Neil Gorsuch says he is no ‘rubber stamp’

Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch said Tuesday that “no man is above the law” when pressed on whether President Donald Trump could reinstitute torture as a USA interrogation method. Dick Durbin (D-IL).

Neil Gorsuch has been compared (including by me) to Antonin Scalia, whom he called “a lion of the law”, but after two days of hearings it’s clear he’s closer to John Roberts-another handsome face with an ugly ideology.

“Do you accept that?”

Did Gorsuch find the EEOC’s guidance to be “persuasive”, Durbin asked?

Thus, Gorsuch was “no ordinary nominee”, Cruz said.

Trump – who asked the Senate to “go nuclear” if Democrats filibuster – has said he is confident Gorsuch will be confirmed.

– Kenneth Jost (@jostonjustice) March 22, 2017 Graham now going on a tangent from Trump’s judge comments, wonders why Dems criticize him then “slander” Gorsuch.

“That’s not what judges do”, he continued. “They don’t do it at that end of Pennsylvania Avenue and they shouldn’t do it at this end, either”.

Gorsuch throughout his hearings has sought to paint himself as a fair and independent judge.

A lower court found in the school’s favor, and anchored much of its analysis in an opinion Gorsuch wrote in 2008 as a judge on the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Gorsuch articulated legal justifications of Bush’s order to wiretap of Americans’ global phone calls and emails without warrants, and of the administration’s practice of suspending habeas corpus for some detainees, The New York Times reported last week.

“The problem is this: Suppose an older partner, woman at the firm that you’re interviewing at, asks you if you intend to become pregnant soon”, Gorsuch said.

Gorsuch seems like a decent guy, although he has avoided giving answers on how he feels about subjects like abortion and guns.

“I am deeply disappointed that it is under these circumstances that we begin these hearings”, said Judiciary Committee ranking member Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.

“For me to insert myself into this would be a fool’s errand, and I have enough of my own fool’s errands”, Hickenlooper joked.

The letter was dated Monday, the first day of Gorsuch’s confirmation hearing for the supreme court. “We have courts to decide these cases for a reason- to resolve these disputes”.

Insisting on the separation of powers between the judiciary and the legislature, he said: “Judges would make pretty rotten legislators – we are life tenured, you can’t get rid of us, it would be a pretty poor way to run a democracy”.

Now the question for Democrats is: What to do? He laughed at the very idea that he lacked the independence from President Trump to serve on the high court. Nominated by President Kennedy in 1962, White eventually drifted into the conservative bloc of the court, opposing the Roe v. Wade decision that afforded rights to abortion and also some gay rights cases.

Reading the quote, Leahy asked Gorsuch if a president would have to comply with a court order.

But Durbin suggested Gorsuch had gone further than what was required and lowered the bar for public schools to comply with the federal law on special education. “My decisions have never reflected a judgment about the people before me – only my best judgment about the law and facts at issue in each particular case”, the nominee said.

A ruling doesn’t mean you are for the victor or for the loser, or that it means you are for the big guy or the little guy, Grassley said.

Politico reports that at least 10 Senate staff will operate a “war room” during the hearing and the Republican National Committee will also have one to help pump out instant reactions to what’s said at the hearing.

Gorsuch noted that it took a civil war for the country to win what might be the most “radical guarantee in all of the Constitution and maybe in all of human history” – equal protection under the law.

It remained unclear when – or even if – the Senate will vote on Gorsuch’s nomination if the committee approves him.