KAVANAUGH CONCERNS HAVE DEMS CALLING FOR HIS IMPEACHMENT | House Judiciary Committee Says It’s Too Busy Impeaching The President
September 17, 2019
THE NEWS OF NO ACTION
|Four days before BRETT KAVANAUGH was confirmed to the Supreme Court, SENATOR CHRIS COONS personally flagged to the FBI new information he believed was relevant to the nominee’s misconduct allegations and needed “appropriate follow up.” Seung Min Kim with The Washington Post writes, “Then, apparently, not much happened. Not at the FBI, which assured Coons it had received the letter but did not interview the person whom the senator referred to the bureau. Not in the office of then-Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), which was copied on the letter that contained few in the way of specifics. And not among Democrats, several of whom had been unaware of the information until a New York Times report this weekend detailed a new alleged incident involving Kavanaugh.”
THE CHILL ZONE
|And while these new concerns over BRETT KAVANAUGH “roil the White House, Capitol Hill and the Democratic presidential nomination trail,” one important body sits in silence: the Supreme Court itself. Robert Barnes with The Washington Post says, “At the Supreme Court, once you’re in, you’re in. It is a no-roil zone.”
THE WAY OUT
|From the campaign trail, several Democratic hopefuls have called for JUSTICE KAVANAUGH to be impeached in light of the latest revelations. Ellie Kaufman with CNN explains the process of impeachment — which is the same for impeaching a president. The House needs a simple majority for impeachment of a justice or federal judge, and then the Senate requires a two-thirds majority.
OH, THAT
|However, House Judiciary Committee Chairman JERRY NADLER says his committee is too tied up with “impeaching the president” to take action on allegations against JUSTICE KAVANAUGH. Kyle Cheney with POLITICO writes, “It’s a significant comment that comes even as advocates for formal impeachment proceedings against Trump have argued the Judiciary Committee is capable of juggling its Trump-focused investigations with other issues in its broad jurisdiction — including immigration and criminal justice policies.”
ED BOARD OVERTURE
|The Editorial Board of The Wall Street Journal addresses what it’s calling an assault on BRETT KAVANAUGH, which it thinks “is part of the left’s campaign against the legitimacy of the current Supreme Court and an independent judiciary.”
THE SIN OF ALL SINS
|Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick responds to the latest iteration of the BRETT KAVANAUGH scandal and notes the ways in which The New York Times fumbled its handling of the breaking news it shared Sunday. But she says the real sin unearthed from the report “isn’t that there was a second account” — it’s how that information was handled by the powers that be. “The real sin is that this former student, Max Stier, went to Delaware Sen. Chris Coons and then the leadership of the Senate, way back in the fall of 2018, to try to tell them what he remembered. And the real sin is that the FBI never investigated it.”
ZOOMING OUT FOR A SEC
|Greg Sargent with The Washington Post argues that beyond BRETT KAVANAUGH, there’s another, more alarming reason to fear the Supreme Court. He makes note of a new study that concludes even if Democrats win the White House and Congress, SCOTUS will likely strike down much of what they do to address the climate crisis — even as the window for action is closing. Ah yes, that pesky climate problem.
WHERE'S THE ETHICS CODE
|So now might be a good time to remind that six months ago CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN ROBERTS was said to be studying whether the Supreme Court should have its own code of conduct. Fix the Court is calling on Roberts to release the code publicly should it exist, and if not, “to get on with writing it.”