Justice waits for a nine-member Supreme Court

  Within an hour of the news of Justice Antonin Scalia’s passing on February 13, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said the Senate should not consider any U.S. Supreme Court nominee until the next president is inaugurated in 2017. Since then, most Senate Republicans have signed on to Sen. McConnell’s obstructionist threat, including Judiciary Committee Chair Charles Grassley (R-IA). This dereliction of constitutional duty is unprecedented. The longest it has ever taken for a Supreme Court nominee to reach a confirmation vote is 125 days.

  In 2012, the American people re-elected President Barack Obama to do his job for another four years, and that job includes fulfilling his constitutional obligation to fill any vacancies on the Supreme Court. Likewise, the Senate must do its job and “advise and consent” on the nominee. The Constitution contains no exception to those obligations for presidential election years.

Harry Stein: Pfizer’s tax-dodging bid for AstraZeneca shows need to tighten U.S. tax rules

  American drug maker Pfizer is attempting to acquire AstraZeneca, the United Kingdom’s second-largest pharmaceutical company. If successful, Pfizer would avoid paying billions of dollars in U.S. taxes by becoming a U.K.-based corporation, and Pfizer executives have made these tax benefits a central element of their pitch to AstraZeneca. This corporate maneuver, in which a U.S. corporation becomes a foreign corporation for tax purposes, is called a corporate inversion. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have fought back against corporate inversions for years, and they could be stopped if Congress were to strengthen laws passed 10 years ago.