March 17, 2016

Sadly, you could say the same thing about most of what comes out of their mouths. If they weren't so dangerous, they might even be humorous as well.

Al Franken Compares GOP’s Supreme Court Arguments To An ‘SNL’ Sketch:

Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) tore into Republicans on Thursday for their contradictory positions on blocking President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court pick, saying their arguments reminded him of his past life as a comedian on “Saturday Night Live.”

“I used to make a living identifying absurdity,” Franken said at the start of a fiery speech in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. “I’m hearing a lot of it today.”

Franken, who played the hapless self-help guru Stuart Smalley on “SNL,” called out his fellow committee members for making arguments that don’t line up. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), for one, had just made the case that the Constitution doesn’t explicitly say the Senate “shall advise and consent” when the president makes judicial nominations. In essence, Lee was arguing that because the Constitution doesn’t use that phrase, the Senate isn’t required, technically, to move on a president’s nominees.

“Well, you know, we could be the rope-a-dope Senate and not do anything,” Franken said, noting that technically, the Constitution also only requires that Congress meet once a year, on January 3, at noon.

“I could go back to Minnesota on the fourth of January and sit in Minnesota,” he said. “But I don’t think Minnesotans would think I was doing my job.”

Franken also took on the GOP talking point of “letting the American people” decide who should be the next Supreme Court nominee.

“I hear, ‘OK, let the people decide, and the presidential election should decide.’ But then I hear colleagues from the other side say, ‘Well, you know what, if the election goes the wrong way, I’d be happy to consider this nomination in the lame duck,’” Franken said.

“How absurd is that?” he went on. “So it’s ‘Let the people decide, unless they decide on Hillary Clinton, in which case let us decide.’”

He got into a back-and-forth with Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) about Republicans setting a precedent by denying even a hearing to a Supreme Court nominee, never mind a vote. Hatch said Democrats did the same thing to failed Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork in the 1980s, which Franken corrected him on. Bork ultimately failed to get confirmed, but he did at least get hearings. Read on...

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