Fill That Seat: Utah Republican Sen. Mitt Romney says he’ll vote for a Supreme Court replacement before election day, assuring President Trump that he’s got enough votes.

  Romney, the only Republican who voted to impeach Trump, said he intends “to follow the Constitution and precedent in considering the President’s nominee.” Of course, the most recent precedent is to block a nomination for 10 months in the last year of a president’s term. This puts Romney among the Republican majority that’s twisted their logic into a pretzel to explain their hypocrisy … and you always knew this would happen.

  Romney and Republican leaders say what makes this okay is that they control both the Senate and White House, unlike four years ago when the Democrat Barack Obama was President.

  Romney said, “My liberal friends have over many decades gotten very used to the idea of having a liberal court, but that’s not written in the stars.” 

  So, all that palaver back in 2016 about how the “next president” should make the Supreme Court appointment — nevermind. The next President could be a Democrat.

  Democrats moved yesterday in protest to slow the business of the Senate, but they won’t be able to stop it. “I’ve been around here a few years,” said Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat. “You can slow things down, but you can’t stop them. And there comes a point when we would use whatever tools we have available. But ultimately there will be a vote.”

Viral News: The rate of coronavirus deaths is up 14 percent over the last two weeks and the US surpassed 200,000 yesterday. This morning the total stands at 200,814 with 6.9 million cases.

  While claiming to have done brilliant work fighting the virus, President Trump is blaming China for the whole thing. Speaking yesterday at the UN General Assembly and promising a “bright future,” Trump said, “We must hold accountable the nation, which unleashed this plague onto the world, China.”

  Labelling it the “China virus,” Trump said, “China condemned my travel ban on their country. Even as they canceled domestic flights and locked citizens in their homes, the Chinese government and the World Health Organization, which is virtually controlled by China, falsely declared that there was no evidence of human to human transmission. Later they falsely said people without symptoms would not spread the disease, the United Nations must hold China accountable for their actions.”

See No Evil: President Trump is expanding his campaign to claim there’s no racism in the US. He tweeted, “A few weeks ago, I BANNED efforts to indoctrinate government employees with divisive and harmful sex and race-based ideologies.”

  Trump, you might recall, wants to create a “patriotic” school curriculum that teaches children what’s great about America, not what’s wrong. 

  His tweet went on, “I’ve expanded that ban to people and companies that do business with our Country, the United States Military, Government Contractors, and Grantees. Americans should be taught to take PRIDE in our Great Country, and if you don’t, there’s nothing in it for you!”

  It’s the new version of “Love it or leave.” 

Politically Correct: A 53-year-old business professor at USC’s Marshall School has been removed from class because he used a Chinese word that to some of his students sounded too much like the racial slur “nigger.”

  Telling his students to avoid filler words and sounds in business meetings,  Greg Patton was trying to give his advice an international component  when he said, “Like in China, the common word is that—that, that, that, that,” he explained. “So in China it might be nèi ge—nèi ge, nèi ge, nèi ge.” 

  Students complained to the administration and  Patton was removed from the class last month and ecoriated in an email. “Professor Greg Patton repeated several times a Chinese word that sounds very similar to a vile racial slur,” Geoffrey Garrett, the Marshall School’s dean, wrote. “Understandably, this caused great pain and upset among students, and for that I am deeply sorry. It is simply unacceptable for faculty to use words in class that can marginalize, hurt and harm the psychological safety of our students.”

The Bulletin Board: Aleksei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader  poisoned last month with a military-grade nerve agent, has been released from a hospital in Germany. Doctors say he has a chance to make a full recovery. — The body of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will lie in state at the court today. — Electric car maker and space explorer Elon Musk promises to produce a $25,000 Tesla car within three years.

The Obit Page: Tommy DeVito, an original member of the Four Seasons, the vocal quartet that shot to fame in the jukebox days of the early 1960s with the song “Sherry,” died Monday in Nevada of the coronavirus. He was 92.

  DeVito was one of the three men who backed up Frankie Valli’s falsetto with “Sherry” and other hits including “Walk Like a Man” (1963) and “Rag Doll” (1964).

  DeVito left the group in 1970 and moved to Las Vegas. The group’s music enjoyed a revival when the biographical musical “Jersey Boys” hit Broadway in 2005.

Bookbeat: The title of the new memoir by former House Majority Leader John Boehner is “On the House.” The cover features the former politician sitting with a glass of wine in his hand, making it unnecessary to read the book because that tells all. 

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