Home»Politics»Clock Runs Out on Anti-Gun Supreme Court Nominee Merrick Garland

Clock Runs Out on Anti-Gun Supreme Court Nominee Merrick Garland

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Barack Hussein Obama Soetoro Sobarkah nominated anti-Second Amendment judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court in March 2016 following the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. Pro-Second Amendment groups opposed the nomination and at noon on Tuesday his nomination expired.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

U.S. Circuit Judge Merrick Garland’s nomination to the Supreme Court expired at noon Tuesday, clearing the way for President-elect Donald Trump to fill a vacancy Senate Republicans held open for months with an appointee championed by conservatives.

Judge Garland’s nomination languished for nearly 10 months until it expired with the formal adjournment of the 114th Congress. Republicans said their inaction on the nomination was a way to permit voters to weigh in on the Supreme Court’s direction by electing the next president. Democrats accused Republicans of “stealing” a nomination that voters entrusted to President Barack Obama in his 2012 re-election.


Judge Garland’s nomination did make history in at least once sense. The 293 days it sat in the Senate without action easily broke the record 125 days the Senate took before confirming Justice Louis Brandeis in 1916.

Brietbart is reporting that some Democrats wanted Obama to install Garland to the Supreme Court during the very short Congressional recess as the old Congress passed off and the new Congress was sworn in.

Rumors whispered around Washington have it that Democrats are debating having President Barack Obama install Judge Merrick Garland on the Supreme Court by a recess appointment on Jan. 3.


Minutes before noon on Tuesday, Congress is expected to adjourn sine die, which would end the outgoing Congress, putting both the House and Senate in recess. Then precisely at noon, the new Congress would be called into session and new members sworn in.

Some Democrats are pushing President Barack Obama to take those few fleeting moments to appoint Garland to the nation’s highest court. If the move succeeded, then for the next twelve months the U.S. Supreme Court would have a reliably liberal majority—in fact, the most liberal in all of American history. That appointment would then expire next January, at which point President Trump would be able to nominate a replacement to fill a lifetime-tenured jurist to Justice Antonin Scalia’s seat. But conservatives dread the thought of what could happen during the intervening twelve months.

Of course, Obama had already broken the law once doing this when he named union lawyer Richard Griffin and Labor Department official Sharon Block, both Democrats, and a Republican, NLRB lawyer Terence Flynn, to the labor board in 2012 during recess. Not only did a federal court find that Obama broke the law, but the Supreme Court did as well.

“I’ve been clear throughout that the next president would name the next Supreme Court justice,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) via his spokesman. “Now, the president who won the election will make the nomination, and the Senate the American people just re-elected will consider that nomination.”

However, Democratic leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said through his spokesman, “What Senate Republicans did to Judge Garland, the Supreme Court, and the Constitution was appalling. Judge Garland is respected on both sides of the aisle. That he did not even get so much as a hearing will be a stain on the legacy of the Republican Senate.”

There is no doubt that politics played a role in this, but I’m glad Merrick was not confirmed, and we’ll see what the new president and Senate agree on concerning a new Supreme Court justice nominee.

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