Richard Epstein (as reported by Powerline ) looks at what’s been going on with the Supreme Court nominee, and says it well:
.The Democratic resistance to the Kavanaugh nomination has been an all-out assault on his judicial philosophy and personal integrity from the moment that it was announced. I have no doubt that any senator has the full and complete right to vote whatever way he or she thinks fit on the nomination. And I have no doubt that if the Democrats held a majority of the seats in the Senate, they could have stonedwalled this nomination, just as the Republicans did with Merrick Garland. It is well-established constitutional law that the Senate need not call a hearing, let alone schedule a vote. In retrospect, the decision not to hold any hearings on Garland should be regarded as a wise and humane political decision, because it spared Garland and the nation a similar disgraceful exhibition of intolerance that some conservative opponents of Garland may well have launched to tarnish his confirmation chances.
But this last-ditch decision to sabotage Kavanaugh at the 11th hour is a disgusting piece of political propaganda. Christine Blasey Ford behaved wholly improperly when she decided to write a letter only to “a senior Democratic lawmaker,” in which she made the most serious allegations of sexual assault against Kavanaugh. At the very least, she ought to have handled matters wholly differently. If she wanted to keep matters confidential, she should have sent that letter to President Trump and to Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the chairman of the judiciary committee. She also should have sent it to the FBI for investigation. And she should have done all of these things at the earliest possible moment, in time for a principled and neutral examination to take place before the Senate hearings took place. Then, she should have sat for a cross-examination.
Putting the information exclusively in the hands of key Democrats thus invited the wholly corrupt strategy that has now unfolded. First, the Democrats would try to discredit Kavanaugh by engaging in a set of procedural antics and obnoxious substantive questions during the hearing, without mentioning this letter. When that strategy abjectly failed, they knew they had to go to Plan B, which was to release the letter and the allegation days before the confirmation vote. A perfect sandbag, for the Democrats knew full well that there was no time to respond to them, without causing an enormous delay in the confirmation hearings. Their hope was, and is, to create a huge media circus that would take weeks if not months to sort out. Shipwreck this nomination. Make it impossible for the current Senate to pass on any subsequent nominee before January. Then take control of the Senate and create a stalemate that could run on until the next presidential election.
And for what? Ford, Kavanaugh’s accuser, maintained a stony silence on these allegations for more than 35 years. At no point did she raise them in connection with the Senate confirmation hearings before Kavanaugh was confirmed in 2006. Kavanaugh has categorically denied the allegations. Late last week, Mark Judge, his alleged accomplice, denounced the allegations as “absolutely nuts.” No other woman has ever made any allegation of this sort against Kavanaugh. and 65 women have written an explicit letter in his defense. Kavanaugh is right not to respond beyond his categorical denial, knowing full well that further comment would only draw him further into a vortex on which credibility determinations would be unending. And the Senate is right to continue with the confirmation vote. The institutional damage to the Senate, the Supreme Court, and the nation has already been enormous. What is left now is only the sorry task of damage containment. What sane judge would like to be the next Supreme Court nominee?
Well, first of all this kind of abuse only gets applied to Republican nominees, particularly, originalists… Those who would use the Constitution as originally written to block the wildest wet dreams of the left.
This has become a hackneyed play of the left when they can’t figure out any other way to stop a nominee they don’t like …which is just about anybody to the right of Fidel Castro. The only thing missing here is the Coke can and the pubic hair.
The tactics being employed by the Democrats in all these cases, are not just an attempt to disqualify any applicant for a position that they don’t like. Rather, it is designed to eliminate originalism as a Judicial concept. And if they can’t do that they’ll teardown the entire institution of the Supreme Court. Ironic, since the court has been there tool for the last hundred years or so. But now the pendulum has swung the other way and we are actually getting judges who think originalism is the way to go in the nomination process and the Democrats in their desperation are doing everything they possibly can no matter how down and dirty to keep such ideas and Concepts out of the Supreme Court and ultimately out of American jurisprudence.
Much has been said about the veracity of the accuser, and the timing of it, and I doubt I need to add anything here, but I can’t resist looking at the large hole in the background data on this woman. She has spent the last weekend scrubbing all of her social media accounts. Why? To eliminate any possibility of being called out on her pro Democrat activities.
Now the reports are that we’re supposed to be seeing a hearing we’re both the woman and Cavanaugh are supposed to testify. the only outstanding question at this point is whether or not Cory Brooker will actually cry. He came so close in the initial hearing, is that the Safe Money seems to be on him shedding a theatrical tear or 20.
Frankly, I can’t think of any reason for us to trust anything the Democrats are saying about any of this. For that matter with the display they put on in this hearing and in the Clarence Thomas hearing, and in the Robert Bork hearing, I’m down to the point now where I think Chuck Grassley, at the next USSC opening, ought to think seriously about putting a nominee forward without a hearing on two or three days notice, since there is nothing in the Constitution, (you remember …the Constitution? ) that demands anything more than that.
As a bonus let’s talk about Keith Ellison. Where is the hearing about the attacks he’s been charged with, which are much more provable and much more egregious? If this doesn’t constitute a double standard I don’t know what does. The Democrats in their concern for charges of sexual attack would seem conveniently one-sided.
This is my shocked face.
In any event, the display being put on here by the Democrats should put an end to the illusion of Comity in government. The truth of the matter is that the biggest threat to America is the Democrats.
