President Barack Obama’s decision to nominate Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court Wednesday morning means that at long last, the oft-short-listed candidate finally gets his shot.
Garland is the chief judge for the Washington, D.C. appeals court, appointed by President Bill Clinton. A former clerk for Justice William Brennan, he’s served in private practice and at the Justice Department.
A Chicago native, Garland, 63, is a graduate of Harvard and Harvard Law School. He was confirmed by a 76-23 vote after being nominated by Clinton in 1997. Obama considered him for the seats that ultimately went to Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
The Rethuglicans have already told Obama….AIN’T GON’ BE NO SAFE CHOICE…Anybody he nominates is going to be slapped back down. So if it’s like that; he should have just gone for broke…he should have nominated the most radical black jurist he could find. Had he done that, at least the event could have been a platform to raise issues and give answers. All that is scheduled to take place is TALK anyway. So he should have given us all something to talk about and he should have used somebody who could talk. This “safe” nice white liberal judge who’s so thankful to be nominated that he almost cried on tv is probably not even going to be a footnote in history.