Why do highly respected mainstream news outlets, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, and National Public Radio, report on the Republican senators’ opposition to President Obama’s nomination of a replacement for the Supreme Court seat vacated by Justice Antonin Scalia when he passed away as if this is a genuine political power struggle, rather than what it really is: the exercise of extra-Constitutional power by those sworn to uphold the U.S. Constitution, which by any rational measure should be considered an act of treason against the Constitution, rather than as fair political combat?

With every article that reports on the matter as a fight for power — such as the New York Times’s “More Republicans Say They’ll Block Supreme Court Nomination” — without any mention of the Constitutional obligation of the parties – for the President to nominate a justice and for the Senate to offer “advice and consent” – the media lends credibility to those opposing the president, legitimizing this lawless action which, by any objective measure and given the duties as outlined in the Constitution, is nothing less than an attempted coup d’etat by the legislative leaders against the executive and judicial branches of government.

 

For the record, Article II Section II of the US Constitution says:

[The President] shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to … appoint … Judges of the supreme Court

 

Note that the Constitution doesn’t even say that the Senate has the power to oppose a President’s nomination. It merely calls on the Senate to exercise “Advice and Consent,” in a subordinate clause in a sentence that without its parenthetical statement actually reads:

[The President] shall have Power to appoint Judges of the supreme Court

 

It is time for the GOP to exercise the power with which they are vested by the US Constitution: to advise the president on his choice of nominee (and no, “We advise the president not to name a nominee” is not any sort of advice) and then to consent to his choice.

By doing so, the Republican senators would be paying the ultimate tribute to the late Justice Antonin Scalia, who was as we all know a devoted “Originalist” in his interpretation of the Constitution. Or rather, in his reading of the Constitution, since Scalia left little room for interpretation. And Article II, Section II, needs no interpretation. It is plain as the words on this page.