This story was originally published on nationaljournal.com on April 7, 2017 For those of us who revere Congress and, in my case, particularly the Senate, having first worked there as an intern 44 years ago, these are sad times. Partisanship is strangling what was long a functioning and effective institution, whose slow pace was in keeping with its claim to be the world’s greatest deliberative body. Republicans acted shamefully last year by refusing to act on Judge Merrick Garland, President Obama’s choice to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court left by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. Now, Democrats’ treatment of Judge Neil Gorsuch, President Trump’s nominee for that same Supreme Court slot, is equally shameful. Both men are eminently qualified and do not deserve to be whipping boys for the ugly partisanship that has poisoned Capitol Hill. The Republican argument that Obama should not be allowed to nominate a Supreme Court justice in the last year of a presidential term flies in the face of the historical record: Six justices have been nominated and confirmed in presidential election
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