Obama writes about obstructionism on Supreme Court nomination in Huffington Post

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"Republican Obstruction Is Undermining The Supreme Court, Enough Is Enough"
10/04/2016 11:45 am ET | Updated 6 hours ago
Barack Obama

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/republican-obstruction-is-undermining-the-supreme-court-enough-is-enough_us_57f3cb16e4b0d0e1a9a9cfce?

This week, the Supreme Court returns to work. The Justices will hear important cases on issues ranging from the separation of church and state to intellectual property to Congressional redistricting to the death penalty. Many of the cases address questions that are fundamental to our democracy: the right to vote, for instance, or what constitutes U.S. citizenship. Yet – regardless of the stakes – Republicans in Congress have forced the Court to weigh these pivotal issues one Justice short of the Court’s full panel of nine.

In a city of self-inflicted wounds, this one is more dangerous and less defensible than most.

It’s been 202 days since I nominated Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court. That’s more than five months longer than the average nominee has had to wait over the last 40 years to receive a hearing in Congress – let alone an up or down vote. This delay has nothing to do with Judge Garland’s personality or his qualifications. Senators on both sides of the aisle acknowledge that he is a distinguished legal mind, a dedicated public servant, and a good and decent man.

Leader McConnell argues that with an election looming, the Supreme Court should remain short staffed, and he certainly knows his way around DC. But the last time a Supreme Court seat was kept vacant through Election Day was in 1864. At the height of the Civil War. So, this isn’t about precedent. This is about the obstruction of a broken Republican-led Congress.

Every day that GOP Senate leaders block this nomination, they hamstring the entire third branch of government. The Supreme Court is the final destination in a federal judiciary that routinely weighs some of society’s biggest questions. Already this past June, we saw a deadlocked Supreme Court, with no tie-breaking vote, unable to reach a majority on a major immigration case – leaving our Nation’s immigrants in limbo.

Part of what makes Judge Garland a remarkable jurist is his understanding that justice isn’t an abstract theory. It touches people’s lives every day. As long as Republicans continue their brinksmanship, America pays the price. Our most basic workings as a nation aren’t possible without a functioning judiciary at every level. Commerce is hindered and lives are put on hold. If we ever hope to restore the faith in our institutions that has eroded in recent years, we cannot tolerate a politically motivated, willfully negligent vacancy on the Supreme Court.

But this breakdown at the highest level is part of a bigger pattern.

By hobbling the Supreme Court for what could be a year or longer, Republicans are eroding one of the core institutions of American democracy. This cannot be the new normal.

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