From the Thursday Morning Jolt:

Public Evenly Divided on Need to Replace Scalia in 2016
If you’re a Senate Republican, you’re probably more concerned about the polling numbers in your particular state, but for now, this should reassure the GOP:
A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll of registered voters found that 43% preferred the Senate to vote this year on Mr. Obama’s choice to fill the unexpected opening, while 42% said the position should remain vacant until 2017, when a new president could nominate a replacement. The remaining 15% had no opinion.
The survey found voters were split deeply along party lines, with 71% of the Democrats favoring Senate consideration of an Obama nominee and 73% of Republicans supporting no action until the next president assumes office.
Voters who identified as independent were almost evenly divided, 43% to 42%, on whether senators should take up a court pick this year.
The notion that Obama’s past work as a constitutional-law professor/lecturer would give him uniquely good judgment as president is pretty thoroughly dispelled, but it’s rather satisfying to see him get things wrong:
“The Constitution is pretty clear about what is supposed to happen now,” said Obama, who taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School. “When there is a vacancy on the Supreme Court, the president of the United States is to nominate someone, the Senate is to consider that nomination, and either they disapprove of that nominee or that nominee is elevated to the Supreme Court.”
. . . The problem for Obama: The Constitution doesn’t say that, at least not explicitly. The pivotal words say the president “shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint” Supreme Court justices. It doesn’t actually say the Senate has to do anything, and in a separate provision the Constitution says both houses of Congress can determine their own rules.
“The text nowhere requires the Senate to hold hearings or give a vote,” said Ilya Somin, who teaches constitutional law at George Mason University School of Law in Arlington, Virginia. “The only requirement is that a nominee can’t actually take a position on the court unless and until the Senate gives its advice and consent.”
It was an early warning sign that when Obama first described the qualities he considers to be found in a good judge, he inadvertently revealed his belief that judges aren’t necessarily supposed to be impartial, objective, and metaphorically blind:
I will seek someone who understands that justice isn’t about some abstract legal theory or footnote in a case book. It is also about how our laws affect the daily realities of people’s lives — whether they can make a living and care for their families; whether they feel safe in their homes and welcome in their own nation.
I view that quality of empathy, of understanding and identifying with people’s hopes and struggles as an essential ingredient for arriving as just decisions and outcomes.
Picture going into a courtroom and before proceedings begin, the judge says to the opposing party, “I identify with your hopes and struggles.” Do you feel confident you’ll get a fair trial?