NEXT STOP, ONE FIRST | Kavanaugh Still Likely To Be Confirmed | Collins Gets Coat Hangers In Protest
September 10, 2018
STEADY AS SHE GOES
|Four days of Supreme Court confirmation hearings that were packed with protests of every variety, and JUDGE KAVANAUGH is still well on his way to becoming a justice. Robert Barnes and Sueng Min Kim with The Washington Post report on last week’s hearings and note that by the end of it all some Dems on the Senate Judiciary Committee “seemed resigned to Kavanaugh’s confirmation.”
JUST KEEP SWIMMING
|NPR’s Nina Totenberg also reviews the hearings with a look at how the Democrats spent much of their time demanding to see more than a mere ten percent of Kavanaugh’s documents in order to properly vet the nominee. Totenberg points out that Republicans can still win even without any Dems on their side, and she says Republicans treated the hearings “largely by treading water nicely. They tried to show Kavanaugh as a good dad, a great husband, a mentor, a nice guy, a basketball coach for his daughters’ teams, who — the teams showed up at the hearing room — that kind of thing.”
LEARNED FROM THE BEST
|“JUDGE KAVANAUGH’S demeanor was bland and unruffled, and he navigated two marathon days of questioning without revealing anything not already on his long résumé, one reflecting a slashing partisan background and a deeply conservative judicial record. Judge Kavanaugh must have studied earlier confirmation hearings carefully, as he had absorbed all of their key lessons: Say nothing, say it at great length, and then say it again.” That’s Adam Liptak with The New York Times assessing the nominee’s performance in which he mostly avoided questions from senators and gave very little away about his views.
PACKAGE FOR YOU
|Previously, SENATOR SUSAN COLLINS has said she won’t vote for a Supreme Court nominee who would overturn Roe v. Wade, but it seems she’s changed her tune as the nomination proceedings have progressed. And people have very easily noticed her shifting position. People from across the country have mailed about 3,000 coat hangers to her office, symbolizing back-alley abortions that took place before they became legal. Political activists have also pledged to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund an opponent to Collins when she’s up for re-election in 2020 if she votes in favor Kavanaugh.
FIX THE COURT
|Last night’s episode of “Last Week Tonight” with JOHN OLIVER opened with a reflection on the Kavanaugh hearings and a call for the imposition of term limits on Supreme Court justices. Oliver said that now “might be a good time to ask” why lifetime appointments are still a thing in the United States. He said, “Lifetime appointment to the highest court is one those things that is uniquely American. Like the Super Bowl. Or drinking Budweiser. Or tolerating Sean Penn. No one else understands why Americans do those things. And if you think about it, it is a little weird.”
SCOTUS VIEWS
The Kavanaugh Hustle
The Washington Post“While Trump is destroying the honor and reputation of the presidency, Senate Republicans are doing all they can to destroy the legitimacy of the Supreme Court. When it comes to this last line of appeal in our legal system, the GOP has treated court appointments in the same way machine politicians once treated jobs in city sewer departments: If you have the clout, you use it to place your people. Period.”
Whose Religious Liberty Is It Anyway?
The New York Times“If the Senate confirms Brett Kavanaugh, it will be declaring that the United States is a nation in which one brand of religion enjoys a place of privilege; that we are a nation of laws — except in cases where the law offends those who subscribe to our preferred religion; and that we recognize the dignity of all people unless they belong to specific groups our national religion views with disapproval.”
Look Past The Politics — Kavanaugh Superbly Qualified For The U.S. Supreme Court
San Francisco Chronicle“U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh are over. They will go down in history as the most chaotic, disruptive, circus-like, non-substantive confirmation hearings in history. So far.”
OTHER NEWS
Science Does Not Support Claims That Contraceptives Are 'Abortion-Inducing'
The New York Times“During his Supreme Court confirmation hearing on Thursday, Judge Brett Kavanaugh referred to some forms of birth control as ‘abortion-inducing drugs.’ The phrase is a characterization that some anti-abortion religious groups use, but it is not supported by scientific evidence.”