Toomey shirking his duties
U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey is refusing to consider President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland for the U.S. Supreme Court, claiming “it is wise to give the American people a more direct voice in the selection.”
Toomey would apparently prefer to forget that the American people have already expressed themselves, having elected Obama president twice. The Constitution is pretty clear how this works: the American people elect a president, the president nominates Supreme Court justices and the Senate votes to either approve or disapprove the nomination. By refusing to consider the Garland nomination, Toomey is ignoring the Constitution and failing to perform the duties he was elected to perform as a senator.
If he doesn’t believe that Garland is up for the job, then he should vote against approval. But to simply ignore his duties, which are laid out in the Constitution, is abhorrent. His motivation for disregarding the law is transparent: Toomey is hoping that the next president will be a Republican who would nominate a justice with a right-wing, tea party agenda similar to his own. But it isn’t fair for Toomey to ignore the Constitution and invent new rules to suit his own wishes.
Simply put, if Toomey isn’t capable of performing the work demanded by the office that he was elected to, then Pennsylvania needs to find a new senator who is capable of doing his job.
Andrew Liebhold
Mt. Morris