Will Lindsey Graham Determine Who The Next Supreme Court Justice Is?

Obama will have to get the OK from Lindsey G or David Souter will never see New Hampshire again

Unless you were on a plane all night and this morning-- like maybe coming back to St Louis from Sri Lanka-- you probably already know that Justice David Souter is leaving the Supreme Court anytime after June that President Obama gets a nominee confirmed by the Senate. Souter, who has been a dependable vote against authoritarianism and against corporate absolutism, was appointed by George H.W. Bush, and his retirement will occasion the first appointment by a Democrat in a decade and a half. The Republicans have already hysterically announced their intention to filibuster whomever Obama picks unless he picks the kind of reactionary fanatic they find suitable. There are 40 Republicans. Can they prevent Souter from returning to New Hampshire? Can they force the always accommodating Obama to pick some kind of right-wing hack?

I suppose if there were 99 Democrats in the Senate, Harry Reid would still find a way to fail. With only 59-- assuming he will allow the GOP to continue to prevent Al Franken from being seated (and if, for whatever reason you decide to count solid Republican Arlen Specter as a Democrat)-- there is no doubt that Reid will guarantee that the balance on the Court will never be righted.

The current Senate has an organizing resolution that includes this Judiciary Committee rule, adopted on February 26, 2009 dealing with the Republican obstructionists' favorite tactic, the de facto filibuster:

IV. BRINGING A MATTER TO A VOTE

The Chairman shall entertain a non-debatable motion to bring a matter before the Committee to a vote. If there is objection to bring the matter to a vote without further debate, a roll call vote of the Committee shall be taken, and debate shall be terminated if the motion to bring the matter to a vote without further debate passes with ten votes in the affirmative, one of which must be cast by the minority.

In other words, the Senate is saddled with a rule that unless one of the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee agrees, the nomination stays bottled up, presumably until Jeb Bush or Carrie Prejean is elected president.

Now imagine if you will-- and I know this is a stretch-- that Harry Reid wasn't the GOP's secret weapon. Imagine instead that he was the strong and resolute leader of a powerful Democratic majority and was a third or even a quarter the man Nancy Pelosi is. Then there'd be an easy way out of this mess. You see... by officially becoming a quasi-Democrat, not one who will vote like a Democrat but one who will caucus with them, Arlen Specter throws the Judiciary Committee off kilter. It currently has 8 Republicans including him (the ranking member) and 11 Democrats, reflecting the overall balance in the Senate.

Arlen Specter (R-PA)
Orrin Hatch (R-UT)
Chuck Grassley (R-IA)
Jon Kyl (R-AZ)
Jeff Sessions (R-AL)
Lindsey Graham (R-SC)
John Cornyn (R-TX)
Tom Coburn (R-OK)

Chairman Pat Leahy (D-VT)
Herb Kohl (D-WI)
Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)
Russ Feingold (D-WI)
Chuck Schumer (D-NY)
Dick Durbin (D-IL)
Ben Cardin (D-MD)
Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)
Ron Wyden (D-OR)
Amy Klobuchar (D-MN)
Ed Kaufman (D-DE)

In the good old days, the Republicans could always count on an asshole with a "D" next to his or her name-- a Schumer or Feinstein particularly-- to voted with the Republicans one some proto fascist loon Bush dug up from the bowels of the Federalist Society, which is how we got stuck with Jay "The Torture Guy" Bybee. Now far be it from me to say that the Senate Republicans don't have assholes on their team. It's just they're a different kind of asshole than a Feinstein or a Schumer. Where Feinstein and Schumer will go through any kind of contortion to show how nonpartisan they are-- and jump all over the opportunity to get on TV and brag how they're abandoning their party for some right-wing torturer-- the Republicans are all pledged to do what's ever necessary to make sure Obama fails as a president. It wouldn't matter who Obama nominates in the eyes of Kyl or Coburn or Cornyn; anyone he nominates is secretly a Muslim terrorist and a socialist and fascist who must be stopped.

If Specter's going to be counted as a Democrat, the Senate is going to have to adopt a new organizing resolution allowing Specter to be counted as a Democrat, which presumably means finding another committee for Ed Kaufman, the least senior member. But Reid doesn't have to do that. He could just let the Republicans howl all they want-- it's what they do anyway-- and refuse to get behind a new organizing resolution and keeping Specter on in the Republican seat. So far he's been voting down the line with them anyway, most recently today when he was one of a small handful of reactionaries to join the Republicans in making sure the banksters could continue throwing families out of their homes with impunity.

But Reid doesn't have the moxy of a Nancy Pelosi. So instead he'll put Obama in the untenable position of having to come to an agreement with the only Republican on the committee who might possibly agree to a compromise: Lindsey Graham. I hope you didn't just puke up your breakfast. If-- like me-- you think Ian Millhiser has the right idea about how to decide on a new Supreme Court Justice, you may well have. I guess the situation for Democrats-- real ones, not the ones owned by banksters in DC-- could be worse: Biden and Reid could accept another half dozen Republicans into the caucus and end any chance for anything ever happening to change the course. No wonder Limbaugh suggested Specter take some more with him!


UPDATE: White Men Never Get Ahead

Adam didn't invent this; it's in the new TIME

The Supreme Court currently consists of 5 white men, several with the most dubious imaginable credentials, one African-American generally considered a complete self-loathing Uncle Tom, and one elderly and infirm white woman. Because the name of one prominent woman judge of Hispanic heritage, Sonia Sotomayor, has been mentioned as a possible nominee, Republicans are going bonkers and complaining that white males never get a shot at anything. These people really are out of their minds; lucky for them there are dicks like Mark Halperin (above) and Limbaugh to whine for them in the public forum.


UPDATE II: Republicans Declare War On... Whoever

Right-wing pressure groups-- primarily those demanding more hard-line corporatists and pro-authoritarian nominees-- got on a conference call today and began plotting strategy. They are determined to sabotage anyone President Obama nominates. We'll be organized. We're more organized than ever before," said Jay Sekulow, the prominent conservative lawyer who heads the American Center for Law & Justice.