MySA:
Associate Justice Antonin Scalia was found dead of apparent natural causes Saturday on a luxury resort in West Texas, federal officials said.
Scalia, 79, was a guest at the Cibolo Creek Ranch, a resort in the Big Bend region south of Marfa.
According to a report, Scalia arrived at the ranch on Friday and attended a private party with about 40 people. When he did not appear for breakfast, a person associated with the ranch went to his room and found a body.
Chief U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia, of the Western Judicial District of Texas, was notified about the death from the U.S. Marshals Service.
U.S. District Judge Fred Biery said he was among those notified about Scalia’s death.
If McConnell and the rest of the GOPe had not already capitulated to everything Obama wanted, I might have been able to believe that GOP control of the Senate would prevent another worthless, racist, anti-American and anti-Constitutionist hack from being put onto SCOTUS by the most execrable piece of filth ever to befoul the Oval Office.
Burn down the Senate GOP phone lines and let them know that if they let another Sotomayor, Ginsberg, or Kagan onto SCOTUS, they will sign their political career death warrants. It would be too much, I think, to hope that the Senate will table any SCOTUS nomination votes until after Obama is finally removed from the levers of power. He’s already named 2 leftist hacks to the court.
God bless Justice Scalia. May God have mercy on us and block any further Obama evil.
It is a major motivation to take the White House in 2016 because there would have been at least one probable vacancy to fill. Fill those with two more Justices that think the Founders should have thought then like they do now and we are screwed as a nation. I would HOPE that the Republicans in the Senate would have enough patriotism to block any nominees until after the election. If a Democrat wins then, it’s over anyhow.
Do all seven Justices have to vote for a decision to be made?
There are 9 Supreme Court justices. Cases are decided by a simple majority. Cases can still be decided by a simple majority even if there is a current vacancy or if someone has excused themselves from voting by recusal, but if less than the full 9 members vote the decision does not establish a binding precedent.
Clarence Thomas is on suicide watch…
@Pete: and Bill
A shame. We have lost someone who actually stood up for the Constitution the majority of times. Obama and company will be salivating over this. One more anti-Constitutionalist appointed to the Court combined with two wishy-washy Justices (Roberts and Kennedy) and it will be next to impossible to ever put a Constitutionally minded majority in place. Sorry to say, I don’t trust the Republican leadership to play hardball with the premier and fully expect another “the Constitution is a living, breathing document” type to be sworn in well before the end of the year. He gets whatever wants. We are a constitutional republic on paper only.
@another vet:
All the more reason to ensure that McConnell and the rest of the GOPe clearly understands they WILL be held responsible if they let the SCOAMF put another leftist hack on SCOTUS. There is NO reason to allow Obama to have a 3rd nominee to the court. Harry Reid can shove his false sanctimony right up his criminal backside.
Sad, sad for his family and sad for our country
I can’t imagine the Republican-controlled Senate confirming ANYONE Obama might nominate, much less a liberal justice – which is what he’d start with – and there isn’t TIME for confirmation hearings to be held for a whole string of Obama nominees before November. So the SCOTUS will simply function with 8 justices at least until the NEXT president is sworn in and certainly until the Senate DOES confirm someone after that.
There IS some measure of risk associated with waiting, however. The Senate’s not acting will help Democrats with their Republican-obstructionism argument, and that won’t exactly help Republican’s hold their Senate majority. And GOD help Republicans if they DON’T win the White House in November. Period!
@Greg #3:
My understanding is that if an 8-member SCOTUS ties, the lower-court decision being contested (usually appellate) is upheld. The appellate decision establishes an appellate precedence, but not a Supreme Court precedence. Any 8-justice SCOTUS decision OTHER than a 4-4 tie DOES establish precedence, and the application of stare decisis in such case is no different that for 9-justice decisions. The logic here is because a 5-3 decision would not be changed by one additional vote, no matter on which side the 9th vote fell. Finally, the term “binding precedence” is somewhat misleading. Stare decisis presses the justices to respect their own precedencies, but does not bind them irrevocably to them. Bad decisions DO get reversed.
@George Wells:
Your theory relies entirely on a mischaracterization when you say the republican-controlled Senate is “not acting”. Refusing to allow Obama to pack SCOTUS with a 3rd leftist hack is most certainly taking action in specific opposition to Obama’s anti-American leftism. Your choice of words is the stereotypical manner that the left always tries to portray the debate. Any effort to oppose the leftist legislative agenda is falsely portrayed as “doing nothing” – presupposing the idea that the only purpose of government is to rubber-stamp leftist ‘feelgoodism’ votes/projects/laws/federal nominations.
I am cautiously optimistic by the current stance McConnell has taken in stating that the next president should nominate Scalia’s replacement. That being said, based upon the Senate’s capitulation to everything Obama has wanted up until his laughable marxist budget submission that won’t even be looked at because it is so bad, I am nervous about the resolve of the GOP Senate to hold the line against any Obama nominee.
The EPA fiasco…2nd Amendment rights…illegal immigration and voter ID…the outrageous federal bullying of Catholic nuns and other Christian religious institutions with regard to forced involvement in abortion and contraception in violation of religious beliefs…these are but a few of the pressing matters before SCOTUS. If Ginsberg or one of the other leftist hacks on SCOTUS had passed away, this wouldn’t be quite the dangerous issue. But giving someone as unethical, dishonest, anti-American and pro-collectivist as Obama the opportunity to replace one of the greatest legal minds to have ever been on SCOTUS with another leftwing activist cannot be allowed.
Not the first time Obama killed an American without due process
@George Wells, #9:
I just checked and see that you’re entirely correct. It’s a tie that affirms the lower court’s decision without establishing a binding precedent. What I said in post #3 was wrong. Thanks!
@Pete #10:
Sorry for my poor choice of words. I should have specified that if the Senate OBSTRUCTED anyone Obama nominated, and in doing so KEPT the SCOTUS one justice short, the Democrats would characterize it as “Republican obstructionism.”
I thought that the logic of this cause-and-effect prediction would have been obvious even with my first, sloppy expression of it, but you mistakenly focused on what you evidently believe to be a suggestion that obstructionism is equivalent to “doing nothing.” It certainly is not – I agree.
I am not suggesting that the Senate SHOULD confirm anyone Obama nominates. In fact, I’m confident that both Obama and the Senate will continue their ugly partisan bickering to the same tragically dysfunctional end that has been repeated consistently for the past seven years. My only point was that this FAILURE will play into the hands of the Democrats who will accuse Republicans of continued obstructionism. Congress isn’t enjoying historic levels of disapproval because Obama is a bad president. Congress is getting the public’s “stink-eye” because it gets so very little done.
OK, blame whomever you want, but the fact remains that disapproval of Congress is at an all-time high, and conventional wisdom suggests that such disapproval isn’t very encouraging for incumbents of either party. IF that’s true, and there are more INCUMBENT Republicans (in both the Senate and the House) than Democrats, then trying to put out the disapproval fire by throwing obstructionist gasoline on it isn’t exactly the best idea. And since there ARE (currently) more incumbent Republicans that Democrats in both chambers… well, you do the math.
“the next president should nominate Scalia’s replacement.”
Aside from the obvious suggestion that Obama won’t nominate a suitable replacement, are you suggesting that the Senate can’t execute a due-diligence confirmation process in nine months? What is the minimum time the Senate requires to perform its constitutional duty in this regard? And what will be the argument if a Democrat wins the presidency in November? What’s the time limit? The constitution doesn’t say what the minimum number of SCOTUS justices is, does it? Can we survive the constitutional crisis that would arise if the SCOTUS gets down to three or four justices because the Senate refuses to confirm anyone a Democratic president nominates? There is some danger in hoping that a Republican wins in November and that these problems will accordingly evaporate. Romney was so sure he was going to win…
The gloating and celebratory postings by progressive Dems in social media over Scalia’s death, gives me renewed disgust in the political left.
@Ditto #14:
As if anything under the sun could in any way diminished your disgust. You are IRREVERSABLY what you are, and in your mind, EVERYTHING that happens confirms your bigoted opinion. Since no measure of Republican corruption, no compelling logical reasoning, no revelation of verifiable science will EVER sway you to vote for a Democrat, your declaration of disgust is an entirely moot point. Nothing in the real world can alter the trajectory of your ossified opinion. Your “renewal” of disgust is simply a maintenance of your personal status quo, your statement to that effect a proud admission of your dedication Republican dogma. Nothing changes.
We all die. We also all contemplate surviving our enemies. Remember when REPUBLICAN Pat Robertson prayed to GOD, hoping that HE would soon end the lives of liberal Supreme Court justices? He asked his audience to pray for GOD to work a miracle “to remove three justices from the Supreme Court” so they could be replaced by conservatives.
Did that “renew your disgust” in the “political right”?
Methinks you doth protest too much.
@George Wells:
George, the point is the GOP has to have the backbone to not only stand up to but must actively destroy the leftist propaganda meme on this. When Obama pouts about government “obstruction” from the GOP refuses to allow the despicable anti-American community organizer to place a leftist hacktivist in Scalia’s SCOTUS seat, the GOP needs to attack in full-throated indignation that they are doing EXACTLY what the Constitution directs in preventing the ideological packing of the bench. They need to further shout out that based on Obama’s false claims about the wonderous expectations of obamacare that were rammed through by the leftist extremists of Reid, Obama and Pelosi without even reading the damned bill, that it is incumbent on the GOP to properly vet any SCOTUS nominee and to utterly reject any leftist activist. The GOP needs to point out the manner that the loathesome dems prevented Bork from being approved, and when Obama plays the race card in whining about his nominee being rejected, the GOP needs to scream about the racist treatment of the hispanic judicial nominee by dems who wouldn’t even bring his nomination to a vote.
Piss on the false sanctimony of the left. The deserve nothing but the exact same political bludgeoning they regularly employ against conservatives.
And piss on the GOP if it buckles and lets Obama put a pro-abortion, anti-2nd Amendment, marxist, racist, anti-Christian, pro-jihadist scumbag activist on SCOTUS in place of Scalia.
I would admit to having been proven wrong, but I don’t think there is a snowball’s chance in hell that Obama is going to nominate someone that anyone but far, far left liberals would find palatable. Of course, Congress will be expected to affirm it because Obama made the nomination because, well, he’s black and if they don’t, they are racist.
I can only hope and pray that the Republicans in Congress will do their job and block a far left nominee.
@Pete #16:
It is interesting that you brought up the Bork case – the most recent of the twelve times in history that the Senate has rejected a president’s nominee to the SCOTUS. As the Constitution does nowhere specify any qualifications necessary for a nominee to meet, the president is free to nominate anyone he (or she) chooses. And similarly, the Senate is not constrained to “advise and consent” – or NOT consent – according to any qualifications or lack there-of. The Senate is just as free to act as it wishes as is the President in this matter. You may not have agreed with the Senate’s rejection of Bork, but it was certainly within its rights to reject him for ANY reason, and the current Senate will be similarly perfectly within ITS rights to reject anyone Obama nominates – for ANY reason IT wishes. Of course, there are always consequences – nothing happens without effecting other things – and some consequences are anticipated while others are not. Bork’s politically motivated rejection was ANTICIPATED to eventually return to haunt the liberals who now do not expect Obama’s nominee to be confirmed FOR THIS REASON. (Pay-backs are a bitche.) What was NOT anticipated was a prolonged period in which NO SCOTUS nominees are confirmed, and at this point such a scenario – and the constitutional crisis that it would create – is a distinct possibility.
I would certainly appreciate if you would refer to the part of “the Constitution directs in preventing the ideological packing of the bench.” I am unfamiliar with such a provision.
Mitch McConnell has suggested that “the voters should have a “say” (in who gets on the SCOTUS).” Doesn’t that issue surface before EVERY presidential election? Doesn’t the electorate PICK who they want to be president – who also happens to be the person who the Constitution designates as the SCOTUS NOMINATOR? Why should Republicans expect Obama to abdicate this constitutionally mandated duty? Isn’t it enough that the Republican-backed Senate already has the right to reject his nominee FOR ANY REASON IT WANTS?
@Bill:
If being an American in opposing a ROTTEN anti-American SOB’s efforts to further ruin the American experience – just because the ROTTEN anti-American SOB happens to be a certain half-color makes one a racist – BIG EFF’N DEAL!! — long past time for this country to put on its big boy pants and realize that the candy counter is empty and the store is closing out front while the marauding aliens of all stripes are being let in the back door
@Budvarakbar #19:
Thank you for stepping up as FA’s next self-proclaimed racist poster boy, and kudos for adding the nice conspiracy-theory touch at the end.
I’m enough of a realist to understand that the sky won’t fall no matter which party wins the White House in the November elections, but most of the padded-cell escapees ranting here are not. If a Democrat wins that contest, y’all’s heads will explode, and what a mess that’ll make!
@George Wells: It all boils down to
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjRqMCZpfjKAhWGYiYKHQRQAmoQ3ywIHTAA&url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4PzpxOj5Cc&usg=AFQjCNHLSZ08Ayh_NIJnm5-zjSMhC1zomw&bvm=bv.114195076,d.cWw
@kitt #21:
No reply.
(Will not download from unknown source.)
Sorry.
@George Wells: I hate when that happens, try this one
@kitt #23:
Ah, yes… the lesser of two weevils…
We are faced with this dreadful prospect far too often, are we not?
I fully expect that in November I will have to make a choice between two terrible candidates, and the thought of either of them becoming – and REMAINING – our president for the next four years is very disturbing.
We will survive the experience, I suspect, but it will diminish us.
We reap what we sow.
@George Wells:
How typical for a hate-filled, trollish Georgie boy to get his panties in a bunch and flame pompously (and incorrectly) in his defense of the Haters on his side of the aisle. In their defense, Georgie attempts to ascribe political leanings of someone he has never met, as being the reason for that person to find utter disgust in how hate-filled political bigots (on his own side) have cheered and gloated over the death of a good and honorable man, simply because they disagreed with his SCOTUS opinions.
Troll-George doesn’t know me at all. As a free thinking independent voter, a Constitutional conservative, and Bill of Rights liberal. I believe in jealously guarding our Constitutionally recognized rights from government over-reach, as well as supporting the need of limited government (local, state and federal,) in order to best protect the people’s freedoms. I do not support the progressive-movement elite oligarchy politicians of either party. I am not bound to any party’s dogma, I do not spew political “talking points,” nor do I generally vote straight party-line.
I find disgust in many people who speak ill of the dead, and that disgust has nothing to do with my political views, but with their classless, snide disrespect. What I find worse is when they do so simply because of their own political bias. GW’s defense of this leftist scum tells me that he is of like mind, and as such also worthy of our contempt.
@Ditto:
What are you talking about?