Free Republic

I’m not sure who Allan Smith at Business Insider ran into who put a bug in his ear to talk to Trump confidant Chris Ruddy, but it must have been one heck of a conversation. The bottom line is pretty much the summation found in the title of this article. In order to avoid any more angst or consternation around Supreme Court nominations, Trump could short circuit the entire discussion by getting Ruth Bader Ginsburg to retire now rather than trying to stick it out for four more years. And what would she get in return? A promise that...

Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland bent over backward to protect White House visitor logs from disclosure, transparency advocates say, leading to their concern about his approach to the law. The Obama administration has disclosed some White House visitor records as a matter of policy since 2009, but in 2013 the White House won a major appeals decision from Garland that disclosure is not legally necessary under the Freedom of Information Act.

Hillary Clinton's running mate is predicting Democrats will go "nuclear" if Republicans try to stonewall a potential Supreme Court nominee by Clinton. Tim Kaine on Friday said he believes Senate Democrats will change the chamber's rules if they run into GOP obstruction in 2017. Kaine, however, said Friday that there's a "significant likelihood" that Garland will get confirmed this year.

After months of attempting to obstruct everything President Trump has tried to do, including an ongoing filibuster of the Judge Gorsuch Supreme Court nomination, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer might be ready to make a “deal.” Schumer: We lost one [Garland] they lost one [Gorsuch] We should now get in a room and come up with a compromise to avoid the nuclear option

FBI agent was at the Garland jihad attack, egging on the attackers. -------- 60 Minutes ran a feature Sunday night about the FBI curious role in the May 2015 Garland jihad attack at a free speech event co-organized by Pamela Geller and me. It was, predictably enough, viciously biased, sloppy, and incomplete, but it was nonetheless illuminating in raising a hard and unanswerable question: did the FBI want Pamela Geller and me dead? Despite the fact that the jihad attack took place at our event, neither Geller nor I appear, except in one still photo, in the 60 Minutes piece....

A decade ago, The Times urged the Senate to confirm John Roberts to the U.S. Supreme Court even though he was a conservative judge nominated by a conservative president and was likely to pull the court to the right for decades to come. We backed him, despite our disagreements with his judicial philosophy, because we believe that presidents — Democrats and Republicans alike — are entitled to significant deference when they nominate justices to the high court, so long as the nominees are well qualified and scandal-free, respect precedent and fall within the broad mainstream of judicial thinking. Under normal...

It didn’t matter that Judge Neil Gorsuch was a highly respected jurist or that his stature as a leading conservative intellectual legal thinker made him a natural successor to the late Justice Antonin Scalia. The growing number of Democrats who are determined to not so much oppose the Trump presidency as “resist” it wasted no time blasting Gorsuch as “anti-woman” and a tool of the corporate class. In doing so, the party base made it clear to Senate Democrats that nothing less than a battle to the death to stop his nomination would be considered acceptable. But in case...

If We, the People, had wanted Merrick Garland as the next Supreme Court Justice, Hillary would have been elected.

One of 2016’s most spectacular examples of government dysfunction was the U.S. Senate’s outrageous refusal to consider President Obama’s nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to replace the late Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court. That dereliction of duty by the Republican majority not only denied a sitting president his constitutional prerogative to fill vacancies in the court (so that the appointment would go instead to a hoped-for Republican successor). It also prevented the court from resolving a handful of cases because of a 4-4 split and probably discouraged the justices from accepting other cases because of the possibility of a...

President Obama will have one last chance to force Judge Merrick Garland onto the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday — but it’s a legal gamble and one that has so many pitfalls that even those who say he could get away with it believe it isn’t worth the fight. Mr. Obama’s moment will come just before noon, in the five minutes that the Senate gavels the 114th Congress out of session and the time the 115th Congress begins. In those few moments the Senate will go into what’s known as an “intersession recess,” creating one golden moment when the president...

President Obama will have one last chance to force Judge Merrick Garland onto the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday — but it’s a legal gamble and one that has so many pitfalls that even those who say he could get away with it believe it isn’t worth the fight. Mr. Obama’s moment will come just before noon, in the five minutes that the Senate gavels the 114th Congress out of session and the time the 115th Congress begins. In those few moments the Senate will go into what’s known as an “intersession recess,” creating one golden moment when the president...

Soon after his inauguration next month, President-elect Donald Trump will nominate someone to the Supreme Court, which has been hamstrung by a vacancy since the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in February. There will be public debates about the nominee’s credentials, past record, judicial philosophy and temperament. There will be Senate hearings and a vote. No matter how it plays out, Americans must remember one thing above all: The person who gets confirmed will sit in a stolen seat. It was stolen from Barack Obama, a twice-elected president who fulfilled his constitutional duty more than nine months ago by nominating...

Singer Barbra Streisand, a major Hillary Clinton supporter and one of Hollywood’s most outspoken leftist activists, is calling on President Obama to bypass Congress and unilaterally appoint his pick for the U.S. Supreme Court. The Senate declined to hold hearings or votes on Judge Merrick Garland’s nomination as part of its broad “advice and consent” power. Obama nominated Garland in March to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia. Now that Donald Trump has won the election and is set to nominate a judge, Streisand has circulated a petition urging Obama to quickly appoint Garland to the court before Trump can...

The White House conceded Tuesday that President Obama has lost two of his most important battles, surrendering on a massive free-trade deal and the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Merrick Garland. Responding to President-elect Donald Trump’s vow to withdraw the U.S. from the Trans-Pacific Partnership on his first day in office, White House press secretary Josh Earnest acknowledged the chances of the pact being approved by Congress “are not very good.” He called it “a significant missed opportunity for the American people.”

.... if Congress adjourned for the year too soon, it could open a window to give President Obama a Supreme Court pick. That's because of a provision of the Constitution that allows the president to make recess appointments that can last two or more years. Now we get word that Congress is planning to adjourn early, which will give Obama an opportunity to appoint Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court. This discussion is fairly complex, involving both constitutional and statutory law, so bear with me. 1) Why does Congress want to adjourn early? Members of Congress want to adjourn early...

The Senate has waived its constitutional right to advise and consent; Obama should exercise his independent constitutional right to appoint. The Supreme Court vacancy opened during Obama's administration, it is Obama's responsibility and right to nominate and appoint a replacement. The Senate has a concurrent right to advise and consent, but its complete failure to schedule an up-or-down vote means it has waived that right. Obama can and should act now.

Sen. Mitch McConnell’s audacious — and roundly criticized — decision to block President Obama’s nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court pending the results of the presidential election has paid off handsomely for conservatives, who until this morning had every reason to suspect the end of their long-running project to reshape the court. Donald J. Trump’s victory means the court will almost certainly have a conservative majority for years to come. Challenges to regulation by administrative fiat, class-action lawsuits and restrictions on property use will find a more hospitable court, while laws restricting abortion and promoting the rights of religious organizations...

Yes, indeed. Just look at Fort Hood, and Boston, and Chattanooga, Garland, San Bernardino, Orlando, as well as Paris, Brussels, Nice, etc. etc. etc. Of course, Obama would insist that these had nothing to do with Islam: all the evidence that refutes his politically correct fantasies is waved away. The national conversation that needs to be had about how jihadis use the texts and teachings of Islam to justify violence and supemacism is once again kicked down the road.

An undercover FBI agent claimed to be the Islamic State's "eyes" when they attacked Garland last year, and even goaded one of the shooters to "tear up Texas," according to federal court records. ... "Tear up Texas," the agent wrote. "That goes without saying," Simpson replied. It's unclear how much the FBI knew about the plot against the contest, but Hendricks told the agent to attend it, according to court records. So on May 3, when blogger Pamela Geller flew in to host the event, the undercover agent was in Garland, too. "If you see that pig make your 'voice'...

Dr. No seems to have become Dr. Yes. Kind of. Tom Coburn, the former Republican senator from Oklahoma known for his often contrarian views, said Wednesday that Judge Merrick B. Garland should get a vote by the Senate Judiciary Committee, going against his old colleagues who have staunchly opposed even considering President Obama's Supreme Court nominee in a presidential election year....