Editor:

On March 16, 2016, President Barack Obama nominated Merrick Garland for associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States to succeed Antonin Scalia, who had died one month earlier.

There were 11 months left to President Obama’s term at the time of Scalia’s death, but the Republicans had a hissy fit and claimed the Thurmond Rule and flatly refused to vote on any Obama nominee.

But now Ruth Bader Ginsburg is dead less than 24 hours (Obama had the grace to wait a month) and we are 41 days (not 11 months) away from a presidential election and Mitch McConnell is vowing to ram through Trump’s nominee. 

There’s no such thing as a “Biden Rule;” Republicans made it up. In 1992 Biden said that IF a Supreme Court seat became vacant during the summer maybe GHWB should wait till after the election OR appoint a moderate.

There is no such thing as a “Thurmond rule.”

Racist Sen. Strom Thurmond made it up to block President Lyndon B. Johnson’s 1968 appointment of Justice Abe Fortas as chief justice.

Through out my whole voting life the Republican Party has always been and played dirty ... like the southern Democratic party they supplanted after the northern Democrats finally washed their hands of them and President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

By 1980 the Republican Party was the new standard bearer of the white Southerners’ cause – to maintain white supremacy.

Diane Daiute

Sweet Home