Federalist senior writer Mary Katharine Ham joined CNN this week in the wake of President Obama’s announcement of his pick for the Supreme Court.
At a Rose Garden announcement of Merrick Garland’s nomination, Obama pled for fairness in the treatment of his nominee. The president was flanked by Vice President Joe Biden, pioneer of judicial obstruction.
Biden was the architect of the demise of Judge Robert Bork’s nomination in 1987. Deemed by Democrats to be technically qualified but ideologically undesirable, they went about a vicious line of questioning and attack, culminating in Sen. Ted Kennedy’s famous speech about “Robert Bork’s America.”
Ham noted repeated escalations of Democrats in the area of judicial nominee obstruction since that time and the irony of Obama and Biden asking for restraint from Republicans, who have made the argument that they shouldn’t consider a nominee in a heated election season.
“It is amusing to watch the two of them stand up there and ask for fairness when then-Sen. Obama voted to filibuster Alito,” Ham said. “And Joe Biden! He pioneered one of the most unprecedented, to use the president’s word, methods in judicial obstruction ever. It’s got its own name. It’s called Borking. It’s named after the nominee who he mistreated and who was never named to the Court. So, welcome to your world, guys.”
