Wednesday, October 9, 2019

Kavanaugh One Year Later


            It was a year ago on Sunday that Brett Kavanaugh overcame staunch opposition to claim a seat on the United States Supreme Court. The anniversary did not occur in silence as there were demonstrators present to remind him of his confirmation battles. Women came forward during the Kavanaugh confirmation hearing in the Senate and told stories that could not be corroborated. Yet, liberals still insist that they are true.


            The opposition begs the question, why are liberals so opposed to Kavanaugh that they were willing to destroy him, his career, and his family? They fear that he will vote against women’s rights – meaning abortion.


Kavanaugh is supposedly an originalist, or a judge who interprets the U.S. Constitution as it was written. It seems to me that anyone who opposes an originalist judge does not like the Constitution, the Supreme Law of the land. So how does Kavanaugh’s decisions over the past measure up to the Constitution?


            Alex Swoyer at The Washington Times gave some figures on Kavanaugh’s voting record over the past year. He reminds us that Kavanaugh took the seat that was vacated by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy upon his retirement. Kennedy was known for years as the swing vote on the bench. He says that Chief Judge John G. Roberts Jr. is now the “pendulum,” but Kavanaugh sided with Roberts 92% of the time during the last term. 


This could mean that both men voted with the conservatives or both men voted with the liberals when they voted together. However, Kavanaugh sided more with Justice Samuel A. Alito – a man known as a loyal conservative –than with any other justice. I hope that all the judges vote for the rule of law and not for liberal or conservative causes. They need to decide what the Constitution says and rule accordingly.


There were several people who made potentially false accusations of sexual misconduct against Kavanaugh during the Senate hearing. Kevin Daley of The Daily Signal reported that then-Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) sent a letter to the Justice Department in 2018 asking the DOJ to pursue criminal investigations for four of them. This week Grassley sent another letter to Attorney General William Barr and FBI Director Christopher Wray asking for an update on those referrals. He asked for a response to his letter by October 21.


When individuals intentionally mislead the committee, they divert important committee resources during time sensitive investigations and materially impede its work…. Such acts are not only unfair; they are potentially illegal. It is illegal to make materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statements to congressional investigators. It is illegal to obstruct committee investigations.


The next Supreme Court nominee should not have to defend himself or herself against baseless and fabricated allegations, and committee staff should not have to spend valuable time investigating them.


            The four people who were referred to the DOJ are Michael Avenatti, Julie Swetnick, and two people who made anonymous claims. Another woman who later claimed to write one of the letters has since admitted that she did not write it and only claimed to be the author to get some attention. Therefore, her name will not even make it into my blog post. Avenatti and Swetnick apparently have reputations for not being creditable, and this is one of the reasons why they were referred to DOJ. I hope the DOJ makes their lives as miserable as the demonstrators did to Kavanaugh and his family. Their behavior was despicable!


            The Kavanaugh hearing was nothing more than a circus, and the clowns came out in great numbers to stop his confirmation. I strongly believe that judicial nomination hearings should be conducted without the demonstrators detracting from their formality. I believe that the sanctity of the hearing should be enforced to provide respect and dignity to the nominated perspective judges. I think that his record over the last term shows that he is willing to decide cases on their individual merits measurable against the Constitution and not according to political ideals. I believe that this is the kind of judges that we need and want in our courts.

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