White House explains why Obama won’t be attending Antonin Scalia’s funeral

Since Scalia died over the weekend, Republicans have said they plan to block Obama’s nominee, and many have added that they don’t think the president should choose a nominee at all.

– Vice President Joe Biden said Obama cannot select the most liberal possible candidate for the U.S. Supreme Court and should seek a “consensus” pick who could attract Republican support.

Our president stated on Saturday that pursuant to the dictates of our Constitution, he will in due time nominate Justice Scalia’s replacement on the court. The death of the stalwart conservative Scalia leaves the court with four conservative justices and four liberals.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said he doesn’t think Obama should put a candidate forward.

“I do believe that the nominee should get a hearing”, Murkowski, who’s running for re-election this fall, told reporters in Juneau, Alaska.

Scalia was found dead on Saturday in his room at a remote Texas hunting resort.

Maddow followed up, “Should president Obama do that with Senator [Chuck] Grassley [current chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee]?” President Obama will nominate a new person to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Later, at Mutt’s Barbecue in Easley, Cruz again hit Obama for not planning to go to the funeral, and for not attending Margaret Thatcher’s funeral in 2013.

Nelson said if a decision ends in a tie, it simply upholds the decisions of the lower court, but it does not set a nationwide standard.

It was interesting to see Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) write in The Post just a few days ago that “the Senate’s constitutional duty to give a fair and timely hearing and a floor vote to the president’s Supreme Court nominees has remained inviolable”.

It’s not clear what “precedent” and “tradition” Murkowski meant, but the claim that a president in his final year ceases to make court appointments is disputed.

A new poll from Rasmussen Reports, which is known to lean a bit conservative in its results, finds that voters would prefer Obama to fill the vacancy rather than waiting until after the next presidential election. In the past, lawmakers have sometimes informally agreed to halt hearings on lower court nominations during campaign season.

“The very balance of our nation’s highest court is in serious jeopardy”.

Unless the Scalia family let it be known that it didn’t wish Obama to attend – which seems inconceivable – the president’s decision makes no sense.