Dennis Byrne has this right:

It seems only fair. The over-wrought Democratic rhetoric demands that President Donald Trump not nominate anyone until “the people” have had a chance to make whom they want to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

That would be by electing someone who would appoint a high court nominee who best reflects voter’s views. In line with that, we know from Trump’s list of potential candidates who Trump might nominate.

So, isn’t it fair that Biden should unveil his list of potential nominees? Doesn’t fairness dictate that voters should know in advance if Biden’s choices would reflect the voters’ views?

Of course, Democrats won’t do that because it’s their strategy to keep voters in the dark as much as possible about what a Harris-Biden, err, Biden-Harris, administration would do. In other words: lights out.

Truth is, while voters might not know who in particular might be nominated, they well know what sort of person will be nominated. Trump would appoint someone who interprets the Constitution as it was written. Biden (or whomever has his/hers hands on the throttle) would appoint someone who thinks words have no meaning when it comes to the Constitution.

The further truth is that all the lip service both parties variously give/gave to the idea that voters should have a say in who gets nominated, neither party truly believes it. Not Republicans when they refused to bring President Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland up for Senate confirmation at the end of that president’s term. Not Democrats now that Trump will bring his up for confirmation before the election or the seating of the new president.

For both parties, it’s a power play. And why not? Many Trump supporters voted for him because they believed that the courts had become a sponge of soft judicial interpretation of the Constitution. Especially when it came to abortion.

Same for the Democrats. In voting for Obama and now for Biden, they believe that the candidate should reflect their liberal views, especially when it comes to abortion

Trump is right: Delaying the nomination to open the door for a liberal/progressive/radical nominee would be a betrayal of his supporters. Just as not trying to push through Garland’s nomination by the lame duck Obama would have betrayed his supporters.

In essence, Trump is following the same path that Obama took in not waiting for an election to dictate whom the nominee would be. So, let the hypocrisy cease.

By the way. If Ginsburg was so determined to ensure a liberal would be appointed to the court in her place, she would have retired when Obama was president so that he could have made the appointment. Instead she stayed on the court, presumably because she could not imagine Hilary Clinton losing to Trump. She gambled and she lost and so did her supporters. That she didn’t retire so that Obama could have nominated her successor says something about…well, I’m not sure. Either her judgment or her character.

Nicely argued.

Senate Republicans set course to quickly fill a new Supreme Court vacancy, with most lining up behind President Trump and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) and rejecting Democrats’ calls to let the winner of the presidential election make the pick. President Trump said he would nominate a Supreme Court pick on Friday or Saturday and that he has five women under consideration to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died Friday of metastatic pancreatic cancer at the age of 87. Mr. Trump maintained that the replacement of Justice Ginsburg should happen swiftly. “We won the election and elections have consequences,” he said Monday morning on Fox News. “We have plenty of time.”

Trump to Make Supreme Court Nomination Friday or Saturday – WSJ

In the vein of “Are you or having you been ever” a CATHOLIC?

The Constitution is clear that religious faith may not be used to prevent an American from holding office. But there is another faith now, a strident faith, that of the left and anyone who stands in its way is to be marked.

Durbin is a Catholic Democrat from blue Illinois, and he seeks votes in Chicago. That he would ask whether someone was an “orthodox Catholic” is stunning.

Durbin. Yuck.

Eloquently, as usual:

“That’s their job,” she said in July 2016. “There’s nothing in the Constitution that says the President stops being President in his last year.”

“Eight is not a good number for a collegial body that sometimes disagrees,” Ginsburg said on the issue a few months later during an event at the Smithsonian Museum of American History in Washington.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who was with her, agreed. “I think we hope there will be nine as quickly as possible.”

“What we do is we automatically affirm the decision of the court below. No opinion is written, no reasons are given, and the affirmance has no precedential value,” Ginsburg explained. “It’s just as though we denied review.”

In a sense, setting a sort of precedent for the coming nomination and senate vote.

The mayor’s hyperbole:

Devastated by the passing of RBG. She represented the finest among lawyers in our country. A giant in her advocacy for women’s rights, civil rights and respect for the rule of law. We must honor her legacy and all her contributions to American jurisprudence. Rest in power, RBG.

The mayor is not devastated — unless she is reduced to chaos, disorder, or helplessness.

As for resting in power, what the hell is she talking about? RBG has gone to the next life, where the power hierarchies are beyond anything she and the rest of us can even remotely imagine.

Words can’t describe . . .

Jailed without proof.

America has been on a virtual martial law shutdown for months now with no end in sight, based on unreliable if not inaccurate data about the lethality of Covid-19.

This is a never-ending argument, but the number of people who died from Covid-19 now is as imprecise as it was months ago when this debate started. At the heart of the debate is whether the patient died with Covid-19 or from Covid-19.

Not the same thing.

The crucial difference was highlighted months ago when Dr. Ngozi Ezike, an internist and pediatrician serving as the director of the Illinois Department of Public Health, tried to clarify the distinction between dying with or from Covid-19. At a press conference with Illinois Gov. J. B Pritzker, she responded to a question (see video below):

I just want to be clear in terms of the definition of people dying of COVID. The definition is very simplistic. It means, at the time of death it was a COVID-positive diagnosis. That means that if you were in hospice and had already been given a few weeks to live and then you were also were found to have COVID, that would be counted as a COVID death. Technically, even if you died of clear alternate cause but you still had COVID at the time it is still listed as a COVID death. Everyone who’s listed as a COVID death doesn’t mean that that was the cause of the death but they had COVID at the time of their death. I hope that’s helpful.

As if people were dying of a cold when they had one when they died.

You wouldn’t believe this about Joe Biden:

I n a classic episode of “Seinfeld,” Jerry is accused by his new girlfriend, a police officer, of being a fan of the tacky 1990s soap opera Melrose Place. When Jerry lies and denies it, she suggests putting him on a polygraph to find the truth. In an effort to beat the machine, Jerry seeks the advice of his masterfully mendacious friend, George Constanza, who tells him that his talents can’t be taught — “It’s like saying to Pavarotti, ‘Teach me to sing like you.’” Still, he leaves Jerry with a vital nugget of advice: “. . . Just remember, it’s not a lie if you believe it.”

I think of this bit whenever Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden starts in with one of his folksy tales about growing up in hardscrabble Pennsylvania and listening to his dad’s extraordinarily forward-thinking adages. We’re probably only a few speeches away from Biden recalling how his dad used to sit on the edge of this bed and tell him, “Champ, always remember, transgendered folk are just like the rest of us.”

He’s ever a man with a yarn.

The politics and journalism are so tribal now that we rarely peek outside our own bubbles.

writes Kass.

Blogging now at the Wednesday Journal, I find my self shocking some readers. It’s as if they have never heard things that I take for granted. One of them announced, as if finding a tarantula under the bed, he’s a Trump supporter.