GOP senator details conversation with Supreme Court nominee

Sen. Mark Kirk (Ill.), a Republican centrist who faces a tough reelection this year, is urging his GOP colleagues to meet with President Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court. 

Kirk distributed a memo to colleagues at lunch Wednesday detailing his meeting with Merrick Garland at his office last week.

“We had a positive conversation and I encourage you to meet with him,” Kirk wrote.

{mosads}Kirk said he pressed the nominee, who has served nearly two decades on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, about the detention and interrogation of enemy combatants and the use of anti-racketeering laws to crack down on drug gangs.

Kirk told Garland that the Supreme Court “must provide clear, succinct, unambiguous — ‘soldier-proof’ — guidance” for military personnel interrogating enemy combatants, according to the summary memo he shared with the GOP conference.

Kirk said he worries uncertainty over the rules for capturing, detaining and interrogating enemy combatants is a major problem for troops on the battlefield.   

The document does not reveal what Garland said in response.

Kirk also argued that the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act should be interpreted broadly to prosecute gang members.

He told Garland that it can be difficult to wield the law because RICO requires prosecutors to prove that a criminal enterprise exists as a more or less formal institution, while gang affiliations are often loose and constantly evolving.

Kirk also said he questioned Garland about his views on the Community Decency Act and to what extent it can be used to shield websites engaged in possibly unlawful activity.

Kirk told the nominee that “liberty on the Internet cannot protect child pimps,” according to the memo.

The scope of the Tenth Amendment, which holds that powers not delegated to the federal government are reserved to the states, was another topic of conversation. 

Kirk said he reminded Garland that the amendment, historically a subject of dispute between conservative and liberal jurists, was intended to limit Congress’s powers to regulate.

“Congress’s power ends when it reaches too far into the states’ zones of autonomy,” Kirk said.

Kirk is one of just a handful of Republican senators to agree to meet with Garland. Most of the GOP is standing firm in its conviction that the Senate should not move on any nominee until after the election.