When I heard that Joe Biden intends to nominate Merrick Garland as US Attorney General, my first reaction was that this is a MASTERFUL “Fuck You” directed at Mitch McConnell.

Just to remind you of recent history, when Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia choked on his own bile in early 2016, Barack Obama nominated Merrick Garland, a well respected, and rather moderate, appellate court judge to replace him.

Mitch McConnell not only refused to allow a vote in Garland, he instructed members of the Republican Caucus not even to meet with him.

It’s how that lunatic Gorsuch ended up on the court.

In nominating Garland for AG, Biden has a chance to replace him with a younger judge (Garland is 68).

Additionally, Garland someone who has been thoroughly vetted on multiple occasions, and has served extensively at the Justice Department, being a US Attorney, an assistant to the AG, and Deputy Assistant AG.

One thing that is pretty clear about him, he won’t take any crap from Mitch McConnell:

President-elect Joe Biden plans to nominate federal judge Merrick B. Garland, a Democratic casualty of the bitter partisan divide in Washington, to be the next attorney general, tasked with restoring the Justice Department’s independence and credibility, according to people familiar with the decision.

Garland, 68, serves on the federal appeals court in the District. He is best known for being nominated to the Supreme Court in 2016 by President Barack Obama — a nomination that went nowhere because Senate Republicans refused to give him a hearing. The opening on the high court was eventually filled the following year by President Trump’s choice, Neil M. Gorsuch.

………

Many Democrats still think of Garland as a living example of Republican double-standards when it comes to the courts and the law, though some Biden advisers have come to view him as well-suited to restore norms of nonpolitical decision-making at the Justice Department, given his track record as a judge and a former senior official at the department, according to people familiar with the decision. Like others, they spoke on the condition of anonymity because Biden’s selection has not been formally announced yet.

The Republicans said that it was too close to the election (9 months), and then pushed through  Amy Coney Barret in 6 weeks to beat the election.

Everything I’ve seen indicates that he probably won’t go after the blatant corruption and self-dealing of McConnell and his wife, former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, but nobody’s perfect.