Ben Sasse: “I rise on the floor with a simple message. We should completely dispel with the fiction that the American Bar…”

“I rise on the floor with a simple message. We should completely dispel with the fiction that the American Bar Association is a fair and impartial arbiter of facts. This is a sad reality, but it is the reality. Let's back up. We in this body have taken an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States. Considering judicial nominees who have lifetime appointments is the most important thing this Senate will do over the weeks ahead. It demands the full attention of every single Member--Republican, Democrat, and Independent. This ought to be an opportunity for this body to pause and stand back from the frenzy of day-to-day media cycles and cable news shouting and recommit ourselves to basic American civics and some very basic American ideas: the idea that our three branches of government have three separate roles; the idea that we in the article I branch, the lawmakers, make the laws because we stand before the people and can be hired and fired--if the people are going to be in charge of our system, they need to be able to fire the people who make the laws--the idea that judges are explicitly not to make law; the idea that judges do not have R and D, Republican and Democrat, behind their names but rather that judges should be dispassionately ruling on the law and the facts; and the idea that all of us, temporary public servants, although the judiciary have lifetime appointments, can be upholding and defending a limited system of government, again,…”