Monday, March 27, 2017 7:43:31 PM
Neil Gorsuch's confirmation hearing revealed his hidden similarity to Trump
The two appear to be a study in contrasts – but both display a remarkable lack
of compassion. Their likeness could serve to justify Democrats’ opposition
‘The trouble with Neil Gorsuch, we learned this week, is not ideology but humanity.’
Photograph: Jim Bourg/Reuters
Lucia Graves in Washington @lucia_graves
Saturday 25 March 2017 22.00 AEDT
[...]
One of the most revealing moments came on Tuesday as Gorsuch sought to explain his dissent in TransAm Trucking v Administrative Review Board. A focus of Democratic questioning much of the week, it has come to be known as the “frozen trucker” case. In it, Gorsuch sided with TransAm’s decision to fire its employee Alphonse Maddin for disobeying company orders after his truck broke down in subzero temperatures and he began to fear he would freeze to death. After notifying his employer and waiting hours, Maddin unhitched and temporarily abandoned his trailer to seek shelter. The dissenting opinion filed by Gorsuch in effect presented him with what sounds like an inhumane option: leave and be fired or stay and risk freezing.
Senator Al Franken asked Gorsuch what he would have done in those circumstances. “I don’t know what I would have done if I were in his shoes,” Gorsuch replied. “And I don’t blame him at all for a moment for doing what he did do. I empathize with him entirely.”
Empathy is often conflated with sympathy or compassion, but there’s a crucial difference. The latter connote feeling; the first does not. Having empathy, as Gorsuch said he had for Maddin, is morally neutral; it does not mean someone will necessarily help a person in need, only that they understand their situation.
VIDEO - Highlights from Neil Gorsuch’s confirmation hearings .. 4:00
https://www.theguardian.com/law/video/2017/mar/21/neil-gorsuch-confirmation-hearing-highlights-video
By Maddin’s own account, three hours into waiting for help to arrive, his torso went numb. He couldn’t feel his feet and felt himself “fading”. Gorsuch understood that cognitively. Yet when presented with credible and abundant evidence of the grave risks faced by Maddin, Gorsuch deemed them irrelevant.
He may have empathized with Maddin but that did not lead him to change his legal opinion. What’s unusual here is not Gorsuch’s conservative philosophy or textualist tendencies. It’s not even that he sided with a company over the “little guy”, as Democrats repeatedly said.
It’s that the fact that Maddin might have died sitting there waiting for help at 14-below, if he’d been unwise enough to follow the only option made available by Gorsuch, did not appear to enter into his calculus. He did not seem to care.
“A good judge doesn’t give a whit about politics,” Gorsuch said at one point, a line whose variations would become a mantra of his throughout the week. But Gorsuch’s record and comments suggest he may also believe a good judge does not give a whit about people.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/mar/25/neil-gorsuch-confirmation-hearing-empathy-analysis
I wondered if the Democrats could hold up any judicial nomination for 4 years. Then saw the Republicans did
exactly that when Bill Clinton nominated Judge Richard Paez to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in 1996.
Clinton appointments: 1993–2000
Main article: Bill Clinton judicial appointment controversies
In 1995, Democrats held the White House. The New York Times editorialized, "The U.S. Senate likes to call itself the world's greatest deliberative body. In the last session of Congress, the Republican minority invoked an endless string of filibusters to frustrate the will of the majority. This (is a) relentless abuse of a time-honored Senate tradition … Once a rarely used tactic reserved for issues on which Senators held passionate convictions, the filibuster has become the tool of the sore loser, dooming any measure that cannot command the 60 required votes." There was no attempt to rewrite Senate rules for cloture at that time.
In 1996, President Bill Clinton nominated Judge Richard Paez to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Republicans held up Paez's nomination for more than four years, culminating in a failed March 8, 2000 filibuster. Only 14 Republicans approved it. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) was among those who voted to filibuster Paez. Paez was ultimately confirmed with a simple majority.
In addition to filibustering nominations, the Republican-controlled Senate refused to hold hearings for some 60 Clinton appointees, effectively blocking their nomination from coming to a vote on the Senate floor.
Bush appointments: 2001–06
Main article: George W. Bush judicial appointment controversies
When George W. Bush took office in 2001 there remained dozens of federal court vacancies. Democratic Senators contended that these vacancies remained despite Clinton nominations to fill them because of obstruction by Republican Senators. Republicans held a majority in the Senate during the last six years of the Clinton administration and controlled who would be voted on. Democratic Senators asserted that, for the most part, Republicans did not raise objections to those judicial candidates, but simply refused to hold hearings on the nominations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_option#Clinton_appointments:_1993.E2.80.932000
So i have to agree with Ronald Klain in that
The Democrats Must Filibuster Neil Gorsuch
President Obama’s senior aide Ronald Klain tells Dahlia Lithwick why it’s time for the Dems to take a stand.
By Dahlia Lithwick and Camille Mott
Neil Gorsuch testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday.
Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images
After four days of marathon hearings .. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2017/03/how_neil_gorsuch_avoids_saying_absolutely_anything_of_substance.html .. before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has announced that Democrats will filibuster .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/gorsuch-confirmation-hearing-to-focus-today-on-testimony-from-friends-foes/2017/03/23/14d21116-0fc7-11e7-9d5a-a83e627dc120_story.html?utm_term=.e67737260745 .. the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. Under current Senate rules, 60 votes are required to stop a filibuster and proceed to an up-or-down vote requiring only a simple majority. With 52 seats under Republican control, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has two options if he wants to get Gorsuch through: He can persuade eight Democrats to defect, or he can exercise the so-called “nuclear option .. http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/01/politics/neil-gorsuch-confirmation-hearings-in-six-weeks-grassley-says/ ” eliminating the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees altogether.
Would a filibuster of Gorsuch be a smart move .. http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/03/23/a_slate_debate_on_the_democrats_gorsuch_filibuster.html .. for Democrats? As a conservative and self-described originalist, his appointment to the seat formerly held by Justice Antonin Scalia would not shift the balance of the court. Therefore, some argue, the filibuster should be preserved for a future Trump nominee—one who might replace one of the court’s liberals, such as 84-year-old Ruth Bader Ginsburg or 78-year-old Stephen Breyer. Proponents of a Gorsuch filibuster point out that McConnell is no less likely to violate longstanding norms .. http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-senate-traditions-trump-20170202-story.html .. the next time around and that Democrats must push back against the majority leader’s extraordinary refusal .. http://www.cnbc.com/2016/03/16/president-obama-to-announce-supreme-court-nominee-at-11-am-et.html .. to consider the nomination of Merrick Garland.
Ronald Klain, who served as senior White House aide to presidents Clinton and Obama and assisted in shepherding the last four Democratic-appointed justices through the Supreme Court confirmation process, believes that Senate Democrats are right to filibuster the Gorsuch nomination. On this week’s episode of Slate’s Supreme Court podcast Amicus .. http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/amicus.html , Klain told Dahlia Lithwick why it’s “time to draw the line in the sand.” (Klain’s answer has been condensed and edited.)
-
My thinking on this has evolved over the past several weeks, but to me it comes down to this.
First of all, I think Justice Kennedy may well leave this summer, and I think that we’re talking about perhaps two nominees this year.
The idea that we would not filibuster Judge Gorsuch because Mitch McConnell is threatening to take our right to filibuster away, and save it for the next nominee, when Mitch McConnell will surely take our filibuster rights away—I just don’t see what we get out of abstaining in that circumstance. You know, this is a little bit like Charlie Brown and the football.
It’s time to take the strong stand, time to draw the line in the sand, and let the chips fall where they may. The only argument against filibustering Judge Gorsuch is, if you really believed that when Justice Kennedy retired and we wanted to filibuster that nominee that because we failed to filibuster Judge Gorsuch, Mitch McConnell would for some reason not go nuclear on the court-bending choice of Justice Kennedy’s replacement. And I don’t see any reason to believe that.
Given that I don’t think there could be a deal with McConnell or a deal that would be binding or any kind of long-term guarantee of the Democrats’ rights, I don’t really see why they shouldn’t use their full rights on this nomination, given both what happened to Judge Garland, and more importantly, Judge Gorsuch’s failure to answer questions in the confirmation process and failure to give Democrats any reassurance about his jurisprudence.
To hear Lithwick’s whole interview with Klain, subscribe to Amicus. The entire episode will be posted at 2 a.m. Eastern Time on Saturday, March 25.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2017/03/the_democrats_must_filibuster_neil_gorsuch.html
Posted specifically to your 3rd video down .. SCOTUS Integrity Damaged By GOP Stolen Seat | Rachel Maddow | MSNBC
The two appear to be a study in contrasts – but both display a remarkable lack
of compassion. Their likeness could serve to justify Democrats’ opposition
‘The trouble with Neil Gorsuch, we learned this week, is not ideology but humanity.’
Photograph: Jim Bourg/Reuters
Lucia Graves in Washington @lucia_graves
Saturday 25 March 2017 22.00 AEDT
[...]
One of the most revealing moments came on Tuesday as Gorsuch sought to explain his dissent in TransAm Trucking v Administrative Review Board. A focus of Democratic questioning much of the week, it has come to be known as the “frozen trucker” case. In it, Gorsuch sided with TransAm’s decision to fire its employee Alphonse Maddin for disobeying company orders after his truck broke down in subzero temperatures and he began to fear he would freeze to death. After notifying his employer and waiting hours, Maddin unhitched and temporarily abandoned his trailer to seek shelter. The dissenting opinion filed by Gorsuch in effect presented him with what sounds like an inhumane option: leave and be fired or stay and risk freezing.
Senator Al Franken asked Gorsuch what he would have done in those circumstances. “I don’t know what I would have done if I were in his shoes,” Gorsuch replied. “And I don’t blame him at all for a moment for doing what he did do. I empathize with him entirely.”
Empathy is often conflated with sympathy or compassion, but there’s a crucial difference. The latter connote feeling; the first does not. Having empathy, as Gorsuch said he had for Maddin, is morally neutral; it does not mean someone will necessarily help a person in need, only that they understand their situation.
VIDEO - Highlights from Neil Gorsuch’s confirmation hearings .. 4:00
https://www.theguardian.com/law/video/2017/mar/21/neil-gorsuch-confirmation-hearing-highlights-video
By Maddin’s own account, three hours into waiting for help to arrive, his torso went numb. He couldn’t feel his feet and felt himself “fading”. Gorsuch understood that cognitively. Yet when presented with credible and abundant evidence of the grave risks faced by Maddin, Gorsuch deemed them irrelevant.
He may have empathized with Maddin but that did not lead him to change his legal opinion. What’s unusual here is not Gorsuch’s conservative philosophy or textualist tendencies. It’s not even that he sided with a company over the “little guy”, as Democrats repeatedly said.
It’s that the fact that Maddin might have died sitting there waiting for help at 14-below, if he’d been unwise enough to follow the only option made available by Gorsuch, did not appear to enter into his calculus. He did not seem to care.
“A good judge doesn’t give a whit about politics,” Gorsuch said at one point, a line whose variations would become a mantra of his throughout the week. But Gorsuch’s record and comments suggest he may also believe a good judge does not give a whit about people.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/mar/25/neil-gorsuch-confirmation-hearing-empathy-analysis
I wondered if the Democrats could hold up any judicial nomination for 4 years. Then saw the Republicans did
exactly that when Bill Clinton nominated Judge Richard Paez to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in 1996.
Clinton appointments: 1993–2000
Main article: Bill Clinton judicial appointment controversies
In 1995, Democrats held the White House. The New York Times editorialized, "The U.S. Senate likes to call itself the world's greatest deliberative body. In the last session of Congress, the Republican minority invoked an endless string of filibusters to frustrate the will of the majority. This (is a) relentless abuse of a time-honored Senate tradition … Once a rarely used tactic reserved for issues on which Senators held passionate convictions, the filibuster has become the tool of the sore loser, dooming any measure that cannot command the 60 required votes." There was no attempt to rewrite Senate rules for cloture at that time.
In 1996, President Bill Clinton nominated Judge Richard Paez to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Republicans held up Paez's nomination for more than four years, culminating in a failed March 8, 2000 filibuster. Only 14 Republicans approved it. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) was among those who voted to filibuster Paez. Paez was ultimately confirmed with a simple majority.
In addition to filibustering nominations, the Republican-controlled Senate refused to hold hearings for some 60 Clinton appointees, effectively blocking their nomination from coming to a vote on the Senate floor.
Bush appointments: 2001–06
Main article: George W. Bush judicial appointment controversies
When George W. Bush took office in 2001 there remained dozens of federal court vacancies. Democratic Senators contended that these vacancies remained despite Clinton nominations to fill them because of obstruction by Republican Senators. Republicans held a majority in the Senate during the last six years of the Clinton administration and controlled who would be voted on. Democratic Senators asserted that, for the most part, Republicans did not raise objections to those judicial candidates, but simply refused to hold hearings on the nominations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_option#Clinton_appointments:_1993.E2.80.932000
So i have to agree with Ronald Klain in that
The Democrats Must Filibuster Neil Gorsuch
President Obama’s senior aide Ronald Klain tells Dahlia Lithwick why it’s time for the Dems to take a stand.
By Dahlia Lithwick and Camille Mott
Neil Gorsuch testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday.
Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images
After four days of marathon hearings .. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2017/03/how_neil_gorsuch_avoids_saying_absolutely_anything_of_substance.html .. before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has announced that Democrats will filibuster .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/gorsuch-confirmation-hearing-to-focus-today-on-testimony-from-friends-foes/2017/03/23/14d21116-0fc7-11e7-9d5a-a83e627dc120_story.html?utm_term=.e67737260745 .. the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. Under current Senate rules, 60 votes are required to stop a filibuster and proceed to an up-or-down vote requiring only a simple majority. With 52 seats under Republican control, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has two options if he wants to get Gorsuch through: He can persuade eight Democrats to defect, or he can exercise the so-called “nuclear option .. http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/01/politics/neil-gorsuch-confirmation-hearings-in-six-weeks-grassley-says/ ” eliminating the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees altogether.
Would a filibuster of Gorsuch be a smart move .. http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/03/23/a_slate_debate_on_the_democrats_gorsuch_filibuster.html .. for Democrats? As a conservative and self-described originalist, his appointment to the seat formerly held by Justice Antonin Scalia would not shift the balance of the court. Therefore, some argue, the filibuster should be preserved for a future Trump nominee—one who might replace one of the court’s liberals, such as 84-year-old Ruth Bader Ginsburg or 78-year-old Stephen Breyer. Proponents of a Gorsuch filibuster point out that McConnell is no less likely to violate longstanding norms .. http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-senate-traditions-trump-20170202-story.html .. the next time around and that Democrats must push back against the majority leader’s extraordinary refusal .. http://www.cnbc.com/2016/03/16/president-obama-to-announce-supreme-court-nominee-at-11-am-et.html .. to consider the nomination of Merrick Garland.
Ronald Klain, who served as senior White House aide to presidents Clinton and Obama and assisted in shepherding the last four Democratic-appointed justices through the Supreme Court confirmation process, believes that Senate Democrats are right to filibuster the Gorsuch nomination. On this week’s episode of Slate’s Supreme Court podcast Amicus .. http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/amicus.html , Klain told Dahlia Lithwick why it’s “time to draw the line in the sand.” (Klain’s answer has been condensed and edited.)
-
My thinking on this has evolved over the past several weeks, but to me it comes down to this.
First of all, I think Justice Kennedy may well leave this summer, and I think that we’re talking about perhaps two nominees this year.
The idea that we would not filibuster Judge Gorsuch because Mitch McConnell is threatening to take our right to filibuster away, and save it for the next nominee, when Mitch McConnell will surely take our filibuster rights away—I just don’t see what we get out of abstaining in that circumstance. You know, this is a little bit like Charlie Brown and the football.
It’s time to take the strong stand, time to draw the line in the sand, and let the chips fall where they may. The only argument against filibustering Judge Gorsuch is, if you really believed that when Justice Kennedy retired and we wanted to filibuster that nominee that because we failed to filibuster Judge Gorsuch, Mitch McConnell would for some reason not go nuclear on the court-bending choice of Justice Kennedy’s replacement. And I don’t see any reason to believe that.
Given that I don’t think there could be a deal with McConnell or a deal that would be binding or any kind of long-term guarantee of the Democrats’ rights, I don’t really see why they shouldn’t use their full rights on this nomination, given both what happened to Judge Garland, and more importantly, Judge Gorsuch’s failure to answer questions in the confirmation process and failure to give Democrats any reassurance about his jurisprudence.
To hear Lithwick’s whole interview with Klain, subscribe to Amicus. The entire episode will be posted at 2 a.m. Eastern Time on Saturday, March 25.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2017/03/the_democrats_must_filibuster_neil_gorsuch.html
Posted specifically to your 3rd video down .. SCOTUS Integrity Damaged By GOP Stolen Seat | Rachel Maddow | MSNBC
It was Plato who said, “He, O men, is the wisest, who like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing”
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