Dick Durbin: “there is an old verse that reads, if I remember correctly, as follows: While I was going up the stair, I met a man who…”

“there is an old verse that reads, if I remember correctly, as follows: While I was going up the stair, I met a man who wasn't there. He wasn't there again today. I wish that man would go away. That man in the U.S. Senate is Merrick Garland, a person whom I am sure the Republican leadership wishes would just go away. But he is not going to go away. Merrick Garland is the nominee whom President Obama has sent forward to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court occasioned by the untimely death of Antonin Scalia. In sending that name forward, President Obama was meeting his constitutional responsibility. Article II, section 2 of the U.S. Constitution states clearly that the President shall--shall-- nominate a person to fill a vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court. It goes on to say that the responsibility of the Senate is to provide advice and consent to Supreme Court nominations. It is very clear. The men who wrote the Constitution understood the importance of filling a vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court, and they understood it to be so important that they mandated that the President send the nominee forward to fill that vacancy. You can read that Constitution from start to finish and never find the rationale being used by Senator McConnell, the majority leader of the Senate, to stop that nomination from being considered in the Senate.…”