Grassley’s Kangaroo Court

National Review ^ | September 22, 2018 6:00 AM | ANDREW C. MCCARTHY

[Hojczyk]

It’s a kangaroo court.

Understand, this is not about Christine Blasey Ford. She’s a tool — a quite willing tool, but a tool all the same. This is not even about the eminently qualified federal circuit-court judge Brett Kavanaugh — it would be no different regardless of which nominee President Trump selected in consultation with White House counsel Don McGahn, the Federalist Society, the Heritage Foundation, and the rest of the originalist, conservative legal community come of age. Democrats do not want a model of constitutional fidelity and judicial restraint elevated to the Supreme Court. End of story.

And who can blame them? Republicans did not want the eminently qualified federal circuit-court judge Merrick Garland to be elevated to the Supreme Court.

But the Left has turned the High Court into an über-legislature for imposing on the country the social-justice-warrior policy agenda that they cannot ride to victory at the ballot box. The Supreme Court is arguably just as vital to them as winning the White House, because justices often outlast even two-term presidencies by a factor of four or five.

Democrats are willing to use any tactics to block conservatives from the Supreme Court and seat their own ideologues. The question is not “Fair or unfair?” It’s “Will it work?” Republicans always seem flat-footed in response because they underestimate how far Democrats are willing to go to win, how willing they are to destroy people’s reputations if that’s what it takes. Republicans keep thinking it’s 1987 and the Bork debacle was the worst of it; in reality, we’re 30 years on, and the Bork debacle was just the beginning of it.

Maybe Chairman Grassley and his colleagues will figure that out on Thursday. Or is it the next Thursday? Or the day after the midterms? . . .

[Liz]

Kavanaugh is being “Borksteined”......... the worst of the Bork era and the worst of the Weinstein era.

[Jack Hammer]

Good article, and right on point.

[SERKIT]

Flake will resurrect McNoName’s cold, dead thumbs, and point them down. Two putzes from the same female dog.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Even by Ms. Ford's own telling, in the putative incident:

• nobody was killed.

• the prestige of the US government was not compromised by the brutalizing and murder of a US ambassador.

• nobody spent a night in terror and fighting for their lives without support from their U.S. government employer.

• the incident putatively happened way back in the 1980s.
  • The USSR collapsed since then.
  • The US engaged in the Gulf War since then.
  • 9/11/01 happened since then.
  • The US has fought wars in Iraq and Afghanistan since then.
  • No less than a third of the people who were alive in America then have died by now.
  In that perspective, is Ms. Ford’s angst actually the only thing that matters?

So the question is: “What difference, at this point, does it make?"

But of course, there actually is an obvious answer. Twenty years ago Hillary claimed that there was “a vast right wing conspiracy . . . against my husband”

And from the behavior of its members on the Senate Judiciary Committee the past week or two, it is painfully obvious that the Democratic Party is a conspiracy against black-letter law and any judge who stands for limited constitutional government.

The facts of the alleged incident do not matter at all, since they will never be known. It is all about creating noise and smoke as a means of promoting the interests of their political faction.

[eyeamok]

McConnell should Bring the Nomination to the floor and Call the Vote Monday Morning at 8AM

[Liz]

Republicans always seem flat-footed in response because they underestimate how far Democrats are willing to go to win, how willing they are to destroy people’s reputations...they keep thinking the Bork debacle was the worst of it; we’re 30 years on, and the Bork debacle was just the beginning of it.

He's forgetting something. This is the Trump era. Democrats have to live with it....and they're losing badly.

[Chickensoup]

Well Grassly gave the leftist fascist totalitarians an opportunity to organize and arrive to protest.

[onyx]

Grassley won't call for a floor vote until he knows for absolute certainty that he has 51 votes for Kavanaugh, even if the 51 has to include Vice President Mike Pence's vote.

There's no way Grassley will possibly risk Kavanaugh going down in defeat. That would be a ginormous, colossal mistake with grave, untold political repercussions, not to mention the complete ruination of Judge Kavanaugh's career.

[frank ballenger]

Fully agree. It has to be a lock.

[Ben Mugged]

The republicans acceptance of these patently transparent delay tactics angers and disgusts me. Gutless politicians cowering in fear of baseless criticism by crybaby liberals.

[sauropod]

Bkmk

[gswilder]

Yes she now has a powerful legal team of about 4 (that we know about). She is being coached to “remember details” as we speak.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Given the facts above http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3689794/posts?page=64#64 and what Judge Kavenaugh has been subjected to, what will happen if the Kavenaugh nomination fails of confirmation?

I put it to you that the next person down on President Trump’s list will say to the president, “Thank you for the honor. If confirmed - confirmed promptly - I will be proud to serve. But I will do nothing to promote the confirmation of your appointment. That was never done in the early history of the Court, and in light of the travesty to which Judge Kavenaugh was recently subjected, it is now necessary to return to that tradition.

Accordingly - if you accept my conditions and choose to announce my nomination - I will not appear publicly in Washington before the matter is settled. l will not visit any senators, and I will not discuss the matter before a Senate committee. And if a Senate committee holds a televised hearing on my nomination, I will immediately request that you withdraw my name from consideration. I do not need the job, and will not be subject to the indignities which were visited on your previous nominee. If you elect to accept those conditions, please inform the Senate Majority Leader and the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee of these conditions when you announce the nomination.

I am in contact with the other people you graciously have publicly suggested as potential nominees to the Court and, if you contact another candidate, they are likely to approach the matter in the same way."

[bitt]

p

[Candor7]

Lets get this vagina monologue side show over and hold the vote!

[Revolutionary]

For once Grassley is playing the dems. The Trump team has the goods on Ford and it isn’t pretty.

[Liz]

If Kavanaugh is not confirmed by October 1, the Court will convene with just eight justices, and more importantly, with the conservative and liberal “blocs” on the Court deadlocked with four justices each.

The subsequently confirmed justice can ascend to the bench the moment she or he is cleared by the Senate.

But the new justice will typically not vote on cases in which oral arguments were heard in their absence.

So the longer the ninth justice is missing, the more it affects the Court’s work.

[rolling_stone]

she’s possibly drunk as a skunk and they need time to sober her up

[Steven W.]

CBS has now issued a CORRRECTION:

Her attorney clarifies she has not agreed to testify on Thursday, she has now agreed to speak to the committee about where + when + how she might.

https://mobile.twitter.com/CBSNews/status/1043600708048703488/photo/1

“Correction: Christine Blasey Ford has accepted a request to speak to Senate committee about Brett Kavanaugh accusation. A prior article and tweet said she had officially agreed to testify”

[Steven W.]