To the Editor:
Re “Stern Rebuke for Senators,” by Adam Liptak (Sidebar column, front page, March 22):
I wish that Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. had admonished Republican senators that their party’s candidates will not be able to talk about how much they love the Constitution or that they stand for its strict construction during this year’s elections or in the near future (if ever). The hypocrisy would be too profound.
Their boycott of President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee is troublesome on those grounds, let alone the meager concept that a president doesn’t have the right to make judicial appointments in his last year in office.
This doesn’t even approach the threshold of loose construction. I can only hope for dire consequences for Republicans at the polls.
MARGARET BALLOU
Novato, Calif.
Note from KBJ: I haven't heard a single person say, or even imply, that "a president doesn't have a right to make judicial appointments in his last year in office," so Margaret Ballou is just making this up for partisan purposes. The president clearly has such a right, and he has exercised it. The Senate, meanwhile, is an autonomous branch of government, not the president's cipher. It has exercised its right to refuse to hold hearings.
