First we had Republicans saying there was no need for President Obama to nominate a replacement for the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia because they didn’t trust a lame duck President to make a good appointment. Then we had the GOP saying the President just wanted to pack the high court with a progressive jurist. And now we have a right-wing nutjob lawyer saying the vacant seat should be left open because nine justices is too many.
Dean Reuter is a member of the Federalist Society, and he went on Newsmax TV to suggest:
“There’s no time limit in the Constitution, and there’s nothing magical about there being nine justices.”
Nothing magical? So we just wind up with a bunch of 4-4 decisions that accomplish nothing? More stalemate from the GOP, which they seem to specialize in.
While he was making an absolute fool of himself, Reuter also said:
“The country started out with six justices, we’ve had as many as ten at some point in time. As recently as 2010, when Justice Elena Kagan came on the Court, she had been solicitor general so she recused herself in over a third of the cases (so) I don’t see a sense of urgency.”
Hey, why not just have one justice? We could call him or her the Great High Potentate Legal Eagle and what that person says goes. Bet Reuter would have a big problem with that if the one justice left was Ruth Bader Ginsburg. He’d be shrieking like a banshee and saying the nation had descended into tyranny.
But Reuter was not yet finished with his lesson in deeply flawed logic, also noting:
“The Senate is perfectly well within its prerogative, even the proper understanding of checks and balances, it can easily be said that the role of the Senate is to check the president’s power in this instance, the appointment power, especially I think when you’re dealing with a third branch of government and a lifetime appointment.”
Conservatives just love to talk about how we all need to read, understand, and follow what the Constitution says, but then they conveniently forget their own advice when they realize they cannot get their way. How convenient and how utterly foolish.
Here’s Reuter Pretending He Understands the Constitution:
Featured Image Via Newsmax TV Screenshot
