Martinson letter: Supreme nominee
Mitch McConnell intends to ignore any Obama nominee to the Supreme Court, and yet in 2005 when the Democrats were blocking a judicial nomination, he said, “The majority in the Senate is prepared to restore the Senate’s traditions and precedents to ensure that regardless of party, any president’s judicial nominees, after full and fair debate, receive a simple up-or-down vote on the Senate floor. It is time to move away from advise and obstruct and get back to advise and consent.”
He also supported a proposal where judicial nominees would receive a committee hearing within 30 days of being nominated by the president, a full committee vote within an additional 30 days, and a vote by the full Senate 30 days after that. “These timetables would apply whether Democrats or Republicans were in charge of the Senate, whether the same party controlled the White House and the Senate, or whether the two parties split the control. I bet to the vast majority of people listening, that sounds like an extremely fair, bipartisan solution. I agree with them,” he said.
His obstructionist views are wrong for either party and is not what our founding fathers intended when they wrote the Constitution.
Melvin Martinson, Boise
This story was originally published February 28, 2016 at 11:19 PM with the headline "Martinson letter: Supreme nominee."