Jack Kingston: “as my colleagues know, the United States Senate leadership wants to have an up or down vote on Supreme Court nominees.…”

“as my colleagues know, the United States Senate leadership wants to have an up or down vote on Supreme Court nominees. Why? Because that is what the Senate should be doing: voting yes, voting no. We have heard that the President is promoting extreme fringe members of the judiciary for appointments on his court. That being the case, why do the Democrats not have the guts to just go ahead and debate it in public, instead of hiding behind the cloak of committee? It is incumbent protection. Let us bring the votes to the floor. I want to introduce to my colleagues one of these nominees, Justice Janice Rogers Brown. She was elected with 76 percent of the State-wide vote in California, hardly an extremist if one gets 76 percent of the vote in California. She was born the daughter of a sharecropper in Alabama in 1948 and grew up under Jim Crow laws in the South. She is a self-made woman. She is a fighter. She is a mainstreamer. She deserves an up or down vote. That is all the Senate majority leader is asking for, asking these very cowardly Democrats to say you know what, if you believe that somebody elected with 76 percent of the vote in California is an extremist, have the guts to put it on the board and vote yes and vote no, but let us see where you stand. ____________________”