title:  Undeterred By Threats Of GOP Obstruction, Obama Interviews Supreme Court Candidates
text: President Obama is clearly not letting GOP threats of obstruction interfere with his duty to nominate a new Supreme Court Justice.The president began interviewing Supreme Court candidates on Tuesday, paying little attention to republican foot-stomping and temper tantrums.Following the unexpected death of Antonin Scalia in February, President Obama made it abundantly clear that he intends to fulfill his duty under the U.S. Constitution by appointing a justice to fill the vacant seat.Although republicans have promised to block any potential nominee the president puts forward, President Obama is moving ahead and doing the job he was elected to do.According to NPR, the president has already interviewed several candidates, one of whom is likely to be chosen to fill the vacant seat on the Supreme Court.NPR reports that the top three candidates include Judges Merrick Garland and Sri Srinivasan, both of the U.S. Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia, and Judge Paul Watford, of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.Judge Garland was first appointed to the DC court by Bill Clinton. President Obama considered him as a replacement for former Supreme Court Justice Stevens upon his retirement, but ultimately named Justice Elena Kagan to fill Stevens  seat.Garland was part of the three-judge panel which ruled against the U.S. government s right to hold 17 Uighurs, a Muslim minority group from China, at Guant namo. The ruling dealt a huge blow to the Bush administration s secretive  tribunals. Liberal backlash over Judge Srinivasan s appointment to the DC court in 2010 was centered on his role in the the defense of Enron executive Jeffrey Skilling.Since that time, however, Srinivasan has played a major role in overturning the Defense of Marriage Act. He has also written the majority opinion in important cases like Sierra Club v. Jewell, which upheld the standing of environmental groups fighting to protect a historical site in West Virginia, Pom Wonderful v. FTC, which upheld the right of the FTC to require health-related advertising to be truthful, and Home Care Association of America v. Weil, which extended labor protections to home health workers.Judge Watford was appointed to the 9th Circuit Court by President Obama in 2011.He authored the majority opinion in Patel & Patel v. City of Los Angeles, which struck down a local ordinance requiring hotel owners to turn guest registry information over to the police without a warrant.Other potential candidates that the president is considering include Judge Jane Kelly of the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals based in St. Louis; and U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who serves in Washington, D.C.Although republicans have threatened to block any nominee that the president proposes, republican obstructionism has been ongoing since the day he took office. Yet somehow, President Obama has managed to accomplish more than any president in modern history.President Obama says he is going to do his job and appoint the next Supreme Court justice.If there s anything republicans should have learned by now, it s that the president does exactly what he says he is going to do.Featured image via wikimedia commons 