Most people go through day-to-day life without being consumed by politics. For them, politics is an afterthought. That’s kind of the way it should be and is perhaps the best argument for the smallest-possible government.
Tag: Brett Kavanaugh
OFFICIAL
– Kavanaugh being sworn onto the Supreme Court
– Trump signing the Commission Appointing Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
https://twitter.com/MonitoredReboot/status/1048773694766637057
A year into her job as the host of Megyn Kelly Today, most media outlets have perhaps unfairly stopped triumphantly reporting about the lackluster ratings that Megyn Kelly is apparently still drawing for the 9 a.m. Eastern slot for the NBC NewsToday show franchise.
Kelly’s primary challenge is and continues to be that the ex-corporate lawyer fundamentally lacks a television constituency. Liberals among the audience, on social media, and the majority of journalists who work as TV critics simply won’t accept her on the NBC daytime platform. More conservative viewers haven’t forgiven her for turning FNC’s Kelly File into an anti-Trump and Never Trump forum.
Whether you like him or not, Donald Trump has exposed many mainstream media pundits as shamelessly opportunistic at best in terms of seeking their next payday. For instance, you’ve probably noticed that quite a few high-profile talking heads completely changed their ideology when they switched networks, which sometimes means literally just walking across the street. It’s kind of like the so-called baby-face-to-heel turn in the kayfabe world of professional wrestling.
Megyn Kelly was expected to follow suit as she tried to fit in to the NBC liberal culture in the process of becoming a daytime diva.
When Megyn Kelly Today show debuted, the host insisted that it would be a politics-free zone. She did, however, quickly jump on the #MeToo bandwagon as a way to stabilize her ratings.
“The Democrats should be happy that this is not a trial because if it were, she would likely lose…This would be a nightmare criminal trial, but that’s not what this is.” –@megynkelly #KavanaughHearings pic.twitter.com/9mqQfYPcty
U.S. Senator Cory Booker, a New Jersey Democrat who wants to run for president, channeled Seinfeld‘s George Constanza with his embarrassing and desperate showboating at the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, as these mashups from the Washington Free Beacon suggest.
As Costanza famously once said, “it’s not a lie if you believe it.”
From the New York Post in detailing Booker’s history of making stuff up:
“Those who have followed Booker’s political career have long claimed that it is merely a long string of theatrics, fables and malleable positions. As an optics-obsessed lightweight mayor of Newark, they contend, he spent large swaths of his time collecting lucrative speaking fees to lecture others about his imaginary accomplishments in his corruption-riddled city. ‘The only way you can see the mayor,’ explained one Newark councilman, ‘is if you turn on Meet the Press.”
The fear-mongering and demonization started even before President Trump named anyone to replace the retiring Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, as evidence by the fill-in-the-blank, boiler-plate statement from the Women’s March embedded below.
Trump seemingly went for the seemingly more confirmable “mainstream” candidate by nominating Judge Brett Kavanaugh of the D.C. Circuit. Kavanaugh obviously possesses the legal credentials, and even has the support of Never Trump Sen. John McCain. His establishment and Bush ties make some conservatives uneasy, but time will tell.
Kavanaugh has authored 300 opinions as an appeals court judge, which is a good and bad thing, depending upon your perspective. Obviously the left will be cherry-picking his entire paper trail to find any statements that they can use to level false accusations of racism, sexism, and/or homophobia. If you’ve followed judicial nominations before, you’ve already seen this movie and its many sequels. Note that obstructionist Democrats stalled his nomination to the D.C. Circuit for three years before he was finally confirmed in May 2006.
Parenthetically, you may recall that Democrats used similar filibuster tactics to prevent the confirmation of Clinton/Bush lawyer Miguel Estrada to the D. C. Circuit in 2003.
When you pre-write your press release slamming Trump’s SCOTUS pick but forget to add the name…. pic.twitter.com/5GiEJXMHUR
— Alex Pappas (@AlexPappas) July 10, 2018
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Amy Barrett (who is probably next up should another vacancy on the high court occur) was probably seen as too controversial, plus she has only served as a judge for less than one year. At crunch time, the other two judges on the short list perhaps were probably never really in contention. Hopefully Trump will go outside the Ivy League in naming future nominees.
In a New York Times editorial, Akhil Reed Amal, a self-described liberal and Hillary Clinton voter who teaches at Yale Law School, described former student Bret Kavanaugh as a superb nominee.
“The nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to be the next Supreme Court justice is President Trump’s finest hour, his classiest move. Last week the president promised to select ‘someone with impeccable credentials, great intellect, unbiased judgment, and deep reverence for the laws and Constitution of the United States.’ In picking Judge Kavanaugh, he has done just that.”
Optics: Someone should have reminded Kavanaugh — which was set for the much taller Trump — to lower the microphone just a bit when he went to the podium last night in the White House East Room after the president spoke
Judge Brett Kavanaugh thanks Pres. Trump after he is nominated to the Supreme Court: "No president has ever consulted more widely or talked with more people for more backgrounds to seek input about a Supreme Court nomination" https://t.co/hAeSktDKxc pic.twitter.com/li0ZecDiZ1
President Donald Trump is set to announce his Supreme Court nominee tomorrow night at around 9 p.m. Eastern time. Some so-called pundits (usually among the Never Trump GOP cohort) have touted U.S. Senator Mike Lee of Utah. Ted Cruz, who received Lee’s endorsement for president in 2016, also recommended his friend and colleague for the high court.
Trump has demonstrated an ability to find common ground with former foes such as Cruz, Rand Paul, Lindsay Graham, and potentially Mitt Romney. While Lee is on Trump’s list of highly qualified Supreme Court contenders, and who seems to be a fine gentleman, is also a Never Trumper who declined to endorse Trump in the general election and even released a video calling for Trump to drop out of the campaign after the Access Hollywood tape surfaced.
If Lee had gotten his wish, Hillary Clinton would be sitting in the White House (no replacement GOP standard-bearer would have defeated her) and embedding far-left activists in the federal judiciary.
Mike Lee’s naive champions, and they should have their pundit cards revoked, are deluding themselves that he would “sail” through to confirmation because he’s part of the club. Recall that when Trump nominated Jeff Sessions as U.S. attorney general, the Alabama senator suddenly became a racist and received 47 no votes when he the nomination was narrowly approved by his colleagues.
The Democrats and their media allies have already freaked out without knowing who Trump will tap for the Supreme Court, and the actual nominee when revealed will only increase their hysteria, Mike Lee notwithstanding.
If you can believe the media, the front-runner seems to be Brett Kavanaugh, the appeals court judge on the D.C. Circuit who is getting support from both the Bushies and Ann Coulter, but who knows.
Judges Amy Barrett (who has only been on the 7th Circuit for less than a year) and Raymond Kethledge of the 6th Circuit (who to his credit writes his own opinions rather than delegating the tasks to law clerks) are also supposedly among the finalists, again if news reportage is accurate. Several other men and women are also mentioned.
When you consider all the identity politics permeating the political culture, would it not be better for President Trump to nominate a woman for this vacancy?
Time will tell.
The president has presumably mentioned to those whom he has interviewed that he expects that there will be other SCOTUS vacancies down the road.
With all the doom-and-gloom, sky-is-falling panic among the progressive cohort primarily about the future of Rove v. Wade — the 1973 decision that legalized abortion in all states — being overturned, that outcome seems unlikely.
It’s been often said that pro-life activists need to change the culture first.
In addition, recall that the high court had the votes in hand to throw out Obamacare entirely, but Chief Justice John Roberts reportedly switched sides at the last minute. A similar scenario could play out if an abortion-related case reaches the court after Trump’s nominee, whoever he or she is, is seated.
The media likes to push everyone into either the pro-choice or pro-life camps, moreover, and most people probably are conflicted about the highly personal and sensitive abortion issue. Even liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had implied that the Roe ruling was too sweeping and thus hyper-politicized the controversy.
Apparently Democrats gave up on erroneously claiming that the McConnell rule (previously known as the Biden rule) precludes a Supreme Court conformation in a midterm election year. The Senate confirmed three of the current sitting justices during off-year elections. The aforementioned precedent only applies during a presidential election year.
It was Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat and former majority leader, who in late 2013 eliminated the filibuster rule, and as such, allows judicial nominees to be confirmed by a simple Senate majority.
McConnell, then minority leader, cautioning Harry Reid not to invoke the “nuclear option” — lowering the vote threshold for confirmation for judges and Cabinet officials from 60 to 51 votes. McConnell as majority leader added Supreme Court Justices to the lower threshold. https://t.co/Oeh7lRXasY
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