Chuck Schumer Got ROLLED? The Chuck You Say!

Remember that judicial nominee deal from LAST WEEK? Yeah. LOL.

While Yr Wonkette would never want to be accused of admiring nasty old hate-tortoise Mitch McConnell and his gang of thugs, we do have to admit a grudging respect for his amoral efficiency at using his position as Senate majority leader to Achieve Republican Goals. He stymied much of Barack Obama's legislative agenda with singleminded efficiency, and has harnessed Donald Trump's "presidency" as an engine to ram as many rightwingers as possible into federal judgeships. Sure, Trump and other Rs may occasionally condemn McConnell as insufficiently committed to creating a white ethnostate, but Mitch don't care, he's building a rightwing judiciary that will fuck over the poors and minorities and women for decades.

So you can see why we sometimes wish Senate Democrats could be, if not exactly ruthless like McConnell, at least not quite as ruthful as Chuck Goddamned Schumer , who agreed to fast track 15 Trump nominees in exchange for a bit more campaigning time in the run-up to the midterms. (This was not a popular "deal" at Wonkette HQ!) And now, big surprise, along comes Senate Judiciary Committee chair Chuck Grassley, saying "DEAL? WHAT DEAL."

Grassley insists that even though the Senate is in recess for October because of -- we repeat -- the "deal" struck by Schumer and McConnell, there MUST be hearings on two additional Trump nominees. Dianne Feinstein and other Democrats on Judiciary complained yesterday, saying, hey, dude, RECESS. Grassley gotta cut a bitch?

Here's the letter by Feinstein et al:

Short version: Um, we are in recess and we don't normally do hearings during a recess and WTF We Can Haz Regular Order please?

Grassley rejected the Dems' request, because he has HAD IT with all the Democratic game-playing, by golly! For one thing, he said, the two nominees' hearings were already delayed twice by the minor distraction of Brett Kavanaugh being accused of attempted rape, and THAT was pretty selfish of you, My Esteemed Colleague (Grassley only mentions the dates, not the actual reason the hearings were delayed).

And since McConnell had planned on keeping the Senate in session for all of October, Dems went and agreed to Grassley delaying the hearings until October 17, so don't go crying that now we shouldn't hold those hearings just because the Senate isn't "in session." It's in session enough to ram through two more judges, now isn't it? For the little it's worth, a spokesperson for Feinstein confirmed that when Dems agreed to the new hearing dates for those two nominees, "at no point did we think there was a possibility of going into recess before October 29th, as was scheduled." So thanks a lot for the recess, Sen. Schumer.

We especially like this part of Grassley's pissy little reply:

God, that complaint about "Democratic delay tactics" resulting in 154 judicial seats being open is simply a masterpiece of gaslighting. Surely that must be why there were 107 unconfirmed Obama judicial nominees at the end of 2016, as Trump prepared to start appointing anyone the Federalist Society put on his list. Or perhaps all those vacancies resulted because Obama "wasn't big on picking judges," and was kind of lazy and "complacent" about judicial nominees, as Trump recently speculated at a presser . Let's just remind you that this judge-manufacturing assembly line is all in the service of creating one of the most anti-democratic (with a small "d") judiciaries since the end of Reconstruction.

In conclusion, it remains balls-to-the wall confirmations of Trump nominees forever unless Dems take the Senate back, and Republicans have no intention of letting Democrats get enough votes for THAT, either. But once the elections are past, either way, we need a Democratic leader willing to finally recognize the other side is not playing by any rules at all.

Now let's return to finding a way to blame this on Nancy Pelosi.

[ Politico / Manu Raju on Twitter / Senate Judiciary Committee / LAT / Atlantic  (MUST READ! -- Dok) ]

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