SCOTUS Brief 3/7/2016
JCN’s Carrie Severino: Pres. Obama looking for “very reliable liberal” for SCOTUS – Ted Cruz in WSJ: The American People Should Have a Voice in Next SCOTUS Justice – Free Beacon: Hillary Contradicts Herself on SCOTUS Vacancy
- Judicial Crisis Network’s Carrie Severino tells the Washington Post’s Jerry Markon, Amy Goldstein and Sari Horwitz that despite discussion of a “moderate” Supreme Court nominee from the White House, President Obama is looking for a “very reliable liberal” to nominate.
Washington Post: Here are some judges the White House is considering for the Supreme Court
“The White House is considering nearly a half-dozen relatively new federal judges for President Obama’s nomination to the Supreme Court, focusing on jurists with scant discernible ideology and limited judicial records as part of a strategy to surmount fierce Republican opposition… ‘What Obama is trying to do is find someone he knows will be a very reliable liberal voice on the court. But he’s going to present them as if they were moderate,’ said Carrie Severino, chief counsel for the Judicial Crisis Network, a conservative legal group, which has hired a research firm to help excavate the records of potential nominees. She cited a plea deal that Kelly secured as a public defender for a child predator.”
- JCN’s Severino writes at National Review’s Bench Memos that one of President Obama’s potential Supreme Court picks, Judge Jane Kelly, helped secure a plea deal for a convicted child predator.
Carrie Severino in National Review: Jane Kelly and Evelyn Miller
“When [Judge Jane] Kelly worked as a public defender she helped secure a plea deal for one Casey Frederiksen, a convicted child predator. Frederiksen was convicted of sexually abusing and murdering Evelyn Miller, the 5-year-old daughter of his partner, who was also the mother of his two sons. As part of that murder investigation it was discovered that Frederiksen had more than a thousand images and videos of children engaging in sex acts, some with adults. He was charged federally with twelve counts of receiving child pornography and two counts of possessing child pornography. Kelly represented Frederiksen in the child pornography case. According to a 2005 story in the Des Moines Register, shortly after Frederiksen was indicted, Kelly ‘argued her client was not a threat to society,’ an odd assertion to make on behalf of a man who had previously been convicted of sexually molesting a different girl.”
- Senator Ted Cruz writes in the Wall Street Journal that in 2014 the American people repudiated the Democratic Party’s governance and they should have their voices heard in the selecting of a new Justice with their votes for President in the fall.
Senator Ted Cruz in WSJ: The Scalia Seat: Let the People Speak
“In 2014 when the American people last spoke in a nationwide election, they clearly repudiated Democratic governance and elected a Republican Senate majority. Although the president has the constitutional power to nominate Justice Scalia’s replacement, no nominee can be appointed without the Senate’s ‘Advice and Consent.’ And as Minority Leader Harry Reid himself once said, ‘nowhere’ in the Constitution ‘does it say the Senate has a duty to give presidential nominees a vote.’ I believe the Senate should fulfill its constitutional duty by letting the American people be heard in selecting the next Supreme Court justice.”
- Aaron Kliegman writes in the Washington Free Beacon that Democratic Presidential Frontrunner Hillary Clinton contradicted her “prior position on the Senate acting on Supreme Court nominations.”
“Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton appeared during Sunday night’s presidential debate to contradict her prior position on the Senate acting on Supreme Court nominations, according to a new video created by America Rising Squared. The video first shows Clinton arguing at the debate that the Senate must hold hearings and a vote when President Obama puts forth a nominee to fill the current court vacancy before showing another clip in which she tells an audience of Democrats 10 years earlier the Senate does not necessarily have to do so…‘I believe this is one of the most important roles [approving the president’s Supreme Court nominees] that the Senate plays,’ Clinton said during a speech in 2005 at the Democratic National Committee’s Women’s Leadership Forum. ‘This, after all, is in the Constitution. We are asked to give advice and consent, or to deny advice and consent.’”
You can watch America Rising Squared’s “Clinton V Clinton” video here:
