As a Catholic, I felt more than a twinge of guilt over the relief I felt upon hearing of late Justice Antoin Scalia’s recent demise. After taking a moment to apologize to God and Justice Scalia’s family for my lack of sensitivity (don’t mock me progressives—I’m being sincere) I began to wonder: what does this mean for the progressive agenda, and is it OK to be excited about a potential Obama appointment?
Soon, my phone began to ring off the hook as TV and the interweb caught fire. And it wasn’t long before Americans from both sides of the aisle began girding our collective political loins for what we knew would be a major Washington war of wills. (Apologies for the excessive alliteration.)
Though I’m based on the West Coast, daily contact with colleagues in D.C. means I hear stuff. And the word on the street was that a nominee was already being kicked around, and the GOP would most assuredly mount a blockade.
Sure enough, after what can best be described as the shortest mourning period in recorded political history—mere hours—the GOP Senate leadership announced plans to block any potential Obama nominee to the nation’s highest court. It’s reasoning: the sitting president is a “lame duck.”
Now I’m not as well versed in political lingo as the Senate Majority Leader, but I can look up the definition of “lame duck.” What I found was “an elected official serving out the final days of a term following an election.” (Emphasis mine.) That term, then, would accurately apply to President Obama between November 6, 2016 and January 20, 2017—but not before then.
Like everyone, I had to wait to hear the name of the nominee. When Merrick Garland’s name came up, however, I seriously wondered what all the fuss was about. He wasn’t Obama’s typical demographic based on previous appointments and wasn’t likely to swing the court widely left.
Given his reputation as a centrist, favorable comments made by members of the GOP about him when he was being considered for appointments to lower courts and as a possible contender for seats held by Justices Sotomayer and Kagan, his relative silence on women’s issues and support for “law and order” positions—the reporter in me had to know why, oh why, Mitch McConnell, and Jim Inhofe, in particular, seemed so keen on keeping him off the Big Bench.
I had to ask myself what, besides the GOP, those two had in common. One thing was obvious: McConnell is a big fan of fossil fuels, as is Inhofe, who literally wrote the book on Climate Denial with funding from the fossil fuel lobby.
I had my answer—enforcement of the Clean Power Act.
Garland while on the D.C. Circuit appellate court upheld the Clean Power Act when the fossil fuel industry attempted to enjoin it from being enforced. In February, shortly before Justice Scalia’s death, the high court overruled (by a predictable 5-4 vote) the D.C. appellate court, effectively upholding the injunctions for the time being.
I’m no lawyer. But even with a lay person’s working knowledge of the law, it seems likely that EPA attorneys would be working on briefs right now to bring a new case that could set a precedent for CPA enforcement—hoping for a hearing before a high court with a new makeup that would be more likely to rule in the EPA’s favor. Whether or not the new justice would have to recuse himself is up for debate, as that is a matter left to the justices themselves. (Side note: we’d be talking BIG money at stake plus a major policy shift and loss of face for the fossil fuel industry and their supporters.)
It doesn’t take much to connect the dots between the Koch Brothers support of McConnell and Inhofe, the rest of the fossil fuel lobby, and the two GOP contenders. Cruz is already cozy with the Kochs and their friends in big oil and gas, and Trump has vowed to gut funding to the EPA (it’s tough to bring a case when you have to lay off your lawyers.)
Makes sense that the GOP’s top fans of “dirty energy” would want to stall an Obama Supreme Court appointment until after the election.
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