As you know if you haven't been living under a rock, Donald tRump nominated Brett Kavanaugh to succeed retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court.
Today is the third and final day of Congressional hearing on the Kavanaugh nomination.
The nod from tRump for Mr Kavanaugh to get Kennedy's seat happened back in early July. Kavanaugh--who is now an Appeals Court Judge for the D.C. Circuit--has a long history as a Republican Party operative and legal hack for the George W. Bush administration. And the GOP majority on the Judiciary Cmte has refused to release documents dating back to that period of time in his government service.
In addition, he has made numerous statements which make it unmistakably clear that he's ready, willing and able--if confirmed--to help John Roberts, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas take America back to that grand time before minorities, LGBT+ folk and women had any rights not explicitly spelled out in the Constitution.
That is to say, no rights at all.
Brett Kavanaugh's well-documented "Originalist" judical philosophy is untenable as the Founding Fathers cared not one whit for the rights of anyone who wasn't just like them. That is male, straight and white.
When our republic was born and the Constitution was framed, blacks were still in chains, bought and sold as property, subject to be lashed without mercy for any offense, and murdered at the whim of their masters.
The framers were fine with that. Many of them owned slaves themselves.
It's so easy in the 21st Century to forget that women were expressly denied the right to vote in America and didn't win the franchise until the 19th Amendment was passed. That happened in 1919, 143 years into what we call "American Democracy!"
So if a SCOTUS Justice has this originalism as his lodestar, how can any more-modern rulings from the Supreme Court be seen as valid?
Kavanaugh has mouthed the usual hollow talking points about how Roe vs Wade is established law and so on, but there can be little doubt that he's poised to strike down Roe--or at the very least, sign off on more restrictions--at the earliest opportunity.
But the most dangerous thing about Kavanaugh is that he's said on more than one occasion that he doesn't think a sitting President can be charged with a crime or even to be required to respond to a subpoena!
So basically, a President who's the subject of an active and very robust investigation has nominated a candidate for the court which will have to rule on whether he is subject to our Nation's laws! And the Repugs in Congress are dead-set on ramming through his nomination even though he's hostile to the rights of minorities, women and is ready to grant a criminal president a Get Out of Jail Free card!
It's going to happen. Today's the final day of the hearings about his nomination and the Rethuglican majority WILL see to it that Benedict Donald gets his sycophantic, Originalist Justice.
Just one more outrage from this criminal tRump regime and the legion complicit co-conspirators in the GOP!
"Bulldog Ben" Basile
© 2018 Ben Lawrence Basile
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