There was a post here about then-Supreme Court nominee Brett
Kavanaugh; but I've deleted it because there's been so much water over the dam
since I wrote that. (So this displays with an incorrect date and was actually posted on 10/11/2018.)
There was a complex and emotional story leading up to
Kavanaugh's eventual (last Saturday) confirmation to the Supreme Court by the
US Senate Judiciary Committee and then the whole Senate--as required by the US
Constitution.
Since the story was well reported, even in international
news, I will recap it briefly: Kavanaugh was accused of sexually attacking a
woman, going back more than 30 years.
Both Kavanaugh and his accuser, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, testified in a
special Senate hearing. Kavanaugh got very emotional, particularly in relating
how the accusations have taken a toll on him and his family--and this probably
earned him a good deal of sympathy.
However, he segued into a rant in which he claimed that the
whole business was a plot by Democrats to exact revenge for Trump's defeat of
Hilary Clinton in the presidential election of 2016. (Had he been coached in
this by Trump? Because it sure sounds like one of Trump's paranoid
hoax/conspiracy claims.)
Anyway, an FBI investigation was ordered. However, the
problem with that is that Trump ordered the investigation and thereby was able
to set the parameters and limits of the investigation, and limited it such that
the FBI was allowed only a week for the investigation and interviewed only nine
people. Probably it was a foregone conclusion that the bottom line to the FBI
report contained nothing earth-shaking and was in fact entirely trivial.
(In the Senate vote, Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican from Maine
widely regarded as a moderate who frequently did not follow Republican or Trump
ideology; and Democratic Sen. Manchin from Tennessee,
both voted to confirm. This was a surprise (a disappointment, if you were on
one side of the issue). So the vote was 50 Yea, 48 No. If one of those two had
voted No, there would have been a 49-49 tie; and then Vice President Pence,
acting as Senate President Pro Tempore, would have cast the deciding Yea
vote--again, all according to the Constitution.)
So Mr. Trump in the end got his extremely conservative
nominee confirmed and now, we are told, we have the most conservative Supreme
Court in many decades, one which may well reverse such landmark Supreme Court
decisions as Rowe v. Wade (which legalized abortion) and Obergefell (which
legalized same-sex marriage). The only hope that these decisions will be left
alone is if the Court keeps in mind a judicial principle called stare decisis
('let the decision stand').
Copyright © 2018.
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