Just when you thought the news wasn't tense enough. . . Russians looming over Ukraine. . . PRC looming over Taiwan. . . the mid term election. . . a baseball lockout. . .
Justice Stephen Breyer decides to retire.
Uff.
Well, off to a titanic nomination spat with a 50/50 divided Senate.
The filibuster, however, won't apply, so the Democrats, assuming they can all agree on the replacement nominee, will get somebody in. They key will be satisfying the moderate Democrats, although they are few in number.
Breyer, a 1964 Harvard law graduate, was appointed to the Court by Bill Clinton in 1994. He was principally a government attorney early in his career before becoming a Harvard professor in 1967, although he took time out from that pursuit to engage in government service from time to time, including serving as a Watergate prosecutor. He was an expert on administrative law. He went on the bench in 1980.
Breyer had one of those legal careers that's both enviable and deceptive. Undoubtedly highly intelligent, he actually practiced real law very little, spending no time whatsoever in private practice and the most of his career in academia or on the bench. Of some slight interest, in his early legal career, 1964 and 1965, he was completing eight years in the Army Reserve, from which he left as a corporal.
Beyer, who is 83, has been under enormous pressure to retire due to Democratic fears that if he does not do so prior to the November election and should then pass away, certain a possibility at his advanced age, his replacement would not get through a Republican Senate or would be nominated by a Republican President.
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