Question to legal scholars: in the context of constitutional law, WTF does it mean to be a “team player”? https://t.co/1o7qAL5tMn
— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) September 4, 2018
“Careful,” a White House official wrote in an email that was sent to Brett Kavanaugh. “These e-mails will all be disclosed in 12 years.”
“Not if Brett can help it,” another White House official responded.https://t.co/5SZnT2t4gu— Michael Kranish (@PostKranish) September 4, 2018
… There have been significant disclosures in documents that have been made public. For example, most of the documents related to Kavanaugh’s work as an associate to Starr have been released. They include a 1998 memo in which Kavanaugh urged that Starr’s deputies pose sexually graphic questions to then-President Bill Clinton about his relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
Many of the documents that have been shielded from disclosure come from Kavanaugh’s three years as associate White House counsel. Democrats have been particularly interested in whether documents would reveal more about whether Kavanaugh played a role in developing Bush’s policy on torture. In his 2006 confirmation hearing for the federal appeals court, Kavanaugh said that “I was not involved and am not involved in the questions about the rules governing detention of combatants.”
The following year, The Washington Post reported that Kavanaugh had participated in a discussion in the White House Counsel’s Office about how Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, for whom he had clerked, would view the detainee policy. Durbin and other Democrats have said they felt misled by Kavanaugh’s denial and said they hoped that full disclosure of the files would reveal more on his role…
Brett Kavanaugh's hearing is a Gilded-Age farce and an affront to the American republic https://t.co/wr3ktwLbTx pic.twitter.com/EIdziVyny1
— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) September 4, 2018
… [T]he entire Republican case for Kavanaugh is that he is “qualified”—went to the right schools, got on the right career track, etc.—and that his “qualifications” are the only measure by which his nomination should be judged. They all deplored the fact that the nominee (and his young children) should have to sit through this unruly hearing that John Cornyn, the unreconstructed dolt from Texas, called “mob rule,” and that had Orrin Hatch wishing for protestors to be kept away from his delicate self. Individually, Tailgunner Ted Cruz, once again sucking up to the president* who slandered his wife and father, accused the Democrats of wanting to “re-litigate” the 2016 presidential election, when “there was a vacant seat on the Supreme Court,” and in which “the American people” showed that they wanted Donald Trump to appoint his kind of judges by giving three million more votes to the other candidate…
And, inevitably, there was the Tailgunner, whose entire statement was oriented around the fact that the 2016 presidential election was unique because “there was a vacant seat on the Supreme Court.” Which led the wandering mind to the single, simple rebuttal to everything every Republican had said.
Merrick Garland.
Kavanaugh Hearing, Day One: Unflattering ReviewsPost + Comments (108)