So why bother to so wantonly engage in the pro-forma farce that these hearings are going to be by trying to get him to lie to you, knowing he’s going to lie to you, so you can, what, whine about it later?
What difference does it make?
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And of course Rand Paul or Marco Rubio will throw a poutie party for a couple of days until they’re bought off.
Rand Paul already folded
Edited to add Marco Rubio is a coward
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Tell us what the falsehood was.
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Kavanaugh lives in Maryland. Both senators from Maryland (Cardin & Van Hollen) are Democrats. Can’t they “Blue Slip” this nomination and at least stall it for awhile?
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McConnell did away with blue slips.
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McConnell would call for a rule suspension vote within an hour.
It’s not even a rule…it’s a tradition. Grassley ignored it already this year and voted a nominee out of committee.
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Rand Paul has already endorsed Kavanaugh.
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Its time for the media to do their job.
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My understanding is that Kavanaugh is a personable guy with a sense of humor who gives good TV. All the Repubs will fall in line and the blue dogs also.
Done deal. Shoo-in. The fix is in. Choose your cliche. McConnell screwed Garland and the American people so hard he almost went heterosexual. Welcome to the 1950s.
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After working on Bush’s legal team during the 2000 election, Kavanaugh joined the White House, where he worked first in the White House counsel’s office and then as the staff secretary, a crucial gatekeeper role. In 2003, Bush nominated him to the powerful D.C. Circuit court, but his nomination stalled. Three years later, Kavanaugh got another chance. During his confirmation hearings, Democratic Senators Patrick Leahy and Richard Durbin quizzed Kavanaugh on what he knew about administration decisions regarding the war on terror, and especially on the treatment of detainees. Senators were feeling burned, because they had in 2003 confirmed Jay Bybee, a former Bush Justice Department official, to a lifetime judgeship only to learn later of his role in the authorship of the so-called torture memos justifying coercive interrogation of individuals in U.S. custody.
During the 2006 hearing, Durbin asked Kavanaugh about the judicial nomination of William Haynes, who had also been involved in detainee decisions as the general counsel at the Pentagon. (Haynes was never confirmed.) “At the time of the nomination, what did you know about Mr. Haynes’s role in crafting the administration’s detention and interrogation policies?” Durbin asked.
“Senator, I did not, I was not involved and am not involved in the questions about the rules governing detention of combatants or—and so I do not have the involvement with that,” Kavanaugh replied.
Leahy asked Kavanaugh about the warrantless wiretapping program, which Kavanaugh repeatedly said he’d learned of from news reports. Leahy also asked about the harsh treatment of detainees.
But there’s evidence he lied and when that evidence came to light he refused to answer to it (even at the written request of Sen Durbin) & of course Bush officials gave him clearance.
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The Democrats have no recourse, the only thing they can do is make a big stink about the nomination, and ask extremely embarrassing questions during the hearings. They are already doing the former, I’m sure there will be a lot of hard questions from the D side during the hearings, all of which will be ignored in the same manner that Grouch did. The fix is in, and Kavanaugh will be the next justice in October.
The only glimmer of hope is that some investigative reporter finds a nugget that can take him down…there’s likely something out there, hidden in the Bush administration documents or known by some former assistant. Make it into a big enough controversy and maybe the Republicans will back off…though odds are they are forcing this through before the election just in case they don’t win the Senate and worry about being blocked until the Democrats take over.
The way the Republicans have treated the judiciary for the past decade is shameful, and probably the most damage they have done to our democracy as these right wing zealots will be with us for decades, slowing progress in making the nation better for all of us.
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It is an old and highly sourced report that Kavanaugh lied during early confirmation hearings. Why not lie again? I am certain he will, and about this very instance.
Kavanaugh replied, “Senator, I was not involved and am not involved in the questions about the rules governing detention of combatants, and so I do not have any involvement with that.”
In fact, in 2002, Kavanaugh and a group of top White House lawyers discussed whether the Supreme Court would uphold the Bush administration’s decision to deny lawyers to American enemy combatants. Kavanaugh advised the group that the Supreme Court’s swing voter, Justice Anthony Kennedy, would probably reject the president’s assertion that the men were not entitled to counsel. Kavanaugh had worked as a clerk for Kennedy. That meeting was first reported in The Washington Post. NPR independently confirmed the details with multiple sources.
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11433231
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If the document request involves the Archives, then Grassley has to sign off on that.
plus
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getting that out of the way
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Meaningless promises, kinda like Roberts and Alito.
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What happened to the Mitch McConnell rule of letting the voters have a say before a supreme court appointment, or are all the republicans liars and hypocrites.
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The answers are: I think you know and yes.
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No thanks. I did my puking on Election Night when I realized loss of the Supreme Court to right wing extremists for a generation was now baked in by mathematically illiterate magical thinkers who didn’t vote for Trump but couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Hillary.
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I hope you’re wrong.
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