Patterico's Pontifications

3/23/2017

Sen. Chuck Schumer Apparently Not Too Interested In Making Sure The People’s Business Is Getting Done

Filed under: General — Dana @ 9:05 am



[guest post by Dana]

This morning, Sen. Chuck Schumer announced that he’s a “no” on Judge Gorsuch:

Untitled

Reminding us of that this is yet more partisan hypocrisy, here’s what Sen. Schumer had to say back in January when the Senate Republicans exercised their prerogative not to give President Obama’s nominee a hearing:

“The Supreme Court handles ‘the people’s business,’ as President Reagan put it. Every day that goes by without a ninth justice is another day the American people’s business is not getting done.”

Sen. Schumer’s grandstanding notwithstanding, Allahpundit points out:

In this year of all years, with the left pushing Schumer to filibuster Gorsuch on principle to avenge Merrick Garland’s honor or whatever, Gorsuch should want to present himself as being as unobjectionable as humanly possible. That way, if Schumer filibusters anyway, McConnell can nuke the filibuster with little political problem: Judge Gorsuch is eminently qualified, he’ll say (correctly), he gave not a single answer at his hearing that would disqualify him from this position (also correct), therefore Schumer’s obstruction is petulant and illegitimate and deserves to be overridden with brute force.

(Cross-posted at The Jury Talks Back.)

–Dana

42 Responses to “Sen. Chuck Schumer Apparently Not Too Interested In Making Sure The People’s Business Is Getting Done”

  1. Good morning.

    Dana (023079)

  2. The people of New York are so proud. Good thing the Donald supported those New York Values. /s

    A lot of good it did him in the end.

    Dejectedhead (fe2318)

  3. Let me shorten this up a bit:

    “Judge Gorsuch is eminently qualified, he’ll say (correctly), he gave not a single answer at his hearing that would disqualify him from this position (also correct), and therefore Schumer’s obstruction is petulant and illegitimate and deserves to be overridden with brute force.

    Leviticus (efada1)

  4. Much like the 50+ votes to repeal obamacare, this is designed to appeal to the base.

    Davethulhu (fab944)

  5. Hi, Dana.

    I really don’t give much of a damn what Schumer has to say. I guess we should all be impressed by the way he didn’t pull a Franken yesterday. “Careful deliberation”, my fat white as*. The only thing he deliberated was tuna melt or the pastrami for lunch yesterday.

    Bill H (383c5d)

  6. since the 1930s when walter duranty and paul robeson were expressing sympathy for stalin, we’ve failed to incite The Lefties to become suspicious of the soviets/russians

    churchill failed to incite them. eisenhower failed to incite them. kennedy failed to incite them. reagan failed to incite them.

    but president mr donald has finally incited The Lefties to become suspicious of the russians
    well done, mr president

    now if we can only figure out a way to incite The Lefties to become suspicious of jihadists
    not even shooting up a gay nightclub in orlando managed to get The Lefties angry, so we know we have an uphill climb

    Cruz Supporter (102c9a)

  7. Where is all that coming from, CS? The article is about Schumer stating his obvious position on Gorsuch, not Commies, Jihadis, or the “failures” of various conservative politicians.

    Bill H (383c5d)

  8. Recall Schumer was the one who held comey’s,leash who ranked Indy bank, whose committee leaked Michael steele’s credit report.

    narciso (034dee)

  9. His business was the Iran deal for which he met with kisyak

    narciso (034dee)

  10. Does anyone in the government these days care about getting the people’s business done?

    Marci (e5bb26)

  11. Yes. The US Army, Marines, Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard. After that it’s anyone’s guess, Marci.

    Rev. Hoagie® (785e38)

  12. R.I.P. Sib Hashian, drummer on the albums “Boston” and “Don’t Look Back” by Boston

    Icy (a1e560)

  13. #7 bill h

    i wasn’t commenting on chuckie schumer
    duh

    Cruz Supporter (102c9a)

  14. Sen. Schumer proves without a doubt that ALL members of the Senate and House be required to take an IQ test as soon as possible. If they fall into the Moron class (IQ under 100) they should be suspended from their duties until they can bring their IQ’s to the level of most of the American people. (Above 100)

    George Schuitt (4b32d9)

  15. Chuckie’s tweet is word-for-word identical to the one sent out by Mitch McConnell about Garland after his hearings.

    Oh. wait. That’s right, Garland didn’t even receive that courtesy.

    “Righteous! Righteous!” – Crush the Turtle ‘Finding Nemo’ 2003

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  16. “Oh. wait. That’s right, Garland didn’t even receive that courtesy.”

    “Cry me a river…” Joe Cocker, Mad Dogs and Englishmen

    Colonel Haiku (8d00c4)

  17. Schumer is not supporting Gorsuch the way he didn’t support the Iran deal – he’s only speaking about his personal vote. He’s not saying he is going to go all out to stop it.

    Sammy Finkelman (3ea6b3)

  18. @16.Oh no, Colonel. Julie London. Smooooth as 50 year old scotch.

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  19. The thing is, we know these hearings are platforms for political grandstanding as Schumer has reminded us. While this is nothing new, it’s nonetheless an unfortunate reflection of where we’re at now .

    Dana (8de1c4)

  20. A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…

    Sen. Mitch McConnell Apparently Not Too Interested In Making Sure The People’s Business Is Getting Done

    “It’s deja vu all over again.” – Yogi Berra, NY Yankees

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  21. Tweet from Ashley Rae:

    “Spicer just nailed CNN. He said “there’s more evidence that CNN colluded with Hillary and her campaign than Trump colluded with Russia.”

    Harkin (b2805d)

  22. I’d go with “Grandstanding Schmuck” whenever I think about Chuck You Schumer.

    Skeptical Voter (1d5c8b)

  23. To compare the completely unprecedented act of refusing to hear a Supreme Court nominee to the entirely normal behavior of opposing a nominee – even to the point of filibustering – is one helluva stretch.

    I don’t think you can call it hypocrisy to feel one way about apples and a another way about Stradivarius violins.

    TR (167a32)

  24. obama was such a nasty person people were just sick of his dirty socialist ass by the time he nominated filthy harvardtrash loser judge garland merrick

    but that’s water under the bridge now

    happyfeet (a037ad)

  25. Thanks for admitting that.

    TR (167a32)

  26. I think the whole thing is Bush’s fault!

    Rev. Hoagie® (785e38)

  27. Perhaps the dank meme creator doesn’t know what a wiretap is.

    Davethulhu (fab944)

  28. “I was not wiretapped, my parents were not wiretapped, which is where you place a listening device on someone’s telephone line and you listen to their conversations” – James Rosen

    Davethulhu (fab944)

  29. yes yes you are welcome

    happyfeet (a037ad)

  30. “What happened to me was that the Attorney General, Eric Holder, under Barack Obama as president secretly designated me a criminal co-conspirator and a flight risk and thereby had a federal judge give the government permission to rifle through all my gmails. They could read the emails, and then also to get all the phone records associated with about 20 phones that I used at that time in my reporting. All of those phone lines were 202 or 703, which are the area codes associated with Washington and the Pentagon, northern Virginia area. One of those 20 phone lines was 718 and that referred to my parent’s house on Staten Island at that time.”

    — James Rosen

    Colonel Haiku (8d00c4)

  31. Now you have… teh rest of teh story……………………………. Good day!!!

    Colonel Haiku (8d00c4)

  32. Go chuck yourself shumer

    mg (31009b)

  33. ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
    Nantucket is being destroyed by the crimaleins.” Sanctuary Island”

    mg (31009b)

  34. That’s not a wiretap.

    Davethulhu (fab944)

  35. 31. OIt;s the akkk too common practice of prosecutors saying whatever they need tosay to a court to get judge to do what they want.

    Technically, they had a right to call him a criminal co-conspirator – although they had no intention of prosecuting him – but they had no basis for calling him a flight risk except maybe general principles, which really didn’t apply here.

    Sammy Finkelman (3ea6b3)

  36. #7 bill h

    i wasn’t commenting on chuckie schumer
    duh

    Cruz Supporter (102c9a) — 3/23/2017 @ 11:20 am

    Oh, thank the Lord, I thought I had skipped an entire section of the article. It was just you going way the hell off topic.

    Bill H (383c5d)

  37. I watched all of Judge Gorsuch’s testimony. He was terrific — invariably courteous and patient whether confronted with tedium, idiocy, or tedious idiot; warm, occasionally a little bit funny himself, but far more often laughing with genuine good nature and sincerity at others’ jests and bon mots; and keeping the hay where the goats could reach it.

    By that last, I mean that when he was engaged on a light level, that’s how he responded. When engaged in gritty detail, he had all the granular answers. If you wanted to talk about the Equal Protection Clause as viewed from 40,000 feet, he could do that; if you wanted to talk about major SCOTUS precedents, he could do that; and if you wanted to get into the deepest weeds, the utter law wonk stuff, he obviously loved doing that.

    He is vigorous; he looks healthy, like the 49-year-old skier and athlete he is. He’s quite charming without a bit of smarm.

    The part that made me laugh the hardest was, of course, his interchanges with Sen. Al Franken (D-MN), who had the execrable judgment to try to lecture Judge Gorsuch about the “absurdity exception” to the “plain meaning rule” of statutory interpretation. Franken insisted that Judge Gorsuch’s judgment is untrustworthy because the result he supported in an employment law case was “absurd.” He read aloud, out of context, something he’d found, or more likely that some other idiot had found and fed to Franken, which was later identified as some sort of continuing legal education conference paper — a dumbed-down summary version of the law as delivered mostly by practitioners for other practitioners in order to keep their licensure current. I’m not knocking CLE papers — I’ve written and delivered them, and read a bunch more — but their quality is decidedly spotty, and only an absolute moron would try to use such a source to contradict a sitting U.S. Circuit Judge or any judge anywhere, much less someone of Gorsuch’s depth and knowledge. It would be roughly as appropriate as trying to lecture Stephen Hawking about physics using a 7th grade science textbook.

    The video clip begins with Franken delivering his legal lecture with great haughtiness, as if he’s caught Judge Gorsuch in an obvious blunder; but then Franken immediately pivots away from that — trying not to give Judge Gorsuch an opportunity to respond about the “absurdity exception” — by re-voicing the Dems’ tired complaints about how awful it was that Judge Garland never got his confirmation hearings (a topic on which Judge Gorsuch graciously resolutely refused to engage on each of the 1,102 occasions a Democratic senator tried to bait him into that). Judge Gorsuch didn’t let him get away with that, and gave a quick but legally thorough and correct explanation of why Franken was mistaken. It was a mild rebuke, delivered without any of the withering sarcasm that I couldn’t have helped myself from using; in fact, I’d doubtless have used another SNL catch-phrase if I’d been in Judge Gorsuch’s shoes, and would have finished my rebuke with: “So that’s why you’re wrong, Al, you ignorant slut!”

    Beldar (fa637a)

  38. Our host has written about the plain meaning doctrine before, in connection with Burwell if I recall correctly. Perhaps he’ll weigh in on Franken and the absurdity exception.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  39. This Burwell, that is to say, the Obamacare state exchanges decision. Sorry, I was being a law nerd again.

    Franken was idiotic, but I have a new favorite-most-nasty Dem senator now, a worthy successor to Harry Reid just for sheer malice and vile, malign, deliberate deception: Mazie Hirono (D-HI). She came near the end of each round of questioning, and it was all bile and campaign politics, indistinguishable from what you’d hear from Rachel Maddow. I’ve never seen a politician obviously try so hard to project so much contempt and superiority with so pitifully little basis. I feel sorry for her dog, if she has one; her dog should run away.

    Watching these hearings is the quickest way to figure out how much smarter a SCOTUS nominee is than the average U.S. senator. To use a sports metaphor, this was like watching a bunch of fourth graders trying to tackle Earl Campbell during his Heisman Trophy season at Texas in 1977, or in that Oilers-Miami NFL game: You know they can’t tackle him, and he ends up being kind of gentle before it’s over, mostly to make sure they don’t hurt themselves too badly while they fling themselves against him without effect.

    Beldar (fa637a)

  40. WHEN HAS cHUCKIE CAREFULLY DELIBERATED ANYTHING?? tHE DEMS HAVE HAD MANY HENCHMEN FILLING TH ROLE OF ‘WHOSE TURN IS IT TO OFFICIALLY SLaM ALL THING REPUBLICAN?, cHUCKIE IS JUST THE LATEST ITERATION, WITH NO MORE INTELLCCTUAL HEFT THAN THE LAST DOZEN, A LOW BAR I KNOW, BUT EVEN A BAR ON THE GROUND IS A GRAND HEIGHT TO THIS THE CURRENT BOZO.

    NECON_1 (4d97ca)

  41. Its pretty clear that the Democrats are now so much the hostage of their few billionaire left wing money men, the George Soros wing of the party, that they will do stupid things to prance around for them.

    Its like George Soros put a stripper pole in the middle of the Senate chambers.

    SPQR (a3a747)


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