Stopping Black-Robed Community Organizing

Last week Sen. Grouchy McCain took the very principled stand of announcing in advance that not only would he not allow Barack Obama’s anti-second amendment Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland to ever get a confirmation vote, he suggested he would also automatically reject anyone Hillary Clinton might appoint, too. This only stood to reason, since she'd probably pick wild-eyed leftist like Buzzy Ginsburg or the "Wise Latina", or maybe the reanimated corpse of their leftist hero, Harry Blackmun himself. McCain did clarify he would “thoroughly examine” any nominee's qualifications before reject them. 

Radical you say? No, radical is unelected people in black robes making law instead of interrupting the law! Radical is by-passing congress and dictating from the oval office. 

Ilya Shapiro at The Federalist got to thinking about the Constitution and unacceptable judicial nominees. According to him, the Senate's only Constitutional mandate is to provide “advice and consent” on judicial nominees. If the Senate's advice is “take your nominees and shove em,” then they've fulfilled their duty. But what if the Rs took their principled opposition to government actually working a step further? Shapiro says go for it; that's totally an option the Founders had in mind.  

"During the battle over the current vacancy, some senators have said they've fulfilled their duty by giving President Obama the advice that they simply won't confirm anyone. (Also, why hold farcical hearings that would be even more Kabuki theater than what we've come to expect?) The voters seem to have evaluated this position and found it acceptable, although of course the GOP could lose its Senate majority for other reasons."

"Similarly, if a majority of senators refused to confirm anyone to any offices, or pass any legislation whatsoever, that's their prerogative. As a matter of constitutional law, the Senate is fully within its powers....."

Utah Sen. Mike Lee said: “Not a single Democratic nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court since [Byron White, nominated by President Kennedy in 1962] has voted independently,” he detailed, which is why he’s been skeptical of all President Obama’s nominees. 

"Indeed, Hillary Clinton herself said at the last presidential debate that the Supreme Court is meant to answer questions like “What kind of country are we going to be? What kind of opportunities will we provide for our citizens?” Well, gee, if those are the questions you ask, of course you'll end up with super-legislators, presumably in ideological agreement with the president appointing them...." 

So if Hillary Clinton insists on appointing “black-robed community organizers,” says Shapiro, then if the Republicans hold the Senate, “it would be completely in keeping with the Senate's legal constitutional duty to vote against essentially every anti-constitutional leftist judicial nominee she names.