So, What's Neil Gorsuch Up to These Days?

By Charles Pierce, Esquire

27 September 17

Trotting around Kentucky with Mitch McConnell.

upreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch dropped down to Kentucky to spend some time with Mitch McConnell, the Senate leader who blew up Senate procedure in order to install Gorsuch in the very tall chair that will hold him for the next 25 years or so. He brought his A-material, too. From ABC:

A limited judicial role sometimes means that a "real-life 'good guy'" loses a case because a judge's ruling conforms to "exactly what the law demands," Gorsuch told an audience at the University of Louisville that included Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. "It is the job of the judge to apply it, not amend the law ... even when he might well prefer a very different outcome," Gorsuch said. "That last part's pretty tough." With McConnell seated just feet away, Gorsuch drew laughter when he noted: "Sometimes, too, the real-life 'good guy' loses because of a law enacted by Congress."

You will have to forgive me if I can’t help but recall the sad saga of Alphonse Maddin, which enlivened Gorsuch’s confirmation hearings. Maddin was the truck driver who was fired when, rather than freezing to death by the side of the highway, abandoned his rig. He sued to get his job back and won, but Gorsuch dissented. Senator Al Franken memorably got up in Gorsuch’s grill about that opinion.

It is absurd to say that this company was within its rights to fire him because he made a choice not to—of possibly dying by freezing to death or causing other people to die because he was driving an unsafe vehicle. That's absurd. Now I had a career in identifying absurdity, and I know it when I see it.

Absurd or not, Gorsuch got the gig anyway, but not before McConnell had ended the right to filibuster Supreme Court justices, so it’s no surprise that he was down in Kentucky with his patron. From ABC:

Thursday's appearance amounted to a home turf victory lap for McConnell, who helped prevent Democratic President Barack Obama from filling the seat last year with Judge Merrick Garland. The Kentucky senator blocked Garland's nomination for nearly a year, refusing to even allow a confirmation hearing, so the next president could make the nomination after the election. When Senate Democrats tried to block Gorsuch's confirmation, McConnell led his Republicans in a unilateral rules change to lower the vote threshold for Supreme Court nominees from 60 to a simple majority in the 100-member Senate. That paved the way for the confirmation of Gorsuch, a veteran of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver. When introducing Gorsuch at his alma mater Thursday, McConnell called the judge a "thoughtful public servant," and said "I could not have been happier" when his nomination was sent to the Senate. "I knew he'd be great for our country," the Kentucky Republican said. Gorsuch's tour of the Bluegrass state with McConnell continued with a scheduled appearance Thursday evening at the University of Kentucky in Lexington.

All one big happy family, aren’t they? And don’t even consider the propriety of a Supreme Court Justice being paraded around a state like a prize trout. If there is a just god, their bus broke down in the rain.