DaveP said:
I find your system of constructing a government quite strange, why should the opposing party have any say in its make-up?
This is just one of several checks and balances designed into our system. The president (executive branch) gets to select his appointments, while the congress (legislative branch) approves them or not with a vote. This way neither side has a free hand to load the administration leadership too strongly based on ideology (while they still do).
But even that vote is not trivial. This week democrats delayed at least one committee hearing by just not showing up. Another way to delay votes is to filibuster, where the senate must vote to have a vote. Traditionally it takes 60 votes (of the 100 senators) to over-ride a filibuster and vote on the issue (the republicans do not have 60 votes now while some more popular appointments might, but these days it's mostly team politics along party lines).
Harry Reid The former leader of the senate changed the filibuster rules to only 50 votes needed to over-ride filibuster to get lesser appointments voted on for Pres Obama (SCOTUS still requires 60 votes AFAIK). The senate rules changes only require a 51 vote majority so that "nuclear option" used by Reid in the last term could be used by the republicans this time to get some appointments voted on. This is the obvious danger of changing such rules since political power oscillates between left and right and what helped the democrats last time could help the republicans this time. The best government is divided where both sides get a say, while preventing the new leader from sitting his cabinet and getting to governing is not very productive or good for the country (while the losing party is quite OK with this).
It is worth noting that we are most vulnerable during such administration transitions and Iran is saber rattling and stirring up tensions in the region. Reportedly Iranian backed rebels in Yemen fired on a Saudi ship. (Yemen is just one of several proxy conflicts in the region). The ballistic missile test is another provocation.
Why can't the President just select his team and get on with it?
In the UK, the entire government would have been in place from Nov 9.
I also find the politicization of the Supreme Court a bit worrying, isn't it better to have the judiciary entirely independent from political bias?
Another undesirable trend in the US has been activist judges, where they are effectively changing legislation from the bench, because they can't change it using the legislature.
The reason Judge Gorsuch is favored by conservatives is because he is an "originalist" or a jurist who interprets the constitution by what it meant when written. The constitution allows for change with amendments that are understandably hard to execute. Several SCOTUS jurist are all to comfortable interpreting the constitution based on ideology. This is why control of the several openings expected are so important. Right now it is a 4-4 tie and Gorsuch should return it to the 5-4 balance we had before Scalia died.
When a liberal justice retires (or dies) then we should expect a real fight, because it won't be returning SCOTUS to some status quo, but a more conservative bias.
JR
