PA's Toomey latest GOP senator to agree to meet Garland

Mr. Biden was running for president at the time.

Pennsylvania's other USA senator, Republican Pat Toomey, has joined the chorus of GOP voices saying there should be no Supreme Court nominee hearing until President Barack Obama has left office. Robert Casey, D-Pa., on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Since it was ratified 226 years ago, it has clearly outlined how U.S. Supreme Court justices are nominated by the president and voted on by the Senate.

"As someone who lives in NY who has experienced the horrors of terrorism close up and personal, the idea of having someone on the Supreme Court who understands those issues, as well as their awful human effect, is very comforting", Schumer said. The ad claims that under a Supreme Court with the "liberal extremist" Garland as a member, the Second Amendment would be "gutted" and "partial-birth abortion legalized" and Garland would become the "tie-breaking vote for Obama's big government liberalism". Of course, that strategy requires the Republican nominee to win the election. "In all six cases, the nominees received thorough and fair hearings", and in all six cases, they received votes in the Senate.

Biden's remarks represent the latest push from the Obama administration to break through opposition to Garland. McConnell said Biden said the same thing back when he was on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Biden, who has acted as a stealthy liaison to the Senate in past negotiations, has begun some of that work.

"Not much of the time". Garland is a nominee who, in all likelihood, would have been easily confirmed in a more statesman-like time. Throughout his distinguished career, Garland has shown a brilliant intellect and respect for the court's duty to, in his words, "apply the law to the facts of the case before it - not to legislate, not to arrogate to itself the executive power, not to hand down advisory opinions on the issues of the day".

Even though Kirk's action is a remarkable display of maturity compared to his colleagues, some Democrats were not impressed with Kirk's dissent from McConnell.

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"A sharply political, divisive hearing process", Roberts said, "increases the danger that whoever comes out of it will be viewed in those terms...."

"We've reached out", Biden said.

But Republicans won't make it easy. Fixated on the conservative Republican base, McConnell is betting that he and his fellow GOP senators have more to gain than to lose by holding out as long as they can against any nomination that might tilt the court leftward.

Garland was a consensus nominee for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 1997. Biden warned President George H.W. Bush to hold off on a nomination.

Ironically, just a couple of weeks before Scalia died, the Supreme Court's conservative chief justice, John Roberts, said during an appearance in Boston that the Senate's confirmation process for the nation's highest court "is not functioning very well" because of political agendas.

Another Democrat vying for the party's U.S. Senate nomination in the state's April 26 primary, Katie McGinty, said: "Toomey's insistence on playing political games with the Supreme Court runs directly counter to what Pennsylvanians are telling him: Do your job".