution was written at a time when the dangers of political parties, religion, or money having control of the government were seen as evil. We have been warned repeatedly by the founders, yet we persist in ignoring the cautionary advice and seem to dwell on assigning blame to the opposition instead cooperating as was envisioned. The enemies of the Untied States take great delight in our division among ourselves.

The PEOPLE elected Obama, SCOTUS sat “W” in the White House, what makes the current Republicans think the next President, a Democrat, will go “right enough”? Oh, right, with only four years to go, a Democrat would of course be “lame duck” and shouldn’t be allowed to nominate, per the Constitutional responsibility of the POTUS.

I wonder if the Republicans realize just how much political damage they’ve done to themselves here. First they were caught trying to delay the nomination process on a bald faced lie. ( There has never been a Supreme Court Justice confirmed in and election year. ) And NOW the popular perception is that they’re holding up the process as, “Revenge for Bork!” Whether or not that’s true, this is the image the rightwing-base keeps projecting. And if they keep this up, it’s going to cost them heavily in Senate Races this November. ( I can hear the attack ads already )Don’t forget, the majority of voters in this country now classify themselves as ‘Independent’. These folks can live with a slightly left-of-center Justice on the Supreme court. What they WON’T stand for is being represented by a Senator who’s going to ram an uber-rightie Justice down everyone else’s throat.

“I want a specific quote from an individual.”Mitch McConnell- “This vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president.”Chuck Grassley- “It only makes sense that we defer to the American people who will elect a new president to select the next Supreme Court Justice.”

Obama is not going to nominate anyone left of center to fill Scalia’s seat. If the Republicans insist on kicking this can down the road, they have no cause to complain when the next Democrat in the Oval Office nominates a staunch liberal. It’s not like the American people haven’t had a chance to weigh in on the matter, then.Who am I kidding? They’ll wail like two years olds, no matter what.

“It’s been standard practice over the last 80 years to not confirm Supreme Court nominees during a presidential election year. Given the huge divide in the country, and the fact that this President, above all others, has made no bones about his goal to use the courts to circumvent Congress and push through his own agenda, it only makes sense that we defer to the American people who will elect a new president to select the next Supreme Court Justice.” Senator Charles Grassley ( R-Iowa ) Chairman of the Senate Judiciary committee

ok – prove no one has said that. Where are your specific quotes? As usual you put up an argument that can’t be proven and insult others. The right will block any nominee Obama tries. They have said it, it is not up to me to prove to you what is going out there in the real world, try something other than fox maybe I don’t know what will help you. When I post articles and write up my opinions you can of course say you don’t believe them But its not my job to spoon feed you what is readily available out there. Nice try – but the GOP has said no before it has even seen the nominee. Prove it wrong – if you can.

So you are going to pretend like you don’t know what we are talking about.They said – they would not – approve a nominee – this is what we are talking about – try to keep up now. They will BLOCK any nominee he puts up… just like they have done with every other piece of legislation. So does this help? Or are you still confused about what everyone is discussing? Do you need us to slow down for you?

You realize don’t you , that this is exactly the kind of argument that spoiled seventh-graders use with their parents.“But Mommmmmmm, you never said I couldn’t stay out LATE!”

They are not saying that Obama cannot nominate anyone. But rather that they will refuse to accept anyone that Obama nominates.

If my approval rating was this low, I would not want to take a chance of the people not becoming upset!

Your interpretation is correct. They are being completely obstructionist.

McConnell should be impeached for dereliction of duty.

The R’s are between the r and a hp, if Obama send a qualified appointment to them for confirmation. And attempt to stop the confirmation will energize the voting bloc of Democrats, and, moreso, the voting bloc of that group represented by the appointee. Their chances of keeping the Senate were pretty low before this, now they are almost non-existant. The rock is losing control of the Senate, the Hard Place is losing control of the Supreme Court. After all, who knows when a Presidential election will be close enough for the Supremes to step in and give it for the R’s?

For the two party system to be viable in the US, both parties have to be inclusive. You can’t have one party representing business and the other the workers, the rich and the poor, the evangelicals and the agnostics, etc. etc.

Republicans just proving again how much they hate the Constitution, and the ends they will go to in burning it.

I wonder if the GOP Senate would refuse it, if Obama named McCain?.They would find new Constitutional theory to back it up.