I probably would have been "ok" if Republicans had held a hearing and voted him down, because at least then Republicans would have followed the normal confirmation process. What happened smacked of Republicans changing the normal process/rules to get away with not allowing President Obama to replace that particular Justice (Scalia) because they knew that it would tilt the ideological balance of the Court away from right-wing dominance. It *might* have been a different story had it been Ginsburg or Breyer resigning (but then they might have still done it to directly seize a liberal seat too, so......?)

At any rate, Republicans suck and they cheated us here.

We live in a secular democracy, NOT a theocracy. And sorry to hear that some of these "faiths" have closed their doors but if they don't plan on joining the 21st Century and recognize that all kinds of people exist on this planet, that's their own fault.

We need to figure out a way to keep stuff like this from interfering with our electoral process. It's bad enough that Russia was involved. It's even worse that there were government agents (i.e. Comey) sitting on this potentially explosive information and depriving we the people of having this information in order to make an informed decision at the polls, not to mention leaking potentially explosive information on the opposing candidate in order to sway the election in his/her preferred way. The information obviously didn't affect my decision to cast a vote for HRC but there is evidence that Comey's letter two weeks before the election caused some people to vote for Trump (or not vote for Hillary). Evidence that the Trump campaign was colluding with Russia during the election season might have caused some people to re-think their vote for Trump but they weren't able to make that informed decision. Now, it's too late. And matters are worse.

if we had this information about Trump during the election. I would imagine that more than a few people would have rather voted for a candidate with "questionable" e-mail habits than one who is potentially compromised by/in league with a foreign power. Why does it always keep happening that our candidates get punk'd by BS like this before elections, so then the Republican wins, but then after the election all of this (much) more damaging information inevitably comes out- but by then it's too late and there's no do-overs and we're stuck with the results for at least 4 years. Maybe we need to implement some kind of recall system into our Constitution to be triggered by certain circumstances? We have the impeachment mechanism but the party in power can't do anything without, well, power, so, ultimately, the party in power- if there the same as the President- won't do anything.

Previous Republican candidates had no apparent ties, financial or otherwise, to Russia, though it seems like Republicans have been developing a certain fascination/admiration of Putin in recent years (probably because of his authoritarian rule of Russia that they no doubt dream of for here in the US- and sort of getting with Trump).

was brilliantly constructed to be difficult to undo without a lot of people suffering due to loss of coverage (not to mention that it's been in place for 6+ years), which is currently what's got the Republicans tied up in Gordian knots. At some point, the Republicans are either going to have to repeal/replace it and deal with the resulting fallout or learn to live with ACA being the established law of the land and new status quo for health care in this country (and maybe eventually work with Democrats to make it even better). Even though Republicans ran and won on repealing/replacing it and even though it cost President Obama and the Democratic Party dearly in a political sense, and even though it went through Supreme Court "meat grinder" twice and been subject to all forms of Republican sabotage efforts, ACA has proven to be remarkably resilient.

but I don't understand why he is so prominent in discussions about the Democratic Party, what it stands for, and how to do better in future elections when he is NOT even a member of it- and was only a member of it long enough to try to run for President last year. Why aren't people like our new DNC head, Thomas Perez, and his deputy, Keith Ellison, talked about/to more? Why aren't we hearing from people whom have been Democrats all of their lives/careers? I know that Bernie caucuses with the Democrats, I know that he votes with the Democrats almost all of the time and I get that that makes him ideologically aligned with the party but I get frustrated that it seems like, since last year, he is put up on a pedestal and given so much print and and airtime as an authority on a party of which he is not even a member- and when he spends a lot of it trying to attack the Democratic Party, oftentimes in a billigerent, non-constructive manner? It doesn't help the Democratic Party (or anybody, really) to have him continue to trash the Democratic Party and give Trumpublicans more ammo when the entire progressive/left-wing/Democratic structure should be out there fighting Trumpublicans instead of each other.

Bootstraps. Pull.

I don't think that most sane/rational/intelligent people know exactly how to respond to the "Trumpmare" that a thin majority of Americans in a few key states put into the WH last November. There's so much that's abnormal/unprecedented and I don't think that anybody, in the MSM, know what to do. We need to all get our collective s**t together soon and figure out how we are going to respond to him before something really bad happens IMHO. Republicans need to figure out for themselves exactly how much they're going to stick their necks out for him too and how much they love our country, because right now they seem to be going along fine with Trump's "program" for the country.

I always felt like the Media spent most of Obama's Presidency tearing him down and giving his opponents more print and airtime to bash him, at least until he was getting ready to leave office. The Media also seemed to spend a lot of time being critical of and picking apart ACA and emphasizing its problems, particularly whenever it was close to election time. Now that we have lost President Obama and very clearly "traded down" with the WH's current occupant, and may be losing ACA, I think that some people- Media included- are realizing that we actually had it pretty good under President Obama (and would've been better off with Hillary in the WH- though I'm pretty sure the Media would be picking her apart as well and giving more coverage to Republican attacks on her).