Schumer's Delusion

Schumer has been smoking his socks again....

New York Sen. Charles E. Schumer, a powerful member of the Democratic leadership, said Friday the Senate should not confirm another U.S. Supreme Court nominee under President Bush “except in extraordinary circumstances.”
“We should reverse the presumption of confirmation,” Schumer told the American Constitution Society convention in Washington. “The Supreme Court is dangerously out of balance. We cannot afford to see Justice Stevens replaced by another Roberts, or Justice Ginsburg by another Alito.”

Schumer’s assertion comes as Democrats and liberal advocacy groups are increasingly complaining that the Supreme Court with Bush’s nominees – Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel A. Alito – has moved quicker than expected to overturn legal precedents.

Senators were too quick to accept the nominees’ word that they would respect legal precedents, and “too easily impressed with the charm of Roberts and the erudition of Alito,” Schumer said.

"Extraordiany circumstances" Where exactly does he get this? Certainly not from the Constitution. Must be the voices in his head again. What he appears to be saying is that he and his liberal Senatorial compadres will not consent to ANY nominee from President Bush unless they are ideologically sympatico with say Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Such a nominee from Bush would indeed be an extraordinay circumstance albeit monumentally unlikely. A sure cure for this sort of philosophical obstinence would be for Bush to make each succeeding nominee further to the right than the previous one, sooner or later they would have to copitulate.

His statement that the court is "dangerously out of balance" is equally ludicrous. As it stands it's 4 libs, 4 conservatives and one swing. Sounds pretty balanced to me. What he's really worried about is a Stevens or Ginsburg being replaced by a conservative making the court 3-5-1. Considering there is nothing in the Constitution prohibiting an "unbalanced" court, should a vacancy arise, he'll eventually be forced to choke it down.