Opinion: Judges, elections and other hopes for 2017

To the editor: You call Merrick Garland, President Obama’s nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, “deserving.” In fact, he was chosen primarily as a cynical partisan ploy to show that Senate Republicans are recalcitrant bigots. The worst part is that Garland was poorly used by the president who got his hopes up, even though Obama was advised not to nominate a replacement for the late Antonin Scalia. (“The Times Editorial Board’s 2017 wish list,” editorial, Dec. 31)

Why didn’t Obama, in the spirit of bipartisanship, choose someone on President-elect Donald Trump’s list of potential Jurists? Couldn’t he still do so?

Also, I see you have joined the chorus of liberals demanding the end of the electoral college. Three words: Ain’t gonna happen. But maybe if Garland had been confirmed, the court could have decided it to be unconstitutional (as UC Irvine Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky recently asserted). That would have ended the electoral college without needing the consent of three-quarters of the states.

Along the same line, now that a majority of Californians (including those who voted overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton) have expressed their desire to not only continue the death penalty, but speed up the appeals process, will you now drop your wrongheaded opposition to capital punishment?

Al Kholos, Winnetka

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To the editor: Conspicuously missing from your otherwise cogent wish list is that the Trump administration and Republicans do not gut the Affordable Care Act and leave America in a death spiral of premiums too high to pay, prescriptions too costly to maintain and in the grasp of penurious insurance companies.

Bill Waxman, Simi Valley

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To the editor: I believe The Times Editorial Board had its head buried in the ground by ignoring the huge financial risk that comes from Californians having to meet retirement benefits promised to public sector workers.

I suggest adding the following to your 2017 wish list: for the California Public Employees’ Retirement System to meet or exceed its 7% predicted investment rate of return in 2017 and thereafter to keep the Legislature from having to cut services or raise taxes to meet public sector workers’ promised retirement benefits.

Eddie Dawes, Hacienda Heights

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