I wasn't pleased with The Federalist Society's "short list" so I'm not pleased with this nomination ~ there will be a ton more info on Kavanaugh over the next couple of days, but his rep seems to be that he's an ultra conservative ~ ~ Sooz

Axios 1 hour ago
Trump nominates Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court

President Trump announced Monday night that he has nominated Brett Kavanaugh, a 53-year-old federal appeals court judge from Bethesda, Maryland, to the Supreme Court, replacing Justice Anthony Kennedy.

Why it matters: As expected, Kavanaugh, if confirmed, will shift the court substantially to the right.


What to watch: Vulnerable red state Senate Democrats, including Claire McCaskill, Joe Manchin, Jon Tester, Joe Donnelly, Bill Nelson and Heidi Heitkamp; as well as moderate Republicans Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, will be the deciding votes on whether Kavanaugh gets confirmed.

Behind the scenes: Kavanaugh was the frontrunner from the start — and a favorite of White House Counsel Don McGahn.

His credentials: Kavanaugh graduated from Yale Law School in 1990, and has been working on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit since then-President George W. Bush nominated him.

Before being appointed to the appellate court, he worked as a top White House lawyer for Bush, clerked for Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy in 1993, and was an attorney for the Office of the Solicitor General.

https://www.axios.com/trump-nominates-brett-kavanaugh-supreme-court-justice-a0866ea4-0121-4451-b28d-620b00c67230.html

Apparently his most notable claim to fame is that he believes presidents should be shielded from prosecution. Making him the clear choice, of course.

I did some searching and found this from 2012 by Jeffrey Toobin...


... according to Kavanaugh, even if the Supreme Court upholds the law this spring, a President Santorum, say, could refuse to enforce ACA because he “deems” the law unconstitutional. That, to put the matter plainly, is not how it works. Courts, not Presidents, “deem” laws unconstitutional, or uphold them.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/03/26/holding-court

Nice job, greeny ... calling this one last night! ~ ~ here's more detail, all of which is, at best, alarming ~ some "live links" in the original ~ Sooz

For Supreme Court, Trump chose a nominee ‘who’d have his back’
07/10/18 08:00 AM
By Steve Benen

[Video, The Rachel Maddow Show, 7/9/18, 8:55 PM ET, "Kavanaugh the product of rigorous right-wing political process", accessible via the end link.]

Over the course of many years, the right has created an intellectual architecture that exists for a single purpose: to scrutinize jurists for their fealty to the conservative cause. The result is a dynamic in which Donald Trump and his White House team didn’t have to come up with a short list of Supreme Court nominees; the president could outsource the heavy lifting to interest groups that were only too pleased to deliver such a list to the Oval Office.

With this in mind, Trump was given the task of simply choosing from a list that was prepared for him, and to no one’s surprise, he chose Brett Kavanaugh, a federal appeals court judge in Washington.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) once famously described Kavanaugh as the “Forrest Gump of Republican politics,” because he’s popped up in so many of the major events of the last generation. Bush v. Gore? Kavanaugh was there. The investigation into Vince Foster’s suicide? Kavanaugh was there. Ken Starr’s investigation into the Clinton-Lewinski affair? Kavanaugh was there. The Elian Gonzales controversy? Kavanaugh was there.

It’s this background that likely would’ve made the conservative judge a favorite of any Republican president filing a vacancy on the high court. What’s unique to this president, however, are the unique circumstances he finds himself in: Donald Trump is the subject of an ongoing criminal investigation, as well as multiple civil suits.

And that’s one of the key elements that makes his nomination of Brett Kavanaugh so important. The Washington Post explained a couple of weeks ago:


As the dust settles on last night’s news, this is the angle that warrants considerable attention: the sitting president facing potential legal liability specifically chose a judge who believes sitting presidents should never have to face legal liabilities.

[Video, The Rachel Maddow Show, 7/9/18, 9:19 PM ET, "Booker: 'We cannot let this confirmation process go forward'", accessible via the end link.]

Or as Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) said on the show last night, Trump was presented with plenty of choices, but he picked someone for the Supreme Court whom he knew would “have his back.”

Let’s not lose sight of landscape: the president’s former national security advisor will be in court today for the start of his criminal sentencing process. The man who oversaw the president’s political operation is facing multiple felony counts and is already sitting in a jail cell. The president’s longtime personal attorney is facing possible felony charges and he’s just hired a defense attorney with experience from the Clinton impeachment saga.

Trump himself may find himself in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s legal crosshairs, at which point it may fall to the Supreme Court to answer weighty questions of historic significance. Can the president be subpoenaed to testify? Can the president be criminally indicted? Can the president pardon himself? Can the president pardon others if the purpose of those pardons is to undermine the case against himself? Can states bring charges against those who’ve received federal pardons from the president? Can the president simply dispense with an ongoing probe in which he’s the subject?

[Video, The Rachel Maddow Show, 7/9/18, 9:30 PM ET, "Trump prioritizes self-protection in SCOTUS choice of Kavanaugh", accessible via the end link.]

These are, by and large, unsettled questions, which may soon need answers thanks to the scope of Trump’s ongoing scandals.

And there’s Brett Kavanaugh, who’s already said in writing that a president should not have to deal with such burdens. We’re left with a dynamic in which Trump was handed a Supreme Court short list to choose from, and he may very well have prioritized self-preservation, picking the judge who’s most likely to protect this president’s fate.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/supreme-court-trump-chose-nominee-whod-have-his-back#break

It just gets 'worser and worser'

As far as conservatives are concerned, if the guy can stop sucking his toes long enough manipulate a rubber stamp without drooling on the paper, he's perfect for the job. Shit! Eric or Donny Jr. could do it!

They really don't want an intellectual giant or anybody with ethics or morality because the guy, like the right wing itself, may have to have his responses undergo a sea change in the blink of an eye. Today the President must be protected from the consequences of his illegal activities at all costs, tomorrow it will be "hang that Democrat President high."

53 years old...

25 years of this shyte and there won't be a US as we know it and it'll be China, India and Russia vieing for top dog spot with the two USAs third world countries.

Another travesty ~ and this one could affect us for decades ~ ~ Sooz

Ahead of Kavanaugh hearings, GOP prefers secrecy to transparency
09/04/18 09:20 AM
By Steve Benen

[Video, The Rachel Maddow Show, 9/3/18, 9:44 PM ET, "New hearing revives question of whether Kavanaugh lied under oath", accessible via the end link.]

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) last week helped organize a curious political stunt. The Utah Republican wrote a joint letter with Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee to the panel’s Democratic members, explaining how impressed they are with the committee’s Republican chairman, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), and the work he’s done ahead of Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmations hearings.

The point of the partisan endeavor was apparently to tell Dems, in writing, how impressed Republicans are with themselves. Indeed, among other things, Hatch’s letter commended Grassley for conducting “the most thorough and transparent vetting possible.”

I especially enjoyed the use of the word “possible” – as in, there’s simply no way anyone, at any time, could’ve done a more thorough and transparent job in reviewing a high court nominee’s professional background. It’s not even possible.

Meanwhile, in reality, there’s a nearly three-year period from Kavanaugh’s tenure in the Bush/Cheney White House that senators were supposed to be able to review as part of the vetting process, but which Senate Republicans have declared off limits for reasons they haven’t fully explained.

Late last week, “the most thorough and transparent vetting possible” became even less thorough and far less transparent.


If there’s a sensible defense for this, it’s hiding well.

The context, of course, deserves special attention: Team Trump waited until late on a Friday, ahead of a holiday weekend, to announce that it’s decided to hide more than 100,000 pages from Kavanaugh’s records.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in a statement, “We’re witnessing a Friday night document massacre. President Trump’s decision to step in at the last moment and hide 100,000 pages of Judge Kavanaugh’s records from the American public is not only unprecedented in the history of Supreme Court nominations, it has all the makings of a cover-up…. What are they trying so desperately to hide?”

By way of comparison, it’s important to note that one of Barack Obama’s nominees for the high court, Elena Kagan, also had White House experience. And yet, the total number of pages the Democratic president kept hidden from the Senate was zero.

There’s no shortage of substantive concerns related to Kavanaugh’s nomination. In the coming days, senators should grapple with his far-right worldview, his eagerness to advance his political agenda, the evidence that suggests he may have lied to the Senate under oath, and even his controversial finances.

And while each of these angles matters a great deal, there’s a foundational controversy that should, in theory, halt the process before it even begins: senators will not have an opportunity to review the nominee’s record before weighing whether to reward him with a lifetime appointment to the nation’s highest court.

Before Kavanaugh was even chosen for the vacancy, GOP leaders realized his extensive paper trail could pose a political problem. Trump and his Republican allies have found a way around that problem: they decided not to care.

Postscript: Last night, Bush lawyer Bill Burck, a former Kavanaugh colleague, released another 42,000 pages of materials from the Supreme Court nominee’s past to the Senate Judiciary Committee (not to the public). If you’re wondering how senators and their aides can read 42,000 pages of documents in one night – the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings begin this morning – the answer is they can’t.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/ahead-kavanaugh-hearings-gop-prefers-secrecy-transparency#break

It is very dismaying how dems never seem to be prepared strategically for republican shenanigans. They always seem caught off guard and struggling at the last minute to try an counter act the dirty-pool players; not sure if they are naive or have a total lack of street smarts. Dems may not like to play dirty, but it appears they disregard any strategy before hand against those who do.

What's truly amazing is that Americans still think they have a "judicial system" when the only two ways of getting a judgeship is though a popularity contest or by being sufficiently "politically pure" for one side or the other. Competence, knowledge of the law, independent judicial decision making come a distant second to "which decision will get/lose me the most votes" and "my political masters want this outcome, therefore I shall deliver."

Karolinablue wrote:

It is very dismaying how dems never seem to be prepared strategically for republican shenanigans. They always seem caught off guard and struggling at the last minute to try an counter act the dirty-pool players; not sure if they are naive or have a total lack of street smarts. Dems may not like to play dirty, but it appears they disregard any strategy before hand against those who do.

That's true and it's why there's a very good chance Grabem will again be President in 2020. The Dems have no discernable strategy, platform or bench with any depth. Even when they had the upper hand back in 2009 they couldn't capitalize on it. They were constantly being out foxed by the Republicans. It's why Obamacare is such a mess and the recovery program was so anemic. Whining is not a tactic. It's a response.

No iota of simple decency ~ this is disgusting in the extreme ~ ~ Sooz

Parkland father confronts Kavanaugh at hearing
Avery Anapol / The Hill / 2 hrs ago



The father of a student killed in the February school shooting in Parkland, Fla., said Tuesday that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh refused to shake his hand when he tried to introduce himself at his Senate confirmation hearing.

Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter Jaime was killed in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas shooting, tweeted that he tried to meet Kavanaugh and shake his hand during a break on the first day of Kavanaugh's hearings.

"Just walked up to Judge Kavanaugh as morning session ended," Guttenberg said. "Put out my hand to introduce myself as Jaime Guttenberg's dad. He pulled his hand back, turned his back to me and walked away. I guess he did not want to deal with the reality of gun violence."


White House spokesman Raj Shah pushed back on Guttenberg's claims, describing the interaction as "an unidentified individual" approaching Kavanaugh.

"As Judge Kavanaugh left for his lunch break, an unidentified individual approached him," Shah wrote in a tweet responding to Guttenberg. "Before the judge was able to shake his hand, security had intervened."


Guttenberg doubled down in response to Shah, saying that he was introduced by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.)

"Incorrect. I was here all day and introduced by Senator Feinstein," Guttenberg tweeted. "No security involved. He turned and walked away."


Guttenberg has been a vocal advocate for gun control since the shooting, and has called out a number of Republican lawmakers for their record on guns.

Kavanaugh, whose confirmation hearings began Tuesday, is likely to come under scrutiny over his views on gun rights during the hearing, as gun control advocates have raised concerns about his past rulings.

The former D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals judge, nominated by President Trump to replace retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy, dissented with the D.C. Circuit's 2011 decision to uphold a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.

The National Rifle Association also spent upwards of $1 million to support Kavanaugh's nomination, touting him as a potential tie-breaker on gun rights.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/parkland-father-confronts-kavanaugh-at-hearing/ar-BBMSo8O?ocid=ob-fb-enus-280

The dems are always playing defense - they have to get out there and play offense big time now or I fear you are right. It is sad because dems have plenty republican negatives to go with, but it seems they have no coherent plan to put it all together to forge a strong campaign against the GOP. The midterms will be very interesting and very telling. One can only hope enough people have had their eyes opened but who knows, and that is what is so scary.

And, that says more about his character than thousands of judicial papers missing or otherwise.

Leaked Kavanaugh Documents Discuss Abortion and Affirmative Action
By Charlie Savage
Sept. 6, 2018

208
WASHINGTON — As a White House lawyer in the Bush administration, Judge Brett Kavanaugh challenged the accuracy of deeming the Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v. Wade abortion rights decision to be “settled law of the land,” according to a secret email obtained by The New York Times.

The email, written in March 2003, is one of thousands of documents that a lawyer for President George W. Bush turned over to the Senate Judiciary Committee about the Supreme Court nominee but deemed “committee confidential,” meaning it could not be made public or discussed by Democrats in questioning him in hearings this week. It was among several an unknown person provided to The New York Times late Wednesday.

Judge Kavanaugh was considering a draft opinion piece that supporters of one of Mr. Bush’s conservative appeals court nominees hoped they could persuade anti-abortion women to submit under their names. It stated that “it is widely accepted by legal scholars across the board that Roe v. Wade and its progeny are the settled law of the land.”

Judge Kavanaugh proposed deleting that line, writing: “I am not sure that all legal scholars refer to Roe as the settled law of the land at the Supreme Court level since Court can always overrule its precedent, and three current Justices on the Court would do so.”

He was presumably referring to then-Justices William Rehnquist and Antonin Scalia, along with Justice Clarence Thomas, conservatives who had dissented in a 1992 case that reaffirmed Roe, Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The court now has four conservative justices who may be willing to overturn Roe — Justices Thomas and John C. Roberts Jr., Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch — and if he is confirmed, Judge Kavanaugh could provide the decisive fifth vote.

Still, his email stops short of saying whether he personally believed that the abortion rights precedent should be considered a settled legal issue.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/06/us/p ... ments.html

Kamala Harris proves her prosecutor bona fides in this [8 minute] exchange with Kavanaugh ~ ~ Sooz

https://twitter.com/cspan/status/103751 ... 29/video/1

YIKES!!! ~ ~ Sooz

11 mins ago
Brett Kavanaugh Refers To Contraception As Abortion-Inducing Drugs
By News & Guts

With all the other fireworks at Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearing today this may have been lost, but not with women (and men) on the Senate. Several are speaking out tonight after Kavanaugh seemed to refer to contraception as “abortion-inducing drugs.”

Huffington Post reports:


Vice writes:





https://www.newsandguts.com/brett-kavanaugh-refers-contraception-abortion-inducing-drugs/

this guy is frighteningly ignorant.

This is a MUST READ commentary and a MUST WATCH video ~ this young woman raced onto and up my personal heroes list ~ ~ Sooz

Parkland shooting survivor confronts Judiciary Committee Republicans in harrowing anti-Kavanaugh testimony
Brendan Skwire / 07 Sep 2018 at 14:34 ET

In riveting and emotional testimony, Aaliyah Eastmond, a survivor of the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland Florida which killed seventeen students and school staff, confronted Republicans on the Judiciary Committee and told them what it was like to hide under a dead body as her fellow students were gunned down. Ms. Eastmond was testifying against the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh, who has been criticized for his broad interpretations of the Second Amendment.

“2:21. We heard a round of extremely loud pops and I had no idea what it was,” Ms. Eastmond began, describing the day that Nikolas Cruz brought an AR-15 to the school and opened fire. “I remember telling myself if I were to get shot anywhere I wouldn’t make it. I need to be behind something. The only thing in front of me was Nicholas Dworet,” a fellow student.

Moments later, Eastmond watched her 17 year-old classmate die. “Nicholas rapidly fell over in front of me. I saw every movement of his body. When he fell over, I fell over with him,” Eastmond recalled. “I then placed myself under his lifeless body, placing his arm across my body and my head underneath his back. Bullets continued flying.”

Eastmond described holding her breath and pretending to be dead while hiding under her classmate’s corpse. “I told God that I knew I was going to die. I asked him please make it fast. I didn’t want to feel anything. I asked for the bullet to go through my head so I wouldn’t endure any pain.” She also described, in a quavering voice, placing what she thought would be her last phone call to her parents. Her mother, she said, later suffered a miscarriage as a result “of what the shock did to her body.”

“As for people of color, law enforcement is the shooter in some cases,” Eastmond continued as a clearly upset Senator Cory Booker rubbed what appeared to be tears from his eyes. “Like many of my brothers and sisters, I am not comforted by deputies with handguns, let alone assault rifles.”

Her voice rising angrily, Eastmond then moved on to the subject of her testimony, Mr.Kavanaugh’s appointment to the Supreme Court. “I am very concerned since learning Brett Kavanaugh’s views on guns and how he would strike down any assault weapons ban,” she said, and urged the committee to remember her story and those of thousands of other victims and survivors.

Taking a deep breath, Eastmond then named and shamed both the nominee and his sponsor, President Trump. “If Kavanaugh doesn’t have the decency to shake hands with the father of a victim, he definitely won’t have the decency to make life-changing decisions that affect real people,” she said. “If the youth across the country can fight to eradicate gun violence, why can’t judges, lawmakers, and Donald Trump understand young people are dying from this senseless gun violence?”

Watch the video below. [Video accessible via the end link or at https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_cont ... ZclbjB2wNw]

https://www.rawstory.com/2018/09/parkland-shooting-survivor-confronts-judiciary-committee-republicans-harrowing-anti-kavanaugh-testimony/

Reading all the negatives what does it matter - it is a done deal as far as i can tell no matter if he should be disqualified or lied, or whatever he did or may do that does not meet the level of excellence a supreme court judge appointed for life should. Just makes me angry and frustrated, because there is not a thing to be done about it.

i would describe it as "all but done", meaning the odds of him getting confirmed are quite high.

but not 100%

Somewhat off topic but seems to fit here ...

The Supreme Court Is Headed Back to the 19th Century
The justices again appear poised to pursue a purely theoretical liberty at the expense of the lives of people of color.

When the Louisiana State Militia finally arrived at the Colfax courthouse on April 15, 1873, all it could do was bury the bodies. Two days earlier, a large force of white supremacists had taken control of the courthouse from the mostly black faction protecting it. J. R. Beckwith, the U.S. attorney for New Orleans, told Congress that in the aftermath the ground was “strewn with dead negroes,” their bodies plundered by whites who had come to watch the bloodshed. The dead remained “unburied and mutilated,” Beckwith said, until federal troops arrived days later to shovel them into a mass grave.

“Not a single negro had been killed until all of them had surrendered to the whites who were fighting with them,” The New York Times reported at the time, “when over 100 of the unfortunate negroes were shot down in cold blood.” Some were killed as they tried to surrender, and others as they attempted to flee the courthouse, which had been set on fire. President Ulysses S. Grant called the Colfax massacre a “butchery” that “in bloodthirstiness and barbarity is hardly surpassed by any acts of savage warfare.”

Many white Southerners saw it differently. Robert Hunter, the editor of The Caucasian, a Louisiana newspaper, told Congress in 1875 that some of his own staffers had participated in the massacre. “I approved it, as most of our people did,” Hunter testified. “Had not the Colfax affair ended as it did, not less than a thousand niggers would have been killed later.”

Seventy-two men were ultimately indicted for their role in the Colfax massacre, charged under the Enforcement Acts of 1870, which were passed to help the federal government suppress the Ku Klux Klan. But their convictions were overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, which concluded that the federal government lacked the authority to charge the perpetrators. Justice Joseph Bradley, a Grant appointee, wrote that the United States had not clearly stated that the accused, in slaughtering more than 100 black men, had “committed the acts complained of with a design to deprive the injured persons of their rights on account of their race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” And it wouldn’t have mattered if they had, argued the Grant-appointed Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite, because ...

MORE>

These days the whites would get off on "stand your ground" laws. After all them blacks storming out of the burning court house with their arms waving in the air were clearly attacking the poor second amendment type "good guys".

WHOA!!! ~ I'm not even sure what to call this ... karma? ... serendipity? ~ ~ Sooz

Merrick Garland asked to probe perjury allegations against Brett Kavanaugh
A Democratic group filed a complaint against Kavanaugh for lying before Congress.
Taylor Link / September 9, 2018 8:48pm (UTC)

Merrick Garland may play a role in the vacant Supreme Court seat after all. A liberal group has filed a criminal complaint against Brett Kavanaugh for allegedly perjuring himself in front of the Senate judiciary committee. Garland, who is the chief judge of the D.C. federal circuit, was asked to rule upon the complaint or appoint a special panel of jurists to investigate the allegations.

The Democratic Coalition, a group led by Jon Cooper and Scott Dworkin, claim that Kavanaugh lied under oath before the Senate back in 2004 and 2006 when he said he was unaware he read and used stolen emails in 2002. Kavanaugh was going through the hearing process in those years to become a federal district and appellate judge, respectively.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, who was on the Senate judiciary committee back in the mid-2000s, asked Kavanaugh if he was involved in the stolen email scandal while he worked in the Bush White House in the early 2000s. Kavanaugh said he was unaware that emails were stolen at the time, and insisted that if he did know, he would would have blown the whistle on his colleagues. Fast forward to 2018, Leahy, still on the Senate judiciary committee, introduced new evidence that suggested Kavanaugh handled emails that were stolen during that time period.

Those who wish to bring down Kavanaugh's nomination say that these new, unearthed emails demonstrate that the judge perjured himself during the past hearings.

The Democratic Coalition filed a complaint against Kavanaugh earlier this week in regards to these allegations. They have asked Garland to review the claims.

Garland's introduction to the Kavanaugh's nomination process is ironic considering Republicans refused to give him a hearing when former President Barack Obama wished to appoint him to Justice Scalia's old seat.

Now, it appears, Garland will play a role as to whether Kavanaugh gets approved by the Senate.

Fortunately for Kavanaugh, he has been careful to speak highly of Garland the past few months.

“As I’ve said before, [Garland is] a great judge – a great chief judge – and he’s very careful and very hardworking, and we work well together and try to read the statute as written, read the precedent as written,” Kavanaugh said, Fox News reported, according to Mediaite. “He’s a judge – like I try to be as well – a judge who’s not trying to impose any personal preferences onto the decision but take the law as written, and that’s what I’ve tried to do in those cases and that probably explains some of that.”

https://www.salon.com/2018/09/09/merrick-garland-asked-to-probe-perjury-allegations-against-brett-kavanaugh/