Friday, February 03, 2017

NYT – Supreme Court Pick Is Neil Gorsuch, an Echo of Scalia in Philosophy and Style

 An ant may well destroy an entire dam

Report: 180 Citizens out of 300 million Sign Up for Workshop on Civil Disobedience.




Via Publisher’s Week – “In his opening keynote at the 2017 ALA Midwinter Meeting in Atlanta, just hours after Donald Trump was sworn in as the 45th President of the United States, W. Kamau Bell made a plea to librarians: don’t let Trump’s vision of America become the new normal. “Everything that’s happening right now in America, you’re on the front lines of that,” Bell, a popular comic, podcaster and television host, told a packed auditorium. “Now, more than ever you have the power to expand the idea of what America is. It is starting to contract, and we need to reopen by putting books in the hands of kids.” Bell’s opening talk struck a chord with his audience, both funny and serious, and at times unflinching in its appraisal of America’s new president…”
The New York Times – Solid Conservative; Not Seen as Divisive

  • “President Trump summoned two front-runners to the capital and then revealed his choice of Judge Neil M. Gorsuch during a live television broadcast.
  • Judge Gorsuch is a reliably conservative figure in the mold of Antonin Scalia, the former justice who died in February, but is not someone known to be divisive.
  • Where Gorsuch Would Fit on the Court – Judge Gorsuch would be a reliable conservative, a study said, who is likely to vote “to limit gay rights, uphold restrictions on abortion and invalidate affirmative action programs.”
  • Little Doubt of His Conservative Credentials – Judge Gorsuch, 49, is an originalist who tries to interpret the Constitution with the understanding of those who adopted it.
  • After the Nomination: What Happens Next?”

Washington Post – Supreme Court nomination could end the Senate’s history as the world’s greatest deliberative body. “With activists on both sides girding for a fight, some Republicans are contemplating putting an end to the filibuster. Such a step would profoundly change the nature of the Senate, where the founders intended to slow down and cool off the hasty and heated impulses more common in the House.”
SCOTUSBlog – President nominates Gorsuch to Supreme Court

KEVIN WILLIAMSON: “I have disagreed with Senator Ron Wyden on practically every political question there is, but he always has struck me as a decent and honest man, and so it is with a heavy heart that I write these words: Senator Wyden must resign his seat in light of disturbing new information about his past that has come to light. The shocking revelation: Senator Wyden has been, for more than a decade, a willing accomplice to a plot to undermine the American political order and to overthrow the Constitution by infiltrating agents of radicalism into the highest reaches of the federal judiciary.”