Three illegitimate Supreme Court appointments, the second worse than the first, and the third worse than the second, and several more illegitimate lower court appointments by an illegitimate president.
Those are the only things which “conservatives” can count as a genuine accomplishment by Trump, a fraud who has abdicated almost all the responsibilities of the office he holds thanks to Russian interference and an Electoral College misfire.
Republican court-packing wouldn’t have been possible without the extremely dishonest and traitorous Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), now better known as Moscow Mitch, refusing to even hold an up-or-down vote on Judge Merrick Garland, President Barack Obama’s third nominee to the Supreme Court during President Obama’s presidency.
Supposedly it was because of the Biden Rule. Supposedly because President Obama had made the nomination during the last year of his presidency, the nominee should not even be given the opportunity to clear the first procedural hurdle towards Supreme Court confirmation.
Moscow Mitch explained that the American people should have a say on who the next justice of the Supreme Court is. Maybe some people thought that was reasonable. But now, with even less time left before an election, Moscow Mitch gave some half-baked explanation for ignoring the so-called Biden Rule and jumped Judge Amy Coney Barrett through all the procedural steps.
The Republican bastards even felt the need to have an unofficial swearing in for Barrett last night, while Trump was still awake, though he still fidgeted like a bored child. This morning, Justice Roberts officially swore Barrett in, while Trump was probably in the White House, carefully arranging his strategically long hairs to cover his bald spots, taking a few whiffs of supplemental oxygen and babbling incoherently on the phone to Fox “News.”
What has Judge Merrick Garland been doing since getting stabbed in the back by Moscow Mitch? Roxanne Roberts for the Washington Post:
Even Republicans who blocked Garland’s confirmation never had a bad word to say about the man. In fact, they made a serious effort to recruit him as director of the FBI after ... Trump fired James B. Comey in 2017 — arguing, without irony, that they wanted a man of unimpeachable integrity who would receive bipartisan support in the Senate.
Even Moscow Mitch had the gall to say that Garland should become FBI director. But even Trump must have been smart enough to know that Garland would never give him the sort of one-sided loyalty the pathetic business failure feels he deserves.
Garland declined and stayed on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the second-most-powerful court in the country. The past four years have been an ongoing vindication, of sorts, filled with honors and accomplishments. Most failed confirmations shrink the person; Garland may be the first in modern history who emerged with his reputation not only intact but enhanced.
He has never publicly addressed the ordeal. The closest he came was in February of this year, when he passed the gavel of chief judge to one of his colleagues but remained on the court.
Roberts notes that Garland declined a request for comment.
After Trump won [the Electoral College], Garland — who typically works 10 to 12 hours a day — took some time off. He and his wife, Lynn, hosted a few dinner parties to thank friends, colleagues and former law clerks who had fought for his confirmation. [Judge Laurence] Silberman and another colleague on the appeals court, Judge David Tatel, hosted a dinner in January 2017 at the Metropolitan Club to welcome him back to work.
Garland threw himself into the court, where he has served as a judge since 1997. “He is very, very good at it,” Tatel says. “He’s a wonderful, easy colleague to work with. It was that way before the nomination, and it’s been that way ever since.”
Garland is smart, honest, experienced, impartial. Still, there’s something that doesn’t quite make sense about this whole idea of offering Garland the FBI directorship.
There is a less generous theory about the offer: Had Garland taken the FBI job, it would have opened a seat on the appeals court, giving McConnell another opportunity for a lifetime appointment to the second-most-powerful court in the nation.
But of course! That’s gotta be the reason. Moscow Mitch keeps his eyes on the prize, the Supreme Court, but he also cares about the appellate courts. With Garland at the FBI, Moscow Mitch would’ve had yet another chance to pack the courts with yet another ideologue spring chicken.
Instead, the judge launched new initiatives to improve the court and its workplace. He allowed for live-streaming of oral arguments. He developed a policy for court cybersecurity. He revamped the way law clerks are recruited, giving law students a fairer process to be considered for the prestigious jobs. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who served with Garland on the appeals court, named him to chair the executive committee of the Judicial Conference, which oversees the federal judiciary’s ethics and policy.
Most noteworthy, Garland led the initiative to overhaul the system for reporting misconduct and sexual harassment in the federal court system. “Judges are used to having their own chambers be their own fiefdom,” says Jamie Gorelick, a close friend from college who was Garland’s boss when they worked at the Justice Department. Charges of sexual harassment, she adds, are so serious that they should not be left to the discretion of individual judges.
The worst thing anyone can say about Garland is that he has a boring biography. If it weren’t for President Obama’s nomination and Moscow Mitch’s dirty trick, his biography would be a tough sell for the major publishers.
Would Judge Garland accept a new Supreme Court nomination? Maybe he’d say “No, thanks.” But for what it’s worth, I hope he would say yes. And I would urge both Michigan senators to vote to confirm.
Though perhaps it would be better for Garland to stay where he is, while President Biden nominates younger (but thoroughly qualified) judges to the Supreme Court. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, though: we need to get out the vote so that Biden’s win is so great that the margin can’t be eroded by any Republican dirty tricks.
By the way, Michigan currently has two Democrats in the Senate: the senior senator is Debbie Stabenow, the junior senator is Gary Peters.
The extremely dishonest John James trails Peters by a scarily close margin. James lies about everything, including his failure to create jobs with tax breaks he got for his company, and also including several lies about Peters’s record.
Why should Michigan dump a highly effective senator who helped protect the Great Lakes against one of Trump’s temper tantrums, and who has done so much for Michigan, in favor of a smooth-talking liar who would probably vote against confirming someone like Judge Garland to the Supreme Court?
The answer is we shouldn’t. Michigan voters should vote to re-elect Senator Peters, so that he can help balance the courts and undo Republican court-packing. Peters’s campaign website is at petersformichigan.com