I've always thought that if Trump does only one thing as President, that that is protect the Supreme Court from the control of the living constitutionalists, his presidency will be a success. This is further icing on that cake.
Once the third branch of government falls to the progressives, our constitutional rights will quickly disappear in a fog of emanations and penumbras, all interpreted to take away our rights and increase the power of the totalitarian state.
With Scalia's death, it was a near thing. Not funny.
Now, it looks like we may still enjoy some status as free men and women for a while, at least.
Senator Chuck Grassley from Iowa, has big time clout as the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Grassley has just used that clout to eliminate one of the final hurdles in the already furious pace of Trump administration judicial appointments to the federal bench.
Late last week, Grassley decided not to honor a Senate tradition of holding up hearings for judicial nominees who aren't cleared by their own home state senators. That tradition is known as the "blue slip courtesy" born out of time before nationwide communication technology when a given state's senators had access to much more information about nominees than their colleagues from the rest of the country. Grassley correctly noted that Democrats were now trying to use the blue slips tradition to replace the filibuster, and he's having none of that. As recently as last month, the Democrats and much of the news media's punditry were expecting Grassley, who is no fan of the president, to keep the blue slip tradition in place. But Grassley gave Trump this very special gift instead.
It's a gift to all of us. The gift of a truly independent and Constitution based court system.
I believe that McConnell could end the hold-up on the "smaller" judgships if he would.
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