‘Obama opted for diversity in SC nominee’

Rejecting criticism that Obama missed a golden opportunity to bring in diversity in the Supreme Court bench and could have chosen someone younger, the White House asserted that he nominated “the best” to serve on the apex court.  

“The President’s commitment to the principle of ensuring we have a judiciary that looks like the rest of the country is rock-solid,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters at his daily news conference.  

“And the other principle that he has strongly adhered to is making sure that he’s choosing the best person for the job, and I think he’s demonstrated over the course of his seven years in office that it is absolutely possible to do both,” he added. 

Earnest was responding to questions on Wednesday as to why Obama overlooked the strong credentials for the judge from diverse communities including African Americans, Indian Americans and Asian Americans even as some of them figured on his short-list.  

“I can tell you that the President considered a diverse array of candidates, and I think that’s what you’d expect considering the diverse array of individuals that the White House consulted in advance of the President making his decision. 

The President took that advice quite seriously and considered a diverse array of candidates,” he said. “The President ultimately settled on Chief Judge Garland for one reason, and that is simply that he believes that Chief Judge [Merrick] Garland is the best person in America to do that job. 

And that’s how the President made the decision,” Earnest said. He also said the President himself had talked on a number of occasions about how important it was to ensure that the federal bench was as diverse as the rest of the country. 

US sanctions against N Korea: 

President Obama imposed sweeping new sanctions on North Korea on Wednesday intended to further isolate the country’s leadership after recent actions by Pyongyang that have been seen by Washington and its allies as provocative. 

The executive order freezes any property of the North Korean government in the United States and prohibits exportation of goods from the United States to North Korea. It also allows the US government to blacklist any individuals, whether or not they are US citizens, who deal with major sectors of North Korea’s economy. 

Experts said the measures vastly expanded the US blockade against Pyongyang. North Korea conducted a nuclear test on Jan. 6, and a Feb. 7 rocket launch that the United States and its allies said employed banned ballistic missile technology.