Q Toon: Day After Day

The sudden death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia overnight this past weekend completely changed my plans for this week's cartoon. The passing of the notoriously antigay and prickly jurist could not go unremarked. But what sort of eulogy could I possibly draw to commemorate the passing of this defender of "the moral opprobrium that has traditionally attached to homosexual conduct" for publication up to a week later?

The answer came with equal suddenness as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) declared even while the body was still on the way to the morgue that Scalia's seat on the Court "should not be filled until we have a new President."

I hastily posted a grayscale version of this cartoon to the AAEC site on Monday, fearing that the place would be crawling with McConnell tortoises by Thursday. (Thankfully, no, and Jon Stewart isn't around to beat me to the punch on The Daily Show, which is in reruns this week anyway.)

I soon heard from a repeat commenter who thought I needed to be told that back in 1987, then-Congressman Chuck Schumer (D-NY) had advised the U.S. Senate not to consider any more of Ronald Reagan's Supreme Court nominees.

That's nice to know, but Schumer was not Senate Majority Leader, and I don't recall the Senate ever following the leadership of third-term members of the House. Senator Schumer's 2007 comments on Dubya's Supreme Court picks would be more germane. As would Senator Mitch McConnell's in 2005 be more germane than his opinion in 1970.

I'll be back on Supremeback Saturday with more on Justice Scalia, and probably over the next year or so with more on whomever President Obama -- or President Sanders or President Trump -- names as his successor. Especially if a 4-4 Court is asked to decide another presidential election in the meantime.