Domino’s, the same pizza company that has embraced drones, will soon start delivering some pizzas in Europe using delivery robots. The machines were created by Starship Technologies, a company based out of London that has developed a self-driving robot with six wheels. The deliveries will be limited to some cities in the Netherlands and Germany to start with; whether they’ll … Continue reading
A civil guard informs people of an ongoing raid as part of a corruption probe in Torrejon de Ardoz near Madrid, Spain.
Luis Gómez Romero, University of Wollongong
Corruption has become a major issue in political agendas across the world, from Donald Trump’s promise to “drain the swamp” to the impeachment of South Korea’s president Park Geun-hye over cronyism claims.
No country gets close to a perfect score in Transparency International’s 2016 Corruption Perception Index (CPI), which annually ranks nations by their perceived levels of corruption, defined as “the abuse of entrusted power for private gain”. Last year, the global average score was 43, indicating endemic corruption in the public sector of more than half the countries in the world.
Spain is a salient example of this global trend. Over the last decade, the country has been plagued with high-profile corruption scandals involving money embezzled from regional governments and mismanagement in local-level urban planning and construction.
Clichéd cultural explanations do not sufficiently explain the breadth and depth of this crisis. As early as 1748, Montesquieu described Spaniards in his seminal work, The Spirit of the Laws, as naturally obedient and generally indolent as a consequence of Catholicism and the mild Mediterranean climate. But this prejudiced view muddles cause and effect, because a culture of corruption is not the ultimate factor that undermines legal and political institutions.
On the contrary, countries develop a culture of distrust and dishonesty between different branches of society as a consequence of high levels of corruption.
Spain is a good case study for understanding the institutional causes of corruption. In 2013, the country dropped ten places – to 40 out of 177 – in CPI. In other words, at the height of the Spanish financial crisis that destroyed over three million jobs, corruption rose faster in Spain than anywhere else in the world except war-torn Syria.
The economic debacle stimulated a debate about corruption, which became fierce amid austerity measures imposed by the Partido Popular (PP) government. Two new political parties, the leftist Podemos and the centre-right Ciudadanos made corruption a central issue in their platforms.
Spain’s Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy at a People’s Party (Partido Popular) event. Albert Gea/Reuters
Spain’s attempts to limit corruption have subsequently intensified, with corruption investigations, arrests and prosecutions on the rise. The high-profile convictions in February 2017 of Iñaki Urdangarin – former Duke of Palma and husband to Princess Cristina, the youngest sister of Spain’s King Felipe VI – and Rodrigo Rato – former deputy prime minister under José María Aznar and former International Monetary Fund director – are seemingly landmarks in Spain’s struggle against corruption.
Urdangarin was sentenced to more than six years of prison on charges that included fraud and tax evasion. He had been accused of embezzling around 6,000,000 euros in public contracts for conferences and sporting events through the Nóos Institute, a non-profit sporting company he ran.
Similarly, Rato was handed a sentence of four-and-a-half years for misusing corporate credit cards while in charge of savings bank Caja Madrid and its successor, Bankia, from 2010 to 2011.
The appearance that Spain has achieved a great feat in transparency and accountability is deeply deceiving.
In a classic work on corruption, political scientist Robert Klitgaard defines the formula that favours the proliferation of illicit behaviour among public agents in the following terms: monopoly + discretion – accountability.
In other words, corruption flourishes whenever agents have monopoly power over clients, because they enjoy discretion and accountability is weak.
Both Rato’s and Urdangarin’s cases fit Klitgaard’s formula. Rato and other Bankia executives used uncontrolled corporate credit cards to rack up around 12,000,000 euros in undeclared expenses. This spending spree is particularly outrageous because Bankia was bailed out in 2012 for 19 billion euros, the largest corporate loss in Spanish history.
In relation to Urdangarin, the Spanish Constitution acknowledges the King (sic) as head of state and broadly defines his functions but issues no norms on central matters like the King’s budget or which members of his family should be considered constituent elements of the Crown.
Iñaki Urdangarin leaves court after a hearing in Palma de Mallorca, Spain. Reuters/Enrique Calvo
This regulatory gap granted Urdangarin a discretionary power. Exploiting his royal connections, he siphoned off millions in public funds from local governments.
The 2012 scandal triggered calls for the abolition of the monarchy. King Juan Carlos was not implicated in the investigation, but it was causal in his 2014 abdication to make way for his son, Felipe.
The real problem, however, is that neither Urdangarin nor Rato is really facing the consequences of his actions.
In his 2011 Christmas speech, then-King Juan Carlos addressed Urdangarin’s scandal by promising that “justice” would be “equal for everyone”.
Today, his words amount to an insult for many Spaniards. Urdangarin and Rato have been formally convicted, but the lenient subsequent court proceedings in both cases have been perceived as a cruel mockery of justice.
A parody of Urdagarin’s trial by Spanish comedians Los Morancos.
Though Urdangarin’s prosecutors requested that he pay bail of 200,000 euros to avoid going straight to prison, the court decided that he should remain free without bail in Switzerland, where he currently lives, as he prepares to appeal his sentence.
Rato was similarly let free without posting bail because the anti-corruption prosecutor did not ask the courts to take him into custody. Calling Rato’s behaviour during the trial “completely appropriate”, the Audiencia Nacional (National Court) saw “no need for precautionary measures”.
Social media exploded in outrage after the judgements were published. Pablo Iglesias, the leader of Podemos, angrily contrasted Urdangarin’s and Rato’s impunity with the Spanish courts harshness toward individuals who oppose and resist the current political system, specifically referencing the plight of rapper Miguel Arenas Beltrán, aka Valtonyc, who was handed three-and-a-half years in prison for songs deemed to have insulted the Crown and to have promoted nationalist Basque terrorism.
“Injustice is different for each of us,” Iglesias tweeted on February 23. “Songs will be written about this sentence and their authors will be condemned.”
“Only poor people go to jail,” declared 23-year-old Valtonyc to the Spanish online newspaper Público. It will be quite difficult for him to fight the court’s decision. He now works at a grocery store and has spent all his savings in his legal defence.
Corruption thrives on impunity, whose roots certainly reach beyond the Mediterranean. They can be traced to the binding forces behind privileged elites of a global capitalist system that increasingly runs wild.
Cultural critic Slavoj Žižek asserts that societies are bound together by their guilty secrets more strongly than by their public principles. Social acts of transgression “reaffirm the cohesion of the group” as “everybody pretends to know nothing” about them, or even “actively denies” their existence.
Corruption would therefore embody the “spirit” of wild capitalism. It binds us to the basic unwritten law of the system: anything is admissible if it helps you get richer. There are no moral or legal limits to the accumulation of capital. In the words of Richard Fuld, the former CEO of the now defunct Lehman Brothers: “Whatever it is, enjoy the ride. No regrets.”
In his last international trip as US president, Barack Obama warned that populist movements from the left and the right have risen across the world from “a suspicion of globalisation, a desire to rein in its excesses, a suspicion of elites and governing institutions that people feel may not be responsive to their immediate needs.”
But in Spain the courts have once again confirmed that powerful individuals have nothing to regret as they pursue wealth. The longer state institutions keep capitalism’s guilty secret, the harder it will be to break free. This Spain has now painfully learned.
Luis Gómez Romero, Senior Lecturer in Human Rights, Constitutional Law and Legal Theory, University of Wollongong
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
Over a year ago, the Environmental Protection Agency asked the country’s top scientific body to pore over six years of studies into how air pollution affects human health. It was a move meant to quell critics who questioned the safety of conducting such research.
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine finally released its findings on Tuesday, offering a resounding endorsement of the EPA’s protocol for conducting tests on human subjects, along with a few suggestions on how to make the tests safer.
The 159-page report makes for humdrum reading, but its timing injects the analysis with a sense of urgency. Lawmakers emboldened by the Trump administration’s assault on environmental regulations have moved to change the way science is used to draft policy to open the door to more industry-friendly or ideologically driven research.
Last month, the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology invited a coal lawyer, a chemical industry lobbyist and a libertarian scholar who has accused the EPA of “regulatory terrorism” to testify alongside a lone advocate for science as witnesses before a congressional hearing titled “Making EPA Great Again.” On Tuesday, the committee’s chairman, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), convened another hearing, “Climate Science: Assumptions, Policy Implications, and the Scientific Method,” will “examine the scientific method and process as it relates to climate change” and “focus on the underlying science that helps inform policy decisions,” according to a hearing charter. To do that, Smith fleshed out his four-person panel with a trio of prominent, like-minded climate change skeptics and attacked the credibility of Science magazine.
The report released Tuesday assesses the treatment of more than 800 participants across 21 studies the EPA conducted from 2009 to 2016, and how that research influenced policies to protect the public from toxic air pollution. But the takeaway can be applied to the agency’s overall use of science in rule-making, according to Robert Hiatt, chair of the epidemiology and biostatistics department at the University of California, San Francisco.
“The studies the EPA conducts are valuable,” Hiatt, the report’s lead author, told The Huffington Post by phone Monday. “They contribute knowledge to making important decisions for the public.”
He said the timing of the report, commissioned roughly 18 months ago by the Obama administration’s EPA, was a fluke.
“It is totally bizarre and coincidental that, at the same time, this issue has come to the floor on the national political scene,” Hiatt said. “The fact that they’re colliding this week is totally by chance. But the relevant information is still important.”
Hiatt and his team of 14 other researchers dug deep into eight experiments in particular, called controlled human inhalation exposure, or CHIE, studies that typically subject participants to hours of a pollutant to see how it affects lung function. The results of those studies are used to set EPA standards for air quality under the Clean Air Act.
The agency’s scientific methods, however, weren’t without flaw. In one study, Hiatt found that a 58-year-old woman suffered an irregular heartbeat during a test. Doctors immediately hospitalized her, and she was discharged two hours later when she was determined to be fine. It’s not clear whether her heart rate hastened by exposure during the test or by chance due to chronic disease. Hiatt recommended EPA researchers increase the amount of information given to participants before tests. But the incident marked the only one of 845 cases that went awry, and Hiatt said researchers handled it appropriately.
“The safety of the individual was never in question,” Hiatt said. “It now becomes a political decision by the country’s deciders about what to do with this information.”
type=type=RelatedArticlesblockTitle=Related… + articlesList=58d94964e4b02a2eaab64c3b,58dbae95e4b0cb23e65d06f5,58d15a56e4b00705db532117,58c85231e4b01c029d7717ed,5898a983e4b0c1284f2718d5
— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
This celebrity sandwich sculpture really cuts the mustard.
It should: It’s a ham and cheese sandwich that looks amazingly like actor Vin Diesel.
The intricately carved deli-cacy is the work of William Osman, a mechanical/electrical engineer in Ventura, California.
Osman’s speciality is posting YouTube videos that he describes as having “dubious quality, questionable integrity and unethical delivery.”
Naturally, a guy with those attributes couldn’t turn down a challenge from a viewer who wanted him to make a Vin Diesel deli sandwich “using laser-cut cross sections of laser-cut ham.”
Osman used a computer program to create a model of Diesel’s upper torso. He then used the laser to cut layers and layers of the cheapest supermarket ham he could buy.
Those layers were then assembled into Vin Diesel’s likeness.
The model of Diesel’s upper torso seems extra busty, but the face definitely resembles the star of “The Fast And Furious” franchise.
Here’s a closer look. By the way, the eyes aren’t edible.
As celebrity sandwiches go, Osman’s creation looks pretty good. However, in the video he seems afraid that Diesel is going to chew him out.
“If Vin Diesel ever sees this, I’m sorry,” he says at one point. Later on, he adds, “This is one of the worst things I have ever done, like, in my life.”
— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
Bride Jessica Brown was heartbroken after her grandma Margaret Harris suffered a heart attack on Friday ― the night before her wedding to Tyler Brown ― and was unable to attend the celebration.
The big day just wouldn’t have been complete without her grandma’s presence, so the newlyweds and other family members decided to end the wedding night by paying a surprise visit to Harris at the Jacksonville, Florida hospital where she was recovering
“It was the equivalent of not having a parent there,” Brown told ABC News of her grandma’s absence. “This woman helped raise me and become who I am. She’s been there for everything.”
Still decked out in her wedding dres, the bride walked into her grandma’s hospital room and sat down next to her on the bed for a sweet, tear-filled hug.
“My granny is the sweetest woman and has a hug so full of love that it makes the whole world feel OK,” Brown told ABC News. “To finally hug her lifted my heavy heart.”
Photographer Amanda Brown of Pink Shutter Photography, who is also the groom’s sister-in-law, documented the heartfelt moment in a series of photos.
For more on this lovely story, watch the video above.
H/T ABC News
— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
Sex isn’t everything in a marriage, but for most people, a healthy, regular sex life matters quite a bit.
Sex therapists can vouch for that. Below, they share seven issues that can ruin a relationship if left unaddressed.
Surprisingly, you can be in a sexless marriage and still have sex. Therapists define a sexless relationship as one in which the couple are physically intimate less than 10 times a year.
In most sexless marriages, the absence of any physical connection divides couples, said Sari Cooper, certified sex therapist and host of the web show Sex Esteem.
“Partners end up alienating each other on a very deep, very primal and sometimes emotional level,” she told The Huffington Post. “Very frequently the couple not only avoids sex, but the discussion of the problem itself. That only leads to a further sense of isolation and loneliness for the partners.”
When couples in sexless marriages come to Cooper’s office, she helps them broach the discussion without placing the blame on one person in particular.
“The sexually frustrated partner needs to ‘break the ice’ and let their S.O. know how much they miss them,” she said. “That’s a much better approach than arguing or blaming the other.”
Feeling wanted and desired is a huge turn-on, especially for women. As sex researcher Marta Meana once put it in an interview with the New York Times, for women, “being desired is the orgasm.” When a partner fails to reassure a woman of her desirability, their sex life naturally takes a hit, said Laura Watson, a sex therapist and the co-host of the sex advice podcast Foreplay.
“Resolving the issue is all about exploring expectations. You have to consider how intimate couple time can lead to better and more sex,” she said. “It also doesn’t hurt to make sure your partner is getting good sex with plenty of orgasms so she’ll want to do it.”
Broken trust after an affair can be a hard thing to mend and your sex life will take even longer to restore, Cooper said.
“It takes a lot of effort and work by the unfaithful partner to re-establish trust. Meanwhile, the betrayed partner needs to better understand what led to the affair,” she said. “Often, the couple needs to create a new sexual contract of sorts, that addresses the needs that were not being met or hidden.
If the unfaithful partner continues to have contact with the other man or woman in secret, it may be impossible to repair the emotional and erotic bond, Cooper said.
In long-term couples, waning sexual attraction can do a number on the relationship, said Moushumi Ghose, a sex therapist and author of Classic Sex Positions Reinvented.
“Sometimes, it’s a matter of one spouse letting themselves go,” she said. “Obviously, life happens and the daily stressors of work, marriage, and having a family can take its toll, but people who are no longer physically attracted to their partner sometimes take it as a sign that their partner has given up on themselves and their relationship.”
There are plenty of physical and health-related reasons couples stop having sex, from premature ejaculation and erectile dysfunction, to pain during intercourse for women.
These problems should be addressed with a doctor, but there’s usually some emotional work that needs to be done by the couple as well, said Celeste Hirschman, a sex therapist and the co-author of Making Love Real: The Intelligent Couple’s Guide to Lasting Intimacy and Passion.
“When these functional problems end up being blamed for all the sexual problems ― and sometimes, problems in the relationship in general ― it blocks the couples ability to discuss their sexual and emotional needs,” she said. “Couples need to see beyond the dysfunction and look at the dynamic that’s been created around it, like fear of being undesirable or blaming the other person for everything.”
We all want different things: When your partner opens up about how they want rough sex or to role play, the worse thing you can do is disregard it or laugh it off, said Ava Cadell, a sex therapist and author of NeuroLoveology: The Power to Mindful Love & Sex.
“I tell my clients that everything is negotiable, even in the bedroom,” she said. “If one partner enjoys BDSM and the other is not that into it but wants something else, I recommend they each share three romantic fantasies and make one a reality for the other.”
From there, continue to share your sexual fantasies and boundaries without any fear of judgement or rejection, Cadell said.
Many couples suffer from a “desire discrepancy,” a situation where one partner wants sex more than the other. This poses a big problem for most couples because the lower-desire spouse holds all the control of the couple’s sex life, whether they realize it or not. Eventually, the higher-desire spouse grows resentful, said Megan Fleming, a psychologist and sex therapist in New York City.
“Sex mismatches are at risk for affairs and divorce if not addressed, since the more sexual partner often can’t imagine living the rest of their lives this way,” she told HuffPost. “After all, they committed to a marriage, not a life of abstinence.”
Don’t wait until your partner is at their wits’ end before addressing the issue.
“The good news is that reasons for low desire are complex but treatable,” Fleming said.
type=type=RelatedArticlesblockTitle=Related Stories + articlesList=57c5b96ee4b09cd22d92d358,58d3f3b2e4b0b22b0d1aa255,5711330ae4b06f35cb6f8551,56e9db0ee4b0860f99db85e8
— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) – At least 12 people were killed and three others injured when a Texas church bus carrying senior citizens had a head-on collision with another vehicle on Wednesday, a Texas state trooper said.
The church bus had 14 people aboard when it collided with a pickup truck, with one person in that vehicle. The cause of the crash was still under investigation, said Sergeant Conrad Hein, a TexasDepartment of Public Safety spokesman.
The accident took place about 80 miles (130 km) west of San Antonio.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott and his wife extended their condolences to the victims.
“We are saddened by the loss of life and our hearts go out to all those affected,” he said in a statement.
First Baptist New Braunfels said on its Facebook page a group of senior adults affiliated with the church was involved in the accident.
“We have heard that there have been fatalities, but we have not received any official details from the local authorities,” it said.
— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
March 29 (Reuters) – A Mexican immigrant with a work permit who was arrested by U.S. authorities was released from federal custody on Wednesday while legal proceedings over his immigration status continue, according to a U.S. immigration official.
Daniel Ramirez Medina, 24, was arrested near Seattle last month by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers who subsequently alleged Ramirez had gang ties and should be deported. Ramirez’s lawyers have denied their client has any gang involvement or criminal record, and called his arrest unconstitutional.
Ramirez, known as a “Dreamer,” came to the United States with his parents when he was about 10 years old. The term Dreamers refers to some 750,000 immigrants brought to the country illegally as children, who have been afforded some protection from deportation under an Obama-era program called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).
The Ramirez case is being closely watched by other Dreamers who worry that they could be swept up in more aggressive immigration enforcement under President Donald Trump.
An immigration judge granted Ramirez’s release this week on a $15,000 bond while proceedings over his legal status in the country continue, his lawyers said. An ICE official on Wednesday confirmed his release.
In a statement, Ramirez’s lawyer Mark Rosenbaum said “this is an important first step toward justice.”
Under U.S. law, deportation cases must be heard by immigration courts, which are administered by the Department of Justice. But Ramirez’s attorneys say he is entitled to challenge the circumstances of his arrest in federal court.
Earlier this month, a Seattle magistrate judge recommended that his court hear Ramirez’s legal claims around his arrest. The Justice Department has challenged that recommendation.
(Reporting by Dan Levine in San Francisco; Editing by Richard Chang)
— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
WASHINGTON ― Looks like the Supreme Court decided not to micromanage how deli shops in New York do business. At least not today.
The high court on Wednesday confronted complicated First Amendment issues when it ruled on a puzzling New York law that penalizes merchants that tell customers they’ll be charged higher fees for using credit cards. But the justices sidestepped the final question by punting the case back to the lower court.
So-called “swipe” surcharges, imposed by some small businesses on people who pay with plastic, are not uncommon. New York has a law that explicitly bans such surcharges. It does not, however, prohibit discounts for people who pay with cash.
A group of shops challenged the measure as unconstitutional because it limits their speech. They argue that the law effectively prevents them from informing customers that they have two options — paying with cash, which is cheaper, or using a credit card, which will cost more.
The Supreme Court, in a decision written by Chief Justice John Roberts, concluded that the New York law regulates the speech of shop owners because it directs how they may or may not communicate prices to their customers. It does nothing to actually set price controls, which the government has the power to do.
Using dollars and cents, Roberts explained how the New York scheme plays out in the real world.
“A merchant who wants to charge $10 for cash and $10.30 for credit may not convey that price any way he pleases,” Roberts wrote. “He is not free to say ‘$10, with a 3% credit card surcharge’ or ‘$10, plus $0.30 for credit’ because both of those displays identify a single sticker price — $10 — that is less than the amount credit card users will be charged.”
“Instead,” Roberts wrote, “if the merchant wishes to post a single sticker price, he must display $10.30 as his sticker price.”
Precisely because the New York law doesn’t allow businesses to be transparent and advertise both the lower and the higher price, the court concluded that it’s not “like a typical price regulation” and thus the First Amendment should apply.
But the justices didn’t take the last step in Expressions Hair Design v. Schneiderman and decide what should happen to the law. Instead, they sent the case back to the federal appeals court to determine whether the law is constitutional.
This quarter-loaf outcome is worse than none.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor
Confused yet? Justice Stephen Breyer, who during oral argument had expressed concern that weaponizing the First Amendment in this area might encourage judges to become price regulators, wrote a separate opinion agreeing with the majority’s result. But he emphasized that the law’s “operation is unclear” and that New York’s top state court may be best equipped to determine what it means.
He also cautioned that “it is wiser” not to get too hung up on what exactly the government is trying to regulate in any given case. “But that is because virtually all government regulation affects speech,” Breyer wrote. “Human relations take place through speech. And human relations include community activities of all kinds — commercial and otherwise.”
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined in an usual pairing by Justice Samuel Alito, also wrote separately to concur in the result. But she argued that the main ruling didn’t do enough and would leave the issue bouncing around in the lower courts.
“This quarter-loaf outcome is worse than none,” she wrote.
Sotomayor said that she too would have asked New York’s highest court to clarify exactly what this “elusive” law does. But she preferred that the Supreme Court do that in the first place, “rather than contribute to the piecemeal resolution of this case.”
A spokeswoman for Eric Schneiderman, the New York attorney general, said that the state respects the court’s ruling and that they would continue to defend the credit card surcharge law in the lower courts.
— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
WASHINGTON ― As Democrats cement their opposition to Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch, it’s becoming a real possibility that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) will have to go “nuclear” to get him confirmed. That is, change the Senate rules to require 51 votes, instead of 60, to advance a Supreme Court nominee.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Wednesday warned Republicans against going that route, saying that they’ll regret it in the long term, and that the better option is to demand a more mainstream nominee from President Donald Trump.
“They’re acting as if a rules change is inevitable, like it’s their only choice if 60 senators don’t agree Judge Gorsuch should be confirmed. They’re wrong,” Schumer said at a press conference. “The answer is not to change the rules. It’s to change the nominee.”
Democrats argue that Gorsuch, currently a judge on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, is too beholden to corporate interests to be a fair Supreme Court justice. Progressive advocacy groups have been torching Gorsuch, too, highlighting his record of opposing reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights, civil rights, workers’ rights, immigrants’ rights and environmental protections.
“He was handpicked by special interests, is supported by special interests and has a record of siding with special interests,” Schumer said. “This is no down-the-middle, neutral judge.”
But the criticisms haven’t slowed GOP momentum around Gorsuch’s confirmation. His Senate vote is on track for April 7, and McConnell has exuded confidence that he will be confirmed.
“We are optimistic that they will not be successful in keeping this good man from joining the Supreme Court very soon,” McConnell told reporters Tuesday.
It may not be that simple. McConnell needs to cobble together 60 votes so Gorsuch can clear a filibuster. There are 52 Republicans and 48 Democrats (including two independent senators who caucus with them), meaning he will need eight Democrats to vote with Republicans. For the moment, the Senate leader doesn’t appear to have enough votes.
That’s where the “nuclear option” comes in. Republicans can go around the 60-vote requirement by using this rarely invoked procedural step to change the rules, so it would only take 51 votes to move forward on a Supreme Court nominee. Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) went this route in 2013, when, in the face of ongoing GOP obstruction of President Barack Obama’s lower court nominees, Democrats changed the rules to require 51 votes for them. But they left the 60-vote requirement in place for the Supreme Court.
The question is whether Republicans have it in them to make a rules change that could permanently alter the Supreme Court confirmation process. It would take 51 Republicans to agree to make the change. Some don’t like the idea of eroding the institution of the Senate, which, unlike the House, specifically has rules like this to require bipartisanship and consensus. Others worry such a change could come back to bite them when Democrats regain the majority and a Supreme Court vacancy opens up.
Schumer is hoping those concerns will weigh heavily on GOP senators. “If they decide to change the rules, it will be on their back,” he said.
So far, Republicans are publicly signaling they’re prepared to do what it takes to get Gorsuch through. Even moderate Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) has suggested she’d go along with a rules change. Privately, though, GOP senators may be more uneasy about it.
“I’ve had conversations with them. They certainly have strong reservations about it for all the the obvious reasons,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) told The Huffington Post. “They certainly know the institutional seismic impact that this change in rules would have for future generations of Senate colleagues.”
The path ahead for Gorsuch is still a guessing game. By the end of next week, McConnell may find eight Democrats willing to vote with Republicans to get to 60 votes. That would avoid the specter of a rules change. Or, Democrats may decide to present a united front and deny McConnell 60 votes, which would put pressure on him to change the rules and require nearly all Republicans to agree to it.
Here’s where every Senate Democrat stands on Gorsuch. We’ll keep updating the list as more Democrats announce how they’ll vote.
OPPOSED (32)
Sen. Tammy Baldwin (Wis.)
Sen. Cory Booker (N.J.)
Sen. Sherrod Brown (Ohio)
Sen. Ben Cardin (Md.)
Sen. Tom Carper (Del.)
Sen. Bob Casey (Pa.)
Sen. Dick Durbin (Ill.)
Sen. Al Franken (Minn.)
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.)
Sen. Kamala Harris (Calif.)
Sen. Maggie Hassan (N.H.)
Sen. Martin Heinrich (N.M.)
Sen. Mazie Hirono (Hawaii)
Sen. Tim Kaine (Va.)
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.)
Sen. Patrick Leahy (Vt.)
Sen. Ed Markey (Mass.)
Sen. Jeff Merkley (Ore.)
Sen. Chris Murphy (Conn.)
Sen. Patty Murray (Wash.)
Sen. Bill Nelson (Fla.)
Sen. Gary Peters (Mich.)
Sen. Jack Reed (R.I.)
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)
Sen. Chuck Schumer (N.Y.)
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.)
Sen. Debbie Stabenow (Mich.)
Sen. Tom Udall (N.M.)
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (Md.)
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.)
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.)
Sen. Ron Wyden (Ore.)
FOR (0)
HAVEN’T SAID (16)
Sen. Michael Bennet (Colo.)
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (Conn.)
Sen. Maria Cantwell (Wash.)
Sen. Chris Coons (Del.)
Sne. Catherine Cortez Masto (Nev.)
Sen. Joe Donnelly (Ind.)
Sen. Tammy Duckworth (Ill.)
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (Calif.)
Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.)
Sen. Angus King (I-Maine)
Sen. Joe Manchin (W.Va.)
Sen. Claire McCaskill (Mo.)
Sen. Bob Menendez (N.J.)
Sen. Brian Schatz (Hawaii)
Sen. Jon Tester (Mont.)
Sen. John Warner (Va.)
— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
