And Kennedy decides to fuck us all

[Econoline]

/s

[Joe Guy]

[ex-khobar Andy]

Coming back from a quick trip to Trader Joe's this afternoon with the radio, as always, tuned to NPR, I heard a segment on The Daily.

I heard only the tail end of it, but what I did hear appalled me. Some women reacting to the Kavanaugh/Blasey Ford hearing were saying, in essence, what did she expect? A fifteen year old girl at a party with 17 year old boys - she wasn't raped so what did she have to complain about? They weren't saying, as some do, that it didn't happen and that Kavanaugh was a victim of lies. It did happen but it was her fault.

I heard only a small bit of the piece; and when I have more time I will listen to the whole thing at the link I provided. But God help us: is this the way some women think? Since November 2016 I have been astonished by the number of people who would vote for an idiot misogynist fuckwit. I had thought that maybe 10% of the population would fall for his brand. I was so wrong. But someone please tell me that this sort of thing is way out on the edge. I did listen to it - start around 15 minutes.

[ex-khobar Andy]

I'm having trouble believing this.

Apparently John Roberts has referred ethics complaints about Kavanaugh, specifically that he was economical with the truth during his confirmation hearings, to the 10th US Circuit (Denver). I am a little confused by the report from the Daily Mail (see quote below) which at one point talks about the Denver court and elsewhere says that Merrick Garland (DC Circuit) has recused himself.

Chief Justice John Roberts is referring complaints against new Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh to federal judges in Colorado and neighboring states.

The 15 complaints deal with statements Kavanaugh made during his confirmation hearings. All were filed originally with Kavanaugh's old court, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the latest last Wednesday, while the battle over his confirmation was still under way.

Two are known to have been filed by filed by the Democratic Coalition, a political action group, Buzzfeed reported.

The first was filed on September 10, before the allegations of sexual assault came out, and accused Kavanaugh of lying when he told the Senate Judiciary Committee he didn't know he received information stolen from Senate Democrats when he was working in the Bush White House in the early 2000s.

The second, filed September 27, claims Kavanaugh violated the judiciary's code of conduct by 'engaging in a public and partisan campaign of lies to cover-up and conceal sexual misconduct and crimes he committed in the past.'

Roberts said in a letter posted Wednesday on the D.C. Circuit website that he has asked judges who handle ethics complaints for the Denver-based 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to deal with the complaints.

In a statement issued Saturday, D.C. Circuit Judge Karen Henderson said the complaints only 'seek investigations ... of the public statements he has made as a nominee to the Supreme Court.'

The ethics complaints were filed against Kavanaugh when he was still a sitting federal judge which made him subject to conduct rules which are ultimately overseen by Roberts himself.

Ironically they would ultimately have come under the supervision of Merrick Garland, the Supreme Court nominee put forward by President Obama who never got a Senate confirmation hearing.

[Econoline]

I'm having trouble believing this.

Ah, yes...the new, all-purpose slogan for our times....

[BoSoxGal]

I just read this elsewhere online - wow!

I was really gutted when I read that the Chief Justice sat on the complaints forwarded by Kavanaugh’s circuit; I figured it meant the fix was entirely in, and the Justices were just going to allow the decimation of public confidence in the Court.

It’s the first good feeling I’ve had about the Court in weeks to learn this news; I’d prefer it had been referred to the 9th Circuit, but it is absolutely appropriate that the complaints be fully investigated because the FBI investigation was a total sham as now admitted by Chris Wray.

It’s perfectly appropriate that serious complaints against a sitting federal judge should be investigated and handled NOT by the panel of judges with whom he sat, as they would be conflicted by their close working and possibly even personal relationships with him. So CJ Roberts is apparently doing his level best to repair public confidence in SCOTUS following the abhorrent process surrounding Kavanaugh’s illegitimate confirmation.

That said, I can’t speak with any authority as to the resources at the 10th Circuit’s disposal for further investigation, or the process that is followed in such cases. It’s entirely possible that the whole matter will be swept under the rug, I suppose. I think in general federal judges tend to ‘retire’ when facing serious allegations, and Kavanaugh seems to have no such inclination. In my dreams the other SCOTUS Justices would encourage him to resign to preserve the integrity of the Court - because guilty or not (and I believe he’s undoubtedly guilty of a whole lot of perjury, lack of judicial temperament and probably sexual assault 36 years ago) his presence on the Court is enormously damaging and if he had any decency he’d put the institution ahead of himself.

[Lord Jim]

Re the threats against Collins..

I would not be a bit surprised to learn that every single member of the Senate Judiciary Committee (on both sides) received threats...(probably the higher profile they had, the more threats they received)

It's the kind of poisonous political environment we live in today...

[liberty]

I was proud of the Republican senators and one Democrat for not letting the mob intimidate them. Showing up at someone house sends a clear message of violence: We know where you and your family live we can get you anytime. I wonder if the Dems realize that this tactic probably backfired on them? If you try to intimidate me you get exactly what you don’t want.

And getting in some face do you think that is going to work? There is some guy in Illinois is going to prison for doing the same. Yes there is a double standard.

[Scooter]

Showing up at someone house sends a clear message of violence: We know where you and your family live we can get you anytime.

Yes, you're right, Dr. Ford being forced out of her home and into hiding due to death threats was something she didn't deserve for her act of patriotism.

[BoSoxGal]

Did anybody watch the White House swearing in ceremony for Kavanaugh? I didn’t have the stomach for it but have been reading bad things - that he was again partisan in thanking GOP Senators and such, instead of striking any kind of conciliatory tone. Apparently Joe Scarborough condemned the ‘spectacle’.

[Scooter]

[wesw]

omg...

did he really just post something about respecting women?



oh my...., I m trying to stop laughing.

[Scooter]

You voted for a self-admitted serial rapist, that says everything there is to be said about how much you "respect" women.

[wesw]

[Econoline]

Donald Trump finally just said it: he doesn’t care if Kavanaugh’s accuser is telling the truth

“It doesn’t matter,” Trump told Lesley Stahl. “We won.”

[ex-khobar Andy]

And after all that, Kavanaugh is just fucking incompetent. The argument from most of us was that he had a nasty reputation as a teenager whch he did nothing to condemn as an adult. Indeed he lied during his confirmation hearings when he claimed that all that stuff in his yearbook was innocent fun, fart jokes and the rest.

But he was said to have a sharp legal mind.

This Slate piece tears that aspect of his reputation to shreds. Is there a precedent for a SCOTUS decision being withdrawn for corrections?

[BoSoxGal]

Incompetent? No. Calculating? Conscienceless? A cunt? Yes.

[ex-khobar Andy]

I don't disagree with a word, BSG. Well: maybe the penultimate one. I can't bring myself to call anyone that especially as I quite like the item you referenced.

Is there a precedent for a SCOTUS decision being withdrawn for corrections?

And, to answer my own question, he has issued a correction. CNN calls it 'rare.'

Edited to add: well I do disagree, once I reread what I had written. That he had to issue the correction - Vermont asked him to because there was an error of fact - and still did not address the other errors the Slate piece pointed out does indeed show total fucking incompetence. States do not declare winners overnight and he, or one of his clerks, should have known that.

[Sue U]

Kavanaugh is not on the court because of his legal acumen, but precisely for moments like this -- to ensure judicial approval for the machinations of the GOP to hang onto whatever power they can grab, the actual facts and law be damned. As I said during his nomination more than two years ago:

My greatest objection to Brett Kavanaugh is not so much that he's been a lout, a jerk and a weasel in the past (although these are character traits that I would find disqualifying for a lifetime appointment), but that he is a hard-core partisan political operative masquerading as a judge. His career path -- including his judicial record -- demonstrates that he has a political agenda to implement through whatever position he happens to hold. He is a faithful servant of right-wing ideology, not of The Law and jurisprudence as we know it. Anyone claiming they don't want an "activist" Court that "legislates from the bench" should reject this guy out of hand.

[Sue U]

O hai, a couple hours after I posted the above, Liz Dye over at La Wonk posted this nice little explainer on how this works (excerpt below). Remember "federalism"? Hahahahahaha, now the federal courts -- stocked by Mitch McConnell with Federalist Society/GOP apparatchiks, right up to the Supremes -- are gonna tell you exactly what your state constitution and laws mean, regardless of what your elected state judiciary says about it, because whatever the law is, it is properly interpreted to mean that Republicans win, always:

To wit, it is axiomatic that federal courts will defer to state courts on interpretation of state law. But last week Justice Kavanaugh pulled a shiny new theory out of his, umm, keg stand. What if the Constitution grants the power to determine the rules for local elections to state legislatures, and thus it is unlegal for state courts to interfere with their rule-making authority?

Here's Kavanaugh in Monday's DNC v. Wisconsin State Legislature decision invalidating a federal court's ruling that extended the absentee ballot deadline.

{U}nder the U.S. Constitution, the state courts do not have a blank check to rewrite state election laws for federal elections. Article II expressly provides that the rules for Presidential elections are established by the States "in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct." The text of Article II means that "the clearly expressed intent of the legislature must prevail" and that a state court may not depart from the state election code enacted by the legislature. Bush v. Gore, 531 U. S. 98, 120 (2000) (Rehnquist, C. J., concurring). [...] In a Presidential election, in other words, a state court's "significant departure from the legislative scheme for appointing Presidential electors presents a federal constitutional question." Bush v. Gore, 531 U. S., at 113 (Rehnquist, C. J., concurring). As Chief Justice Rehnquist explained in Bush v. Gore, the important federal judicial role in reviewing state-court decisions about state law in a federal Presidential election "does not imply a disrespect for state courts but rather a respect for the constitutionally prescribed role of state legislatures."

As Jamie explained, this reference to Rehnquist's non-precedential concurrence in Bush v. Gore, is klaxon signaling that the Court intends to start wading in on matters of state election law. And while Chief Justice Roberts is trying to slice the onion thinly enough to differentiate between state and federal court electoral decisions, the other conservative justices have no such qualms.

Yesterday, Justices Gorsuch, Alito, and Thomas decried the seizure of state legislative power by state judges in the North Carolina and Pennsylvania cases. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court extended the deadline based on its interpretation of Pennsylvania law. And yet, here's Justice Alito pretending that the Constitution bars those very judges from rendering decisions on state law when elections are implicated.

The parties before us all acknowledge that, under the Federal Constitution, only the state "Legislature" and "Congress" may prescribe "[t]he Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections." Art. I, §4, cl. 1. Everyone agrees, too, that the North Carolina Constitution expressly vests all legislative power in the General Assembly, not the Board or anyone else. N. C. Const., Art. II, §1; cf. N. C. Const., Art. I, §6. So we need not go rifling through state law to understand the Board's permissible role in (re)writing election laws. All we need to know about its authority to override state election laws is plain from the Federal and State Constitutions.

They are telling you very plainly that once Justice Barrett is sworn in, they're going to invalidate state court decisions on gerrymandering and ballot access and felon disenfranchisement and everything else that ensures free and fair elections in this country. They will ensure that Republican state legislatures in places like Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, where districts are drawn to ensure that the GOP maintains a stranglehold on power despite receiving far fewer votes than Democrats, can control elections without interference from federal or state judges.

Like I said two years ago, Kavanaugh uses his position as a blunt instrument in service of his partisan political agenda; the law is not a principle, but is simply a tool malleable enough to make sure his "side" is always victorious. It is this blatant politicization of the court and its function that discredits the institution.