"Today I am nominating Chief Judge Merrick Brian Garland to join the Supreme Court," President Obama says.
After more than a month of vetting, he picked up Merrick Garland, a 63-year-old lawyer who is currently serving as the chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
The President was full of praise for judge Garland.
"I've selected a nominee who is widely recognized not only as one of America's sharpest legal minds, but someone who brings to his work a spirit of decency, modesty, integrity, even-handedness, and excellence. "
President Obama urged Senate to give Garland a fair hearing, for the sake of the nation.
However, the call was immediately criticized by the Republicans. Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell insisted that the Senate would not schedule a hearing.
"It is the President's constitutional right to nominate a Supreme Court justice. And it is the Senate's constitutional right to act as a check on a President and withhold its concern. "
He also quoted Vice President Joe Biden, a former chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who opposed George W. Bush's Supreme Court nomination in 1992.
Biden at that time suggested that the nomination should be put off until after the political season, meaning the presidential election.
Senator McConnell said President Obama was trying to politicize the nomination process for purposes of the election.
Xiaohong, CRI, Washington DC.
