All right, then, Mitch; the people will have their say

        Like blowing out that last birthday candle, Mitch McConnell is going to get his wish.

For the remainder of 2016, no one will occupy the seat vacated by the death of Antonin Scalia. No concession will be made to a lame-duck president. That nominee won't get a sniff of a hearing room.

Such joyous Republican news comes with an advisory, however:

Enjoy the cake, the balloons and the party hats, Mr. Senate Majority Leader, because in your revelry and obstinacy you increase the odds that when a new year dawns we'll address you as Mr. Senate Minority Leader.

Meanwhile, on another significant political front, your latest gambit (Sen. Harry Reid terms it "obstruction on steroids") is going to help more Americans understand why they need an experienced consensus-seeker rather than a hotel-suite bomb-thrower for president.

Back to the Senate and the court. It is quite magnanimous for Republicans to say, as McConnell did, that voters "should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice." That, of course, they did, in electing Barack Obama to appoint justices. They did it once, and they did it again.

On the Senate floor, Sen. Al Franken suggested that the GOP leaders appear to have enacted a new rule to "lop off the last year" of a presidency.

Franken added, "If only the American people had a voice in deciding precisely how much we should shave off a president's term."

Of course, we have that option. It's called a constitutional amendment. Go for it, suggested Franken. Put that one before the voters. Let them speak.

Here's what Washington Post columnist James Hohman predicts the voters are going to say this year: Blocking Obama from doing his job is going to make it more likely that Republicans will lose the Senate.

"Assuming the president picks a Hispanic, African American or Asian American – bonus points if she's a woman – this could be exactly what Democrats need to re-activate the Obama coalition that fueled his victories in 2008 and 2012," writes Hohman.

The fact is that this year the Senate is there for the Dems to retake after an off-year election in which just about every contested race with a Democratic incumbent was in a state that had gone red in 2012.

This year seven Senate incumbents face challenges in states that Obama won twice -- Florida, Illinois, Iowa, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The Democrats need to win five of them and then prevail in safer states where their incumbents are on the ballot.

None of this is a sure thing, but Obama stands to have a mighty poster child – the Supreme Court nominee soon to be introduced -- to show the nation that things need to change and the GOP way of obstruction and division is not the way.

All the while, that nominee will be a sympathetic victim of politics most venal. That nominee will be seen as a political martyr.

One scenario many people don't seem to consider is that this attractive, willing, able nominee could remain, waiting patiently, judiciously, right through the next election -- to be re-nominated by Obama's Democratic successor.

That would be the ultimate nightmare for those who, like McConnell and Ted Cruz, put partisan bloodlust over every other concern they might have had in Congress. At that point, hara-kiri might be in order.

Based on this scenario, McConnell goes down in history as the Senate majority leader who failed in meeting his No. 1 legislative objective (depriving Obama of two terms). Then he helped lose the Senate, hence failing ultimately to block that still-nominated Obama Supreme Court nominee. Oh, and he helped elect a Democrat to hold the White House well into the 2020s.

This is called reverse obstruction.

Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.

The pope said what about whom?

      Before discussing what Pope Francis said the other day, let's discuss one of the most Christlike things a U.S. president has done lately.

     That was when President Obama brought soothing words to an American mosque, words like, "You're not Muslim or American. You're Muslim and American."

     Marco Rubio, the junior robot from Florida, said the visit was meant to "divide the country." Within the next 30 seconds, we can be certain, he repeated it.
     In the event of a Rubio presidency, I'm curious which Americans he would seek to represent — which Americans he'd soothe with a visit, and which ones he would shun.
     Traveling through Africa recently, Pope Francis said, "Christians and Muslims are brothers and sisters." He can say that because he is not on the Republican primary ballot.
     It's the same reason that he could say the other day: "A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not of building bridges, is not Christian."
     This was framed by the media as an attack on Donald Trump. True?
     Amid the expected tumult, the pope appeared to say, "If the sandals fit, wear them." However, he said he meant not to single out any one person.
     Of course, just as rapidly as the press made the assumption, Trump jumped to affirm it. Yes, just like him.
     The comedy in Trump knows no bounds. Most comically, in his furious response to the pontiff, he referred to Christianity's being "consistently attacked." Christianity attacked by whom? The pope?
     Well, not to disappoint anyone, but I'm here to take Trump off the hook. As Pope Francis said, he didn't single out anyone. He was talking of a whole mess of wall-builders and their deafening bellicosity. That means you, Ted Cruz. That means you, Marco Rubio.
     That means demonizing Mexicans or Muslims, or desperate Central Americans or Syrians. That means never considering quantum shifts in relations with Cuba and Iran that would make this a more tolerant and amiable planet. A wall is a wall.
     It could be said that the hottest seat in hell is reserved for those beneficiaries of great fortune who would deny the same to others. Cruz and Rubio were both born to refugees but now refuse to see the very same life-or-death circumstances bearing down on others.
     Trump rides the wave of anti-immigrant hysteria while an immigrant bride rides his arm down the escalator.
     Once again, Pope Francis didn't mean Trump in particular when saying what he said. He meant everyone who would be inspired by Trump's words: "They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people." The "they" of course, means Mexicans.
     The pope didn't mean anyone in particular, except anyone who would gobble up such words and pooh-pooh a papal proposition called brotherhood.
     What does it mean to be Christian? We all should know what it means. By and large nothing in the political process bears any resemblance.
     That said, it is mystifying that Cruz, who stands out in the GOP field for what the Washington Post's Dana Milbank calls "utter nastiness," could be considered the supposed choice of America's evangelical Christians. How so?
     When President Obama shed tears on the dais after one more mass murder, commentator John Pavlovitz wrote something sure to send Cruz supporters into conniptions. He wrote that Obama's presidency has been "more Christian than his critics will ever admit."
     Obama, like few other American leaders, has "championed justice, equality and the inherent dignity of all people in a way that closely mirrors the stated mission of Christ, certainly as much as any politician on either side can claim," wrote Pavlovitz.
     I know: Trump, Cruz and Rubio would prefer that Pavovlitz, like the pope, would stop being so literal, particularly about that brotherhood stuff.

Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.

Democracy in Antonin Scalia’s world

           A photo widely shared upon the death of Justice Antonin Scalia is a reminder of what the stakes are when we vote for president.

The photo shows a beaming Scalia and a beaming Ronald Reagan, who nominated him. It shows then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who couldn't be happier with the pick.

The Constitution sets almost no requirements for those who serve on our highest court. In fact, they need not even be attorneys. It certainly doesn't prohibit rank political sharks from attaining such a pivotal station, someone like William Rehnquist.

Sure, Rehnquist had considerable judicial experience when tapped for the court by Richard Nixon. He had clerked for the court and served as assistant attorney general. However, Rehnquist had really earned his stripes as a cutthroat Republican operative.

In his home state of Arizona in the 1960s reported the New York Times, Rehnquist "helped plan and direct a poll-watching program that was intended to block what Republicans called illegal attempts by Democrats to win elections by bringing large numbers of unqualified black and Hispanic residents to the polls shortly before they closed."

Unqualified? How so? At the time, Arizona was one of few remaining states still applying a literacy test to voting. That became illegal with the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Fast-forward 50 years, when Scalia, Rehnquist's ideological heir, scored one of his great career achievements. He and a one-vote majority managed to gut key provisions of the Voting Rights Act.

This made possible the continuation of egregious state efforts at "ballot security" laws, measures calculatedly designed to reduce voter participation by minorities.

As U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos observed, Texas' so-called voter security law had an "impermissible discriminatory effect against Hispanics and African-Americans."

Justice Scalia did not see it that way, or at least didn't think the federal government needed to be policing this matter any longer through Justice Department pre-clearance of voter I.D. and redistricting schemes.

He called the Voting Rights Act antiquated. Indeed, he said it had become a "racial entitlement."

Racial discrimination is ancient, implied the court majority. The court affirmed this even as Republican schemers made every effort to achieve exactly what Judge Ramos said they were doing – writing laws that discriminate against racial minorities.

With the 2015 ruling, states could keep playing by the Rehnquist rules.

Whatever else can be said about Scalia, without question he was one of the most politically driven justices in history. If you shared his politics, that was fine with you. If you are black or brown, not so much. 

In 2012, when dissenting with a court majority that overthrew Arizona's abominable law allowing police to ask a brown person's immigration status, thereby institutionalizing racial profiling, Scalia used a stunning comparison. He wrote longingly for the days when states controlled their own populations -- not only with their own immigration laws but also laws to "restrict the travel of freed slaves."

Memories. Ah, those good ol' states' rights days.

The irony of all of this is that Scalia (and Rehnquist) talked a good game about democracy, about how the courts should not override the will of the people as enacted by state legislatures. 

The problem with the rhetoric of justices like Scalia and Rehnquist is that they backed efforts to make democracy less representative of society in its sum – that sum including many colors, origins, faiths, incomes, sexual orientations, and more.

Democracy? They fought to keep this democracy a tool of the privileged and already empowered. And isn't that what the founders intended?

Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.