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Position: Gorsuch should be confirmed
This position addresses the topic Neil Gorsuch Supreme Court nomination.
For this position
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After two days of often hostile hearings, Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch is proving himself an even-tempered, deeply knowledgeable nominee who should be confirmed by the Senate. Gorsuch calmly turned back attempts by Democrats on the Judicial Committee to paint him as an extremist whose rulings as an appeals court judge heavily favored corporate and big money special interest, the evidence to support that charge is flimsy.
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It’s worth noting that progressives offer no allegations that Judge Gorsuch has ignored the Constitution or failed to properly apply the protections enshrined in the Bill of Rights. Instead, their main objection appears to be that he didn’t deliver the outcomes they sought in a handful of cases. That’s hardly a rational reason to reject a highly qualified nominee.
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Trump’s desperate attempts this week to blame others for the fantastically botched rollout of his executive order on travel from seven majority-Muslim countries, portray a man fundamentally at odds with our country’s cherished beliefs in the separation of powers. It happens, however, that Gorsuch’s defining work to date has been his clear thinking on just this topic.
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Such is the partisan divide in America at the moment that John Jay, Learned Hand or Louis Brandeis could not pass the inspection of the pickers of tiny nits in the U.S. Senate without an epic struggle. But Mr. Gorsuch, 49, is the distinguished choice in the mold of the late Antonin Scalia who reveres the Constitution as it was written, with none of the ghostly “penumbras” and gauzy “emanations” that certain lesser jurists have insisted they see in the founding document.
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Against this position
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Judge Gorsuch became President Trump's nominee only after Senate Republicans’ outrageous and unprecedented blockade of Merrick Garland, whom President Barack Obama picked to fill the same seat more than a year ago and who by all rights should long ago have been sitting where Judge Gorsuch is now — introducing his family, smiling for the flashbulbs and listening patiently as senators lecture him about the Constitution. But Senate Republicans made sure that would never happen, refusing even to meet with Judge Garland — the chief of the federal appeals court in Washington and one of the most widely respected judges in the country — let alone give him a hearing or a vote.
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This is an appointment by the biggest popular vote loser of the modern era to fill a stolen seat. Pretending this is just Senate business as usual would pat the Republican Party on the head for pulling off the heist of the century, and it would give Trump a thumbs up for his first-week “shock and awe” campaign of executive orders designed to roll back immigration, the Affordable Care Act and voting rights.
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Mixed on this position
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Nothing will stop the GOP from confirming this nominee. Indeed, Gorsuch gave them no reason to act otherwise. As expected, he dodged questions pertaining to abortion rights, gun rights, and the president's travel ban. His only slip was forgetting his role in crafting George W. Bush's signing statement that accompanied the Detainee Treatment Act as a DOJ attorney in 2005; most of us would remember if we gave a green light to waterboarding.
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Senate Democrats have a right, indeed an obligation, to aggressively scrutinize Trump’s selection. The next justice would have a profound effect on the direction of everything from gay rights and abortion to guns and free speech, environmental protection to corporate clout. Let the extreme vetting begin. But, in the end, Senate Democrats should fulfill their role of “advise and consent” by giving Gorsuch what Garland never received from Republicans: a fair hearing and an up-or-down vote on the Senate floor.
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