dagblog - Comments for "Kavanaugh Hearing Thread"

Good closer for this thread:

artappraiser — Sun, 30 Sep 2018 03:19:05 +0000

In reply to Kavanaugh Hearing Thread

Good closer for this thread:

This has aged perfectly. https://t.co/bDsApfZ2eB
— Mikel Jollett (@Mikel_Jollett) September 29, 2018

ABA concerns about Kavanaugh

AmericanDreamer — Sat, 29 Sep 2018 16:35:33 +0000

In reply to Especially since Kavanaugh

ABA concerns about Kavanaugh 12 years ago, ignored by Republicans then as well:

History repeated itself. At least it had a spell of deja vu when the American Bar Association released an extraordinary statement at a crucial moment that raised concerns about Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh’s nomination to a powerful judicial position — just as it had done 12 years earlier.

Late Thursday evening, the ABA called for an FBI investigation into sexual assault allegations against Kavanaugh before the Senate Judiciary Committee voted on his Supreme Court nomination. The warning was all the more remarkable, because just hours earlier, Kavanaugh and his Republican defenders had cited the ABA’s previously glowing endorsement of the nominee — “the gold standard,” as one leading Republican put it.

Flash back to the mid-2000s and another fight in the Senate over Kavanaugh’s nomination to a federal court:

Democrats for three years had been blocking President George W. Bush’s 2003 nomination of Kavanaugh to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. They argued he was biased, as shown by his work as a lawyer for Bush’s presidential campaign, for an independent counsel’s investigation into President Bill Clinton and for other conservative causes.

Republicans kept pushing to make Kavanaugh a judge on the powerful appeals court, year after year. In his defense, they cited multiple reviews by the ABA’s judicial review committee that found him “well qualified” — the big attorney association’s highest possible endorsement, meaning Kavanaugh had outstanding legal abilities and outstanding judicial temperament.

But in May 2006, as Republicans hoped to finally push Kavanaugh’s nomination across the finish line, the ABA downgraded its endorsement.

The group’s judicial investigator had recently interviewed dozens of lawyers, judges and others who had worked with Kavanaugh, the ABA announced at the time, and some of them raised red flags about “his professional experience and the question of his freedom from bias and open-mindedness.”

.......

"The American Bar Association had concerns about Kavanaugh 12 years ago. Republicans dismissed those, too." Avi Selk, WaPo online, yesterday afternoon: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/09/28/american-bar-associat...

He's especially good on these

AmericanDreamer — Sat, 29 Sep 2018 16:22:52 +0000

In reply to Good! I think it's important

He's especially good on these matters because he knows just what to look for. He knew that it was significant, as well as dramatic, to air last night the footage focused on Flake during Coons' committee speech.

We'll see on how Flake

AmericanDreamer — Sat, 29 Sep 2018 16:20:49 +0000

In reply to Just asked Flake if he could

We'll see on how Flake eventually votes.

One of the reporters who guested on MSNBC last night, I think it was an NPR White House reporter, mentioned (again paraphrasing from memory and my interpretation of what I heard her say) that the FBI investigation could end up serving in effect, if not also intent among some senators supporting it, as the procedural fig leaf to push the nomination through in the end. Where the Kavanaugh supporters say, look, we gave you your FBI investigation, so what's the complaint now?

As of now, with the results of the investigation TBD, my gut tells me Flake is looking for a way to justify voting yes in the end.

If he does, it will make it politically harder for Collins, Murkowski and Manchin all to vote no, although that could still happen, and would defeat the nomination if all others vote on party lines. The four of them and/or their staffs surely will continue to communicate with one another over the next week. My gut tells me that Collins and Murkowski are more open to voting no than is Flake, going into the FBI investigation.

Murkowski has already been primaried and survived it by getting herself elected as an independent. She owes the GOP nothing except, if she were so inclined, perhaps a middle finger. It's possible that Collins may privately already have decided that, partly due to the no-win situation she faces here, she will in the end not run for re-election in 2020.

Flake is more right-wing and ideological in his worldview than either Collins or Murkowski. I have to fight the feeling that for Flake the main issue is procedural fairness, or as much of an appearance of same as can be generated to slightly calm down the appalled public at this time and try to mitigate electoral damage for his party in the mid-terms.

If Flake votes yes in the end, in his mind that may amount to having his cake and eating it, too. He gets credit for introducing one fairness measure into the process and possibly helping his party in the mid-terms, while also doing his part to get the substantive outcome--the votes on the future Court he is anticipating with a Kavanugh confirmation--he wants.

One reason Flake deserves credit now for what he did, regardless of the final vote, is that opening up the process in this way introduces uncertainty, which senators hate in high-stakes situations such as these. They know that bringing in the FBI this week could easily take this matter in (additional) unpredictable--and possibly uncontrollable--directions.

One wild card is Heitkamp. She is not receiving as much attention as the other four so far.

Another wild card is whether Kavanaugh will (even more visibly and seriously than Thursday, if that can be imagined) blow up under the scrutiny, which could lead to a withdrawal, either voluntary or pressured/forced by others. He may not emotionally survive the coming week.

Yah, even an artistic know

AmericanDreamer — Sat, 29 Sep 2018 15:23:27 +0000

In reply to that said, I like to share

Yah, even an artistic know-nothing like me can see why.

Now there there is a human who has the rapt attention of some other humans.

When I commented the other

AmericanDreamer — Sat, 29 Sep 2018 15:13:17 +0000

In reply to Note the above NYTimes

When I commented the other day that Kavanaugh presented himself Thursday afternoon after a judge nominee after Trump's own heart I wasn't considering what seems to be a very real possibility that Trump indeed was, if not Kavanaugh's audience of one that afternoon, at the top of the list. To get Trump's support on anything we all know that you have to make him see himself, easily, in you. Because everything, as we all also know, is about him.

MSNBC, on either O'Donnell or

AmericanDreamer — Sat, 29 Sep 2018 15:01:43 +0000

In reply to Oh nooo, Flake & Coons couldn

MSNBC, on either O'Donnell or Williams I believe, reported last night that Rosenstein (paraphrasing from memory) said that with one week they could, in fact, produce useful information.

Republicans always win

rmrd0000 — Sat, 29 Sep 2018 14:24:39 +0000

In reply to Worse, doesn't get this

Republicans always win without the black vote. Democrats cannot win without the black vote. Nothing I say or do prevents Democratic outreach to white voters.

Kavanaugh could only have

PeraclesPlease — Sat, 29 Sep 2018 13:42:03 +0000

In reply to Note the above NYTimes

Kavanaugh could only have been worse with a line if shots and a bong. That calendar, oops...

Note the above NYTimes

artappraiser — Sat, 29 Sep 2018 13:24:15 +0000

In reply to Since the POTUS is not a

Note the above NYTimes article has White House anonymice describing Trump's reaction to Ford's testimony which totally explains his behavior! whether one wants to believe it or not, up to the reader of course:

Trump Thinks It’s Over

The drama began 24 hours earlier, right after Christine Blasey Ford told the committee that she was sexually assaulted by Judge Kavanaugh when she was 15 years old. President Trump, aides said, believed she was persuasive and informed the aides that he believed the judge’s confirmation was in jeopardy. Maybe, he said, the F.B.I. should spend a week to investigate the accusations as Democrats were demanding.

Some of the aides pushed back on Mr. Trump, including the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, who saw the investigation as a delay tactic cooked up by the Democrats to give them more time to dig up dirt on Judge Kavanaugh.

Mr. Trump heeded the advice, and in a rare moment of political restraint, his Twitter feed stayed quiet.

The strategy worked.

That afternoon Judge Kavanaugh delivered a fiery and emotional defense of his own character, prompting what looked by Thursday night to be unstoppable political momentum toward his confirmation to the Supreme Court.

Mr. Trump, who just hours earlier had appeared defeated to his aides, triumphantly tweeted after Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa and the chairman of the judiciary committee, gaveled the hearing to a close.

“Democrats’ search and destroy strategy is disgraceful and this process has been a total sham and effort to delay, obstruct, and resist,” Mr. Trump wrote. “The Senate must vote!”