{"id":301240,"date":"2017-03-29T15:10:11","date_gmt":"2017-03-29T14:10:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/gorsuchs-soft-style-and-hard-line\/"},"modified":"2017-03-29T15:10:11","modified_gmt":"2017-03-29T14:10:11","slug":"gorsuchs-soft-style-and-hard-line","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/gorsuchs-soft-style-and-hard-line\/","title":{"rendered":"Gorsuch\u2019s Soft Style and Hard Line"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>After blocking President Obama\u2019s Supreme Court nominee for the past year, the Republicans got President Trump to put up a soft-spoken but hard-line right-winger in Judge Neil Gorsuch, as Marjorie Cohn described for Truthdig.<\/p>\n<p>By Marjorie Cohn<\/p>\n<p>When Donald Trump\u2019s chief of staff Reince Priebus addressed the Conservative Political Action Committee in February, he identified two priorities of the administration: the confirmation of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, and deregulation.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_22796\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/Screen-Shot-2017-03-01-at-5.59.23-PM.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/lazy-load\/images\/1x1.trans.gif\" data-lazy-src=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/Screen-Shot-2017-03-01-at-5.59.23-PM-300x246.png\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-22796\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"246\" srcset=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/Screen-Shot-2017-03-01-at-5.59.23-PM-300x246.png 300w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/Screen-Shot-2017-03-01-at-5.59.23-PM-160x131.png 160w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/Screen-Shot-2017-03-01-at-5.59.23-PM.png 480w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\"\/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-22796\" src=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/Screen-Shot-2017-03-01-at-5.59.23-PM-300x246.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"246\" srcset=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/Screen-Shot-2017-03-01-at-5.59.23-PM-300x246.png 300w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/Screen-Shot-2017-03-01-at-5.59.23-PM-160x131.png 160w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/Screen-Shot-2017-03-01-at-5.59.23-PM.png 480w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\"\/><\/noscript><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">U.S. Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch speaking at the announcement of his selection on Jan. 31, 2017. (Screen shot from Whitehouse.gov)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>It turns out that elevating Gorsuch to the Supreme Court and achieving deregulation are inextricably linked. During Gorsuch\u2019s confirmation hearing, Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee challenged him on his pro-business positions.<\/p>\n<p>Minnesota Sen. Al Franken pressed him on a case \u2014 that of the now-infamous \u201cfrozen trucker\u201d \u2014 in which the judge reached what Franken characterized as an \u201cabsurd\u201d result. Alphonse Maddin was driving a truck for TransAm Trucking Inc. in 2009 when the brakes froze on the trailer he was hauling. The heater inside the truck wasn\u2019t working, and the temperature outside was minus 27 below zero.<\/p>\n<p>Maddin contacted his employer, who arranged for a repair unit to come to Maddin\u2019s location. While waiting for help to arrive, Maddin nodded off.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI awoke three hours later to discover that I could not feel my feet, my skin was burning and cracking, my speech was slurred, and I was having trouble breathing,\u201d he said at a recent event in Washington, D.C. When Maddin stepped out of the truck, he said he \u201cwas on the verge of passing out. I feared that if I fell, I would not have the strength to stand up and would die.\u201d Maddin was exhibiting symptoms of hypothermia. He called his employer again to report that he was leaving to seek shelter. His supervisor ordered him \u201cto either drag the trailer [with no brakes] or stay put.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn my opinion, clearly, their cargo was more important than my life,\u201d Maddin said.<\/p>\n<p>Faced with defying his employer\u2019s order to remain with his disabled&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/2017\/03\/27\/gorsuchs-soft-style-and-hard-line\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After blocking President Obama\u2019s Supreme Court nominee for the past year, the Republicans got President Trump to put up a soft-spoken but hard-line right-winger in Judge Neil Gorsuch, as Marjorie Cohn described for Truthdig. By Marjorie Cohn When Donald Trump\u2019s chief of staff Reince Priebus addressed the Conservative Political Action Committee in February, he identified [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2524,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-301240","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2524"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=301240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301240\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=301240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=301240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=301240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}