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President Biden wants credit for nominating the first Black woman to the Supreme Court. But here is the shameful irony: As a senator, Biden warned President George W. Bush that if he nominated the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court, he would filibuster and kill her nomination. The story begins in 2003, when Bush nominated Judge Janice Rogers Brown to serve on the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The D.C. Circuit is considered the country’s second-most important court, and has produced more Supreme Court justices than any other federal court. Brown was...

The leftist attacks on the faith, family, and character of Supreme Court nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett are — sadly — neither surprising nor new. The initial battle plan by establishment leftists to attack the faith, family, and character of Supreme Court nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett is neither surprising nor new. As a counsel on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee for more than five years, I gained a clear inside look at the tactics used by Senate Democrats to personally attack GOP judicial nominees.In 2003, I was working on the committee for Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, when Judge Janice...

The appeal Conrad Black is making from his jail cell at a federal prison in Florida is nearing a crucial stage. His appeal was rejected in June by a panel of the 7th United States Circuit Court of Appeals, but the panel's decision conflicts with others in the circuit, and Conrad Black is asking the circuit to hear it en banc. The question centers on how broad is the reach of the law of what is called honest services. If Conrad Black's conviction is allowed to stand, a precedent will be have been set that could leave thousands of executives...

President Barack Obama respond this afternoon to promises by Senate Republicans to not allow a vote o his nominee to replace recently-deceased pro-life Justice Antonin Scalia. Obama doesn't care about the fact that he filibustered Justice Samuel Alito's nomination in an attempt to prevent the Senate from voting to confirm him, he demanded that Republicans allow a vote on his nominee. After Scalia's death, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said the Senate will not take up a vote on a replacement for deceased pro-life Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia until after the presidential election. Such a promise prevents pro-abortion President...

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Mitch McConnell's message to the White House after Antonin Scalia's death on Saturday seemed unequivocal: Don’t even bother sending a Supreme Court nominee to Congress, we won't act on it. But on Tuesday, some Republicans were signaling they're open to at least holding hearings, if not allowing a confirmation vote.

During a Sunday morning appearance on ABC’s “This Week,” Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer decried the intent of many Senate Republicans to prevent President Barack Obama from appointing the successor to deceased Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. But less than a decade ago, Schumer advocated doing the same exact thing if any additional Supreme Court vacancies opened under former President George W. Bush. Almost immediately after Scalia’s death was announced Saturday evening, Republican lawmakers and presidential candidates began arguing the appointment of his successor should be left to the next president. Schumer lamented this outlook as pure obstructionism. “You know, the...

There was much hubbub in late 2012 when President Obama made four recess appointments during a short recess The case later went to the Supreme Court and the maneuver was ruled to be unconstitutional... The key in the 2014 Supreme Court decision regarding the president's appointments to the National Labor Relations Board over the three-day break was that the justices found the executive branch determined what it interpreted as a recess. But Justice Stephen Breyer wrote in the majority opinion that under the Constitution "the Senate is in session when it says it is." Obama said Saturday night that he...

Obama said Saturday night that he would submit an appointment to the Senate, as part of his constitutional obligation, but “in due time.” This window is open next week and this week only. In short: Both bodies of Congress are operating in the perfect parliamentary status in which a recess appointment would be applicable. The last such appointment to the high court came by President Eisenhower in 1956 when he appointed William Brennan. Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution states that “The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the...

Current news reports say that Harry Reid will allow a vote on the Keystone Pipeline so that Mary Landrieu can register her support, and thus improve her chances in the December Senate election in Louisiana, even as the Democratic majority votes it down. The theory behind this move is the usual Democratic assumption that voters are dumb, and will not realize that the Senate vote is a charade, designed to fool them into believing that Landrieu actually supports Keystone and is not in cahoots with Harry Reid and the enviro-zealots and billionaires who back and bankroll the party.  (Even...

She does not subscribe to one of Commentary’s themes, which is that we are all reasonable people and that the left will eventually be persuaded by the force of our superior logic, so she understands the importance of determination and élan. We will see about the electoral future. Palin will do what she does, which is rally the forces of liberty and support good candidates. She will not triangulate or dissemble. The current wisdom of the political class is that this does not result in electoral victories, a conclusion borne out by Obama’s success. But political climates change, and honesty...

In a double-barrelled blast at President Obama, Senate Republicans today moved to join a lawsuit challenging the White House’s Christmas “recess appointment” of National Labor Relations Board members even though the Senate was technically in session. To handle their case, they hired Miguel Estrada, who in 2002 became the first-ever judicial nominee to be torpedoed by a Democratic filibuster. “The president’s decision to circumvent the American people by installing his appointees at a powerful federal agency, when the Senate was not in recess, and without obtaining the advice and consent of the Senate, is an unprecedented power grab,” McConnell said....

From a purely tactical stand-point, the implications of what Estrada is saying are obvious: If the Democrats block nominees on ideological grounds -- as they did with Estrada -- and the Republicans rely on traditional credentials, eschewing ideology, we will wind up with a court of well-credentialed liberals.

There's been a years-long multi-front attack on John Yoo - now a professor of law at Berkeley - for his war-related legal opinions while he was at the Justice Department during the Bush administration. Activists have tried - and so far failed - to boot Yoo from his position at Berkeley, but they still disrupt his classes, and protest at his house & publicize his address. The threat of criminal charges against Yoo was finally dropped, after years of leaks from Democrat hacks at the Department of Justice, intended to damage Mr. Yoo's reputation. But there's still an ongoing civil...

Conservative lawyers and academics are voicing support for Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, praise that could soften criticism from the right and provide cover for any Republican senators inclined to vote for her nomination. The essence of their take on Kagan, the former Harvard Law School dean who now serves as solicitor general, is that she clearly has the smarts to be a justice and has shown an ability to work with all sides on thorny issues. “She has had a remarkable and truly unusual record of reaching out across ideological divides,” said Michael McConnell, a former federal appeals court...

Tuesday, September 22, 2009 Sarah Palin begins to build her network of advisors Politico's Ben Smith reports: Randy Scheunemann, has emerged as an advisor to former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as she attempts to build a serious public profile and begins to build a network of aides and advisors typical of a national politician. Scheunemann confirmed this evening that he's with Palin in Hong Kong, where she is delivering a paid speech at a conference hosted by the brokerage house CLSA, which has in the past heard keynotes from Bill Clinton and Al Gore. Rich Lowry recounts how the McCain...

The 31 Republican senators who voted against Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation deserve credit for standing firmly against a nominee who has an unsound judicial philosophy and who failed to testify candidly about it. Given the large Democratic majority in the Senate, Judge Sotomayor’s confirmation was a virtual certainty from the moment that President Obama nominated her. The easy path for Senate Republicans — the path they took in 1993 and 1994 on President Clinton’s nominations of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer — would have been to cave to that political reality and to jump on the Sotomayor bandwagon. Indeed,...

Seems like the Hispanic community has had previous brushes with fame and fortune at the top of the Federal Government Food Chain. The problem: their diversity extended uncomfortably beyond what the Bolshevik Elite thought proper and politically correct. So he was summarily destroyed, never to reappear.

Under the country's Constitution, the ouster of President Manuel Zelaya was legal. Honduras, the tiny Central American nation, had a change of leaders on June 28. The country's military arrested President Manuel Zelaya -- in his pajamas, he says -- and put him on a plane bound for Costa Rica. A new president, Roberto Micheletti, was appointed. Led by Cuba and Venezuela (Sudan and North Korea were not immediately available), the international community swiftly condemned this "coup." Something clearly has gone awry with the rule of law in Honduras -- but it is not necessarily what you think. Begin with...

Unless something entirely unforeseen happens, confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor will be a lovefest for the Democrats who run the Senate Judiciary Committee. There will be much talk about Sotomayor's historic opportunity to become the first Hispanic on the Court, about her inspiring background, and about the sterling qualifications she would bring to the job. Sotomayor will have the majority party strongly on her side, and odds are things will end happily for her. For some Republicans, however, it will be hard to avoid thinking back a few years, to a confirmation hearing that didn't end happily...