Moscow Mitch Willing To Kill His Fellow Senators To Get Political Toadie On Court Of Appeals.
Moscow Mitch is willing to risk the lives of his fellow senators in order to force a vote on one of his political toadies to the Court of Appeals to D.C.
Only 161 days after he took his seat on the U.S. District Court in Louisville, Judge Justin Walker, who has close ties to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, is being tapped to fill a vacancy on the powerful U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
President Donald Trump announced Friday he is nominating Walker, 37, to the coveted seat, which likely will ignite a fierce fight on Capitol Hill over the former University of Louisville law professor’s qualifications to serve on the nation’s second-most influential court.
The American Bar Association Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary last year rated Walker “not qualified” for the District Court, saying that he had never tried a case, either civil or criminal, as lead or co-counsel.
But Walker was confirmed by the Senate 50-41, and University of Richmond law professor Carl Tobias, who studies federal court appointments, predicted he will be for the appellate court as well.
McConnell quickly praised the pick, saying in a statement that Walker is “an outstanding legal scholar” who represents a “new generation of federal judges.”
“I am proud that President Trump’s search took him outside the Beltway and into the Bluegrass,” McConnell said. “He has chosen a rising Kentucky star, born and raised in Louisville, to refresh the second-most-important federal court in the country.”
I’m not a lawyer, but the lack of never trying a case would give me pause. I bet he slept at a Holiday Inn Express. That must be it.
It also helps that he worked for McConnell, clerked for Kavanaugh, and is a Federalist Society asshole.
And you can tell that Walker is one great legal scholar.
A federal judge has rebuked Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer’s call on churches to forego drive-in services this Easter weekend to slow the spread of the coronavirus, calling the move overly broad and unconstitutional.
“On Holy Thursday, an American mayor criminalized the communal celebration of Easter,” wrote U.S. District Judge Justin Walker in a temporary restraining order issued Saturday.
On Fire Christian Church, in Louisville, sued Fischer and the city on Friday, arguing the mayor’s direction on drive-in religious services violated Constitutional rights and their religious liberty.
Walker, who was appointed to the bench last October, banned the city from “enforcing; attempting to enforce; threatening to enforce; or otherwise requiring compliance with any prohibition on drive-in church services at On Fire.”
Churchgoers there “face an impossible choice,” the judge wrote: “skip Easter Sunday service, in violation of their sincere religious beliefs, or risk arrest, mandatory quarantine, or some other enforcement action for practicing those sincere religious beliefs.”
Columnist Jospeh Gerth was right when he said this wasn’t so much a court ruling as a campaign speech for the SCOTUS, which is where McConnell plans to eventually place Walker. It’s one of those open secrets, and you know it has to be pretty damn widely dispersed for the Louisville Courier-Journal to be picking up on it.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) decision to require senators, staff and building employees to descend on the Capitol on Monday — overriding the anti-coronavirus health and safety orders of the executives of the three jurisdictions of the national capital region, is an irresponsible act of partisan selfishness.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.), based upon guidance received from attending Capitol physician Brian Monahan, announced that House lawmakers will not return to Washington next week. “We had no choice,” Pelosi told reporters Tuesday. “If the Capitol physician recommends that we not come back, then we have to take that guidance.”But McConnell’s office wouldn’t say whether he even bothered to consult with Monahan. What matters most to the majority leader is getting Senate Republicans back in town so he can ram through more of President Trump’s judicial nominees, including 37-year-old Justin Walker.A Kentucky native and McConnell protege, Walker was confirmed for a federal judgeship in western Kentucky in a party-line vote only last October, despite having been judged “not qualified” by the American Bar Association, which cited his insufficient legal experience. Undeterred, Trump then nominated Walker to the second-most powerful court in the land, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. McConnell’s mission is to make it happen.Senate Minority Whip Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) said, “To take [Walker] who’s been on Kentucky district court for a matter of weeks and promote him to the second highest court in the land is an outrage. It is as bad as it gets in terms of packing the court with political toadies.”None of that matters to McConnell, who has now made clear that covid-19 concerns are secondary to his top priority, which is judicial nominees. “Of course, we will go back to judges,” he told radio host and Post contributing columnist Hugh Hewitt in late March. “My motto for the rest of the year is leave no vacancy behind.”
Yes, you read it there from Dick Durbin of IL. Normally, Durbin is all about maintaining comity in the Senate body, but he flat out called Walker a “political toadie” of McConnell’s. Given that after Kavanaugh hearng that Durbin has hoping they could back to having some kind of “bipartisan” cooperation on judges, well, this is predictable. Not so much Durbin’s reacion mind you. No, Moscow Mitch filling a plastic bag full of shit and lighting it on fire and placing it at Durbin’s door is what I expected. However, I never dreamed that McConnell would want to risk the lives of his fellow senators to obtain a judgeship. After all, he might end up killing a Republican or two in the process.
Or does he think because Rand Paul recovered that Republicans are immune to the coronavirus?
Or maybe Moscow Mitch believes that all is lost in November, and he wants to ensure that the Judicial Branch will be all Republican to strike down what a President Biden may sign into law?
Or maybe Moscow MItch is like Trump and believes that their must be sacrificies for the greater good? In the column, Colbert King provides us with the fact that managers and section chiefs of several governmental agencies are reporting back to duty on May 4th. Their mission is figure out a way to bring the REST of the federal workforce back to work. Trump wants the government open for business you know!
And I know exactly what King is writing about. To my horror, I got a Census Bureau alert telephone call last week announcing that supervisors, managers, and section chiefs are to return to work on Monday, May 4th. This can only mean that in a week or so I wil be called off of administrative leave and be forced back to work. I will be 57 years old in August, and I have hypertension and am prediabetic. And I am the primary care giver for my 91 Mom who is a type II diabetic with a heart condition.
Besides meatpackers, Trump wants hundreds of thousands of federal employees to return to work, and a bunch of them work in MARYLAND and D.C. where there is high COVID-19 infections. I will be going back to Indiana that has an increasing number of viral cases and deaths. No way in hell are the infections going down for two weeks before the reopenings.
But Mitch may have adopted Trump’s attitude of “While some of you will die, it is a sacrifice I am willing to make!” I just wonder how many of Mitch’s Republicans want to be to among the human sacrifices?
