All of this is just individual pieces of the system coming apart at the seams. It's not designed for a deeply polarized, and unevenly represented, populace.
Yea he’s boring I guess. A lot of shady debt in his past doesn’t look good and might indicate a gambling problem, but is not really disqualifying unless he’s susceptible to blackmail and/or bribery. He also just called birth control pills abortion pills, which pisses me off because it’s willful fucking ignorance. If you’re too stupid to know how birth control pill actually works, you shouldn’t be allowed to speak on it. So he’s anti science and anti choice. But we knew that.
He's also stated that he thinks RvW can and should be reversed. (that's in some of the docs that were recently disclosed by Booker). He's also for racial profiling, and refuses to answer any questions around Presidential Pardons. McConnel thought he'd be tough to get through, which is why he recommended going with someone else... but apparently all they had to do was not disclose 100k pages of docs that had the "bad stuff" hidden in it.
Seems he may have lied under oath based on the recent leaks... https://thinkprogress.org/brett-kav...-tell-truth-nsa-wiretap-program-f32a71e840e7/ I'd consider that to be a big fucking problem if you want him to be on the Supreme Court... no?
It also looks like he considers birth control as "abortion inducing drugs"... https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/brett-kavanaugh-birth-control_us_5b917b79e4b0162f472b3cb8 Dude sides heavily on the "Religious Freedom Restoration" act... which, to me, is pretty scary. So... serious question here... why does this public process happen at all? If the GOP is going to just vote him through and confirm him, why do this? Is there something that can stop his confirmation?
Was it an off the cuff question on feasibility or do you think he was hiding his involvement in a fully operational national surveillance program that was designed and implemented within a week of 9/11? There’s barely any reporting on it outside of wingnut sites like ThinkProgess. To your other question, I think justices can be impeached, but I think it has only happened once.
15 federal judges have been impeached, with 8 removed. Samuel Chase was the only Supreme Court Justice in the former group, but was acquitted in the Senate after being impeached in 1804.
So today Kavanaugh reaffirms that he will not recuse from any matters that may arise from the ongoing special counsel investigation. And miraculously, Giuliani says that they won’t answer any questions in any form basically forcing a subpoena, which might end up before the Supreme Court. Funny how that works out.
My question was really, why go through this public process in the first place if it's such a certain end result? Is there anything that can happen during this c-span covered event that will result in him not being confirmed? It seems like everything you've mentioned (impeachment, etc) happens after the fact. Why the charade? (Am I missing something?)
You're missing that it's not supposed to be a charade, but the Republicans have to keep pretending that the system isn't completely broken.
Look up Robert Bork. It’s pretty much all a farce, but it’s the only thing we’ve got that allows the public to see what the nominee thinks in an accessible way. No one except uber nerds are going I go read old opinions, but regular folks can watch these proceedings and get some good information about a person who they will have to hear about for the rest of their fucking lives. If people don’t like what they hear they can try to convince their senators to vote no. I haven’t been following this one closely but from twitter it seems like there are some serious problems. It could still go off the rails if they find a skeleton or gives a terrible answer.
But that's my point... and I haven't found an answer to it... is there any way that the outcome of this public process is that he is not confirmed? If so, then why is it being done, and why is shit being hidden or not disclosed to the public? It's not just public grandstanding by the Dems... there seems to be legitimate shit that this guy believes in that goes contrary to the way a lot of Americans think. RvW, abortion/birth control, relighius freedom restoration, etc.
So it's more like "hey everyone, here's who we've hired", as opposed to a job interview. Basically because the parties vote along party lines.
The party line votes are a more recent phenomenon. In the “good old days” it was really just a giant rubber stamp. 100 yeas and 0 no’s. As we have become more partisan and the courts have become a more central issue things have changed. I think the best way to look at kavanaugh and gorsuch is as the end result of 30-40 years of right wing activism to reshape the judiciary system. There is that feeling of “wow it doesn’t matter what the guy says republicans are going to vote for him” because that is true as he is the reward for all their hard work. It’s kavanaugh’s appointment that is reminding republicans why it was worth it to embrace trump. The gop writ large doesn’t give a shit about trump and how bad he is. So trump gets voted out of office in 2020? Who gives a fuck. The supreme court is shifting far to the right and they will have a good long while for it to deliver the goods.
They didn't used to. Recent confirmation votes: Gorsuch: 54-45 Garland: Denied a vote Kagan: 63-37 Sotomayor: 68-31 Alito: 58-42 Roberts: 78-22 Breyer: 87-9 Ginsburg: 96-3 Thomas: 52-48 Souter: 90-9 Kennedy: 97-0 Bork: 42-58 Scalia: 98-0 O'Connor: 99-0 Stevens: 99-0 Before our recent era of hyper-partisanship, the only contentious votes were Thomas (who was probably a sexual harasser) and Bork (who was opposed for his views on civil rights and executive power, as well as his role in the Saturday Night Massacre). Prior to this Nixon had two nominees rejected, but the rejections were mostly bipartisan (Carswell for being a mediocre judge and a racist and Haynsworth for his views on civil rights and labor).
Speaking of Clarence Thomas, this shit is nuts. https://abovethelaw.com/2018/09/i-hate-black-people-says-ginni-thomass-assistant-yes-clarences-wife/
How does MotherJones compare? From what I've seen, they've been a pretty solid source... not sure how you view them... https://www.motherjones.com/politic...rs-to-have-lied-to-congress-while-under-oath/