Tonight finds me outside Rochester. I’ll be headed down into New Jersey in the morning come around 5 o’clock or so. They got some serious weather down there right now, and I’m hearing from people in various places across the mid section of the eastern seaboard, that the weather is terrible flights are being cancelled the driving is horrendous and so on. It’s all part of the game for me of course, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. There are times I’d just as soon not drive and tomorrow is one of them.
As it happens I’m here because of a minor malfunction that popped up in the truck. I’ll have to deal with it for a couple of days because the rest of the system is still scrambling trying to get everything together from that cold snap we had up here yesterday. As you may know, diesel fuel has a tendency to freeze and truly mess things up. Well that’s what happened for the majority of our fleet, & I gather from drivers from other lines that we are not alone. Again, it’s part of the game, particularly this time of year.
Valentine’s Day passed this year almost on March in our family. That is sad because Donna deserves better than that. Given the proximity of Valentine’s Day to her birthday though its always ended up being less of a celebration for us and then it might have been. It’s usually us going out for a weekend to celebrate both days.
I cherish the time that she and I have together, but I must confess that’s this job I have takes a lot out of a body, & I always feel a little guilty that I wasn’t able to spend as much time awake and alert with the family as I might have been otherwise. They understand, and all that, but still. Again, part of the game I suppose.
Sigh.
Onto other matters…
[1]
This evening I note the passage of one of the greats of the Supreme Court, Justice Antonin Scalia. Ronald Reagan certainly knew what he was doing when he nominated him to the court some time ago.
Beyond that, I will leave the task of praising Scalia and his work to others who will certainly do so… and it is right that they should.
But at this stage, it is my opinion that Scalia’s passing puts an even sharper focus on the upcoming election and its results, and it’s this that I want to concentrate on here tonight.
First of all, the rare occurrence of my agreement with Mitch McConnell is noteworthy. McConnell suggests that it’s a good idea for us to hold off on appointing a new justice until such time as the election goes past us. In other words, to leave the election to decide the type of justice that we shall have to install his place. Personally I wonder if Mitch McConnell and the remainder of the Republican Senate have the testicular mass to stick to that idea. Time will tell, but I’m somewhat skeptical.
Speaking of skepticism, I will admit that there is a certain part of me that considers the timing of Scalia’s passing to be too damned convenient for it not to have been arranged. Occam’s razor cuts two ways on this one. First, it can be easily said that Scalia’s passing certainly benefits the left, because it allows a stone cold left as president to appoint a stone cold leftist jurist, and, given the current balance of the court, completely change that balance. Moreover with the GOPs record of bending over forward to give Obama everything he wants it seems to me that the chances are extremely high that such an appointment would go through.
[2]
On the other hand it also seems to me that if the Senate and McConnell and the other leaders in Congress in particular have the guts to stand up to Obama and reject anything he sends down until such time as the election goes past, then we have a decent chance of not only taking the White House but also ending up with another strict constitutionalist in the chair just vacated by Scalia.
Not to put too fine an edge on it, I will say that if we fail to replace Scalia with someone of his like and way of thinking, we will lose the country.
Recognizing this I refuse to believe that others don’t understand what’s at stake here, and therefore it seems to me also that this would be a gigantic get out the vote aid for the GOP. With something on the order of 30% of the country thinking that is too conservative, or put another way the vast majority of Americans appreciating a conservative court and perhaps a majority of them also wanting a more conservative court it doesn’t take a brain surgeon to see which way this next election is going to go if the point of Supreme Court justice appointments is made essential point in the campaigns.
Then again, the record of the GOP on this matter hasn’t been all that great lately. We’ve ended up with several appointees to the Supreme Court who turned out to be far more left-leaning then was needed and certainly left leaning enough to catch the president Who nominated them by surprise. Consider Anthony Kennedy, who recently opened that the Constitution is a Floyd documents, as an example… Consider also the chief justice.
It’s my guess that the White House will be exerting all kinds of pressure on each individual senator, trying to get Obama’s sure to be liberal candidate on to the court.
Of course there is President or Congress not wanting to approve any one this far along in a lame duck presidency. Ponder for example the specter of Chuckles the Clown Schumer [3].
Of course, there was more president than that, even. As David French says… [4]
Does any sentient human being believe that if the Democrats had the Senate majority in the final year of a conservative president’s second term — and Justice Ginsburg’s seat came open — they would approve any nominee from that president? Further, does any sentient human being believe that the Democrats’ behavior in 1987-88 — when they engaged in shameful character assassination against Robert Bork before finally confirming Anthony Kennedy — represented Democratic cooperation with President Reagan?
Indeed. And consider also the character assassination tossed by the Democrats at Justice Thomas.
We will hear much wailing and gnashing of teeth from the left, and from Obama specifically over the supposedly obstructionist Republicans. He will do anything he can to secure whatever is left of his legacy. But he must not succeed, else we have lost the country, game over. What Reagan called the last best hope for freedom this planet has, will be gone.
Say what you will about the idea that the death of Antonin Scalia was arranged, that could go either way. As I say, I think it’s awfully convenient, him passing on just now. And the circumstances along with the lack of an autopsy strike me as suspicious. But what strikes me as interesting and indicative of the level of trust that Obama currently has from the American people is that a large portion of the American people wouldn’t put such an execution past him. Or his fellow travelers.
That, I think, is the measure of the last 8 years.
And down the road I go. I’ll see you tomorrow.