Republicans Charge Obama With Court-Packing For Trying To Fill Empty Seats

[Tx4obama]

Republicans Charge Obama With Court-Packing For Trying To Fill Empty Seats

WASHINGTON -- Republican senators are fuming about President Barack Obama's attempt to fill empty seats on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, charging him with "court-packing" and alleging that his push to confirm nominees is all politics.

But not only is Obama not "court-packing" -- a term describing an attempt to add judges to a court with the goal of shifting the balance, not filling existing vacancies -- but Republicans' efforts to prevent Obama from appointing judges amount to their own attempt to tip the scales in their favor. What's more, some of the GOP senators trying to prevent his nominees from advancing previously voted to fill the court when there was a Republican in the White House.

As it stands, the powerful D.C. Circuit has 11 seats, three of which are vacant. Obama has signaled plans to put forward nominees for all three open slots as soon as this week. But Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and other Republicans are pushing legislation that would eliminate those seats and keep the court where it is: with eight judges, four of whom were appointed by Democrats and four of whom were appointed by Republicans.

Grassley has argued that the court simply doesn't need to have three more judges because it has a lighter workload than other circuit courts -- a stance that Democrats say overlooks the fact that the court is second in stature only to the Supreme Court and takes on particularly complex cases. But Grassley has also suggested that Obama is trying to pack the court.

-snip-

Full article here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/28/obama-court-packing_n_3347961.html

Related older DU thread here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014493989

[Tx4obama]

1. An excerpt from another article...

-snip-

Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) recently slammed the idea that Obama would fill all the D.C. court vacancies as "packing the court," but was quickly corrected by a colleague, who noted that the term refers to an attempt to increase the number of judges on a panel in order to tip the balance, not to fill existing vacancies.

-snip-

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/28/obama-judicial-nominations_n_3345267.html

[Tx4obama]

2. Kick - where is everyone? :) n/t

[Cha]

3. Here I am, Tx! Another day Another republiCon Whine Loaded with

Propaganda!

[Major Hogwash]

4. In other words: We got nothing. The GOP's "lather, rinse, repeat" cycle is getting boring already.

It's only May and the Republicans have no new complaints, no new ideas, and nothing to add to the national conversation.
Why am I not surprised?

President Obama has a unique opportunity in American history for another "teaching moment", if he so chooses to use it.
While Congress is busy grinding to a halt, while Americans grind their teeth, President Obama can take an entire day out of his busy schedule and spend some of it lecturing the American people on the way the Federal Government is supposed to work.
President Obama is a learned Constitutional scholar, after all, and who would be better to give a lecture on a dry subject, such as that one is, than the president himself.

President Obama can later use some of his time to turn his first speech in to a whole series of lectures on the subject, and continue all summer long. Just one a month should do it.
Then next year during the Congressional campaigns, the Democratic candidates who will run for office could turn those lectures into cannonballs, and use them to blow holes in the broadsides of the GOP's ship of fools, who are on the wrong course, in order to sink them at the polls in November.

[octoberlib]

5. It's the President's job to appoint judges

I'm so sick of these assholes.

[Cosmocat]

7. It is relentless

they never stop, never ...

[UCmeNdc]

6. GOP Propaganda

This is exactly how the GOP controls the press. They label a normal function of a president's job a power grab. When will the press call them on it?

[Cosmocat]

8. No, they won't

they will let republican's babble about it while sitting on their hands, and in order to be "balanced" they will ask the President, "What do you say to those who say you are PACKING THE COURT!" which serves to legitimize it.

[Scurrilous]

9. K & R

[DFW]

10. Countercharge:

I hereby formally accuse the Republican Party of trying to fill empty seats in the US House and Senate with empty crania.