BREAKING: Obama’s Replacement For Scalia Was Just Announced — Let The Battle Begin
Randy DeSoto
Western Journalistm
Mar 16, 2016
http://bit.ly/1pLWzOw

[snip]

As promised, President Obama announced his nominee on Wednesday to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court.

Obama has chosen chief Washington, D.C. circuit court judge Merrick Garland, 63. While the president knows the Republicans have stated they will not consider a nominee to the high court during an election year (following the “Biden rule”), the president believes now that an actual person has been put forward, it will be more difficult to maintain that pledge.

“As president, it is both my constitutional duty to nominate a justice and one of the most important decisions that I — or any president — will make,” Obama said in an email to supporters early Wednesday morning. “In putting forward a nominee today, I am fulfilling my constitutional duty. I’m doing my job. I hope that our senators will do their jobs, and move quickly to consider my nominee.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell stated last month, “Presidents have a right to nominate just as the Senate has its constitutional right to provide or withhold consent. In this case, the Senate will withhold it.”

Garland was nominated to the D.C. Circuit Court in 1997 by President Bill Clinton and was approved by the Senate by a 76-23 vote. The New York Times reported that the judge was on Obama’s short list in 2010, but the president ultimately chose Elena Kagan for the slot. At the time, Sen. Orin Hatch, R-Utah, called Garland a “consensus pick” that he would support for elevation to the Supreme Court.

The nominee’s 20-year history on the bench will likely work against him, with decisions to be uncovered that Republicans will find objectionable.

The National Review reports, “the judge would vote to reverse one of Justice Scalia’s most important opinions, D.C. vs. Heller, which affirmed that the Second Amendment confers an individual right to keep and bear arms.”