For several years now we have all grown accustomed to the fact that President Trump likes to go to rallies of his supporters where they relentlessly chant the subject head of this post. It has always referred to his opponent in the presidential election of 2016, the person who got about 3 million more votes than he did, even as he managed to win in the determining electoral college. While I recognize that Hillary Clinton has many flaws, she has been investigated more times than I can count for many alleged offenses, some of which I suspect she is guilty of, even as some of them were pretty minor (see financial shenanigans back in Arkansas). She also was subjected to many Congressional investigations by several committees for many alleged offenses, including her notorious getting emails in her home like her three predecessors did, although none of them were ever so investigated. She even had 8, really 8, investigations of her role in the Benghazi fiasco, these costing taxpayers many millions of dollars. The final one involved her sitting for 11 hours straight while a GOP led committee interrogated her, ending up with them looking like a bunch of exhausted foolish idiots while she looked cool as a cucumber. The final bottom line is that none of those investigations led to even an indictment for anything.
A peculiar sideshow on this is that among the more bizarre investigations of her, costing millions of US taxpayer dollars, was that in 1998 by the Starr group of the chance that she had been responsible for the death of Vincent Foster, who committed suicide on the GW Parkway. The person advocating this investigation of a conspiracy theoty and engaging in it, only to find a big fat nothing, was none other than Brett Kavanaugh, apparently about to be confirmed to be the next lifetime member of the US Supreme Court.
So. What can be done to protect Dr. Ford? What is the mechanism?
Believing her is unlikely to be enough. How do we gather together and honor the sacrifices that she has, and will probably have to continue, making?
Would voting in November be an appropriate indication of support?
If more is needed, what is the mechanism?
He is a crook. Lock him up.
The deplorables shouting to jail Clinton [some of them] are smart enough to remember training they received as mid level federal employees. The training was designed to keep us out of jail.
The e-mail “problem” was brushed aside by an attorney general following democrat party orders.
The federal records act is statute, it is meant to assure the republic is safeguarded by giving citizens and officials access to the machinations of crooks.
E-mails are included!
In my DoD experience I received annual training designed to keep me out of jail!
It is obvious Hillary Clinton was too smart for Federal Records Act compliance same as she was too smart to safeguard sensitive national security information.
In what may turn out to be poetic justice, Justice Kavanaugh may find himself, going forward, investigated as continually, thoroughly, and annoyingly as the investigations of Hillary Clinton to which he happily contributed.
JackD,
I think you are right about the future, though I do not know what good it will do to discover that we have another mole person on the Supreme Court. As far as Collins is concerned, she has always been a mole person ever since she helped to stop debate on the ARRA and received the wrath of the GOP leaders. Spare me her vote on trump’s ACA attacks, she could have voted to end debate on the ACA attacks, but would not follow Snowe and Spector into the wilderness.
“Let’s just say that the Maine delegation in the United States Senate is not unified on the subject of Brett Kavanaugh.
The FBI report that I reviewed today does not confirm or contradict Judge Kavanaugh’s statements, nor does it undermine the credible testimony of Dr. Ford. For me, my decision is based on Judge Kavanaugh’s record, which indicates an overly rigid judicial philosophy that would threaten protections for healthcare, personal liberty and a women’s right to choose, the environment, and campaign finance laws; it is based on his refusal to recuse himself from any cases that may come before the court involving presidential power as it applies to the President who nominated him for the seat; it is based on his partisan behavior during last week’s hearing, which does not match the temperament and impartiality needed to serve on our nation’s highest court; and it is based on the voices of Maine women who in recent weeks have shared with me their deep concern about this nomination. Based upon what I’ve seen, read, and witnessed, I remain a no vote on his confirmation.
Collins’s speech is going to go down as a landmark in the annals of congressional smarm. It was too long. It was badly delivered. It made little or no coherent sense. Beyond the aesthetic, it was a suicide note delivered on behalf of her entire political identity.
This was perhaps my favorite passage—and by “favorite,” I mean, “completely detached from any possible empirical reality on any plane of existence in this particular universe.”
My fervent hope is that Brett Kavanaugh will work to lessen the divisions in the Supreme Court so that we have far fewer 5-4 decisions.
My fervent hope is that I will awaken tomorrow with six pounds of gold in each of my shoes, but I’m not counting on leprechauns…..
this is a guy who by temperament alone doesn’t deserve the promotion he now apparently will get, and that even if you ignore the privilege-fueled tantrum he directed at the Senate Judiciary Committee, this is a guy whose judicial philosophy was not nurtured in academia or in the actual practice of the law, but in the rage-furnaces of modern conservative Mordor, and that these, taken in tandem, make him somebody who shouldn’t be allowed within five blocks of the Supreme Court.
Moreover, and this is just what we all need, no matter whether he’s confirmed or not, the stories about him are going to keep piling up, which in turn will make the FBI’s perfunctory seven-day “investigation” look ever more like at best inadequate, and at worst, a deliberate cover-up.”
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a23626503/susan-collins-brett-kavanaugh-speech/
EMichael,
I think thi is something his GOP supporters are not factoring in. They think this is like Clarence Thomas, a different era with him accused of much less serious matters. They got him on there and everybody pretty much let it go, even as he almost never says anything on the court.
In this case there are reportedly as many as 40 people who offered to testify to the FBI who did not, with most of these not having had their stories in the press. All of this is going to be dribbling out for some time to come. Kavanaugh’s reputation is going to go downhill, not up, like many in the GOP seem to delusionally think.
Trump could have avoided this by withdrawing his nomination, but we know he espcially likes BK because he thinks presidents should not be interrogated So now we have a deeply flawed member of the SCOTUS, much worse than Thomas.
Barkley,
We do not disagree much, but I believe that Kavanaugh’s reputation, whatever comes out of any further investigation, means absolutely nothing. He is not going to get impeached. Just like Trump. Cannot happen.
That the GOP was willing to go through this whole thing in order to put a Republican operative on the Supreme Court like this cretin shows clearly how united they are. Especially when you consider there were another 20 somethings Federalist Society picks that would vote the same way as Kavanaugh.
Let’s face facts, the progressive cause in the US has reached the point where there is nothing they can do outside of a couple of states. Even then, any kind of big changes in those states will be brought down.
Somehow liberals do not get this. I see columns and interviews that state, “Our only hope is that Roberts can be a swing vote and stop this carnage.” Not going to happen. Roberts (spare me the ACA vote) is not a swing voter.
I remember writing in here during the neverending 2016 Dem primary (still ongoing) that such actions would result in two Scalias on the Supreme Court. We’ve got them. And that is the only reason I am happy to be a senior citizen. I will not be around to see the worst that is yet to come.