“Senate Republicans changed longstanding rules on Thursday to clear the way for the confirmation of Judge Neil M. Gorsuch to serve on the Supreme Court,” nytimes.com reports. “bypassing a precedent-breaking Democratic filibuster by allowing the nomination to go forward on a simple majority vote.” So we now have a conservative judge to replace Scalia. The question is . . .

How long before Constitution-loving gun owners will see another pro-gun Supreme Court judge? So that the Court can overturn the enormous number of unconstitutional gun control laws bedeviling citizens in states with “may issue” carry laws, gun purchase waiting periods, due process-defiling Extreme Risk Protection Orders, “assault weapon” and standard magazine capacity bans, gun registration schemes, etc.?

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81 COMMENTS

      • Why do so many people dislike Roberts? I know he went with the liberals of the court on the Obamacare decision, but other than that he has been a pretty steady conservative, including on gun issues.

        • his above and beyond activism to rewrite the ACA’s mandate into a penaltax so it would pass Constitutional muster affected millions of people negatively.

        • I agree that Obamacare decision was a disaster. I didn’t know if there was any other case(s) where he sided with the liberals that cause people to dislike him.

        • It’s not that I don’t like his Obamacare rulings (he did it twice), it’s that he’s shown his willingness to shred the Constitution to please his liberal buddies on the court. Once you shred the Constitution you can’t be trusted to put it back together.

        • We dislike Roberts because he is a go along to get along wimp and only follows the Constitution once and awhile. He flipped on Obamacare tax/no tax issue by applying a bogus Progressive liberal “savings”interpretation, when the law should clearly have been gutted and left to die. Now we are left in the 16th year of the Bush/Obama recession with little hope of repeal.

        • If memory serves correctly, he also ruled that a woman’s right to force her employer to pay for her birth control supercedes the First Amendment right to freedom of religion.

        • Thanks for the feedback, it helps me understand things better.

          As to the last issue raised – “If memory serves correctly, he also ruled that a woman’s right to force her employer to pay for her birth control supercedes the First Amendment right to freedom of religion”, this is not correct. In the Hobby Lobby case, he joined with the majority of the court in holding the exact opposite, that an employer’s first amendment rights supersede the Obamacare mandate to provide coverage for abortion and contraception.

    • If I’m not mistaken Stevens is already gone, replaced by Sotomayor. Kennedy is the other oldster.

      • “Wise Latina” Sotomayor replaced Souter in 2009; Kagan replaced Stevens in 2010. You’re right, Kennedy is the aging quasi-conservative whom I’d love to see retire.

    • A decade is generous, but one never knows when the body will naturally or accidentally go. I pray she lives for many more years… in retirement.

      • Unfortunately, I recently learned that Ginsburg is incredibly serious about good health. Most 40 year-olds probably could not do her exercise regimen. I thought I also heard that she eats really healthy foods as well.

        I don’t see her dying of natural causes for another 10 years minimum.

        • I’ve heard the same thing myself, and while eating helthy, solid excercise regimen, health-consciousness etc certainly help prolong life, at some point entropy catches up, no matter what. She could be the fittest octogenarian in America, she;s still 84 years old, and that means she’s frail and weak compared to just about anyone who’s not also an octogenarian. One slip in a puddle leading to a fall, one case of the flu, or even some totally random event (infarction in major blood vessel etc) could spell the end. At 84, even the healthiest person is walking the razor’s edge of mortality

        • She has/had pancreatic cancer… 5 year mortality of that is over 95%; I’m hoping its 100% in her case….

    • Ginsberg is such an idealogue that I wouldn’t be surprised if she sticks a knife in Gorsuch just to spite Trump.

      Though this rule changing is not even close to ideal. There may come a day when the other party is in control and few options to block anti gun SC nominees.

      • The rule has only been in place since 2003 and Dems already pulled it for other judges and said they would for the SC if Hillary won

        • In 2013 the Democrats killed the filibuster for all other judicial appointments. They would have killed it for SCOTUS if they had managed to get Hillary elected, so there was really no point in the Republicans keeping the limitation just for themselves since the next Democrat elected will do their best to put more like Ginsburg or Sotomayor on the court.

        • Correct,. Look up the votes for Sotomayor & Kagen both were majority, not super majority.

        • Sorry, Parnell, but you are mistaken. Kagen won confirmtion 63-37; Sotomayor won confirmation 68-31. Both are super majorities by the 60+ filibuster standard.

          That would actually be a stronger point to make on your part. Kagen received 5 GOP votes aand Sotomayor received 9. That is, both radical leftists only escaped filibusters by receiving generous GOP votes. It shows how (overly) deferential Republicans are and how destructive and intransigent Democrats are with regard to presidents of the opposing party.

        • Timothy,

          Democrats do not need a simple majority to confirm U.S. Supreme Court Justices because some Republicans are dumb enough to vote with the Democrats. Reference the confirmation of Kagan and Sotomayor.

      • Ginsberg and Scalia were very good friends. They hung together off the bench and enjoyed each other’s company. They didn’t agree on everything but didn’t let that harm their friendship.

        • Well… Those times are over!

          In these days of Calexit, there is more division than ever. And that’s ok. Because one of the parties have transitioned to complete and total freedom hating socialists.

  4. The 60 vote requirement has only been in place since 2003. Dems controlling the Senate wanted to make it tough for Bush Jr. It’s hardly a “nuclear” option. Dems want to campaign on the lie that Republicans had to “break” the rules to get such a “horrible” justice in.

    Forget the fact that Gorsuch has never had a decision overturned. Forget that his confirmation to the Circuit was unanimous. Forget that he’s always ruled purely on the law. What do facts matter to any liberal?!

  5. Ginsburg is 84 and clearly going senile and has had multiple bouts with cancer.
    Breyer turns 79 before the next term and the average age of retirement from the court has been just before 78.

    So, hopefully so one way or the other we will see the court turn under Trump.

  7. “How long before Constitution-loving gun owners will see another pro-gun Supreme Court judge? ”

    It may be sooner than the Left wants.

    There have been murmurings Kennedy wants to step down, if he thinks the court is in safe hands. It appears he may think Goresuch is safe hands.

    If so, he drops his resignation in Trump’s lap summer or fall.

    Then we hope Trump picks someone like that nice judge Diane Sykes.

    And the sounds of the shrieks, wailing, and tearing-out-of-hair by the Progressives will be sweet, sweet *music* to our ears.

    And we will just smile sweetly (and *snicker* softly to ourselves) as we remind them of Harry Reid’s slick move he thought he was pulling when he changed the Senate rules to ram Obama’s judicial appointments down our throats a few years back.

    We *warned* you Harry, that you would regret it…

    • We know he joined the opinion in Rodriguez that made clear exercising 2A justifies a transient suspension, i.e. Terry Stop, of 2A.

      • still, much better than Garland or anyone else Felonia Von Pantsuit would’ve nominated.

        • That goes without saying. We’ll know exactly where he stands as soon as the blue states get sued for shall (not) issue infringements (again). I’m guessing he’ll keep things the way they are, letting those states keep their so-called ‘reasonable’ restrictions. If that’s the case, it’ll be obvious to me that 2A cases won’t get any real support from him. I hope I’m wrong.

    • My only assumption is that he understands the original intent of the Second Amendment and, being a Constitutional scholar fitting the same mold as Scalia, he will uphold his sworn duty to preserve, protect and defend said Constitution.

      If the Democrats didn’t consider him to be an existential threat to their socialist agenda, they wouldn’t be throwing this temper tantrum. That works for me.

      • One can hope. I suspect the dems would have attacked ANYONE even remotely on the right given the current atmosphere… I doubt they care any more about gun rights than Trump, relatively speaking (as in: they care, but it’s a lot lower on the list than a lot of other things they really care about).

        His general ideology isn’t enough for me to believe he’s really ‘pro-gun rights’ when, in the only case he’s had, he has voted against those very rights.

        There are lots of federal judges, on the other hand, who are on the record with the 2nd Amendment. Wouldn’t it have been nice to have one of those up for nomination?

        • The thing is, he didn’t vote against gun rights. The defendant didn’t raise the 2A as an issue. The court didn’t even consider the issue of whether or not the seizure violated the 2A. Just whether or not it complied with the Terry Doctrine laid down by SCOTUS. The opinion immediately noted this. This is a signal that the court would have ruled differently if the defendant had raised the issue.

          Courts are not supposed to rule on arguments that are not in front of them. This is one of the problems with the 9th Circuit’s Peruta decision. They ruled on the argument of whether or not there is a constitutional right to carry concealed, not whether or not there is a constitutional right to carry at all.

  9. SCOTUS takes on about 75 cases a year and — believe it or not! — most of those cases have nothing to do with gun rights. If we’re lucky, we’ll get one gun rights case annually.

    So if you want SCOTUS to do all the heavy lifting on 2A, expect it to take, oh, about 75 years.

    Or, people can stop electing donkeys to public office.

    I swear, there are times when I think that a brain-eating zombie in America would starve.

    • There have been some rulings at the Federal Court of Appeals level recently that clearly do not square with Heller. If SCOTUS gives even one of them a well-deserved bitch slap, does it give the others incentive to toe the line?

      Are there consequences for insubordinate federal judges who refuse to follow superior court precedent?

      • The only “penalty” that judges face for not following precedent is reversal by a higher court. That’s all there is.

        The left wing ideologues on the District, Circuit and state courts will continue to wreak havoc on 2A until they die and are replaced by other left wing ideologues.

    • Many other cases effect guns.

      Immigration
      Voting rights
      State Rights
      ect.

      If we can end birthright ciztenship, end the attack on voter protection laws, end Reynolds v. Sims, etc and its a new ball game that we win by default.

    • Crafting an actual standard by which the 2A is applied could go a long way towards getting lower courts to strike down unconstitutional laws.

      Will liberal judges still bend the standard beyond the breaking points knowing the Supreme Court can’t take all the cases? I’d bet so, but at least it’s something.

      • There was that federal court ruling (after Heller/McDonald) in the Chicago area that if a community wanted to restrict 2A on the grounds that such made the community “feel safe”, that was a “compelling interest” of the municipal government, and allowable.

  10. We should probably change “pro-gun” to “pro-Constitution” or “pro-freedom” if the goal is to win hearts and minds of people that are exposed to anti gun propaganda.

    Harder to be anti-Constitution or anti-freedom…

    • You’d like to think that, but — in reality, they twist it in their reality to mean the opposite. Nobody is more anti-freedom and anti-Constitution than the hard left. They despise the first, second, and fourth Amendments. They believe “freedom of religion” means “discrimination”. They believe “freedom of speech” means freedom to hurt people. They believe that the Constitution was written by slave owners and therefore has no bearing on today’s modern world.

      Trumpeting “freedom” and “Constitution” is not going to get you very far with these folks.

    • for lots of progressives, the Constitution and “freedom” (liberty) are colonialist white male patriarchy.

  11. Thank God. This choice was more cut and dried than the Thomas appointment. The opposition could not really dig up any dirt, so Gorsuch should have passed muster a long time before this. Frankly, I am suprised that he couldn’t get the Dem vote he needed. Party politics for a judge who has no dirt?

    • Garland was similarly uncontroversial. The GOP blocked his vote and, in turn, the democrats are blocking this one. And the GOP is busting the filibuster just like the dems did when they needed it. Both sides are playing the same game of politics.

      • I’d respectfully disagree with you. The Democrats appoint judges who ignore precedent and the constitution. Feinstein was horrified that Gorsuch didn’t believe in a constitution that “is a living document, intended to evolve as our country evolves.”

        When a judge believes that the constitution changes with the changing beliefs of … something, then the only real measure of what the law is now is what the judge wants it to be. If Gorsuch wasn’t lying and really believes in originalism, there isn’t much room for interpretation. If an originalist disagrees with the constitution, well tough shit. If a living constitutionalist disagrees with the constitution, then it has “evolved.”

        The point is that liberal judges will rule on the law they think should be in front of them instead of ruling on the law in front of them. Such a belief system turns judges into tyrants instead of neutral referees.

        • Did you notice the number of Demoncrats who objected that Gorsuch should “side with the little guy”, based on “doing the right thing”, rather than applying the law as written?

  12. Please stop calling it the “Nuclear Option”. It is nothing of the sort.
    You want to be accurate?
    Call it “The Harry Reid Precedent”

    Nuclear Option come on.

  13. Fine by me. Just get Gorsuch in. And yes the old commie hag needs to be replaced. Elections have consequences…

  15. My esteem of Mitch McConnell is (for the moment) considerably higher today.

    I didn’t think he had it in him to pull the trigger.

    • “I didn’t think he had it in him to pull the trigger.”

      Neither did I. Neither did I.

    • Despite the fact that he was emphatic that Gorsuch was going to get a straight vote this week, I am surprised he went through with it.

      Now let’s see what he does on legislation when the Democrats filibuster everything.

  16. Good right now but don’t celebrate too much. It could also come back to bite us in the ass in the future. Happens alot in politics.

    • I don’t see it that way. The Democrats invented a rule in 2003 to antagonize the Bush Administration. Today’s precedent essentially annuls that nonsense and takes us back to square one.

      Remember – There is no Constitutional basis for the Senate filibuster. It was a gentleman’s agreement, which doesn’t work when you have a deplorable lack of gentlemen.

    • I guess it could but what are the chances that the democrats, upon needing to kill a filibuster to get a SCOTUS pick in, wouldn’t get rid of it just as fast? They sure did it happily when they needed to fill federal appointments before.

      • When they still thought they were going to win the Senate and Presidency, they talked about doing this if the Republicans took the unprecedented action of filibustering a Supreme Court nominee. The only thing the Republicans are going to lose over this is the media debate about whose fault this is.

  17. Short Term Win. Long Term? Divides The Nation And Senate more. judges need to be unbiarsed in applying law.

    • Division is good because it eventually leads to dissolotion and eventually people having the ability to create a new political environment of their own choosing. Your own country governed by your own worldview.

  20. ” Kagen received 5 GOP votes aand Sotomayor received 9. That is, both radical leftists only escaped filibusters by receiving generous GOP votes. It shows how (overly) deferential Republicans are and how destructive and intransigent Democrats are with regard to presidents of the opposing party.”

    SUPERB point!

  21. “BREAKING: Senate Deploys ‘Nuclear Option’ To Confirm Constitutional Originalist Gorsuch to Supreme Court”
    FIFY

  22. Both Kagen and Sotomayor lied to congress during their conformation hearings. They both said one thing then and when some non specific on my part cases came up. Did just the opposite of they said they would do as in “its written law:. Ginsberg will hang in there just to annoy Trump. Roberts blew his chances of having my support when he started writing laws from the bench. Now the next best chance while Trumps still around because he might not make it the full 4 years at his current rate. Is for Kennedy to retire. He might just retire this summer if all goes well.We get in another solid choice and the courts set in the right direction for many years to come. Then we go after all of Obslamas Federal Judges. Will the Dims get their chance?? Eventually yes.
    But selfishly. I will be long gone by then.

  23. “longstanding rules”…oh good grief. The first judicial filibuster was in 2003…all of 13 years ago. The nation survived 200+ years without a judicial filibuster, we’ll be just find without it.

    And should correctly be called the “Reid option”. Look it up.

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