Law The Search For The 114th Supreme Court Justice: The Witch-Hunt Against Judge Brett Kavanaugh

Who do you believe?


  • Total voters
    453
Anybody see the story that Kennedy's retirement was pay for Trump waving the fines against Deutsche Bank, Kennedy's son worked at Deutsche bank and was Trump's go to guy.
 
Anybody see the story that Kennedy's retirement was pay for Trump waving the fines against Deutsche Bank, Kennedy's son worked at Deutsche bank and was Trump's go to guy.


Yes, and we added it to the list of shit we don’t give a fuck about.
 
Is this an attempt at satire by pretty much verbatim copying the Republicans line's when they blocked Obama's apointements until after the election?

Also, I will personally find a rubber 'hypocrite' stamp for any conservative poster who complains about Dems "unconstitutionally" refusing to vote on an appointee until after an election plays out

Was bullshit when Rs did it. Will be bullshit once Ds do it. But the bullshit was let out of the can by the Repubs so they can play in the mess they've made

I don't think they have the votes to actually block it though, and it would take one hell of a happening to come away with a senate majority since the nuclear option of only needing 50% to confirm was already forced into play. Dems, if their long game was better, would have just affirmed Gorsuch giving him the 60% needed and then held out for the 2nd appointment
In which case the thing that happened with Gorsuch would have happened now, instead.
 
Kamala Harris: Trump's potential Supreme Court nominees 'complete nonstarters'
By Max Greenwood - 06/27/18

harriskamala_061818gn2_lead.jpg

Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) on Wednesday dismissed President Trump's list of potential Supreme Court nominees as "complete non-starters," insisting that the Senate should wait until after the November elections to confirm a new justice.

Harris' comments came shortly after Justice Anthony Kennedy announced that he would retire from the Supreme Court, setting the stage for Trump to nominate a second justice to the high court.

"Given the stakes of this Supreme Court seat, which will determine the fate of fundamental constitutional rights, the American people, who will vote in less than 4 months, deserve to have their voice heard," Harris tweeted. "We shouldn't vote on confirmation until they have voted at the ballot box."

"The President’s list of potential SCOTUS nominees are complete non-starters," she added. "They are conservative ideologues, not mainstream jurists. We cannot and will not accept them to serve on the highest court in the land."





Harris' comments echoed those of other Democrats on Wednesday. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in a speech on the Senate floor on Wednesday that it would be hypocritical for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to hold a vote on a Supreme Court nominee before the midterm elections.

McConnell announced moments earlier that he planned to hold a vote on Trump's next nominee in the fall.

After the death of former Justice Antonin Scalia in 2016, McConnell refused to hold a vote on then-President Barack Obama's nominee for the court, Merrick Garland, saying that the Senate should wait until after the presidential election.

Trump was elected later that year, and eventually nominated Neil Gorsuch to the court. He was confirmed by the Senate last year.

It's not yet clear whom Trump will nominate to replace Kennedy on the court. The White House released a list of 25 potential nominees in November, and Trump said on Wednesday that he plans to make his selection from that very list.

http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/...l-supreme-court-nominees-complete-nonstarters

Too bad Rs don't need your vote, Kamala.

bork1}
 
President Trump Says He's Considering Two Women for Supreme Court Seat, Announcement to Come July
By Glenn Fleishman | June 29, 2018



President Donald Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One that he will announce his candidate to fill Anthony Kennedy’s Supreme Court seat on July 9, according to the AP. The president said two women are among the candidates he’s considering among a pool of between five and seven potential nominees.

In answer to reporters’ questions, Trump denied a candidate’s stance on abortion rights and the landmark Roe v. Wade abortion case would be a litmus test. “That’s not a question I’ll be asking,” he replied, reports the AP. He said he thinks those issues are “inappropriate to discuss.”

Trump’s interviews may begin as early as this weekend in New Jersey. The president told reporters, “It’s a great group of intellectual talent.”

Kennedy’s announcement came after the close of the Supreme Court’s latest term and was no surprise to court watchers. It has emerged that the Trump administration heavily courted Kennedy to retire before the mid-term elections, giving Trump the potential to nominate a justice with a known majority in the Senate.

Trump’s statement that two women are included in his shortlist for the position may be intended to neutralize any plans by Democrats to stage an all-out war in the Senate. Some experts in Congressional procedure have suggested a plurality of Democrats could shut down the chamber by denying a quorum—being short enough members to gavel into session. Other slowdown strategies have been suggested as well.

But even with Sen. John McCain of Arizona absent and unlikely to return to vote, the GOP has 50 votes to the Democrats’ 49, and Vice President Pence holds a tie-breaking vote in case of other absences. Several Democratic senators have re-election campaigns this fall in states that Trump won and are considered in jeopardy. The Democrats have to win all those seats and turn others to achieve 51 votes that would allow them to bypass Pence’s tie-breaker.

 
Last edited:
President Trump Says He’ll Announce Supreme Court Nominee July 9
By Margaret Talev and Greg Stohr | June 29, 2018,



President Donald Trump said Friday he has narrowed down his search for a nominee to fill a Supreme Court vacancy to about five finalists, including two women, and will announce his pick on July 9.

Trump said that he may interview one or two candidates this weekend at his resort in Bedminster, New Jersey, as his effort to replace retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy accelerates.

A person familiar with the process said White House officials are focused primarily on five federal appeals court judges -- Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, Thomas Hardiman, Raymond Kethledge and Amul Thapar.

“I like them all but I’ve got it down to about five,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One. In response to a question about Barrett, he called her “an outstanding woman.”

It isn’t clear what other woman might be on Trump’s short list. Trump said he may consider as many as seven candidates.

Trump’s July 9 time frame could prove optimistic. The FBI is still conducting background checks, the person said. But the president is already moving to get the process on a fast track. He met with a group of swing-state senators from both parties at the White House on Thursday to discuss the nomination, and his aides also spoke with more than a dozen other senators.

Trump said he’s not going to ask the candidates whether they’d vote to overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade abortion-rights ruling, a decades-long aspiration of the Republican Party.

“It’s a great group of intellectual talent,” Trump said, adding that the candidates are “generally conservative.”

The confirmation process promises to be a partisan brawl, but one where Republicans have most of the control over the clock. Trump aims to have a replacement for Kennedy confirmed in time to join the court for its new term in October, White House legislative affairs director Marc Short said Friday.

Republicans have a 51-49 majority in the Senate, and second-ranking Democrat Dick Durbin of Illinois said Thursday there is little Democrats can do to stop the nomination unless some Republicans defect. Virtually all Republican senators have supported Trump’s lower-court selections and most have spoken favorably about Trump’s list of candidates for the Supreme Court.

Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, a top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said that no matter who is chosen, confirmation will rest on the decisions of two GOP senators: Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. Both have expressed support for Roe v. Wade, and last year they displayed a willingness to split with their party when both voted to defeat the GOP Obamacare repeal effort.

On Thursday night, Trump met at the White House with Collins, Murkowski and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley of Iowa, along with swing state Democratic senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Joe Donnelly of Indiana and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota.

Hardiman and Thapar were among the group interviewed by Trump before he selected Neil Gorsuch for a vacancy last year. Kethledge was also under consideration for that opening, though he didn’t get an interview with Trump.

Kavanaugh, 53, is a former Kennedy law clerk who serves on the federal appeals court in Washington and has been a source of controversy for two decades. He was a top deputy to independent counsel Ken Starr and drafted much of the report that led to President Bill Clinton’s impeachment.

Kethledge, 51 and from Michigan, is also a former Kennedy clerk, known for pointed opinions. He won praise from conservatives for voting against the Internal Revenue Service in a case involving a Tea Party group that claimed it was singled out for mistreatment on its application for tax-exempt status.

Barrett, who’s in her mid-40s, is a Trump appointee who serves on a federal appeals court in Indiana. During her Senate hearing, Democrats questioned the role her Catholic faith would play on the bench. Barrett’s supporters accused Democrats of imposing a religious test.

Thapar, 49, is also a Trump appointee. He was recommended for his current post by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a fellow Kentuckian. Thapar, whose parents immigrated from India, would be the first Asian-American justice.

Hardiman, who turns 53 on July 8, is a former cab driver who was the first in his family to graduate from college. He serves on a federal appeals court in Pennsylvania and has been a staunch supporter of gun rights.

Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah isn’t among the leading candidates, the person familiar with the discussions said.

 
Last edited:
President Trump Says He's Considering Two Women for Supreme Court Seat, Announcement to Come July
By Glenn Fleishman | June 29, 2018



President Donald Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One that he will announce his candidate to fill Anthony Kennedy’s Supreme Court seat on July 9, according to the AP. The president said two women are among the candidates he’s considering among a pool of between five and seven potential nominees.

In answer to reporters’ questions, Trump denied a candidate’s stance on abortion rights and the landmark Roe v. Wade abortion case would be a litmus test. “That’s not a question I’ll be asking,” he replied, reports the AP. He said he thinks those issues are “inappropriate to discuss.”

Trump’s interviews may begin as early as this weekend in New Jersey. The president told reporters, “It’s a great group of intellectual talent.”

Kennedy’s announcement came after the close of the Supreme Court’s latest term and was no surprise to court watchers. It has emerged that the Trump administration heavily courted Kennedy to retire before the mid-term elections, giving Trump the potential to nominate a justice with a known majority in the Senate.

Trump’s statement that two women are included in his shortlist for the position may be intended to neutralize any plans by Democrats to stage an all-out war in the Senate. Some experts in Congressional procedure have suggested a plurality of Democrats could shut down the chamber by denying a quorum—being short enough members to gavel into session. Other slowdown strategies have been suggested as well.

But even with Sen. John McCain of Arizona absent and unlikely to return to vote, the GOP has 50 votes to the Democrats’ 49, and Vice President Pence holds a tie-breaking vote in case of other absences. Several Democratic senators have re-election campaigns this fall in states that Trump won and are considered in jeopardy. The Democrats have to win all those seats and turn others to achieve 51 votes that would allow them to bypass Pence’s tie-breaker.

http://fortune.com/2018/06/29/trump...dering-women-anthony-kennedy-seat-nomination/


That fucking misogynist.
 
It's truely amazing that the president picks a supreme court justice and will likely do so to pander to the christians and likely to end Roe v Wade. No trias politica and no seperation of church and state. Donald Trump gets to shape US landscape for the next decades, I mean DONALD TRUMP. It's really no wonder that US politics is in the shape it is in right now.
 
“Elections have consequences and at the end of the day I won” - Obama


Deal with it.
 
Amy Coney Barrett is the odds-on favorite to be Trump's pick because...

*45 Years Old.
*Strict Catholic
*Conservative Record
*Liberals already dispise her.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/09/catholics-senate-amy-barrett/539124/

“The dogma lives loudly within you,” Feinstein said. “And that’s of concern when you come to big issues that large numbers of people have fought for for years in this country.”



"It turns out that the number of cases in which we thought an adherence to your moral principles would prevent you from deciding a case according to the law was much smaller than we imagined,” said Garvey in an interview.




“You are controversial. Let’s start with that,” Feinstein said during the hearing. “You’re controversial because many of us who have lived our lives as women really recognize the value of finally being able to control our reproductive systems, and Roeentered into that, obviously. … You have a long history of believing that your religious beliefs should prevail.”
 
That fucking misogynist.

2 in a pool of 5 or 7 is pretty slim, but I'd love to see him nominate a well-qualified female judge just to see how Pelosi gonna react.
Amy Coney Barrett is the odds-on favorite to be Trump's pick because...

*45 Years Old.
*Strict Catholic
*Conservative Record
*Liberals already dispise her.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/09/catholics-senate-amy-barrett/539124/

“The dogma lives loudly within you,” Feinstein said. “And that’s of concern when you come to big issues that large numbers of people have fought for for years in this country.”



"It turns out that the number of cases in which we thought an adherence to your moral principles would prevent you from deciding a case according to the law was much smaller than we imagined,” said Garvey in an interview.




“You are controversial. Let’s start with that,” Feinstein said during the hearing. “You’re controversial because many of us who have lived our lives as women really recognize the value of finally being able to control our reproductive systems, and Roeentered into that, obviously. … You have a long history of believing that your religious beliefs should prevail.”

I can't imagine Feinstein dare saying that to any other judge with another faith *ahem*, as the media would be up in arm with such a "religious test".
 
I can't imagine Feinstein dare saying that to any other judge with another faith *ahem*, as the media would be up in arm with such a "religious test".
Feinstein is disgusting trash that needs to die already, but shes completely right saying that. If the proposed judge were Muslim though....
 
Amy Coney Barrett is the odds-on favorite to be Trump's pick because...

*45 Years Old.
*Strict Catholic
*Conservative Record
*Liberals already dispise her.
She's my odds on favorite to get the nod. Second in line is Amul Thapar.
 
Seeking a successor to Justice Kennedy’s complex legacy
By Douglas W. Kmiec, opinion contributor — 07/01/18

kennedyanthony_06202018getty.jpg

This being an election year, Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement came as a surprise. Was the timing simply observance of the unstated rule that a justice tries to resign when his political party is incumbent, or did it represent — like the reputation of Justice Kennedy himself — that the electoral question could go either way?

The Supreme Court’s 2017-2018 term involved everything from whether a baker with religious objection could be required to cater same-sex weddings, to the legitimacy of presidential limits on migratory and refugee travel, to the collectability of so-called agency fees from nonmembers of public-employee unions. As disparate as these may seem, each case asked the court to resolve the tension between individual liberty and governmental power. Justice Kennedy was in the majority in each.

As Kennedy wrote at the time of his confirmation, “one can conclude that certain essential, or fundamental, rights should exist in any just society. It does not follow that each of those essential rights is one that we as judges can enforce under the written Constitution. The Due Process Clause is not a guarantee of every right that should inhere in an ideal system.”

When the courtly southern gentleman, Lewis Powell, resigned from the court in 1987, President Ronald Reagan did not immediately turn to Kennedy to fill the vacancy. Reagan’s first choice was Robert Bork, with whom Kennedy shared much by way of conservative ideology but with a crucial difference. Bork, by nature, exuded an almost categorical — some would say arrogant — rejection of any judicial role in the articulation and defense of un-enumerated or implied rights. Kennedy left open the possibility of judicial intervention, suggesting a zone of liberty, a zone of protection, where the individual can tell the government “beyond this line you may not go.”

This may seem a subtle difference, but it was over that boundary that Bork was rejected and Kennedy confirmed, 97 to 0.

Over his tenure, Kennedy favored the conservative outcome well over 90 percent of the time. On the Rehnquist Court in the 1980s and ’90s, he often shared the midpoint with Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. The hot topics of those days implicated issues of race, religion and abortion. Kennedy would be more reluctant than O’Connor to extend the use of race beyond provable past discrimination, was more accommodating than O’Connor to public interaction with faith-based organizations, and with O’Connor (and Justice David Souter) reconstructed, but did not overrule, the abortion right found in Roe v. Wade.

O’Connor tended toward the pragmatic or fact-specific while Kennedy repeatedly stressed an overarching limit on governmental power: Yes, the defense of human rights can be left to the political process but not where that process is a manifestation of hostility.

Thus, Kennedy’s recent concurrence upholding President Trump’s travel ban reasoned that “governmental action may be subject to judicial review to determine whether or not it is ‘inexplicable by anything but animus.’” State legislation that denied civil rights protection on the basis of sexual orientation had no rational basis, said Kennedy, and it would be a short distance from that to his conclusion that the Constitution precludes limiting marriage to a man and a woman.

The Supreme Court with a Kennedy successor will now need to more clearly identify the due process and equal protection nature of his rulings.

In matters of race, Justice Kennedy was not prepared to embrace Chief Justice Roberts’ notion that, to get beyond the troubling use of race, one must stop using it in decision-making. Instead, while rejecting the generalized reliance upon race to bring diversity to the law school at Michigan, Kennedy for a court majority allowed the University of Texas to seemingly satisfy constitutional concerns by promising, vaguely, not to rely upon race indefinitely and consciously monitoring admission practices to ensure that race remained a modest, individualized consideration.

Reagan and Bush supporters indulged the idea that an appointment or two on the Supreme Court would lead to the overruling of Roe; Justice Kennedy would disappoint on that prospect. Waxing philosophic, he posited that moral reality was subject to self-definition and, thus, abortion was different than the taking of other human life. Nevertheless, he moderated the impact of Roe by joining with Justices O’Connor and Souter to put abortion off-limits unless such limitations created an “undue burden.” He persuaded his colleagues to sustain limitations on a particularly gruesome form of abortion and, in his final week, concurred in the invalidation of a California statute mandating that entities not offering abortion be coerced to inform patients of the availability of abortion elsewhere.

Who might succeed him? By constitutional design, impartial judges are chosen from among political partisans. Given today’s stark political divisions, he almost certainly understood that his retirement would subject the Supreme Court to what passes for discourse in a midterm election.

At a minimum, Democratic partisans are likely to closely scrutinize the Federalist Society list on which President Trump found Neil Gorsuch; are the remaining listed candidates in the moderate, Kennedy mold? Moreover, it will not be lost on Democrats that whoever is appointed by President Trump may well rule on the president himself, given the special counsel investigation.

Names already are circulating. Judge Jeffrey Sutton of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, Judge Diane Sykes of the Seventh Circuit, and former judge and constitutional religion-clause expert Michael McConnell received shortlist attention in the past and are likely to again. Amy Coney Barrett, new to the Seventh Circuit, presents a Souter-like opportunity to appoint someone with a short paper trail; Margaret Ryan of the armed services’ Court of Appeals provides the historic opportunity to nominate the first female Marine.

The discussion will be intense, as it should be. As Justice Kennedy wrote in one of his last concurrences, “history ... shows how relentless authoritarian regimes are in their attempts to stifle free speech ... Freedom of speech secures freedom of thought and belief.”

And lest the point be obscure, Justice Kennedy expressly conditioned his acceptance of the facial validity of the travel ban with these words: “It is an urgent necessity that officials adhere to these constitutional guarantees and mandates in all their actions, even in the sphere of foreign affairs. An anxious world must know that our government remains committed always to the liberties the Constitution seeks to preserve and protect, so that freedom extends outward, and lasts.”

 
President Trump Interviews Four Supreme Court Candidates
By Michael D. Shear | July 2, 2018​

03dc-scotus-superJumbo.jpg

WASHINGTON — President Trump said he spoke Monday morning with four candidates to replace Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who is retiring, as the White House raced to meet the president’s deadline to announce a Supreme Court nominee in one week.

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump said he likely would meet with two or three other candidates before making his decision. The president has said he plans to announce his choice next Monday, kicking off a sprint to get the nominee confirmed by the fall.

“I had a very, very interesting morning,” Mr. Trump said as he met with Mark Rutte, the prime minister of the Netherlands.

White House officials declined to say which potential judicial nominees Mr. Trump talked with Monday morning, but the short list of candidates is believed to include six federal appeals court judges: Thomas M. Hardiman, William H. Pryor Jr., Amul R. Thapar, Brett M. Kavanaugh, Joan L. Larsen and Amy Coney Barrett.

Mr. Trump said Monday that all of the people he has talked to about the job are ”outstanding people,” but he gave no hint about who he might choose.

In the meantime, White House officials said Mr. Trump will temporarily reorganize his White House staff to focus on confirming a new justice by the time the court’s new term opens in October.

Raj Shah, the deputy press secretary, will take a leave from his responsibilities in the press office to focus exclusively on coordinating the president’s message on behalf of the pick, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, said Monday morning.

Donald F. McGahn II, the White House counsel, will lead the overall process, Ms. Sanders said, but he will be aided by a team of lawyers in the counsel’s office and another at the Department of Justice, which will help in vetting the candidates and preparing the nominee for hearings.

The job of working with conservative organizations outside the White House will fall to Justin Clark, the director of the Office of Public Liaison, Ms. Sanders said.

“Teams of attorneys from the White House Counsel’s Office and Department of Justice are working to ensure the president has all the information he needs to choose his nominee,” Ms. Sanders said in a statement. “The Department of Justice is fully engaged to support the nomination and confirmation efforts.”

The temporary reorganization is a reflection of the seriousness with which the White House takes the task of confirming the president’s second Supreme Court justice. While Republicans control the Senate, they have only a one-vote margin if they want to succeed in confirming the president’s choice.

Others in the White House, including Marc Short, the director of legislative affairs, and John F. Kelly, the chief of staff, will also be involved in the process, she said.

Ms. Sanders said Mr. Trump did not interview any Supreme Court candidates over the weekend, and she declined to say whether the president would conduct other interviews this week, ahead of his self-imposed deadline.
 
Last edited:
Liberal groups prep grass-roots campaign against Trump’s SCOTUS pick
By ELANA SCHOR | 07/03/2018

90

Grass-roots groups on the left are planning a massive mobilization next week against President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee — pressing senators to oppose the pick as soon as it’s announced.

The campaign promises to replicate some of the headline-grabbing civil demonstration tactics that helped defeat the GOP’s Obamacare repeal effort last year, sending protesters to in-state Senate offices starting on Monday after Trump taps his nominee for the high court. Its focus is outside Washington, part of an effort to ramp up local media and public attention on swing-vote senators in the Supreme Court fight.

“Senators need to immediately feel the pressure to protect our rights and oppose Trump’s extreme nominee,” liberal groups state on their #SaveSCOTUS website, which was launched on Tuesday.

Organizations behind the push include Indivisible, MoveOn, Demand Justice, NARAL Pro-Choice America, People For the American Way, Center for American Progress Action, Progressive Change Campaign Committee, Protect Our Care and others.

The activists’ efforts will center on highlighting the record of Trump’s nominee on Roe v. Wade and ongoing legal challenges to Obamacare, a strategy emphasizing abortion rights and health care that Senate Democratic leaders are also adopting in their push to derail the confirmation.

Democratic leaders are urging their base to train their fire on the GOP, pressuring swing-vote Republicans such as Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska to oppose any high court nominee culled from Trump’s list of potential nominees blessed by conservatives.

Progressive groups, however, are casting a wide net with their advocacy, and are planning to target red-state Democratic senators as well.

“We have a 50-state strategy,” said Planned Parenthood national organizing director Kelley Robinson, whose group tallied more than 150 events focused on the Supreme Court held during this week’s congressional recess.

And the left isn’t limiting its firepower to next week’s in-state mobilization campaign.

Demand Justice is aiming to spend $5 million on its own TV, digital, radio and mobilization efforts against Trump’s Supreme Court pick, focusing on Collins’ and Murkowski’s home states as well as Indiana, North Dakota and West Virginia, states where moderate Democratic senators voted last year to confirm Trump-tapped Justice Neil Gorsuch.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/07/03/trump-justice-liberal-activists-693561
 
Back
Top