No, Joe, It Is Not Unconstitutional For The President To Fill Supreme Court Vacancies.
You don’t have to like the fact that the Republicans in the U.S. Senate are poised to appoint Amy Coney Barrett to the vacant seat on the U.S. Supreme Court.
You can call the GOP hypocrites or worse for refusing to hold a vote on Merrick Garland in the final year of Barack Obama’s presidency while preparing to fill a seat in the final days of Donald Trump’s first term.
You can argue that it would be better to wait until after the election to see if the voters replace Trump with Biden before filling the vacancy.
You can yodel all you want about how Barrett’s appointment will shift the court to the right.
But it’s simply a lie to say the Senate’s actions are unconstitutional.
It’s absolutely constitutional for that body to fill vacant court seats and everyone in the country knows that.
Except Joe Biden apparently.
Increasingly annoyed by the drumbeat of pointed questions about whether he plans to pack the Supreme Court with Democrats if he’s elected, Biden tried a new tack this weekend, according to Newsweek: He attempted to pivot by accusing GOP Senators of acting unconstitutionally.
“The only court packing that’s going on right now is going on with the Republicans packing the court now. It’s not constitutional what they’re doing,” Biden told reporters this weekend.
Seriously?
Look, no one accuses Joe Biden of being a Mensa member. But he did manage to graduate from college and law school and surely must have a passing acquaintance with the U.S. Constitution. That means he’s familiar with Article II Section 2 that says the president shall nominate “with the advice and consent of the Senate…Judges of the Supreme Court.”
It’s pretty simple. Filling vacancies as they arise is not remotely the same as packing the nine-member court.
Biden is apparently feeling the heat as he repeatedly ducks questions about adding seats to the Supreme Court to create a large liberal majority. That would be a dangerous politicization of the court that was first attempted by Franklin Roosevelt in 1937 when he was frustrated by a court that was striking down his New Deal legislation.
The move proved to be hugely unpopular and Roosevelt backed down.
In the wake of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death, Democrats have been threatening to pack the court if Biden wins the presidency.
"Let me be clear: If Leader McConnell and Senate Republicans move forward with this, then nothing is off the table for next year. Nothing is off the table," Schumer said in the wake of Ginburg’s death, according to Forbes.
He was joined by Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York who immediately called for enlarging the Supreme Court.
On Thursday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Biden said voters will “know my opinion on Court-packing when the election is over.”
That’s part of an outrageously unacceptable pattern. One that also seems to have awakened Biden’s slobbering lapdogs in the press.
Both Biden and Kamala Harris have resolutely refused to answer the court-packing question - and it’s being asked everywhere they go - to the point where an irritated Biden on Friday bristled at a Nevada radio reporter’s question:
“This is the number one thing that I’ve been asked about from viewers in the last couple of days,” began KTNV’s Ross DiMattei, according to The New York Post.
“Well, you’ve been asked by the viewers who are probably Republicans,” Biden sarcastically responded.
“Don’t the voters deserve to know where you stand on …” DiMattei continued.
“No, they don’t deserve,” Biden snapped. “I’m not going to play his game.”
That’s an astonishingly blockheaded comment.
If Biden doesn’t stop dodging the important question of court-packing, it could become the sort of unwanted distraction that will dog him until Election Day.
The voters DO deserve an answer.
