The sudden death of longtime Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia immediately elicited a controversy. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, indicated that they would not allow any potential successor chosen by President Barack Obama to be confirmed during the remainder of his 11 months in office.
McConnell and other Republicans are hoping that the party’s nominee will win the November election and make that choice instead. Such a stand has brought charges of hypocrisy by Democrats, who cite the fact that Ronald Reagan selected Anthony Kennedy to replace Lewis Powell on the Court when Reagan had just 13 months left in his term. Despite that fact, all six Republican candidates at the party’s Saturday night debate in South Carolina insisted that Obama should not be given that opportunity.
Their opinions were based on what they stated was precedent of lame duck presidents not making such selections. When the debate moderator pointed out the discrepancy involving Reagan, he was booed by the audience. McConnell’s opinion is that American voters deserve to have a say in making the choice, that coming when they elect the next president. Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren countered that argument by saying that the American voter had already made that decision when they re-elected Obama in 2012, when he defeated former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.
The Republican counter-argument will likely be that Kennedy’s late selection was the result of one candidate, Robert Bork, being rejected by the Senate, and another, Douglas Ginsburg, dropping out before any vote.
Somber remembrances are common on Veterans Day, with Americans taking the time to acknowledge the sacrifices made by both current and past veterans, and especially those who offered the ultimate sacrifice in dying in defense of their country.
On that day, the custom is that the incumbent President lays a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and offers words of tribute to all veterans. On November 11, 1985, then-President Ronald Reagan spoke at Arlington National Cemetery about veterans and how many of his predecessors in the White House had offered a prayer in remembering their sacrifice. Reagan recounted how the night before the pivotal D-Day battle on June 6, 1944, an anxious Gen.
Matthew Ridgway offered prayers to God that he hoped would be similar to the Bible passage in which God had told Joshua that he would neither fail nor leave him. In Ridgway’s case, it would mean allowing for success in this battle that was the beginning of the end for fighting in Europe during World War II.
Reagan connected the sacrifice of veterans to the reason for their service, which was the failure of peace to be achieved across the world.
He noted that such failures result when the country neglects what their basic principles are in pursuit of other goals. Describing the concept of the United States lacking principles made them nothing more than a “crust of a continent,” Reagan said the country needed to be at the forefront of all those seeking peace.
