Dishonesty all around on Gorsuch

In an op-ed for The Arizona Republic, Sen. Jeff Flake declared, “Even President Obama’s two Supreme Court nominees were recognized for their ability to do the job and confirmed without incident.” Sen. John Cornyn of Texas quoted The Wall Street Journal when he tweeted, “Never in U.S. history have we had a successful partisan filibuster of a Supreme Court nominee.” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell accused Democrats of using “obstructionist tactics” to thwart the confirmation of Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court.

Their hypocrisy is palpable.

In referencing President Barack Obama’s “two” Supreme Court nominees, Flake is conveniently forgetting to tell his readers that Obama made three nominations to the Supreme Court, not two: Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, whom the Senate confirmed, and Judge Merrick Garland, whom Senate Republicans refused to consider even though Obama had almost a year left in his term.

Cornyn surely knows that Senate Republicans effectively engaged in a partisan filibuster of Garland’s nomination by refusing even to hold hearings.

And McConnell must recognize that he himself led “obstructionist tactics” to prevent Garland, as Obama’s nominee, from joining the court.

Regardless of the “alternative facts” the Republicans are peddling, we should all understand the GOP’s tactics last year in opposing Garland for what they were: a blatant power grab that ultimately worked.

For their part, Democratic senators who are opposing Gorsuch are not immune from this affliction. There is no principled reason to oppose Gorsuch beyond politics. On any objective measure he is qualified for the job. If Justice Antonin Scalia had passed away this past February, after President Donald Trump took office, then there would be little justification for Democrats to filibuster Gorsuch’s nomination. The Republicans’ brazen action last year on Obama’s nominee clouds the current debate.
Both sides should acknowledge what is really going on: Republicans refused to consider Garland for purely political reasons; Democrats are going to filibuster Gorsuch for similarly partisan justifications.
This state of affairs shows that the Supreme Court confirmation process is broken. As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg herself recognized, some Republican senators who voted to confirm her in 1993 “today wouldn’t touch me with a 10-foot pole.” The Senate voted to confirm Ginsburg by a 96-3 vote. That kind of bipartisanship on Supreme Court nominees is unfathomable today.

What can we do to fix the problem? For one, senators on both sides need to start telling the truth about their real motivations. Republicans should not hide behind a false claim that the Senate treated Obama’s nominees fairly.

Democrats should acknowledge that their filibuster of Gorsuch is directly related to the Republicans’ failure to consider Garland. Actually telling the truth — which should not be so unfathomable — will help voters discern whether to trust the current incumbents come the next election. Senators’ actions should have consequences, but it is difficult for average Americans to evaluate their senator’s activities without honest and accurate information.

In addition, Senate Republicans and the Trump White House should offer Democrats an olive branch. Perhaps it is an agreement to consider only names from a pre-approved list that the Democrats provide for the next vacancy. Maybe Republicans would agree to give Garland a vote if a liberal such as Ginsburg steps down. Or perhaps there is something else that would cause both sides to stand down.

And both because they are in the majority and because they were at fault last year by being so political with the Garland nomination to the Supreme Court, Republicans should be the first actors in a ceasefire. Although the confirmation process was already breaking down somewhat before last year, McConnell pushed it over the edge by refusing to consider Obama’s choice with almost a full year left in the presidential term.

Good leaders know how to compromise for the good of the country. McConnell should show his leadership skills. Both sides are obscuring their real motives for their partisan actions. Neither side’s spin is good for the country.

To get that message across to the Senate, let’s tell our representatives they must acknowledge what they are really doing and force them to account for their political power grabs. It would be the first step in fixing a truly broken process.

Dishonesty all around on Gorsuch

In an op-ed for The Arizona Republic, Sen. Jeff Flake declared, “Even President Obama’s two Supreme Court nominees were recognized for their ability to do the job and confirmed without incident.” Sen. John Cornyn of Texas quoted The Wall Street Journal when he tweeted, “Never in U.S. history have we had a successful partisan filibuster of a Supreme Court nominee.” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell accused Democrats of using “obstructionist tactics” to thwart the confirmation of Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court.

Their hypocrisy is palpable.

In referencing President Barack Obama’s “two” Supreme Court nominees, Flake is conveniently forgetting to tell his readers that Obama made three nominations to the Supreme Court, not two: Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, whom the Senate confirmed, and Judge Merrick Garland, whom Senate Republicans refused to consider even though Obama had almost a year left in his term.

Cornyn surely knows that Senate Republicans effectively engaged in a partisan filibuster of Garland’s nomination by refusing even to hold hearings.

And McConnell must recognize that he himself led “obstructionist tactics” to prevent Garland, as Obama’s nominee, from joining the court.

Regardless of the “alternative facts” the Republicans are peddling, we should all understand the GOP’s tactics last year in opposing Garland for what they were: a blatant power grab that ultimately worked.

For their part, Democratic senators who are opposing Gorsuch are not immune from this affliction. There is no principled reason to oppose Gorsuch beyond politics. On any objective measure he is qualified for the job. If Justice Antonin Scalia had passed away this past February, after President Donald Trump took office, then there would be little justification for Democrats to filibuster Gorsuch’s nomination. The Republicans’ brazen action last year on Obama’s nominee clouds the current debate.
Both sides should acknowledge what is really going on: Republicans refused to consider Garland for purely political reasons; Democrats are going to filibuster Gorsuch for similarly partisan justifications.
This state of affairs shows that the Supreme Court confirmation process is broken. As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg herself recognized, some Republican senators who voted to confirm her in 1993 “today wouldn’t touch me with a 10-foot pole.” The Senate voted to confirm Ginsburg by a 96-3 vote. That kind of bipartisanship on Supreme Court nominees is unfathomable today.

What can we do to fix the problem? For one, senators on both sides need to start telling the truth about their real motivations. Republicans should not hide behind a false claim that the Senate treated Obama’s nominees fairly.

Democrats should acknowledge that their filibuster of Gorsuch is directly related to the Republicans’ failure to consider Garland. Actually telling the truth — which should not be so unfathomable — will help voters discern whether to trust the current incumbents come the next election. Senators’ actions should have consequences, but it is difficult for average Americans to evaluate their senator’s activities without honest and accurate information.

In addition, Senate Republicans and the Trump White House should offer Democrats an olive branch. Perhaps it is an agreement to consider only names from a pre-approved list that the Democrats provide for the next vacancy. Maybe Republicans would agree to give Garland a vote if a liberal such as Ginsburg steps down. Or perhaps there is something else that would cause both sides to stand down.

And both because they are in the majority and because they were at fault last year by being so political with the Garland nomination to the Supreme Court, Republicans should be the first actors in a ceasefire. Although the confirmation process was already breaking down somewhat before last year, McConnell pushed it over the edge by refusing to consider Obama’s choice with almost a full year left in the presidential term.

Good leaders know how to compromise for the good of the country. McConnell should show his leadership skills. Both sides are obscuring their real motives for their partisan actions. Neither side’s spin is good for the country.

To get that message across to the Senate, let’s tell our representatives they must acknowledge what they are really doing and force them to account for their political power grabs. It would be the first step in fixing a truly broken process.

Opinion: Dishonesty all around on Gorsuch

In an op-ed for The Arizona Republic, Sen. Jeff Flake declared, “Even President Obama’s two Supreme Court nominees were recognized for their ability to do the job and confirmed without incident.” Sen. John Cornyn of Texas quoted The Wall Street Journal when he tweeted, “Never in U.S. history have we had a successful partisan filibuster of a Supreme Court nominee.” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell accused Democrats of using “obstructionist tactics” to thwart the confirmation of Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court.

Their hypocrisy is palpable.

In referencing President Barack Obama’s “two” Supreme Court nominees, Flake is conveniently forgetting to tell his readers that Obama made three nominations to the Supreme Court, not two: Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, whom the Senate confirmed, and Judge Merrick Garland, whom Senate Republicans refused to consider even though Obama had almost a year left in his term.

Cornyn surely knows that Senate Republicans effectively engaged in a partisan filibuster of Garland’s nomination by refusing even to hold hearings.

And McConnell must recognize that he himself led “obstructionist tactics” to prevent Garland, as Obama’s nominee, from joining the court.

Regardless of the “alternative facts” the Republicans are peddling, we should all understand the GOP’s tactics last year in opposing Garland for what they were: a blatant power grab that ultimately worked.

For their part, Democratic senators who are opposing Gorsuch are not immune from this affliction. There is no principled reason to oppose Gorsuch beyond politics. On any objective measure he is qualified for the job. If Justice Antonin Scalia had passed away this past February, after President Donald Trump took office, then there would be little justification for Democrats to filibuster Gorsuch’s nomination. The Republicans’ brazen action last year on Obama’s nominee clouds the current debate.
Both sides should acknowledge what is really going on: Republicans refused to consider Garland for purely political reasons; Democrats are going to filibuster Gorsuch for similarly partisan justifications.
This state of affairs shows that the Supreme Court confirmation process is broken. As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg herself recognized, some Republican senators who voted to confirm her in 1993 “today wouldn’t touch me with a 10-foot pole.” The Senate voted to confirm Ginsburg by a 96-3 vote. That kind of bipartisanship on Supreme Court nominees is unfathomable today.

What can we do to fix the problem? For one, senators on both sides need to start telling the truth about their real motivations. Republicans should not hide behind a false claim that the Senate treated Obama’s nominees fairly.

Democrats should acknowledge that their filibuster of Gorsuch is directly related to the Republicans’ failure to consider Garland. Actually telling the truth — which should not be so unfathomable — will help voters discern whether to trust the current incumbents come the next election. Senators’ actions should have consequences, but it is difficult for average Americans to evaluate their senator’s activities without honest and accurate information.

In addition, Senate Republicans and the Trump White House should offer Democrats an olive branch. Perhaps it is an agreement to consider only names from a pre-approved list that the Democrats provide for the next vacancy. Maybe Republicans would agree to give Garland a vote if a liberal such as Ginsburg steps down. Or perhaps there is something else that would cause both sides to stand down.

And both because they are in the majority and because they were at fault last year by being so political with the Garland nomination to the Supreme Court, Republicans should be the first actors in a ceasefire. Although the confirmation process was already breaking down somewhat before last year, McConnell pushed it over the edge by refusing to consider Obama’s choice with almost a full year left in the presidential term.

Good leaders know how to compromise for the good of the country. McConnell should show his leadership skills. Both sides are obscuring their real motives for their partisan actions. Neither side’s spin is good for the country.

To get that message across to the Senate, let’s tell our representatives they must acknowledge what they are really doing and force them to account for their political power grabs. It would be the first step in fixing a truly broken process.

Sean Spicer’s shameful scapegoating

One of the alleged assailants was an undocumented immigrant from Guatemala. “I think part of the reason the President has made illegal immigration and crackdown such a big deal is because of tragedies like this,” Spicer said.

If the allegations in the Rockville case are true, they represent a horrific case of sexual assault. Nothing more, nothing less. The alleged incident should not be conflated with the immigration debate and should not be manipulated for political purposes. The fact is, immigration status actually has little to do with violent crime.

Asked about the Rockville High case at a press briefing, Spicer said, “The President recognizes that education is a state-run and a local-run issue but I think it is — it is cause for concern, what happened there. And I think that the city should look at its policies and I think that this is something that authorities are going to have to look at.”

Spicer seems to suggest that the undocumented student accused of raping his classmate did not belong in school. But this is not a matter of any city “policies” that “authorities” should examine. In 1982, the Supreme Court ruled in Plyler v. Doe that all children, including the undocumented, have a right to a public education.
State laws require young people to be in school (where, in any case, they have a much better chance of avoiding criminal activity to begin with). No one should be criticizing Montgomery County for meeting its legal obligations to students.
What is troubling is how the Trump administration leaps at this chance — and any other like it — to advance the false idea that undocumented immigrants are dangerous criminals. For his address to Congress last month, for example, President Trump invited several people whose family members had been killed by undocumented immigrants. In that speech, the President announced the creation of a new office within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that will highlight crimes committed by undocumented immigrants. And on Thursday, the Department of Justice released the annual federal justice statistics, with a focus on immigration-related arrests.
However, research has consistently shown that that immigrants, including the undocumented, are associated with lower levels of crime than native-born Americans. Studies by the American Immigration Council, the Marshall Project, the Cato Institute and criminologists all support this conclusion.
So Americans are more likely to be the victim of a crime committed by a fellow citizen than by an undocumented immigrant. The alleged assailant in the Rockville High case is no more representative of all undocumented immigrants than the Border Patrol agent accused of sexually assaulting two sisters is representative of all border patrol agents.
One byproduct of the rhetoric surrounding the Rockville High incident is that Montgomery County Public Schools district, where the school is situated, has been besieged by threatening and xenophobic phone calls, tweets and emails. One caller threatened to burn down the school; another vowed to “shoot the illegals.”
How sad that for so many individuals, their response to reports of an unacceptable act of violence is to threaten more violence. And consider that some of these individuals who are so angry about the sexual assault allegations against an undocumented immigrant may well have supported a President with his own lengthy history of sexual assault allegations.

Yes, perhaps the Rockville High attack might not have happened if the alleged perpetrator had not been in this country without authorization. But we don’t know that — just as we don’t know yet if the allegations are in fact true. If we believe in the presumption of innocence, the cornerstone of our justice system, we should withhold judgment until the case has been tried in a court of law.

In the meantime, the focus of our concern should be our need for safer schools. Although the alleged attack by an undocumented student has generated outrage from everyone from Fox News host Bill O’Reilly to Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, it is not the first such incident.
In the last school year, there were 250 sex-related “serious incidents” in the Montgomery County Public Schools district, 64 of which resulted in calls to police. Should one victim receive more attention because her attacker happened to be undocumented? Of course not. The same holds true for other cases across the country involving students who are victims of sexual assault. Crime is crime, and all of these cases deserve a complete investigation.

The Trump administration is wrong to play the blame game with undocumented immigrants. Crime victims need support, not scapegoats.

It’s time for Devin Nunes to step down

Story highlights

  • Paul Callan: Democrats and others want intelligence committee chair to resign for odd late-night visit to White House
  • Callan: Nunes should do so; US has right to expect more circumspect behavior from head of committee in charge of America’s secrets

In the full technicolor version of this fantasy, the cuffs would next be fastened on Trump, ending the progressives’ enduring Trumpian nightmare.

It’s clear that a lot more information is required before anyone can fairly judge the propriety and legality of Nunes’ actions. What we do know is that shortly after this visit to view classified information, Nunes perhaps surprised even the President by requesting a meeting. He failed to tell the House Intelligence Committee about this meeting with the President, an action for which he recently apologized.

Nunes tried to explain all of this to Wolf Blitzer earlier today, fielding specific questions about the White House visit. The chairman hedged on some questions and flatly declined to answer other inquiries, invoking the need to protect “sources and methods” and still “classified” information.

As chairman of the intelligence committee, enjoying among the highest of security clearances, the chairman would clearly be committing a crime if he publicly disclosed classified information. Answers that appear to be specious and deceptive may fit that description or in fact just be an intelligence chairman trying to protect classified information as well as “sources and methods.” This can only be legally evaluated when more is known about the contents of the mysterious documents that are now causing such a controversy on Capitol Hill.

Many Democratic members of the House Intelligence Committee as well as others in Congress, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, are calling for Nunes’ resignation, or recusal from any further role in the House committee’s investigation of the Trump campaign’s contacts with the Russians and the issues relating to the President’s Twitter-announced claim that President Obama ordered wiretaps on Trump Tower.

Nunes should seriously consider stepping aside, as his own actions have now become the center of an ever-widening and distracting controversy.

Though at this point there is no evidence that the chairman acted illegally, the country has the right to expect far more circumspect behavior from the chairman of the House committee in charge of America’s secrets. It’s a little late for him to be learning that secrecy is paramount in the business of investigating the intelligence community.

The missteps of Nunes and the inappropriate tweets of the President appear to be drawing both men into the dark fantasies of Trump opponents across the country. One lesson they both should have learned by now is that the denizens of America’s spy apparatus are nicknamed “spooks” for good reason.

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