A Poster Boy for the Supreme Court, But Will He Follow Kennedy's Lead To Protect Rights

If you could judge a judge nominated to be a justice of the Supreme Court merely from his public acceptance speech Brett Kavanaugh would be confirmed in a heartbeat. Unanimously. 

Sure, he spoke in hyperbole when he proclaimed Donald Trump’s “appreciation for the vital role of the American judiciary. No president has ever consulted more widely, or talked with more people from more backgrounds, to seek input about a Supreme Court nomination.” 

Donald Trump sought out the most diverse input before making a selection? Really!?! 

Just how many progressive voices did the divider-in-chief invite to the White House or to one of his golf or resort properties to discuss the qualities he should look for in a justice for life? No doubt he talked to gun lobbyists, and big business lobbyists, and anti-abortion lobbyists, and anti-immigration lobbyists, and anti-environment lobbyists. By lobbyists I am including elected Republican officials for they have, in effect, become part of the partisan network, rather than staying independent in their evaluation of issues and candidates. 

Let’s call it the Trump Effect. It is difficult to cite any action his administration has taken that has not rolled back advances in the quality of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all Americans and peoples of the world. Even as he espoused his dedication to life Trump pursued a measure at the World Health Organization that would undercut the health of newborns by advocating feeding them infant formula rather than breast milk which is universally considered the best food they could consume. 

Judge Kavanaugh outwardly seems like a nice, all-American guy. A little shy and awestruck at the podium, gushing over his parents, daughters and wife. Young enough to coach his daughter’s basketball team. Not ramrod straight like Neil Gorsuch but someone fluid enough to tease his younger daughter about her incessant talking and have her be okay with it in front of a national audience. 

Just irresistible. Who wouldn’t want this dad to parse legal conflict for us all? (https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-announcing-judge-brett-m-kavanaugh-nominee-associate-jus)

Kavanaugh clerked for his predecessor Justice Anthony Kennedy, as did Gorsuch. It has been said that Kennedy opted for retirement at this moment so a Republican president and GOP-majority Senate could pick and confirm a successor in his image.  

One wonders if Kavanaugh absorbed Kennedy’s compassion for the privacy rights of women and gay communities. Gorsuch apparently didn’t. He seems to be more in line with the originalist doctrines of Antonin Scalia whose seat he now occupies because Republicans blocked the centrist jurist Merrick Garland nominated by Barack Obama.

It will be up to Kavanaugh to sustain rights Kennedy protected. As Gorsuch has shown, clerks do not always agree with their bosses. 

If you didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton, or if you wasted your vote on a symbolic alternative candidate like Jill Stein, you relinquished the right to complain about Trump’s selection of his second Supreme Court justice and the near hundred lower court federal judges who will shape the direction of the country for decades. 

Forget about protesting or expecting Democrats to thwart his nominations. They don’t have the votes, not in the Senate now and, thanks to you and likeminded fools, not in November 2016. 

Supreme Court Aside, Why Do Evangelicals and Republicans Stay Silent on Trump?

Ever the showman Donald Trump is expected to reveal Monday night his next conservative, court-packing nominee for a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court. It is his constitutional imperative to select a nominee; it is within his rights and privilege to choose a jurist he believes will decide the law based on the values and principles he espouses. Forget for a moment that Trump waffles on principles and displays no values, especially as they relate to family. 

I don’t agree with them, but I can understand why evangelicals support Trump. He promised them a conservative federal court. He is delivering on that promise, thanks in no small measure to Mitch McConnell’s obstructionist strategy to deny a hearing to President Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland. 

Support, however, does not mandate blind, unswerving allegiance. It does not prohibit conscientious objection to policies that are aberrant to their Christian faith. They should not have to twist Scripture inside out to justify abhorrent behavior. 

The Catholic church, after all, is just as dedicated to the abolition of abortions, yet its leadership, all the way up to the pope, has been intensely vocal in criticism of Trump’s behavior towards migrant families. 

So I am puzzled by the silence flowing from an evangelical community that is accustomed to hearing fire and brimstone penalties to anyone who acts contrary to god’s and Jesus’ admonitions.  

Let me reiterate: While I do not condone one-issue voters, I recognize their right to follow their narrow public consciousness. I have too many friends who voted Trump because they perceived his support of Israel stronger than the alternative, reinforced by his shift of the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. 

They remain friends. We try not to talk politics, as I cannot condone their silence, and that of millions who I do not personally know but who profess to be god-fearing, in the wake of Trump’s flagrant abuses and miscalculations. Those millions include elected Republican officials. 

Where is the outcry, the condemnation, or at least an expressed revulsion at a zero-tolerance policy that ripped children from their parents? Should they not be repulsed by the ineptitude of their government not being able to expeditiously reunite families?

Even Democrats acknowledge industry is weighted down by too many regulations. But where is the sense of outrage from Republicans over the revocation of laws that protect our water, land and air quality? 

Do rank and file Republicans, along with Independents and Democrats who voted for Trump, not see that the tax bill provides meager relief to the vast majority of Americans while rewarding the wealthy and corporations with riches beyond their expectations? 

As other countries respond to Trump’s tariffs by targeting products from states he won, why are they silent when their livelihood is at stake? It’s not “America right or wrong” time when it is painfully obvious to all but Trump that winning a tariffs war is not easy.

Do they not see Trump was snookered by the North Koreans, that his boast that we could sleep more easily now because Kim Jong-un agreed to denuclearize was as empty as his claim to educate the gullible and desperate at Trump University? 

And what about our stature in the world? Do they not understand that “America First” runs counter to the principles and leadership embodied by the United States after World War II? That it was that global, communal ethos embodied by NATO and the Marshall Plan that enabled Western European civilization to reconstruct itself after the war’s devastation, that it forged successful economic and political recoveries in Japan and South Korea after two devastating conflicts? 

How do they square Trump’s campaign rhetoric that he is a big builder who will draw up a huge infrastructure investment list with the reality he not only has not initiated a building program but he also has stymied perhaps the most important project, construction of a new rail tunnel under the Hudson River critically needed to support the Northeast which represents more than 10% of the nation’s economy?

Despite Trump’s repeated efforts to hamper it, the Affordable Care Act remains popular. How can they justify a disregard for the health needs of millions? Isn’t caring and concern for the sick part of their religious creed? How can they remain silent when the Trump administration, in support of infant formula manufacturers, disregards scientific data that breast milk is better than baby formula, and compounds the heresy by blackmailing other countries to follow its dictates at the United Nations-affiliated World Health Assembly? How humiliating that Russia—Russia!—had to save the day for truth and science! (https://nyti.ms/2J0WJuV)

And speaking of Russia, how can evangelicals and ordinary Republicans acquiesce to the bromance Trump has with Vladimir Putin? Democrats are not demanding an invalidation of the 2016 presidential election. They are demanding admission that Russia interfered with it. They are demanding Trump instruct appropriate federal agencies insure it doesn’t happen again. To date Trump has not. 

With all that Trump has accomplished in undermining the values and doctrines of America, Republicans have steadfastly stood behind him. It is foolish to presume they will abandon him in the 2020 election. 

The only way to unseat him will be if enough citizens who failed to vote in 2016 realize their voices can and must be counted to avoid a decades-long descent into despair. 

In 2016, roughly 100 million eligible voters stayed home. 

Question of the Day: Will the New FBI Probe of Clinton's Emails Matter?

The question of the day is: At this late date, 11 days before Election Day, with early voting already underway in many states, will any minds be changed by Friday’s revelation that the FBI has reopened its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails?

Against any candidate other than Donald Trump the answer would be an emphatic, “YES!!!” But these are never-before (and hopefully never-again) political times with a Republican candidate anathema to a larger swath of the American public than the Democratic standard bearer. 

What can be said, without equivocation, is that if, as many polls now say, Clinton will be elected our 45th president, it will be a historic achievement, but one that may ring hollow for at least two possible reasons. 

First, without at least a majority of Democratic senators—it is too wild a dream to expect the House to be flipped to the Democrats— Clinton’s presidency would be stymied even more than President Barack Obama’s last six years. She would be hard pressed to advance any of her legislative agenda. She will be forced to govern by executive action, which will generate lawsuits from Congress and/or affected state and municipal governments.

Moreover, without a Democratic controlled Senate, Clinton will most certainly be tied up with investigation after investigation launched by the GOP House, regardless of the findings of the latest FBI probe. Republican congressmen are itching to file impeachment charges. As it would take 67 Senate votes to ratify impeachment, a conviction is unlikely, but the time spent defending her presidency would take its toll, especially during a period of Russian aggressiveness and the still constant threat from Islamic extremists here and abroad. 

A second reason a Clinton return to the White House would be submarined would transpire if Democrats fail to secure control of the Senate. Already three Republican senators—John McCain of Arizona, Mike Lee of Utah, and Ted Cruz of Texas—have indicated they would hold up any nominations to the Supreme Court made by Clinton. Can Majority Leader Mitch McConnell be far behind?

Their recalcitrance stems from wanting to deny Clinton the opportunity to recast the Court in a more progressive mode. While Republicans say the Court in the past has functioned for years with fewer than nine justices, they are not so coyly gambling the health and welfare of the Supreme Court against the health of aging justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer. 

It is a lurid tactic waiting for a death or retirement among the liberal leaning justices to secure a conservative majority lost when Antonin Scalia died in his sleep almost a year ago. It goes far beyond loyal opposition and their stated explanation that they haven’t acted on the nomination of Merrick Garland because they wanted to wait until the people chose the next president. 

If they proceed to deny any nominees from a Democratic president, the GOP would have hit the trifecta in undermining the validity of each of our three branches of government. It is a parlay a quarter century in the making.

Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich shut down the government in 1995 and 1996; Republicans shut it down in 2013, as well. For years Trump led a birther movement that questioned the legitimacy of Barack Obama’s presidency. By not even granting hearings to Garland Republicans have shown disdain for the constitutional process of advise and consent.

Is it any wonder, then, public confidence in government is at historic lows?