{"id":22472,"date":"2016-07-31T10:24:10","date_gmt":"2016-07-31T17:24:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/69.46.6.243\/?p=22472"},"modified":"2016-07-31T10:24:10","modified_gmt":"2016-07-31T17:24:10","slug":"weekly-address-its-time-to-fill-the-vacancy-on-the-supreme-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/?p=22472","title":{"rendered":"Weekly Address: It\u2019s Time to Fill the Vacancy on the Supreme Court"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Washington, DC&#8230;Remarks of Vice President Joe Biden and Retired Federal Judge Timothy Lewis as Prepared for Delivery.  THE VICE PRESIDENT: Hi, folks. Joe Biden here and I\u2019m sitting with Tim Lewis, a retired federal judge who was nominated to the bench by a Republican President and confirmed by a Democratic Senate\u2014within four weeks of a presidential election. JUDGE LEWIS: Hello, everyone. That\u2019s right. And I\u2019m living proof that President Obama\u2019s nominee to the Supreme Court\u2014Chief Judge Merrick Garland\u2014deserves similar consideration by today\u2019s Senate.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/hOmJPO9n2AY\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>THE VICE PRESIDENT: Not only because Merrick Garland is recognized\u2014without exception\u2014by the right and the left as one of America\u2019s sharpest legal minds and a model of integrity.<\/p>\n<p>JUDGE LEWIS: But also because that\u2019s what the Constitution requires. The sitting President shall\u2014not may\u2014but shall nominate someone to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court, with the advice and consent of the Senate.  That includes consulting and voting. <\/p>\n<p>THE VICE PRESIDENT: Here\u2019s how it works. For 17 years, I was chairman or ranking member of Senate Judiciary Committee, which overseas nominations to the Court. I presided over nine total nominations\u2014more than anyone alive. Some I supported. Others I didn\u2019t. But every nominee was greeted by committee members.  Every nominee got a committee hearing.  Every nominee got out of the committee to the Senate floor, even when a nominee did not receive majority support in my committee.  And every nominee, including Justice Kennedy\u2014in an election year\u2014got an up or down vote by the Senate. Not much of the time. Not most of the time. Every single time. That\u2019s the Constitution\u2019s clear rule of Advice and Consent. And that\u2019s the rule being violated today by Senate Republicans.<\/p>\n<p>Nobody is suggesting that Senators have to vote \u201cyes\u201d on a nominee. Voting \u201cno\u201d is always an option. But saying nothing, seeing nothing, reading nothing, hearing nothing, and deciding in advance simply to turn your backs\u2014is not an option the Constitution leaves open.<\/p>\n<p>JUDGE LEWIS: And it has real consequences for all of us. In the four months since Merrick Garland\u2019s nomination, we\u2019ve already seen how the Senate\u2019s refusal to act is preventing the Court from fulfilling its duty of interpreting what the law is and resolving conflicts in lower courts. Historic obstruction is leading to greater litigation costs and delays\u2014the burden falling mostly on average Americans rather than corporations with endless resources. Unresolved decisions by the Supreme Court are leading to federal laws that should apply to the whole country being constitutional in some parts but unconstitutional in others. If this continues, our freedom of speech, our freedom to practice our faith, our right to vote, our right to privacy\u2014all could depend on where we happen to live. <\/p>\n<p>THE VICE PRESIDENT: And the longer the vacancy remains unfilled, the more serious the problem\u2014with greater confusion and uncertainty about our safety and security. If you have eight Justices on a case, Justice Scalia himself wrote, that it raises the, \u201cpossibility that, by reason of a tie vote, the Court will find itself unable to resolve the significant legal issue presented by the case.\u201d  And if Republican Senators fail to act, it could be an entire year before a fully staffed Supreme Court can resolve any significant issue before it.<\/p>\n<p>Folks, there\u2019s enough dysfunction in Washington, D.C. Now is not the time for it to spread to the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n<p>JUDGE LEWIS: And we\u2019re better than what we\u2019re seeing. As a country, we\u2019re only as strong as the traditions we value\u2014that we sustain by dedicating ourselves to something bigger than ourselves. <\/p>\n<p>THE VICE PRESIDENT: Folks, the defining difference of our great democracy has always been that we can reason our way through to what ails us and then act as citizens, voters, and public servants to fix it. But we have to act in good faith.  For unless we find common ground, we cannot govern. For the sake of the country we love\u2014we all have to do our job. The President has done his. Senate Republicans must do theirs.<\/p>\n<p>Thanks for listening and have a great weekend.<\/p>\n<p>###<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Washington, DC&#8230;Remarks of Vice President Joe Biden and Retired Federal Judge Timothy Lewis as Prepared for Delivery. THE VICE PRESIDENT: Hi, folks. Joe Biden here and I\u2019m sitting with Tim Lewis, a retired federal judge who was nominated to the bench by a Republican President and confirmed by a Democratic Senate\u2014within four weeks of a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22473,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_cbd_carousel_blocks":"[]","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,5,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-government","category-news","last_archivepost"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Fullscreen-capture-7312016-92734-AM.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22472\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/22473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}