In an emergency, Rabner can use the Jacobson plan

that in order to exercise senatorial courtesy the nominee must reside in the county that the senator RESIDES in not just represents. Otherwise the plan to move to Passaic is a non-starter since Gill's district includes parts of Passaic County.

The Casino Control Commission and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court: two appointments that shouldn't even be in the same sentence.

Senatorial courtesy was originally so everyone could get an equal share of patronage, not to hold up the CJ nominee.

Mr. Democrat is right in the sense that it would simply not do to have the position of Chief Justice held up for any lengthy period of time like six months by one Senator who cannot even conjure up an articulable reason why.

The CJ has the constitutional duty to be the administrative head of the courts statewide, including assigning the judges of the Superior Court and other inferior courts, and a host of other responsibilities that simply must be exercised.

From a political point of view, Nia missed an opportunity here. She has no legitimate basis for raising questions about Rabner. Indeed, from today’s news it looks like she and a few other African American senators, including Ron Rice and Shirley Turner, are even suggesting that race should very definitely play a part in who gets nominated for high office. Anthony Cooley can pour honey from the “understanding jar” on that one all weekend long if he likes. It won’t matter. We cannot go down that road. That is racism, and is simply beyond the pale.

If she were shrewd, she would have attempted to enlist the assistance of the political opposition in an attempt to put temporary pressure on the front office to get a hearing on whatever it is that she really wants.

All Nia needed to say was that, in her opinion, there was a perception that the Supreme Court has failed over the past few decades to properly recognize the limits of it's own power, and she was not going to sign off on this appointment until this nominee was at least closely questioned on his views, including his view of the constitutional provision that, "[n]o person or persons belonging to or constituting one branch shall exercise any of the powers properly belonging to either of the others, except as expressly provided in the Constitution."

Every Republican in the State (and possibly a Democrat or so) would have perked up, nodded their heads with approval, praised her for her political acumen, and pledged to help with the questioning, so long as it was done in a timely manner.

But instead when sources said that she had raised “questions about his inexperience in civil law” the guffaws could be heard three states away! What was she thinking, everyone thought?

Finally yesterday, having finally realized that she simply has no reason for holding up the nomination, other than an inexcusably raw exercise of power, she clamed up! And then, she actually threatened to call the cops on reporters who tried to "pepper her" with questions about it.

Now the Republicans are backing the Governor, pushing for a quick hearing on the nomination, and forcing Dick Codey to say there’s no rush, while he is desperately looking for ways for her to save face from an obvious overreach.

by Trochilus

There are many consequences of the hastily-devised system of Senate representation. I've always felt that having three legislators represent the exact same legislative district was more than a bit redundant. Why not have one senator per current-sized legislative district, but then halve each legislative district so that one Assembly member represents exactly half of each Senate district?