Progressive One

Washington (CNN) — Following President Barack Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland to fill the open seat on the Supreme Court, a new CNN/ORC poll finds two-thirds of Americans want the Senate to hold confirmation hearings on his candidacy, and a majority of Americans say the Senate should ultimately v**e to confirm him.

According to the survey, 52% say Garland ought to be confirmed, 33% that the Senate should not v**e in favor of his nomination. Another 15% are unsure. That's about on par with public support for Obama's previous two Supreme Court nominees, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, as well as other current justices on whose nominations we have polling, including Samuel Alito, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Clarence Thomas. Chief Justice John Roberts is the only one to enter the confirmation process with significantly greater public support: 59% said the Senate should v**e in favor of his nomination.

Most Democrats (80%) and a plurality of independents say Garland should be approved (48% v**e in favor, 37% against), but Republicans lean against it: 26% say the Senate should v**e to confirm, 54% against.

Assessing Garland himself, 45% say they have a positive impression of him so far, 34% are neutral, 14% negative. Just 13% say they feel he is not qualified to serve on the Supreme Court, around a quarter say he is among the most qualified candidates out there. A majority, 56%, say that as a Supreme Court justice, he would be "about right" ideologically, more than said so about any other recent nominee. Just 25% say they think he would be too liberal as a justice.

Regardless of whether Garland's nomination succeeds, the Supreme Court at the end of Obama's time in office will likely remain majority male and majority white. Still, 58% in the survey said Obama has done enough with his three appointments to improve diversity on the court, 35% that he has not done enough.

Turning to process, most Republicans disagree with the position taken by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who says the Senate will not hold hearings on Garland's confirmation. Among Republicans, 55% say the Senate should hold hearings on Obama's choice, as do 67% of Democrats and 68% of independents. The 64% overall who say there should be hearings is about the same as the 66% who said so in February before Obama named his choice to fill the vacancy.

Most Americans, 57%, say the choice for the next justice should rest with Obama and not with the next president, and a similar majority, 58%, say that senators who believe the seat should be filled by the next president would not be justified in v****g against Garland for that reason. These views are sharply divided by party, however, with 85% of Democrats saying Obama should make the appointment, while just 26% of Republicans agree. Most Republicans (57%) say a v**e against Garland because a Senator believes the next president should fill the seat is justified, while three-quarters of Democrats (76%) say it is not justified.

Most side with Obama on the Supreme Court nomination, and he fares better than Congress or the GOP leadership there on several other measures tested in the poll.

Congressional approval stands near its all-time low in CNN polling, with just 15% approving. That's down 6 points since last February, and just a few points above the 10% low point hit in September 2013 just ahead of a partial government shutdown. Another finding from the poll, released earlier this week, found the Republican Party's favorability also at its lowest point since that shutdown.

Obama's approval rating, meanwhile, stands at its highest point since May 2013, and the public expresses broader confidence in him to handle top issues than the Republican leadership in Congress.

Majorities of Americans say they have at least some confidence in Obama on dealing with the economy, handling foreign affairs, appointing the best people to office and providing real leadership for the country. Those figures are all down since December 2008, about a month before Obama took office, but they are well above the public's reviews for the Republican leaders in Congress on the same measure. A majority express confidence in those leaders on handling foreign affairs, but most say they have no real confidence in Republican leaders on the economy, providing real leadership for the country or on their constitutional role of providing advice and consent on p**********l appointments.

The CNN/ORC poll was conducted by telephone March 17-20 among a random national sample of 1,001 adults. Results for the full sample have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. The margin is larger for subgroups.

JMHO Loc: Utah

Ain't gonna happen...nor should it happen...get over it, hypocrite.

Progressive One

Time will tell my little name-caller

Loki Loc: Georgia

Considering that the Vice-president of CNN is married to a deputy Secretary of State, and that both ABC and CBS presidents have siblings working in the White House, it's no surprise that any poll conducted by any one of them shows anything Obama does in a favorable light.

Progressive One

Kind of like running for President and the deciding v**es comes from a state where your brother JUST HAPPENS to be the Governor. Imagine that for an assist. Obama is favored everywhere except for the right. Look at Gallup and Pew Research or any non-conservative poll.

Loki Loc: Georgia

Look at any non-Liberal poll.

JMHO Loc: Utah

Name caller? Talk like a moron, and I will refer to you as a moron, because you are a moron, pal. Can't handle the t***h?

snowbear37 Loc: MA.

Tell it to Joe Biden or Harry Reid!

Progressive One

Who cares girlie man?

Progressive One

Biden criticizes Republicans on high court v**e

The vice president says his 1992 remarks on e******n-year vacancies have been misrepresented.

BY MICHAEL A. MEMOLI
WASHINGTON — The pitched battle over a vacant seat on the Supreme Court is not only the latest drama between President Obama and a Republican Congress, but increasingly a test of wills for two veterans of the Senate.
Call it the “Biden rule” versus the “McConnell precedent.”
For Vice President Joe Biden, who spent half of his 36-year Senate career as the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, Republicans’ refusal to consider Obama’s Supreme Court candidate marks a further breakdown of the norms and traditions of an institution he still reveres.
His longtime Senate colleague Mitch McConnell had vowed to restore the Senate’s great deliberative tradition as he campaigned in a successful bid to become majority leader in 2014.
But now McConnell, the Kentucky Republican, is using Biden’s own words to underscore his strategy to obstruct the confirmation process by denying a hearing and v**e on Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland.
He and other Republicans point to a speech Biden made as a senator nearly a quarter-century ago in which he cautioned a Republican president against trying to fill a Supreme Court vacancy in a p**********l e******n year.
After video of the speech was unearthed, Republicans dubbed his assertion the Biden rule and said it applied now just as the Delaware senator argued it then: putting off a politically charged confirmation fight in the middle of a heated p**********l e******n was not only sound but fair to the nominee.
On Thursday, the vice president offered his most vigorous defense yet on the issue, arguing the Republican Party was not only misrepresenting what he said but ignoring what he did as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which oversees confirmation hearings for federal judgeships.
“There is only one rule I ever followed in the Judiciary Committee,” he said in a speech at Georgetown University’s law school. “The Senate must advise and consent. And every nominee, including Justice [Anthony M.] Kennedy in an e******n year, got an up-and-down v**e. Not much of the time. Not most of the time. Every single, solitary time.”
But he also broadened his critique to accuse Republicans of launching the country into “a genuine constitutional crisis born out of the dysfunction of Washington.”
It was an implicit challenge to McConnell, who once accused Democrats of turning the Senate into “a veritable graveyard for good ideas.”
As he campaigned to end eight years of Democratic control of the Senate in 2014, McConnell repeatedly accused the party of putting its own political interests above the national interest, and its leaders of shielding senators from tough v**es to help them get reelected.
“There’s a time for making a political point, even scoring a few points — I know that as well as anybody,” McConnell said in a speech that year that laid out his vision of a Republican Senate. “But it can’t be the only thing we do here.”
After he realized his goal of becoming majority leader, McConnell said his first task was to “get the Senate back to normal.”
The death of Justice Antonin Scalia in February put McConnell on a different track. He swiftly ruled out the possibility that the Senate would consider an Obama-nominated replacement, later saying he wouldn’t even meet with the nominee as a courtesy.
McConnell argued that the public should be heard through its v**e for president before a seat is filled that could tip the balance of the high court for generations. And he insisted he had precedent — set by Biden.
In June 1992, amid speculation that a liberal justice might resign, Biden reflected on the recent tumult of the Supreme Court confirmation process to caution then-President George H.W. Bush.
“If the president goes the way of Presidents Fillmore and Johnson and presses an e******n-year nomination, the Senate Judiciary Committee should seriously consider not scheduling confirmation hearings on the nomination until after the political campaign season is over,” Biden said then.
Adopting Biden’s argument is not without risk. Some Senate Republicans have become increasingly public in expressing reservations about the strategy, saying they would be willing to meet with Garland or calling outright for a confirmation hearing.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a member of the Judiciary Committee who said he supported McConnell’s approach, nonetheless has noted that it sets a precedent that a Republican president might have to live with.
He also warned that if Hillary Clinton were to be elected president this fall, she might pick a more liberal nominee than Garland.
But that line of thought is a gamble for Senate Republicans. The GOP base “is not open to this argument at all,” said Francis Lee, a University of Maryland professor who studies partisanship in the Senate.
“What McConnell’s doing here with Garland [is] he’s protecting his members from tough v**es,” she said. “No matter what the politics might look like in terms of general public opinion, it divides the Republican Party. … They want to see this stopped. They do not want to see the ideological direction of the Supreme Court changed.”
Biden, in his speech Thursday, warned of the long-term effects such a Republican posture could have, saying it was already affecting U.S. standing in the world.
“Obstructionism is dangerous and it is self-indulgent,” he said. “For the sake of both parties, for the sake of the country, for the sake of our ability to govern, it’s got to stop.”
McConnell’s office said Biden was on “a cleanup mission” given how politically problematic his past speech has been.
Republican Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said it was Biden who was misrepresenting his old remarks.
“The American people should be provided an opportunity to weigh in on whether the court should move in a more liberal direction for a generation, dramatically impacting the rights and individual freedoms we cherish as Americans,” he said. michael.memoli

whole2th

Hearings open the possibility of exposing Garland as one of the key players in the cover-up of the Oklahoma City bombing.

He also has a connection to TWA Flight 800.

Easy to look up.

Progressive One

The smear campaign is on. maybe Hillary should appoint a grateful deadhead. haha

whole2th

Comfort is proportional to willful stupidity, ignorance, and complacency.

Hemiman Loc: Communist California

If that is true than ADemocrate is very comfortable.

Hemiman Loc: Communist California

Except you can't tell time.