FOCUS | "Bob Is Not Afraid of Anything": Inside the Mueller-Giuliani Chess Match
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=44647"><span class="small">Abigail Tracy, Vanity Fair</span></a>
Monday, 10 September 2018 12:23
Tracy writes: "Giuliani appears to be betting that Mueller won’t want to engage in a months- or years-long legal battle over whether a sitting president can be subpoenaed."
Former FBI Director Robert Mueller. (photo: Getty Images)
"Bob Is Not Afraid of Anything": Inside the Mueller-Giuliani Chess Match
By Abigail Tracy, Vanity Fair
10 September 18
Mueller’s former colleagues say he is always two steps ahead—and will see his job through to the bitter end.
ours after Rudy Giulianideclared Thursday that questions related to obstruction of justice would be a “no go” if Donald Trump were to sit for an interview with Robert Mueller, the president’s lawyer backpedaled. “We’re not closing it off 100 percent,” he told Politico, echoing a similar statement to NBC News. For Giuliani, the flip-flop was typical. Since he joined Trump’s legal team earlier this year, the longtime ally of the president has repeatedly moved the goalposts for an interview before hurriedly recalibrating. As is often the case with Giuliani, it was unclear whether his reversal was part of a grand strategy or another example of the septuagenarian putting his foot in his mouth.
Ultimately, it may not matter. As negotiations between the Trump and Mueller camps drag on, the perceived odds of the encounter actually happening have diminished. “The whole thing has been a charade, and Giuliani is playing for what he ultimately believes may be an impeachment hearing. He is trying to win the hearts and minds of the people. . . . all of this negotiating is pure nonsense,” Glenn Kirschner, a former homicide prosecutor, told me, dismissing the notion that Giuliani and the rest of Trump’s legal team will ever allow the president to go toe-to-toe with Mueller. “I joke that if you ask the president 10 questions, he probably picks up nine false-statement charges after the first question, which is state your name. I am assuming that he can get that one right, but we have all seen the man—he is a showman, and not a particularly good showman.”
Of course, Mueller’s position could also be political theater. Giuliani appears to be betting that Mueller won’t want to engage in a months- or years-long legal battle over whether a sitting president can be subpoenaed. But it is just as likely that Mueller figured an interview was always a long shot, and has been playing along, in part, to establish that their negotiations were always in good faith. “Mueller wants to at least give the appearance that he is giving the president every opportunity to have his side heard,” explained Kirschner, who reported to Mueller as a prosecutor in the late 1990s. “Because if he doesn’t do that, then when the report is issued or the indictment is handed down, what are the president’s lawyers going to say? They are going to say, this didn’t take his side into account.”
As Mueller’s investigation enters its final stretch, speculation surrounding the timing of the special counsel’s next move has taken on the complexity of the ancient Chinese board game Go. Giuliani’s most recent prevarication regarding an interview with Mueller came on the eve of the 60-day mark before midterms—an arbitrary milestone set by Giuliani, in various interviews, as the point after which any major action by Mueller’s office might be seen to be interfering in the midterm elections. Perhaps, some sources have suggested, Giuliani’s remarks on Thursday could be seen as an attempt to get in a last word before things go dark.
People who know Mueller believe he will abide by the rules. “Bob Mueller has a very, very good instinct for politics and the dangers of Washington, D.C., that’s what made him a very good F.B.I. director,” said Robert Grant, a top former F.B.I. agent and a longtime colleague and friend of the special counsel. “I think his greatest strength was his ability to navigate shark-infested waters very well. He is in tune with both Republicans and Democrats,” Grant continued. “I think going into the election, he is going to be very mindful of the potential impact of anything he does on the midterm elections.”
Kirschner concurred. “The one thing I am confident of is that he is going to make sure that he doesn’t do anything on the timing front that would interfere with the midterm elections. . . . I suspect that we are not going to see anything dramatic between now and the midterms,” he told me. But after a pause, he added, “Who knows? These are unprecedented times and circumstances.” The former homicide prosecutor said that while it wouldn’t surprise him if Mueller went radio silent for the next 60 days, he could also see his former boss operating on the fringes of the investigation, possibly bringing indictments against “satellite players” in the probe such as longtime Trump confident and G.O.P. operative Roger Stone and his associates. “I don’t think those kinds of indictments would necessarily impact or interfere with the midterms,” he posited.
Giuliani’s stalling tactics notwithstanding, reality could come crashing down on Trumpworld. “Bob Mueller is notoriously impatient,” noted Grant. “My guess is that he is pressing his lawyers as hard as he can without interfering with the strategy or the tactics of the investigation.” After the midterm elections, many observers expect the Justice Department to bring indictments that implicate more significant targets, potentially including Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. and his son-in-law and top adviser, Jared Kushner, for their roles in a Trump Tower meeting with Russian agents peddling dirt on Hillary Clinton. “I have a feeling one way or another that we are going to see a large conspiracy indictment. Who that might include, that is hard to say,” Kirschner said. (Stone, Trump Jr., and Kushner have all denied any wrongdoing.)
The outcome of the midterms will likely be fateful for Trump. If Democrats retake the House, they are expected to open multiple investigations into the president, his businesses, and his campaign, many of which have been thwarted by the current Republican majority. They are also almost certain to initiate impeachment proceedings once Mueller’s report is concluded.
The special counsel, for his part, has given no indication that he is shying away from the political battle to come. “Bob is not afraid of anything for god’s sakes, given what he went through in Vietnam,” said Kirschner. Indeed, everyone I have spoken with who knows Mueller has expressed an unwavering trust that the former F.B.I. director will see his job through to the bitter end. “He is the real deal. He will get to the bottom of this and no one is going to stop him,” said Eugene Casey, the former chief of the F.B.I.’s Eurasian Organized Crime Unit. “I just hope he doesn’t get fired and is able to complete his investigation.”
Krugman writes: "At a fundamental level, the attempt to jam Brett Kavanaugh onto the Supreme Court closely resembles the way Republicans passed a tax cut last year. Once again we see a rushed, nakedly partisan process, with G.O.P. leaders withholding much of the information that's supposed to go into congressional deliberations."
Economist Paul Krugman. (photo: Getty Images)
Kavanaugh Will Kill the Constitution
By Paul Krugman, The New York Times
10 September 18
The legitimacy of the Supreme Court is on the line.
t a fundamental level, the attempt to jam Brett Kavanaugh onto the Supreme Court closely resembles the way Republicans passed a tax cut last year. Once again we see a rushed, nakedly partisan process, with G.O.P. leaders withholding much of the information that’s supposed to go into congressional deliberations. Once again the outcome is all too likely to rest on pure tribalism: Unless some Republicans develop a very late case of conscience, they will vote along party lines with the full knowledge that they’re abdicating their constitutional duty to provide advice and consent.
True, Kavanaugh is at least getting a hearing, which the tax bill never did. But he’s bobbing and weaving his way through, refusing to answer even straightforward questions, displaying an evasiveness utterly at odds with the probity we used to expect of Supreme Court justices.
No, the real difference from the tax bill story is that last year we were talking only about a couple of trillion dollars. This year we’re talking about the future of the Republic. For a Kavanaugh confirmation will set us up for multiple constitutional crises.
The Deceptive Contrast Between Trump and Kavanaugh
Sunday, 09 September 2018 13:58
Toobin writes: "Donald Trump and Brett Kavanaugh looked and sounded very different, but those appearances deceived. Both men were pulling the country in the same direction, toward more inequality, more pollution, and, to put the matter bluntly, women once more dying from botched abortions."
Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee for his Supreme Court nomination hearing. (photo: Doug Mills/NYT)
The Deceptive Contrast Between Trump and Kavanaugh
By Jeffrey Toobin, The New Yorker
09 September 18
Last week, the impetuous President and the thoughtful Supreme Court nominee seemed very different, but they share an agenda for the country.
he past week in Washington offered what appeared to be a startling contrast: on the one hand, tales of a President unhinged, issuing garbled, contradictory commands to appalled aides who were conspiring against him; on the other, a thoughtful Supreme Court nominee, calmly parrying the futile assaults of a frustrated senatorial minority. Donald Trump and Brett Kavanaugh looked and sounded very different, but those appearances deceived. Both men were pulling the country in the same direction, toward more inequality, more pollution, and, to put the matter bluntly, women once more dying from botched abortions.
Regarding the President, the week featured twin elaborations of the obvious—that he is dangerously unfit for office. Bob Woodward’s new book, “Fear,” which began circulating on Tuesday, portrays Trump as ill-informed, incurious, impetuous, and mendacious. In one already oft-quoted passage, Woodward asserts that John Kelly, the White House chief of staff, said of Trump, “He’s an idiot. It’s pointless to try to convince him of anything. He’s gone off the rails. We’re in crazytown.” (In one of many artfully crafted denials from Trump insiders that wafted through Washington last week, Kelly said he did not call the President an “idiot.”)
Then, on Wednesday, the Times published an Op-Ed by a “senior official in the Trump administration,” who reported that he or she is part of a secret group of insiders who are trying to protect the government, and the country, from Trump’s various pathologies. The group, the official wrote, was acting to “preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses until he is out of office,” adding, “The root of the problem is the president’s amorality.” What made the two indictments of the President so striking was that they reaffirmed each other and that their harsh judgments came not from Trump’s political enemies but from his allies—from the denizens of crazytown itself.
Kavanaugh’s pleasant manner, meanwhile, seemed well suited to the content-free banalities that are the customary form of expression for Supreme Court confirmation proceedings. The Administration officials who escort nominees through the process do their best to make sure that the hearings withhold, rather than disclose, information. Still, nominees can’t help but reveal at least something of themselves. Consider Kavanaugh’s litany of self-praise in his opening statement. He has ruled, he said, “sometimes for workers and sometimes for businesses, sometimes for environmentalists and sometimes for coal miners.”
Coal miners? It wasn’t soot-stained laborers who faced off against environmentalists during Kavanaugh’s twelve years on the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit but coal companies, and they and other polluters have been this judge’s favored litigants. The reason for this disposition came out in a seemingly innocuous colloquy between the Judge and Senator Orrin Hatch, of Utah, about “Chevron deference.” In the 1984 case of Chevron U.S.A. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, the Supreme Court found that judges should defer to Administration agencies, such as the Environmental Protection Agency, in how to interpret federal law on issues like air-quality standards.
Kavanaugh has been a key figure in the attacks on Chevron, and thus very much appreciated by polluting industries and the Chamber of Commerce, which want to insulate themselves from regulatory oversight. But you’d never know any of this from his opaque answer to Hatch. “I’ve heard it said I’m a skeptic of regulation. I’m not a skeptic of regulation,” Kavanaugh said, with wounded innocence. “I’m a skeptic of illegal regulation, of regulation outside the bounds of what the laws passed by Congress have said.” That is nonsense. Deprived of the right to interpret what the laws mean, administrative agencies can do very little, even if they are inclined to act. Of course, Trump’s agencies have been doing industries’ bidding from the other end of the process, by not regulating them in the first place, or by weakening the rules put in place by previous Administrations.
On abortion, still the most contentious issue before the Court, Kavanaugh had the same problem that all recent Republican appointees have had: conservatives want to overturn Roe v. Wade but the public, overwhelmingly, does not. So he dissembled, describing the case as “settled law.” That is a meaningless phrase: all Supreme Court decisions are “settled” until a majority of Justices decide to unsettle them, which is what the candidate Trump promised that his Court nominees would do, particularly on Roe. In 2003, when Kavanaugh was a lawyer in the George W. Bush White House, he sent an e-mail, revealed during the hearings, in which he commented on a draft of a piece that stated, in effect, that scholars believed that Roe would endure. Kavanaugh wrote, “I am not sure that all legal scholars refer to Roe as the settled law of the land at the Supreme Court level since Court can always overrule its precedent, and three current Justices on the Court would do so.” In 2018, with Kavanaugh, that number is likely to be five—a majority.
On one level, it is absurd to have to do this kind of archeological excavation to determine the answer to a simple question: Will Kavanaugh, if confirmed, vote to overturn Roe? It would be a lot easier just to ask him. But the antediluvian customs of confirmation hearings allow nominees to duck such queries, so the real research on nominees now goes on during the selection process, rather than the confirmation hearings. And we know that this President outsourced the selection of his pool of potential nominees to a pair of right-wing outfits, the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation. Neil Gorsuch, who came from that same pool, now shares the far-right ideological niche on the Court with Clarence Thomas.
There is, by now, a pattern to the Trump Presidency. As Woodward’s sources and the Op-Ed “official” confirm, the President staggers from one self-generated crisis to the next, shedding or collecting allies as the mood strikes him. But, from the time of the campaign, Trump has recognized that he will have the freedom to behave in this manner only if he keeps his promises on what his base really wants—a Supreme Court that indulges corporations and rejects abortion rights, among other priorities. Last week only presented in distilled form what has been on sprawling display since January, 2017. Trump and his enablers have decided that they can live with the status quo; the question for the rest of us is whether we can.
Serena Williams and the Game That Can't Be Won (Yet): What Rage Costs a Woman.
Sunday, 09 September 2018 13:47
Traister writes: "I don't care much about the rules of tennis that Serena Williams was accused of violating at Saturday night's U.S. Open final. Those rules were written for a game and for players who were not supposed to look or express themselves or play the game as beautifully and passionately as either Serena Williams or the young woman who eventually beat her, twenty-year-old Naomi Osaka, do."
Serena Williams and the Game That Can't Be Won (Yet): What Rage Costs a Woman.
By Rebecca Traister, New York Magazine
09 September 18
don’t care much about the rules of tennis that Serena Williams was accused of violating at Saturday night’s U.S. Open final. Those rules were written for a game and for players who were not supposed to look or express themselves or play the game as beautifully and passionately as either Serena Williams or the young woman who eventually beat her, 20-year-old Naomi Osaka, do. They are rules written for a sport that, until Williams and her sister came along, was dominated by white players, a sport in which white men have violated those rules in frequently spectacular fashion and rarely faced the kind of repercussions that Williams — and Osaka — did on Saturday night.
Chair umpire Carlos Ramos first issued Williams a warning for purportedly having gotten “coaching,” via a hand signal from her coach Patrick Mouratoglou in the stands. This was a mystifying call, so common are coaches’ hand gestures to their players, so unlikely was it that Williams had seen the gesture from across the court, or that it would have had any impact on her game. It was a call that felt designed to provoke and diminish perhaps the greatest tennis player of all time, during a year in which she has made a return to the sport after having had a baby, come close to dying after a postpartum hematoma, and lost her No. 1 seed as a result of her absence from the game.
Ramos’s censure of Williams on Saturday night cannot be disentangled from her gender and race any more than the other recent obstacles she’s faced, from the physical toll of pregnancy, to her profession’s status-tax on it, to her higher risk of maternal mortality and postpartum complication. Because in making the coaching call, in the midst of a match she was playing against a newcomer who looked likely to beat her fair and square, the umpire insinuated that Serena was herself not playing fair and square. That made her livid. And one thing black women are never allowed to be without consequence is livid.
Of course she was mad! She was enraged by being called a cheater, furious at the suggestion that her stature, in this sport that has made her feel so unwelcome even as she has dominated and redefined it, has in any way been anything other than earned. And so, breathless with rage, she said, “I don’t cheat to win; I’d rather lose.” Over and over, she repeated, sometimes pointing her finger at him, “You owe me an apology. You owe me an apology.”
It was her anger that wound up costing her materially in the game: After Williams broke her racket in frustration after losing a serve, which without the first coaching violation would have merited a warning, Ramos docked her a point; in response, still furious primarily at the suggestion that she had cheated, she called him a “thief.” For this comparatively mild epithet he penalized her by taking away a full game.
So during a naturally supercharged Grand Slam final between veteran superstar and the young woman trying to unseat her, a male umpire prodded Serena Williams to anger and then punished her for expressing it. In doing so, he took from her not just the point, not just the game, but ultimately the tournament, even if — and this seems likely — she would have lost it anyway. She was punished for showing emotion, for defiance, for being the player she has always been — driven, passionate, proud, and fully human.
Fully human just like Jimmy Connors, whose famous late-career drive to the U.S. Open semifinals in 1991 included him screaming at the chair umpire, “You’re a bum! I’m out here playing my butt off at 39 years old” and later calling him — perplexingly — “an abortion.” Connors’s contemporary, John McEnroe, famously shattered a thousand rackets and uttered a thousand expletives at umpires. His anger was his calling card, a trademark. In 2008, Nicholas Dawidoff wrote in the New York Times about that famous temper, “For a lot of younger people, especially, the McEnroe out there raging and smashing rackets could express all the displeasure at bad things in the world that they were too inhibited to disclose.”
Serena’s rage is also an expression of displeasure at the bad things in the world, her wrath channeling far broader impulses to defy those rules designed and enforced by, yet so rarely forcefully applied to, white men. As she said at the press conference after the game, “I’ve seen other men call other umpires several things, and I’m here fighting for women’s rights and for women’s equality … For me to say ‘thief’ and for him to take a game? … It was a sexist remark. He’s never took a game from a man because they said thief. For me, it blows my mind. But I’m going to continue to fight for women.”
But it’s not simply that those who are angry at the kinds of things Serena Williams is angry about are “too inhibited” to disclose their fury. It’s also that they are told all the time — like when they watch a tennis final — that if they do permit themselves to rage, even if that rage pales in comparison to the rage of their male peers, their white predecessors, that they will face reprimand. Women are made to understand, all the time, how their reasonable expression of vexation might cost them the game. Women’s challenge to male authority, and especially black women’s challenge to authority, is automatically understood as a threat, a form of defiance that must be quashed.
As Sally Jenkins put it about Ramos, writing in the Washington Poston Saturday night, “He couldn’t take it. He wasn’t going to let a woman talk to him that way. A man, sure. Ramos has put up with worse from a man.” Recalling that just last year, Rafael Nadal had told off Ramos without it costing him a match, Jenkins went on, “But he wasn’t going to take it from a woman pointing a finger at him and speaking in a tone of aggression.”
Women have so much to point fingers about, so many reasons to speak in aggressive tones. In her press conference, Williams mentioned Alizé Cornet, who was hit with a code violation at the Open last week for having briefly taken her shirt off, to turn it back to front, on court, something that men do regularly. Williams did not mention how the catsuit she wore to the French Open — which she had described as both “Wakanda inspired” and a tribute to “all the moms out there who had a tough pregnancy and had to come back and try to be fierce,” and which also had medical functionality, since she has been plagued by blot clots since her 2011 pulmonary embolism — had prompted the French Open to alter its dress code, banning any similar dress in future.
The point isn’t about the catsuit or the shirt or the broken racket or even the U.S. Open title. It’s about the ways in which women’s — and especially nonwhite women’s — dress and bodies and behavior and expression and tone are still deemed unruly if they do not conform to the limited view of femininity established by men, especially if that unruliness suggests a direct threat to male authority.
Perhaps the most heartbreaking moment on Saturday night was watching Serena Williams work to clean up the mess. After losing to Osaka — 16 years her junior, Haitian-Japanese, looking traumatized at having beaten her childhood idol to win her first Grand Slam in such a perverted fashion — Williams stood beside her as the stadium erupted in boos. Williams spoke to the crowd, asked them to stop booing. “I just want to tell you guys she played well and this is her first Grand Slam. Let’s not boo anymore. We will get through this. No more booing. Congratulations, Naomi.” Williams was working to ensure that young Osaka was getting what some in tennis have had such a hard time offering her: respect, pure admiration, and the acknowledgment that her remarkable achievement was earned and legitimate. Both women were crying.
This has been the ask of women, and most especially, of nonwhite women, since the beginning of time: Take the diminution and injustice and don’t get mad about it; if you get mad, you will get punished for it, and then you will be expected to fix it, to make sure everyone is comfortable again.
In her press conference, Williams said, her voice again breaking, “I just feel like the fact that I have to go through this is just an example for the next person that has emotions and that wants to express themselves and they want to be a strong woman and they’re going to be allowed to do that because of today. Maybe it didn’t work out for me, but it’s gonna work out for the next person.”
As I listened to Williams say this, so swift to contextualize the events of the night as part of a longer, slower process, extending back into our past and deep into the future, as I heard her situate the policing of her anger not as a miscarriage of justice or even as a bad call in a tennis match, but rather as a lifeline thrown, in her own defeat, to another generation, I thought immediately about something Brittney Cooper, Rutgers professor of women’s and gender studies, wrote in her book Eloquent Rage, her stunning paean to black feminist anger.
“Watching Serena play,” Cooper writes, “is like watching eloquent rage personified. Her shots are clear and expressive. Her wins are exultant. Her victories belong to all of us, even though she’s the one who does all the work … That’s kind of how it feels to be a Black woman. Like our victories belong to everyone, even though we do all the work.”
On Saturday, even when it wasn’t a victory, she was still doing all the work.
FOCUS: The US Must Settle Its Constitutional Crisis Before It Confirms Kavanaugh
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=11993"><span class="small">Jill Filipovic, Guardian UK</span></a>
Sunday, 09 September 2018 12:08
Filipovic writes: "This president is now in a position where he is selecting one of the judges who may eventually judge him - a clear conflict of interest if there ever was one. It's a highly unusual situation, but it is a crisis."
'These are certainly the rules of sleazy New York real estate - you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. These are not supposed to be the rules that govern supreme court appointments and decisions.' (photo: REX/Shutterstock)
The US Must Settle Its Constitutional Crisis Before It Confirms Kavanaugh
By Jill Filipovic, Guardian UK
09 September 18
Donald Trump is now in a position where he is selecting a judge who may eventually judge him – a clear conflict of interest
rump’s US supreme court nominee Brett Kavanaugh is certainly competent at dodging difficult questions. In his confirmation hearing in Congress this week, he was asked for his opinion on Roe v Wade, the supreme court case that legalized abortion nationwide. His answer was that it’s “an important precedent. It has been reaffirmed many times”. But will he reaffirm it? He won’t say – even in light of leaked emails that suggest he doesn’t think Roe is settled law at all, and that the US supreme court could overturn it.
That slipperiness should be enough to reject him as a justice, but there are other reasons, too. The United States is perched on the edge of a constitutional crisis, led as we are by an unstable wannabe authoritarian who is at the center of a web of criminality, and is himself under investigation – and not for a petty matter, but for potentially selling out American democracy to a hostile foreign power.
This president is now in a position where he is selecting one of the judges who may eventually judge him – a clear conflict of interest if there ever was one. It’s a highly unusual situation, but it is a crisis. And it means that Kavanaugh’s confirmation – any confirmation to the supreme court – must be put on hold.
This is the point made in a recent paper by legal scholars Laurence Tribe, Judge Timothy Lewis and Norman Eisen in a paper for the Brookings Institution. They rightly point out that the body that could wind up adjudicating some of the most crucial issues of the Trump investigation is the same one Trump is currently hand-picking a judge for. The president is under criminal investigation. Do we really think that same president should be picking a judge who may ultimately decide, for example, whether the president can pardon himself?
The three men who wrote the Brookings paper “have either been before the Senate for confirmation, worked on supreme court or other confirmations, or both”. And this confirmation process, they say, is a frightening outlier, coming from a White House that has already shown total disregard for political norms and fair processes. “We have never,” they wrote, “seen anything like this hurried and defective process for such an important nomination.”
If the president asked Kavanaugh to recuse himself from any cases involving the current investigation or other alleged Trump (and Trump family) wrongdoing, and Kavanaugh agreed, this would be a different conversation. But we know Trump would never do that, because he explicitly selects toadies and sycophants who he hopes will offer him cover.
That’s why he’s so upset with his attorney general, Jeff Sessions. Sessions’s proper decision to recuse himself from the Russia investigation has enraged Trump, who believes he did Sessions a favor with the appointment, and it’s not being properly returned. These are certainly the rules of sleazy New York real estate – you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. These are not supposed to be the rules that govern supreme court appointments and decisions.
The fact that this appointment process has also been hasty and opaque, with too much information dropped at the last minute and too much still obscured, does not lend it confidence. Supreme court hearings have become increasingly farcical, as ambitious young lawyers who then become judges spend their whole careers side-stepping controversy in order to be a palatable higher court pick. That’s why you get Kavanaugh making simple factual statements in lieu of answering crucial questions.
While Kavanaugh is side-stepping questions on abortion rights and about his other opinions and likely decisions on topics of vital importance to millions of Americans – for example, the power of a president to pardon himself, which has become worryingly relevant – he’s not offering any more transparency about what he’s actually done in his career. As a George W Bush administration staffer, he may have weighed in on some of the country’s most critical legal matters, from torture to executive power. But we don’t know, because more than 100,000 White House documents were withheld as privileged; tens of thousands more were unceremoniously dropped by representatives of the Bush White House the day before his confirmation hearings in a classic document dump.
Compare that to Elena Kagan, who worked for the Bill Clinton administration; none of her White House documents were withheld for privilege (a relatively small number were withheld for personal privacy). According to Senator Patrick Leahy, 99% of Kagan’s documents from her time in the White House were made available to the senate judiciary committee. Only 7% of Kavamaugh’s have been similarly produced. Republicans are gunning to confirm Kavanaugh by 1 October, before the National Archives releases a huge volume of Kavanaugh’s documents, which may not be ready until the end of October. Republicans are pushing forward anyway.
If Kavanaugh and his Republican champions believe he is a qualified justice, then they should act like it and give the Senate proper time to vet him.
Instead, they see that their president is imperiled, and so they’re rushing to consolidate their power even further. At this point, such craven and immoral behavior isn’t surprising, but it remains disgusting, anti-democratic and a slap in the face to the patriotic ideals they claim to uphold.
If you think America’s independent judiciary, our constitutional democracy and our system of checks and balances are models for the world, then act like it by letting the process unfold with transparency and adequate time. Act like it by not letting a man under investigation handpick his own judge. Act like it by putting this irresponsible, wholly self-interested confirmation process on hold.
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ours after Rudy Giuliani 
t a fundamental level, the attempt to jam Brett Kavanaugh onto the Supreme Court closely resembles the way Republicans passed a tax cut last year. Once again we see a rushed, nakedly partisan process, with G.O.P. leaders withholding much of the information that’s supposed to go into congressional deliberations. Once again the outcome is all too likely to rest on pure tribalism: Unless some Republicans develop a very late case of conscience, they will vote along party lines with the full knowledge that they’re abdicating their constitutional duty to provide advice and consent.
he past week in Washington offered what appeared to be a startling contrast: on the one hand, tales of a President unhinged, issuing garbled, contradictory commands to appalled aides who were conspiring against him; on the other, a thoughtful Supreme Court nominee, calmly parrying the futile assaults of a frustrated senatorial minority. Donald Trump and Brett Kavanaugh looked and sounded very different, but those appearances deceived. Both men were pulling the country in the same direction, toward more inequality, more pollution, and, to put the matter bluntly, women once more dying from botched abortions.
don’t care much about the rules of tennis that Serena Williams was accused of violating 
