Teabag Rounds, GOP leadership: "block the black guy!"

Let's face it: John Kasich looks like he could keel over dead any second.

Faltering Republicant presidential candidate Ben Carson said President Barack Obama was raised white.

South Dakota Senator Mike Rounds says he wants to see a Justice with similar views to Antonin Scalia. Rounds says he doesn’t think hearings should be held this year. [WNAX]

Mike Rounds and GOP leadership: "see? Obama isn't colored: let's block his black ass!"

Just before lunchtime Tuesday, Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee announced that, during a closed-door huddle with Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, they had reached a consensus not to hold hearings on any Supreme Court nominee that President Obama might put forward this year. As Larry Sabato, head of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, notes, the alternative was a full-blown confirmation battle, in which individual GOP members would have needed to take positions, and ultimately cast votes, on a flesh-and-blood nominee. “McConnell recognized, This can only divide us—‘us’ being Republicans,” says Sabato. [The Atlantic]

Ezra Klein says the national GOP is broken.

The GOP is already holding on by a string when it comes to their control of the Senate this year, given the number of seats they have to defend in states won by President Obama and the increasing likelihood of the party putting forth an incredibly unpopular Presidential candidate in Donald Trump. [Public Policy Polling]

A Democratic Senate confirmed Anthony Kennedy, Ronald Reagan's nominee to the Court in his last year in office and failing to confirm an Obama nominee could significantly increase voter turnout, which historically works against GOP.

Hearing that Rep. Cole is from the Chickasaw Nation, Scalia said: “Don't forget you belong to a conquered race.” [Indian Country Today]

4-4 decisions affirm the lower benches and an equally divided Court would uphold affirmative action, union rights and abortion protection.

Scalia's death is just one more teaching moment about why Democrats need to control the judiciary and should be a clarion call for Tom Daschle to get in South Dakota's US Senate race but he is all to cognizant that the state is a 77,184 square mile institution for the criminally unwell.

Rounds is rumored to be considering an exit from the US Senate.

So, who is a President Donald Trump's nominee: Sarah Palin, Ted Nugent, Ted Cruz or Tom Cruise?

Senate Republican leaders say they won’t meet with an Obama Supreme Court nominee https://t.co/vymWVcV2CK pic.twitter.com/48D8HhTfL7

— NYT Politics (@nytpolitics) February 23, 2016