Advice and Dissent: With the brewing fight over replacing the late Justice Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court, Republicans are demanding that Barack Obama be a placeholder for the last year of his term.

Marco Rubio yesterday on NBC said it would not be “wise” for President Obama to try to replace Scalia. Rubio said. “We cannot afford to have Scalia replaced by someone like the nominees he’s put there in the past. We’re going to have an election, there’s going to be a new president, I believe it’s going to be me, and we’re going to look for someone that most resembles Scalia to replace him.”

Sen. Ted Cruz, a member of the Judiciary Committee, vowed on ABC that he would filibuster any nominee put forward by the president. “Let the election decide.”

The Democrats are spitting mad. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren said, “The Constitution says the President of the United States nominates justices to the Supreme Court, with the advice and consent of the Senate. I can’t find a clause that says ‘…except when there’s a year left in the term of a Democratic President.’”

Filibuster: With 54 seats in the Senate, Republicans have the power to filibuster a Supreme Court nominee. Maybe Ted Cruz will reprise “Green Eggs and Ham” on the Senate floor.

The President needs 60 votes for approval, which means some Republicans would have to cross the line. The last time the Senate blocked a nominee was in 1968 when Lyndon Johnson put Abe Fortas up for Chief Justice. Richard Nixon ended up getting to fill the seat. Leaving Scalia’s seat open this year means some decisions could be a 4-4 split.

The president cannot permanently dodge the Senate by making a recess appointment. Under the Constitution he can make a temporary appointment that lasts only until the end of the following Senate session.

Obama is faced with the choice of naming an avowed legal progressive, thereby throwing down the glove, or nominating someone less known, less opinionated, and thereby exposing the Republican obstruction as purely political, not about the merits of the candidate.

The Mannings: Just a week after he won the Super Bowl and possibly played his last football game. Denver quarterback Peyton Manning is the subject of a long story in the NY Daily News accusing him of a crude sexual assault against a female athletic trainer back when he sophomore at the University of Tennessee.

The trainer, Jamie Naughright, is a PHD who’s been a groundbreaking woman in the world of men’s sports. According to court documents she was examining Manning’s foot for a stress fracture when Manning suddenly slid down the raining table and placed his naked genitals on top of her head.

Much of the article is about how Manning, his father Archie, and the athletic department harassed, smeared and ultimately destroyed Naughright’s reputation. Naughright received a settlement, and got a second settlement when the confidentiality agreement attached to the first was broken when Archie Manning published a book trashing her.

Writer Shaun King says in his article, “As his career winds down, we’re left to grapple with the reality that there is credible evidence that Peyton and the Manning family knowingly, willingly, wantonly ruined the good name and career of Dr. Jamie Naughright, a respected scholar, speaker, professor, and trainer of some of the best athletes in the world.”

PopeTour: Pope Francis lashed out at the drug trade and corruption while celebrating a Mass for 300,000 people in the Mexican city of Ecatepec. “You cannot dialogue with the devil because he will always win,” he said.

Take a Chillaxative: The Eastern cold snap is moving through with warmer temperatures on the way. But right now, it’s cold. New York, 17; Staatsburg, NY, 0; Boston, 5; Camden, Me. -5.

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