Since January 20, 2009, a significant segment of this country has lost its collective mind and tossed law and logic to the wind. Demented by his two national victories, Teapublicans have now decided that their beloved Constitution notwithstanding, Barack Obama’s presidency is valid for only three of the four years to which he was reelected. And a new tradition has been invented which requires a president to replace a departed Justice with a philosophical replica.

Before revealing the name of who the new Supreme Court Justice should be, a word about the Teapublican opposition to President Obama even nominating a replacement for Antonin Scalia. The Teapublicans have proven themselves to be masters of invention. Consider the claim that there is a tradition that justices should not be nominated during an election year. History indicates that fourteen Supreme Court justices were nominated in an election year.

The Hate Anything Obama crowd would have this country believe that there is simply not enough time for a Supreme Court nominee named by President Obama to be considered prior to the election. In point of fact, of the remaining eight members of the Court, the confirmation hearings of seven lasted sixty days or less. The outlier in this case is Clarence Thomas, and the less said about the Silent Justice the better…..and even his confirmation hearing lasted a little over ninety days.

And speaking of Clarence Thomas, the Teapublicans have also literally invented the bogus “historical tradition” that requires Justice Scalia’s replacement on the Supreme Court to be his ideological heir and his philosophical doppelganger. The nomination of Clarence Thomas proves that lie, as Justice Thomas replaced Thurgood Marshall.

Thurgood Marshall was an icon of the civil rights movement and lead counsel in the major court cases that resulted in seismic changes in the concepts of race and class in this country. In choosing Clarence Thomas, a known neo-conservative, President George H.W. Bush proved once and for all that this so–called tradition is simply not a tradition at all.

As it turned out, Clarence Thomas has been the exact polar opposite of Thurgood Marshall. He is the only justice who believes teenagers have no free speech rights at all. He is the only justice who believes that it is unconstitutional to require campaign funders to disclose their identity. And Clarence Thomas is the only justice who voted to strike down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. So much for the Teapublican claim of the existence of an “historical tradition”.

And the final fiction offered by the Teapublicans and the out of the closet Obama-haters is that with the election nine months away, “the people should decide” who should be the next Supreme Court justice. Of course the Constitution clearly excludes the Supreme Court justices from the electoral process and there is no basis for making the November 2016 a “referendum on the Supreme Court”.

It is hoped that President Obama will nominate Attorney General Loretta Lynch to the Supreme Court. She would be the fifth woman ever to be a Supreme Court Justice and her presence on the Court would mean that there would be an historic four women on the bench. She would be the first African American woman and the third African American to ever serve on the highest court in the land. And less than one year ago she was confirmed by a 56-43 vote in a Senate with a Republican majority.

It would be a delicious dish of irony served up by Chef Obama to watch the Teapublicans oppose the nomination of a person that was confirmed by a Republican Senate less than a year ago. It would be a pay-per-view spectacle to watch Teapublicans squirm and twist and contort as they explained why the historical confirmation of Loretta Lynch should be denied.

It is more than amazing to watch the convenient distortions of history and pathetically blatant misrepresentations of the Constitution being employed in the Teapublican effort to oppose President Obama one last time. To paraphrase Franklin Roosevelt, President Obama should “welcome their hatred” and nominate Loretta Lynch.