Bill linked yesterday to the live-blogging at Powerline on the nomination hearings for Loretta Lynch as Attorney General. To watch video yourself, cruise on over to C-SPAN. At the WSJ, Andrew Grossman and Devlin Barrett have this article on the "relatively tame" hearing. Also at Powerline, John Hinderaker has this apoplectic post titled Loretta Lynch Must Not Be Confirmed, focusing on immigration.
A note to my fellow conservatives: Get a grip and get real.
Elections have consequences. We live in a country where a majority of the voters chose Barack Obama over Mitt Romney. We may consider that choice profoundly stupid, but that's democracy -- the worst form of government except for all the others.
If Loretta Lynch is not Attorney General, who do you think will be? Somebody better? Get real. We want the best AG we can get, and as long as Barack Obama is President, "best" means the best from among the subset of people he might choose. Call that "least bad" if you like, but that's where we are.
The Constitution vests all executive authority in the President. Everyone else in the branch works for him. He is going to nominate people who agree with him on policy, and that's how it works from now until January 20, 2017. Judicial nominations are different. For executive officers, the Senate pretty much lets the President appoint who he wants, and it has been that way for both parties.
If Ms. Lynch is not confirmed, as Mr. Hinderaker demands, who will be Attorney General? Eric Holder will stay on until the next nominee is confirmed. The next nominee will not be any less aligned with the Obama/Holder policies than the present one. So the chances of having someone better as AG would be slim in the long run and absolute zero in the short run.
The WSJ article says, "Several Republicans suggested that simply by not being Mr. Holder, Ms. Lynch's chances of confirmation were improved."
Roger that.
A note to my fellow conservatives: Get a grip and get real.
Elections have consequences. We live in a country where a majority of the voters chose Barack Obama over Mitt Romney. We may consider that choice profoundly stupid, but that's democracy -- the worst form of government except for all the others.
If Loretta Lynch is not Attorney General, who do you think will be? Somebody better? Get real. We want the best AG we can get, and as long as Barack Obama is President, "best" means the best from among the subset of people he might choose. Call that "least bad" if you like, but that's where we are.
The Constitution vests all executive authority in the President. Everyone else in the branch works for him. He is going to nominate people who agree with him on policy, and that's how it works from now until January 20, 2017. Judicial nominations are different. For executive officers, the Senate pretty much lets the President appoint who he wants, and it has been that way for both parties.
If Ms. Lynch is not confirmed, as Mr. Hinderaker demands, who will be Attorney General? Eric Holder will stay on until the next nominee is confirmed. The next nominee will not be any less aligned with the Obama/Holder policies than the present one. So the chances of having someone better as AG would be slim in the long run and absolute zero in the short run.
The WSJ article says, "Several Republicans suggested that simply by not being Mr. Holder, Ms. Lynch's chances of confirmation were improved."
Roger that.
Kent makes a couple of very good points: That the principal question adults are required to ask is, "What's the alternative?"; and that elections have consequences.
The answer to the first is that we don't know what alternative candidate Obama might choose. Kent is correct that it very likely wouldn't be very much different from Ms. Lynch. But even small differences can tell a tale in an office as powerful as AG.
As to the second issue: The most recent election ALSO has consequences, and the specific consequence is that the voters put Republicans in the majority in the Senate. One thing that choice means is that the quality and extent of deference to Obama's appointments is going to be different from what it has been over the last six years. The voters did not put Republicans in charge with the expectation they'd act just like Democrats.
The text of the Constitution confers upon the Senate the power to confirm, or deny confirmation to, Presidential cabinet picks. Although, as Kent notes, the Senate usually goes along, this is not always the case. In 1989, a Democratic-controlled Senate denied confirmation to Pres. Bush's nominee for Defense Secretary, John G. Tower, 53-47.
The deliberative process on Ms. Lynch is not over. I personally have serious doubts about her, not least because of her acquiescence to grossly unethical behavior by Judge John Gleeson is his partisan campaign to lower the perfectly legal, and just, sentence of a violent felon. She has not adequately explained that acquiescence, and has, in other respects, been evasive and non-responsive on specifics.
I personally would like to know whether she will or will not continue the thus-far pretty quiet clemency campaign. I also want to know whether she approves mass clemency for drug dealers, and whether she thinks drug sentencing is nothing but a racist cabal. Finally on this front, I'd like to know whether she approves the out-sourcing of clemency processing to flagrantly pro-defendant groups. Out-sourcing ANY core governmental function has some serious issues, and outsourcing it to these groups compounds the problem.
The Constitution gave the Senate the right to ask taxing questions, and the election gave Republicans the power to do so and make it stick. They should use it. I'll be examining the results.