Monday, December 05, 2011

Complete, grandstanding horse s**t

Describing Amy's hearing charitably

Strib photo
Kevin Diaz has a post on Hot Dish Politics about a hearing that Amy Klobuchar intends to conduct on televising U.S. Supreme Court hearings:
Minnesota Democrat Amy Klobuchar, a member of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, will hold a hearing Tuesday on televising proceedings before the U.S. Supreme Court, which currently doesn’t even allow note-taking in view of the Justices. 
Klobuchar calls it an effort to increase transparency and access for the public, which now often gets a very time-limited view of Supreme Court hearings.
The ever cautious Diaz says:
Given the separation of powers provisions in the U.S. Constitution, it's unclear what Congress could do even if Klobuchar's push were to gain traction on Capitol Hill.
The power of Congress to conduct hearings is supposed to be in furtherance of its legislative authority, to help it write intelligent legislation. There have been many abuses of that power, of course, think Joe McCarthy.

But this doesn't even rise to the level of abuse of authority.

Congress has no authority - none, zero, zip, zilch, nada - in deciding whether Supreme Court hearings are televised.

The queen of small ball wiffs again.

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