The latest tea leaves from the White House, (and this time they appear to be real and not sheer trolling) say that Jane L. Kelly, judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit in Iowa, is being vetted as President Obama's Supreme Court nominee. It's a pick that will challenge Republicans, and one in particular: Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, who also chairs the Judiciary Committee.
Judge Kelly won quick and unanimous confirmation by the Senate three years ago to her current post on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. Her nomination could intensify pressure on Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, to break with his party and hold hearings on Mr. Obama’s Supreme Court candidate.
In a Senate floor speech in 2013, Mr. Grassley effusively praised Judge Kelly, who has spent her career in Iowa and is well regarded in legal circles there. He quoted from a letter from retired Judge David R. Hansen, a Republican appointee, who called her a “forthright woman of high integrity and honest character” and a person of “exceptionally keen intellect” before voting to confirm her for the appeals court post.
“I congratulate Ms. Kelly on her accomplishments and wish her well in her duties,” Mr. Grassley said at the time. “I am pleased to support her confirmation and urge my colleagues to join me.”
The same day this story was released, Grassley took to the floor of the Senate in a diatribe about how Democrats—yes Democrats—were making this Supreme Court vacancy all about politics. About "making this process as political as possible," because everyone knows the Republican decision to forego the process completely has nothing to do with politics. Preventing President Obama from doing his job and naming a justice is just the Republicans' way of keeping the court from being politicized, he says.
Why is he so concerned about that?
Because the people are mad about the court being so political. Because "at my town meetings often somebody will come in very outraged […] you ought to impeach those supreme court justices. They're making law instead of interpreting law. How come you put up with that?" That's why waiting for this political process of an election that's eight months away to finish, in hopes that you have a Republican president (Donald Trump?!?!?!) making the nomination, why all that is not politicizing the courts. But Democratic outrage that Republicans are being so extreme as to refuse to do their jobs? Somehow, that’s politicizing.
You can see Grassley's twisted logic below, but that won't make it make any more sense. Nor will it explain his refusal to even meet with Jane Kelly, a woman he unequivocally supported for a lifetime appointment to the federal judiciary just three years ago.
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So I just want to make sure everyone understands what all this outrage is really about. It's about making this process as political as possible. We aren't going to let that happen to the court, the nominee, or the nation, to follow the suggestion of then-senator Biden. We're going to have a debate, a national debate, between the Democrat nominee and the Republican nominee about what kind of justice the American people want on the supreme court.
That's what the American people deserve, and that's what we're going to let the people -- that's why we're going to let the people decide. Beyond just one justice, there's even more basic debate here, because at my town meetings often somebody will come in very outraged about why this senator, who probably doesn't understand senators don't impeach; we are juries of impeachment. But you ought to impeach those supreme court justices. They're making law instead of interpreting law. How come you put up with that? So we can have a debate between the Republican nominee and the -- on the Republican nominee on what is the constitutional role of the court?