Tonight…
[BUMPED UP–scroll down to see UPDATE]
…Trump will announce his SCOTUS pick.
Who will it be? There’s plenty of speculation, but I won’t be guessing.
You can try, though, in the comment thread.
UPDATE: It’s Brett Kavanaugh.
The Democrats have their talking points all prepared. His academic credentials are, as they say, impeccable, but I’m they’ll find plenty of reason to make him into the devil incarnate (the Catholic devil incarnate). By the way, Trump gave a nice speech of introduction, and emphasized that Kavanaugh clerked for Kennedy. Ha! Won’t this preserve the “balance” on which the Democrats are so intent?
Thomas Hardiman.
Alex Jones. Ted Cruz.
That prosecutor guy in Congress that is popular on CNET youtube.
All the indicators point to Hardiman.
The latest update has Kavanaugh and Hardiman as the two finalists. I think giving Kavanaugh consideration is a red herring; a sop to GOPe and the Bushies. In the end, Trump almost always goes with people he personally likes and trusts (reportedly he has good rapport with Hardiman). He also relies heavily on family for advice (Hardiman is the choice of the President’s sister).
Justice Hardiman. A solid conservative, and a very good choice.
The WSJ editors are pushing hard for Kavanaugh, so for that reason alone (maybe another one too) I hope it is not him.
Awww… c’mon Neo… take a shot.
Here’s Stilton’s surprise nominee.
http://stiltonsplace.blogspot.com/2018/07/nom-nom-nom.html
Won’t be me.
vanderleun:
You cannot tempt me.
Best comment on this pick I’ve seen all day is:
“Hillary Clinton will not be announcing her second Supreme Court appointment on July 9th 2018”
Neo, don’t you think the time is right to put the fourth female on the court?
Hardiman.
The proper time to nominate Amy Coney Barrett would be to replace RBG. Let hope this will happen soon.
As long as it’s not another Souter or Kennedy…
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/07/campus-liberals-denounce-trumps-supreme-court-pick.php
“You may not know whom President Trump will appoint to the Supreme Court, but liberal students do. Or think they do, anyway. Campus Reform–an excellent organization, by the way–asked a number of college students what they thought of the nominee whose selection Trump had announced. Their responses are entertaining:”
The important thing to notice is the date of this “poll” — Powerline carried the report yesterday.
My record as a prognosticator on matters public and political is quite well known, and remarkably poor. I therefore will predict only that Trump’s choice will be a lawyer, and a pretty well known one at that. Have to beef up my stats somehow…
Best argument I’ve seen for Barrett: forces Collins & Murkowski to align themselves with the Ds & become targets at re-election time. Also forces centrist Ds to consider their options if their states are leaning red.
Ginsburg told President Lincoln she would live forever. She’s good on her promise so far. So…Barrett now. Hardiman next.
But all I really know. Won’t be me.
Barrett
Watch the Pope, God, Oprah, Collins, Murkowski, La Raza, UNHCR, LIRS, Supreme Court, ALMO, and Planned Parenthood all align with ABCCBSNBCCNNMSNBC to reject the exremism of:
Barrett
Unless Trump picks someone the dems can live with and, especially if they are strongly conservative, I expect for enough RINOs to vote against Trump’s nominee to defeat them. If so, Trump’s reaction will be interesting. Will he then nominate a more liberal pick or will he pick someone even more conservative? If even more conservative and they in turn are down voted and Trump then doubles down… the dems and RINOs will have established a pattern of obstructionism. Which bodes ill for the dems and RINOs 2018 and 2020 electoral chances. I have to wonder if Trump is canny enough to be looking past a possible rejection of his nominee and if Schumer et al are astute enough to see the potential trap.
Ok…I hit .500
I was wrong about Barrett but completely right…it wasn’t me. 😉
Well, I whiffed on that one…
Kavanaugh is a decent choice. Better than Coney Barrett in my opinion, but Hardiman or Kethledge would have been better.
Regardless, barring some very unusual development, I expect he will be confirmed (through noisy, acrimonious, breast beating, hyperbole spewing hearings to be sure), and will be a solid, Gorsuchesque conservative.
So, in the end, very much a win.
Congratulations, Justice-designate Kavanaugh.
That Kavanaugh represented the family of Elian Gonzalez pro bono in their attempt to force a deportation hearing is enough to gain my support. An excellent conservative choice.
I don’t know what to think about Kavanaugh as I’m not familiar with his writings from the bench. However, I’d say about 95% of what I’ve heard from reliable experts at Heritage, the Federalist Society, National Review, and Cato is music to my ears.
What sticks in my craw are two things: clerking for Kennedy (yes, I’m aware Gorsuch did as well), and – far more significantly – the Obamacare stuff. Apparently there’s been a rational defense of what Kavanaugh did, written, I think, by one of his clerks (it’s on William Jacobson’s site). If it passes muster I’ll feel better, since I still maintain that what Roberts did was indefensible – so indefensible that even Kennedy, of all people, saw that it was indefensible – and leaves a deep stain on his record, his Court, our country, and my incredulous brain that will likely never go away.
The stinker just sits there like a miasma over constitutional jurisprudence, as Scalia duly noted in his dissent, ready to be bottled and sprayed by the next spineless coward forced to choose between reputation and right.
I just really don’t like that Kavanaugh had *anything* to do with that. At all. Even a little bit. Yes, it’s kind of a one-drop rule. I’m a bigot about the Obamacare ruling. I distrust anyone who played any part in it, however small.
I hope I’ve been misled and am simply paranoid because of my extreme contempt for that ruling (which consists in the adoption by a conservative Chief Justice of the progressive principle of rewriting laws and thus legislating from the bench – and good-bye Constitutionalism).
Please, Justice Kavanaugh, prove me a fool.
“I’m a bigot about the Obamacare ruling. I distrust anyone who played any part in it, however small.” Kolnai
Passed by Congress as not a tax, upheld by Roberts as a tax–indefensible!
But I remain hopeful when it comes to the SC appointments by President Trump. His list was the one positive reason I voted for him.
Have to disagree with Kolnai and Sharon W. Obamacare is a tax. It is a tax on the young and healthy to pay for the health care of the old and sick. Everybody knew, or should have known, that at the time. I’m old enough to remember Alfred Kahn, President Jimmuh Carter’s “inflation czar. President Smiley told him he couldn’t say “inflation,” so he called it “banana.” It was still inflation.
Unfortunately, no one in the judiciary was going to say, “Congress simply has no power to order people to have, and then define what kind of health insurance they had to have”. (Maybe now they will!)
That being the case, what to do? Reasonable minds can certainly differ, but I think it is reasonable for a judge to conclude, “it really is a tax, so we judge it by that standard.” If you go the other way, and start looking into what Congress said about O’care instead of what it really is, then you are opening the door for a court to say, “We don’t look at the actual terms of the travel suspension, but what the President called it, a Muslim ban, so we strike it down.”
That’s not a good thing.
If The Left can’t find anything “wrong” with his academic background they’ll find something. It could be anything: his looks, his cut and style of his suits, the way he speaks, his faith.
From that infamous “fake news” – satire site
https://babylonbee.com/news/ruth-bader-ginsburg-encased-in-carbonite-until-next-court-session/
I am somewhat befuddled why nobody mentioned an obvious thing: a conservative attitude of SCOTUS is not a bug, but a feature in a constitutional framework, where separation of powers is considered to be a central mechanism for check and balances, and Constitution itself as a restraint on possible overreach of both executive and legislative branches. The judical branch was never intended by the Framers to be an agent of social change, so why all this fuss about SC conservative majority?
They had talking points prepared ahead of time for ANY candidate Trump might have picked.
https://static.pjmedia.com/instapundit/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Screen-Shot-2018-07-10-at-8.21.10-AM-499×600.png
Some even jumped the gun and forgot to fill in all the fields in their “oppose XX for Supreme Court” form letters.
https://www.infowars.com/womens-march-mocked-for-calling-nominee-xx-an-extremist-in-pre-written-statement/