I will probably have more to say, actually, about the midterms in a few days, especially in light of recent tragic events. I'm recovering from a bad bout of stomach flu as I write this to you. I would probably still be in bed for the sake of my recovery. But I've decided to get out of bed for at least a little while to write this.
These days, my legal work includes a great deal of time spent with firms that review documents produced for litigation. On one such project recently, in a conversation with a colleague on a project, the subject turned to politics (a lot of this work is done in D.C., so that's probably not surprising. We started talking about why young people generally don't vote, and, on the basis of current reporting, are probably not going to vote in next week's midterm elections. He advanced the theory, advanced many other places in the MSM and social media, that young people don't vote because they don't see themselves as gaining or losing anything by not doing so.
Then he surprised me by including himself as one of those young people.
I say "surprised" because I assumed that someone who had been through both undergraduate and law schools, passed more than one bar exam, and worked on a regular basis in what is arguably the political center not just of the nation, but the world, would understand the power of voting. I would not necessarily expect that person to have an appreciation of all of the sacrifices that have been made for the sake of the right to vote, although I would hope that he (or she) would do so. But I would think they would know that voting affects a broad range of issues that ultimately do affect young people--the economy they graduate into, the ability to pay for tuition, and the assurance of health care coverage, for example.
Apparently, however, it's not enough for this cohort to make political appeals based on issues that affect everyone. Somehow, they're expecting to get something specifically, uniquely targeted at them, regardless of its impact on anyone else. And, even worse, they seem to think that, by not voting, the right political appeal will just come along looking for them. To put it another way, they don't think like citizens, putting the interests of the country first. Rather, they think like consumers, regarding themselves as a market that will, sooner or later, be "served" by a politician wise enough to do so.
But that's not how politics works today, if it has ever worked that way at all. On the Republican side of the nation's partisan divide, the pursuit of power at the expense of every other consideration is its only motivating force. The GOP pursues power largely for the sake of holding onto it, so that it can protect itself, as well as its principal funders, the investor class.
If you are not a significant member of that class (and 99% percent of us are not), well, the Republicans are still interested in you. But not as a market to be served. Rather, as a market to serve them.
I shared with my colleague a quote that I am fond of sharing in these circumstances: "You may not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you." I made the mistake of attributing it to Brecht; judging from the Internet, its provenance seems a bit uncertain. Regardless of the source, however, it has always been true, and remains true. Even in a world where it may be hard to find politicians perfectly or mostly aligned with you, it is nevertheless absolutely essential, especially in this political climate, to practice what can be referred to as "defensive voting." At the very least, do what you can to protect not only yourself, but any other people or causes you care about, from the potential of greater harm to your interests should the results go to a candidate less aligned with those interests than someone else might be. Perhaps this explains it somewhat better than I'm doing here; it's worth a look, in any case.
In any case, my colleague was not particularly impressed with the quote. I hope and pray that you will feel differently.
And vote next month like your freedom depends on it. Because it does.
Wednesday, October 31, 2018
Saturday, October 20, 2018
What I Learned From An Understaffed Hotel
As I mentioned last week, my wife and I recently returned from Louisville, Kentucky, where she attended an embroidery conference and I went sightseeing. And, as I mentioned, we had a good time. But one negative aspect of it has stayed with me, as it has a bearing on what is arguably the major issue of our current political debate, especially headed into the midterms.
We stayed in--well,, I won't mention the name, but it was a major hotel designed and built to serve the needs of convention-goers. The city's convention center is a very short walk away from the hotel, in fact, as are a number of major tourist attractions. The room was very spacious, clean and comfortable. But there was one major problem, one that surprised both of us given our experience with conferences and conference hotels.
Everything was understaffed. On our first full day in Louisville, we had dinner at one of the hotel's restaurants, and ended up waiting over an hour for our meal. We both noticed that the wait staff seemed badly outnumbered relative to the number of tables in the restaurant. When our food finally arrived, we complained to our waitress, who told us that there were only two cooks in the kitchen. Two cooks, and perhaps four or five servers, for a restaurant that had over 60 tables (a rough estimate on my part). On the plus side, she did give each of us a free dessert, without a lot of negotiation on our part. This tended to make both of us think that our complaint about the wait for our meals wasn't an unusual one here. On our way out, we noticed a crowd of about 20 people waiting to be seated, with no host or hostess to seat them but plenty of available tables. I tried to shout to them that they may want to go elsewhere, but I doubt that any of them heard me. Needless to say, after that, we took all of our meals outside of the hotel.
Then there was housekeeping. Or, rather, there wasn't, unless we made a complaint to the front desk to have our room cleaned and made up, and our bathroom supplies replaced. Again, given our experience with the restaurant, we suspected the problem was not with the diligence of the housekeeping staff, but with the level of staffing that the hotel was maintaining. And my wife discovered, from talking to some of her fellow conference attendees, that this was indeed a hotel-wide problem.
I realize that, in the broader scheme of life's potential problems, these are relatively petty complaints. They didn't detract from the fact that the overall experience was a wonderful break from other responsibilities that my wife and I both badly needed. But I found myself looking at the understaffing of the hotel from a business management standpoint, and I found myself wondering: why would a major convention hotel, one whose management should be well aware of the staffing levels needed to keep its business running smoothly, allow itself to be so poorly staffed while still marketing itself as a full-service hotel for conference business?
Not deliberately, of course. But what circumstance beyond its control could put the hotel, and perhaps others, in a circumstance that threatens its short-term effectiveness and its long-term existence?
Well, when you've traveled as much as I have, and you notice how many hotels rely on immigrants to staff their businesses, especially on the food service and housekeeping side, it becomes pretty clear what's really going on here, in the Age of T****.
It's not that there aren't people who are available, willing, and often very experienced to fill these vacant positions, thereby energizing the economies of cities all over the country and creating more jobs for everyone, native-born or otherwise. It's that we have a "President" who has turned his back and the nation's back on the centrality of immigration to the very essence of the history and greatness of the United States. All of those potential housekeepers, cooks, servers, and porters are just grist for the deportation mill, and for T****'s manipulation of the immigration issue for personal political gain. Sadly ironic, given how much of his alleged economic gain has come from the use--and abuse--of immigrant labor.
But what about all of those "economically distressed" T**** voters? The ones who supposedly have a better work ethic than all of those POC willing to risk their lives for the sake of making their lives better, and keeping America great? Why aren't they making themselves available to take these jobs, which are clearly there for the taking? What do they have to say about their seeming unwillingness to cross city and state lines to do so, a far less riskier process than crossing national borders to do so?
In a word: {crickets}
That's all you really need to know about both immigration and the state of the economy, currently pumped up by debt but shortchanged by the subtraction of labor from people who will take any job, and any risk associated with that job. That's how much we as a people, at the moment, are willing to throw away the American Dream for the sake of perpetuating the continuance of the American Nightmare: racism, the original sin of America's founding and the thread that runs through every major crisis in our nation's existence.
Does it really make any sense? Is it even what a decent people would expect of themselves? Have we struggled and sacrificed as a nation for nearly three centuries to die a death inflicted by caving in to our worst impulses?
T**** has no interest in anything except exploiting our worst impulses for short-term political gain. Immigration, on the other hand, has been an enduring part of our nation's growth, and a part that we have neglected fixing for decades. If I have to chose between T****, and the people who really want to exemplify the American work ethic, the people who should be filling the jobs at the convention hotels across the country--well, I've made my choice.
And I'm making it again on November 6.
I hope and pray you will join me.
We stayed in--well,, I won't mention the name, but it was a major hotel designed and built to serve the needs of convention-goers. The city's convention center is a very short walk away from the hotel, in fact, as are a number of major tourist attractions. The room was very spacious, clean and comfortable. But there was one major problem, one that surprised both of us given our experience with conferences and conference hotels.
Everything was understaffed. On our first full day in Louisville, we had dinner at one of the hotel's restaurants, and ended up waiting over an hour for our meal. We both noticed that the wait staff seemed badly outnumbered relative to the number of tables in the restaurant. When our food finally arrived, we complained to our waitress, who told us that there were only two cooks in the kitchen. Two cooks, and perhaps four or five servers, for a restaurant that had over 60 tables (a rough estimate on my part). On the plus side, she did give each of us a free dessert, without a lot of negotiation on our part. This tended to make both of us think that our complaint about the wait for our meals wasn't an unusual one here. On our way out, we noticed a crowd of about 20 people waiting to be seated, with no host or hostess to seat them but plenty of available tables. I tried to shout to them that they may want to go elsewhere, but I doubt that any of them heard me. Needless to say, after that, we took all of our meals outside of the hotel.
Then there was housekeeping. Or, rather, there wasn't, unless we made a complaint to the front desk to have our room cleaned and made up, and our bathroom supplies replaced. Again, given our experience with the restaurant, we suspected the problem was not with the diligence of the housekeeping staff, but with the level of staffing that the hotel was maintaining. And my wife discovered, from talking to some of her fellow conference attendees, that this was indeed a hotel-wide problem.
I realize that, in the broader scheme of life's potential problems, these are relatively petty complaints. They didn't detract from the fact that the overall experience was a wonderful break from other responsibilities that my wife and I both badly needed. But I found myself looking at the understaffing of the hotel from a business management standpoint, and I found myself wondering: why would a major convention hotel, one whose management should be well aware of the staffing levels needed to keep its business running smoothly, allow itself to be so poorly staffed while still marketing itself as a full-service hotel for conference business?
Not deliberately, of course. But what circumstance beyond its control could put the hotel, and perhaps others, in a circumstance that threatens its short-term effectiveness and its long-term existence?
Well, when you've traveled as much as I have, and you notice how many hotels rely on immigrants to staff their businesses, especially on the food service and housekeeping side, it becomes pretty clear what's really going on here, in the Age of T****.
It's not that there aren't people who are available, willing, and often very experienced to fill these vacant positions, thereby energizing the economies of cities all over the country and creating more jobs for everyone, native-born or otherwise. It's that we have a "President" who has turned his back and the nation's back on the centrality of immigration to the very essence of the history and greatness of the United States. All of those potential housekeepers, cooks, servers, and porters are just grist for the deportation mill, and for T****'s manipulation of the immigration issue for personal political gain. Sadly ironic, given how much of his alleged economic gain has come from the use--and abuse--of immigrant labor.
But what about all of those "economically distressed" T**** voters? The ones who supposedly have a better work ethic than all of those POC willing to risk their lives for the sake of making their lives better, and keeping America great? Why aren't they making themselves available to take these jobs, which are clearly there for the taking? What do they have to say about their seeming unwillingness to cross city and state lines to do so, a far less riskier process than crossing national borders to do so?
In a word: {crickets}
That's all you really need to know about both immigration and the state of the economy, currently pumped up by debt but shortchanged by the subtraction of labor from people who will take any job, and any risk associated with that job. That's how much we as a people, at the moment, are willing to throw away the American Dream for the sake of perpetuating the continuance of the American Nightmare: racism, the original sin of America's founding and the thread that runs through every major crisis in our nation's existence.
Does it really make any sense? Is it even what a decent people would expect of themselves? Have we struggled and sacrificed as a nation for nearly three centuries to die a death inflicted by caving in to our worst impulses?
T**** has no interest in anything except exploiting our worst impulses for short-term political gain. Immigration, on the other hand, has been an enduring part of our nation's growth, and a part that we have neglected fixing for decades. If I have to chose between T****, and the people who really want to exemplify the American work ethic, the people who should be filling the jobs at the convention hotels across the country--well, I've made my choice.
And I'm making it again on November 6.
I hope and pray you will join me.
Sunday, October 14, 2018
The Kavanaugh Aftermath
I spent last weekend with my wife in, of all places, Louisville, Kentucky--in other words, in Mitch McCONnell's home state. Louisville is a relative island of blue in a sea of Bluegrass red, so I can't say I picked up anything from the locals about the nature of their support for the Senate majority leader. However, and despite the fact that we had a good time on our trip, McCONnell and his fellow caucus members still managed to put a damper on our mood, as well as that of millions of Americans (and women in particular). They did this, of course, by ramming through a vote to put Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court, by a margin of 50-48--the lowest number of votes for a Supreme Court nominee in the nation's history.
McCONnell and his Senate cronies, of course, don't give a damn about making this kind of history. Nor do they care about the sham FBI investigation of Kavanaugh requested by the aptly-named Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona. This, of course, would be the investigation that was arbitrarily limited in scope by T**** (or T$$$$, if you will; works just as well), to make sure that nothing was discovered, and in which any number of witnesses who volunteered to cooperate were without exception ignored. The investigation, in other words, that accomplished nothing except formalizing the politicization of the FBI that began almost the moment that T$$$$ took office.
Nor did McCONnell and his cronies care about the systematic trashing that they, and their media allies, did not only of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, the principal accuser against Kavanaugh, but other women who came forward to share their knowledge of Kavanaugh's abusive behavior. All of these women were systematically slandered or libeled, and, with the exception of the sham FBI investigation previously mentioned, none of their accusations were investigated in any way, or treated with the seriousness that they deserved in connection with the potential (now actual) lifetime appointment of Kavanaugh to the highest court in the land.
If anything, the Republican caucus members and their fellow-travelers on Fox News and the Internet felt obliged to show blatant, over-the-top disrespect for the accusers in a way that not only demeaned them individually, but also demeaned them as women as well (and thereby demean all women). Typical of this sort of verbal assault was the suggestion by Senator Lindsey Graham that Dr. Ford was little more than the lowest form of prostitute, looking for attention from Kavanaugh. To put that slanderous accusation in a little political perspective, it was not long ago that Graham, along with his late colleague John McCain, was regarded as one of the more moderate Republican members of the Senate. If that is still true of Graham, then the rest of us can only conclude that the World's Greatest Deliberative Body has been led completely off the deep end.
Anyone watching the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings from the very beginning, however, and doing so with any degree of objectivity and intelligence, would have been able to see almost immediately that he was almost certainly a perjurer, and temperamentally unsuited for any judicial post at all, let alone an Associate Justiceship on the Supreme Court. I'll put aside the question of how he couldn't remember whether he recently talked to a law firm or not, yet somehow had detailed calendars from over three decades ago covering his prep-school personal life. I'll even put aside the question of his personal finances, even though that question did and still does have a bearing on his character, especially his ability to be blackmailed.
Instead, I'll point out something that, in all of the controversy over the sexual abuse allegations, somehow got overlooked. And that is the fact that there exists evidence that Kavanaugh perjured his way into his previous position on the D.C. federal circuit court. You don't have to believe me; you can find out more about it here.
Now, you may recall that a Republican Congress once upon a time impeached and put on trial in the Senate a popular Democratic President on the grounds that he had committed perjury while defending himself in a civil lawsuit--a lawsuit in which he was accused on engaging in the sort of conduct that Kavanaugh was accused of engaging in with Dr. Ford. This was allegedly done not because of the salacious details of the alleged conduct leading to the suit, but because the President's alleged perjury showed contempt for the rule of law, which every president swears to uphold.
Needless to say, every candidate for a federal judiciary post testifies under oath and, if a candidate lies while doing so, is subject to the penalties of perjury. If Kavanaugh did commit perjury, it not only disqualified him from service on the Supreme Court, but also makes him a candidate for impeachment either from his former circuit court position, or his new one. Unsurprisingly, neither the Senate Republicans nor the politically-tethered FBI delved into the question of Kavanaugh's possible perjury too deeply--or, indeed, at all. Thus, a new entry can be made in the catalogue entitled "It's OK If You're A Republican." Especially OK, of course, if the opportunity to politically pack the Supreme Court for a generation is at hand.
Aside from the question of Kavanaugh's fidelity to the truth, however, there is also the matter of his temperament. Judges are supposed to be fair and, in order to be fair, are expected to keep their feeling on the proverbial even keel, thereby preventing them from being swayed in their judgments by anything other than the application of the law to the facts of a given case. Likewise, in order to be fair, they are supposed to deal with individuals who come before them in a way that does not show partiality to one cause or another.
If it seems overly obvious to make those points, it is only so I can demonstrate the abundant lack of temperament that Kavanaugh demonstrated over the entire course of his confirmation hearings. Early in the process, at the end of one day's session, he was approached by the parent of a school shooting victim, one who was concerned about Kavanaugh's Second Amendment views. Kavanaugh could have politely greeting him, shown a modest amount of respect for the man's loss, and otherwise excused himself without tipping his hand on how he might rule in a case that raised the issue of school gun violence. Doing so would not have betrayed any degree of prejudice regarding the relative rights of gun advocates versus students.
Instead, Kavanaugh retreated from the man with the demeanor of a frightened rat who was looking to avoid being poisoned. Again, you need not take my word for it; you can look for yourself. Personally, I was convinced right then and there that he was not someone who belonged on any bench. Why should the law of the land be shaped by someone who is clearly afraid of the people to whom it might be applied?
As if that wasn't enough, there was his diatribe defense against Dr. Ford's allegations, for which he appeared to have been coached into doing an amateur imitation of Trump. Whether he was following a specific line of strategy or not, he made an absolute embarrassment of himself. No sane person could come before a judge who acted like this and expected justice, or even fairness. The clincher in the whole mess of words was his reference to his previous work for Kenneth Starr against Bill and Hillary Clinton, suggesting that the accusations against him were only some form of political retaliation for that work. That reference, far from serving as an effective line of defense, only served to poison his own reputation by exposing him as a political hack, one who was only being considered for the Supreme Court to serve a partisan agenda. It also served to illustrate, for the umpteenth time, the Ahab-like obsession that conservatives have with a Democrat who, during his time in the White House, gave them much of what they wanted in a desperate attempt to avoid impeachment--and then ended up being impeached anyway.
Despite the many doubts raised against Kavanaugh, despite the fact that there were undoubtedly other conservative candidates for the Court with far less baggage dragging behind them, McCONnell rallied his colleagues and rammed the nomination through a badly divided Congress. Because, of course, that's what McCONnell does. Nothing he does has anything to do with serving the interests of the nation, its people, the Constitution, or the Senate itself. All of these long-term interests, in the majority leader's world, are routinely sacrificed in favor of the short-term political victory. And that is especially so when doing so may well have the effect of tipping the outcome in midterm elections that now are less than a month away. You can understand McCONnell's inability under the circumstances to refrain from gloating in the aftermath of the Kavanaugh vote--even though at least one conservative has counselled against doing so.
So, without further ado, here is my five-point plan for wiping the smug grin off of McCONnell's oyster-face.
First, impeaching hearings much be launched, not only against Kavanaugh, but also his partner on the High Court in sexual shenanigans, Clarence Thomas. As I said earlier, there is certainly evidence that Kavanaugh has committed perjury; there was also the likelihood that Thomas did the same thing, and was allowed, in less enlightened times, to get away with it. If anything is clear in all of this, it should be the fact that we no longer live in less enlightened times, and Thomas, for the sake of the Court's reputation and for the sake of justice in this country, should not get the benefit of being barely confirmed (52-48, the previous record-holder for a close confirmation vote) to the Court simply because a less enlightened Congress made that possible.
Second, take a page out of Franklin D. Roosevelt's book, and pack the Court. There's never been anything constitutionally sacred about nine seats: the Court could have one, a thousand, or any number that Congress and the President see fit for it to have. Add two seats. Hell, add four, or six.
Politically, it would be a very heavy lift but, like FDR's attempt, it might send a message to the Court that its jurisprudence can't survive if it is not sensitive to the will of all the people. And it would certainly send a message to the Republicans that there are consequences to playing politics with the judiciary. Having already blazed that trail, they are in no position to try to club the Democrats over the head with that argument.
Third, and either of these would be a heavy political lift as well, either pass a statute limited the jurisdiction of the Court or, better yet, do so by constitutional amendment. Such an amendment could also impose term limits on the Justices, thereby lessening the pressure and the high-stakes politics that now surround lifetime appointments. It could also provide a mechanism for overturning Supreme Court decisions, such as by votes in the state legislatures.
Fourth, investigate the living daylights out of McCONnell. There is every reason to believe, going back to his willingness to block a Russian investigation before the 2016 election, that he is every bit as complicit as T**** is with allowing Vladimir Putin to try to turn the United States in a proxy state to do his bidding. Just as we need to know everything we can find out about T****, we need to do likewise with McCONnell.
Fifth, and the most fundamental point I can make here, is that none of these ideas are going to go anywhere in the current configuration of political power at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. We need, American needs, our future needs a Democratic Congress in Washington by next January, so that all of this can begin, and include the impeachment of T****, without question the most impeachment-worthy President this country has ever had the misfortune to have.
You know what you have to do.
DO IT!
McCONnell and his Senate cronies, of course, don't give a damn about making this kind of history. Nor do they care about the sham FBI investigation of Kavanaugh requested by the aptly-named Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona. This, of course, would be the investigation that was arbitrarily limited in scope by T**** (or T$$$$, if you will; works just as well), to make sure that nothing was discovered, and in which any number of witnesses who volunteered to cooperate were without exception ignored. The investigation, in other words, that accomplished nothing except formalizing the politicization of the FBI that began almost the moment that T$$$$ took office.
Nor did McCONnell and his cronies care about the systematic trashing that they, and their media allies, did not only of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, the principal accuser against Kavanaugh, but other women who came forward to share their knowledge of Kavanaugh's abusive behavior. All of these women were systematically slandered or libeled, and, with the exception of the sham FBI investigation previously mentioned, none of their accusations were investigated in any way, or treated with the seriousness that they deserved in connection with the potential (now actual) lifetime appointment of Kavanaugh to the highest court in the land.
If anything, the Republican caucus members and their fellow-travelers on Fox News and the Internet felt obliged to show blatant, over-the-top disrespect for the accusers in a way that not only demeaned them individually, but also demeaned them as women as well (and thereby demean all women). Typical of this sort of verbal assault was the suggestion by Senator Lindsey Graham that Dr. Ford was little more than the lowest form of prostitute, looking for attention from Kavanaugh. To put that slanderous accusation in a little political perspective, it was not long ago that Graham, along with his late colleague John McCain, was regarded as one of the more moderate Republican members of the Senate. If that is still true of Graham, then the rest of us can only conclude that the World's Greatest Deliberative Body has been led completely off the deep end.
Anyone watching the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings from the very beginning, however, and doing so with any degree of objectivity and intelligence, would have been able to see almost immediately that he was almost certainly a perjurer, and temperamentally unsuited for any judicial post at all, let alone an Associate Justiceship on the Supreme Court. I'll put aside the question of how he couldn't remember whether he recently talked to a law firm or not, yet somehow had detailed calendars from over three decades ago covering his prep-school personal life. I'll even put aside the question of his personal finances, even though that question did and still does have a bearing on his character, especially his ability to be blackmailed.
Instead, I'll point out something that, in all of the controversy over the sexual abuse allegations, somehow got overlooked. And that is the fact that there exists evidence that Kavanaugh perjured his way into his previous position on the D.C. federal circuit court. You don't have to believe me; you can find out more about it here.
Now, you may recall that a Republican Congress once upon a time impeached and put on trial in the Senate a popular Democratic President on the grounds that he had committed perjury while defending himself in a civil lawsuit--a lawsuit in which he was accused on engaging in the sort of conduct that Kavanaugh was accused of engaging in with Dr. Ford. This was allegedly done not because of the salacious details of the alleged conduct leading to the suit, but because the President's alleged perjury showed contempt for the rule of law, which every president swears to uphold.
Needless to say, every candidate for a federal judiciary post testifies under oath and, if a candidate lies while doing so, is subject to the penalties of perjury. If Kavanaugh did commit perjury, it not only disqualified him from service on the Supreme Court, but also makes him a candidate for impeachment either from his former circuit court position, or his new one. Unsurprisingly, neither the Senate Republicans nor the politically-tethered FBI delved into the question of Kavanaugh's possible perjury too deeply--or, indeed, at all. Thus, a new entry can be made in the catalogue entitled "It's OK If You're A Republican." Especially OK, of course, if the opportunity to politically pack the Supreme Court for a generation is at hand.
Aside from the question of Kavanaugh's fidelity to the truth, however, there is also the matter of his temperament. Judges are supposed to be fair and, in order to be fair, are expected to keep their feeling on the proverbial even keel, thereby preventing them from being swayed in their judgments by anything other than the application of the law to the facts of a given case. Likewise, in order to be fair, they are supposed to deal with individuals who come before them in a way that does not show partiality to one cause or another.
If it seems overly obvious to make those points, it is only so I can demonstrate the abundant lack of temperament that Kavanaugh demonstrated over the entire course of his confirmation hearings. Early in the process, at the end of one day's session, he was approached by the parent of a school shooting victim, one who was concerned about Kavanaugh's Second Amendment views. Kavanaugh could have politely greeting him, shown a modest amount of respect for the man's loss, and otherwise excused himself without tipping his hand on how he might rule in a case that raised the issue of school gun violence. Doing so would not have betrayed any degree of prejudice regarding the relative rights of gun advocates versus students.
Instead, Kavanaugh retreated from the man with the demeanor of a frightened rat who was looking to avoid being poisoned. Again, you need not take my word for it; you can look for yourself. Personally, I was convinced right then and there that he was not someone who belonged on any bench. Why should the law of the land be shaped by someone who is clearly afraid of the people to whom it might be applied?
As if that wasn't enough, there was his diatribe defense against Dr. Ford's allegations, for which he appeared to have been coached into doing an amateur imitation of Trump. Whether he was following a specific line of strategy or not, he made an absolute embarrassment of himself. No sane person could come before a judge who acted like this and expected justice, or even fairness. The clincher in the whole mess of words was his reference to his previous work for Kenneth Starr against Bill and Hillary Clinton, suggesting that the accusations against him were only some form of political retaliation for that work. That reference, far from serving as an effective line of defense, only served to poison his own reputation by exposing him as a political hack, one who was only being considered for the Supreme Court to serve a partisan agenda. It also served to illustrate, for the umpteenth time, the Ahab-like obsession that conservatives have with a Democrat who, during his time in the White House, gave them much of what they wanted in a desperate attempt to avoid impeachment--and then ended up being impeached anyway.
Despite the many doubts raised against Kavanaugh, despite the fact that there were undoubtedly other conservative candidates for the Court with far less baggage dragging behind them, McCONnell rallied his colleagues and rammed the nomination through a badly divided Congress. Because, of course, that's what McCONnell does. Nothing he does has anything to do with serving the interests of the nation, its people, the Constitution, or the Senate itself. All of these long-term interests, in the majority leader's world, are routinely sacrificed in favor of the short-term political victory. And that is especially so when doing so may well have the effect of tipping the outcome in midterm elections that now are less than a month away. You can understand McCONnell's inability under the circumstances to refrain from gloating in the aftermath of the Kavanaugh vote--even though at least one conservative has counselled against doing so.
So, without further ado, here is my five-point plan for wiping the smug grin off of McCONnell's oyster-face.
First, impeaching hearings much be launched, not only against Kavanaugh, but also his partner on the High Court in sexual shenanigans, Clarence Thomas. As I said earlier, there is certainly evidence that Kavanaugh has committed perjury; there was also the likelihood that Thomas did the same thing, and was allowed, in less enlightened times, to get away with it. If anything is clear in all of this, it should be the fact that we no longer live in less enlightened times, and Thomas, for the sake of the Court's reputation and for the sake of justice in this country, should not get the benefit of being barely confirmed (52-48, the previous record-holder for a close confirmation vote) to the Court simply because a less enlightened Congress made that possible.
Second, take a page out of Franklin D. Roosevelt's book, and pack the Court. There's never been anything constitutionally sacred about nine seats: the Court could have one, a thousand, or any number that Congress and the President see fit for it to have. Add two seats. Hell, add four, or six.
Politically, it would be a very heavy lift but, like FDR's attempt, it might send a message to the Court that its jurisprudence can't survive if it is not sensitive to the will of all the people. And it would certainly send a message to the Republicans that there are consequences to playing politics with the judiciary. Having already blazed that trail, they are in no position to try to club the Democrats over the head with that argument.
Third, and either of these would be a heavy political lift as well, either pass a statute limited the jurisdiction of the Court or, better yet, do so by constitutional amendment. Such an amendment could also impose term limits on the Justices, thereby lessening the pressure and the high-stakes politics that now surround lifetime appointments. It could also provide a mechanism for overturning Supreme Court decisions, such as by votes in the state legislatures.
Fourth, investigate the living daylights out of McCONnell. There is every reason to believe, going back to his willingness to block a Russian investigation before the 2016 election, that he is every bit as complicit as T**** is with allowing Vladimir Putin to try to turn the United States in a proxy state to do his bidding. Just as we need to know everything we can find out about T****, we need to do likewise with McCONnell.
Fifth, and the most fundamental point I can make here, is that none of these ideas are going to go anywhere in the current configuration of political power at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. We need, American needs, our future needs a Democratic Congress in Washington by next January, so that all of this can begin, and include the impeachment of T****, without question the most impeachment-worthy President this country has ever had the misfortune to have.
You know what you have to do.
DO IT!
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