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Contribute tab at bestofalife.com. Now welcome to the award winning Best of a Left Podcast with clips today from

Counter-Spin, We The Podcast, D-Code DC, the Tom Harman program at the Young Turks and the Data Backman Show.

CNN State of the Union discussed the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonyne Scalia, February 14th, and the opening that it leaves on the court. With Washington Post

Associate Editor Bob Woodward laying out what he called the potential minefield posed by a liberal Supreme Court appointment to quote everyone including Hillary Clinton and the Obama White House.

Close quote. His reasoning, Woodward said quote, because it was a conservative justice who died, who's going to be replaced, the argument by the Democrats is,

gee, we're going to put a fifth liberal on the Supreme Court. The Republican nominee can go out and say, we are going to preserve the balance.

Close quote. As Steve Rendell noted for fair.org, this is a unique understanding of the word balance, meaning a court with a conservative majority.

That's without addressing the assumption that the other four are best described as liberal. Though it was framed as a Republican viewpoint, the idea was pretty clearly embraced by Woodward.

Who explained how most undecided and independence would view the appointment of anyone but a conservative as a radical move.

Quote, in the world now of real voters, I think it is the persuadable voter or the independent who's likely in a positive way to respond to the idea that, yeah, let's preserve the balance.

Let's not do anything radical. Close quote.

Woodward closed the segment citing a 1970s Washington star headline on the occasion of Justice William Douglas's death, which he claimed said that everyone, left, right and center, is going to miss Justice Douglas.

I think it's the same for Justice Scalia, said Woodward.

All they are hard to have is alone, I'll be sleeping all alone, no one has to kill.

I'll be having all the fun, I'll be sleeping all alone, I won't be cascading.

Let me just remind people that this is, again, not exceptional. The Senate has considered nominees to the Supreme Court in presidential election years, six times in the last century,

including Justice Kennedy who sits on the court right now who was confirmed in the last year of President Reagan's presidency.

And therefore, this is something the American public gets deeply, that this is something that the Senate needs to and must do.

And if you take it even further, Senator Grassley is chair of the Sanctuary Shred Committee is running for election this year, so he's in the last year of his six year term.

So maybe he shouldn't be able to vote or hold hearings or do whatever he's doing because he's in the last year of his term.

It's just absurd, it just doesn't hold water and the American people get it.

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