Roy Blunt: “I am here today to discuss the nomination of Neil Gorsuch to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. So far this year, we have…”

“I am here today to discuss the nomination of Neil Gorsuch to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. So far this year, we have heard that it is too early to do everything, that the process of putting the President's Cabinet in place, which took longer than any administration since George Washington and is still not completed, was somehow too early. We heard that every single nominee was being handled too quickly, even though every previous President since the first President has managed to have a Cabinet confirmed by the Senate quicker than this one. Clearly the process going on right now--hours of questioning beginning today for Judge Gorsuch, who has a 10-year record as an appeals judge on the Tenth Circuit, where all of the other judges in the district courts under the Tenth Circuit's jurisdiction see their cases go to be appealed. The Supreme Court is ``distinctly American in concept and function,'' according to Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, and there is, frankly, nothing quite like it in any other constitutional government. It is a Court that was supposed to be part of this very unique at the time idea of a government that was so finely balanced that it would run itself, a machine that was so finely balanced that it didn't take a King, it didn't take the intervention of somebody to decide who would be the one person who would run the country. The Supreme Court--the only Court mentioned in the Constitution--is a uniquely American court.…”