We Are Spartacus

More Kavanaugh: Yesterday Democrats ramped up the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearing drama, making it clear that though they might not be able to derail his confirmation altogether, they aren’t going down without a fight.  NJ Senator Cory Booker went for an “I am Spartacus” moment by releasing some documents that had been made available to members of the Judiciary Committee but that weren’t supposed to be shared with the public or even with other members of the Senate.  He announced that he knew he was violating the rules but that he didn’t care and was willing to face the consequences.  Republican Senator Cornyn took his bait, and threatened to have him expelled from the Senate, the penalty for sharing confidential information.  Other Democratic senators on the committee including Hawaii’s Mazie Hirono and Connecticut’s Richard Blumenthal jumped to Booker’ defense and said that if he was going, they’d accompany him out the door.  The documents in question included an email where Kavanaugh referred to a Department of Transportation affirmative active practice as a “naked racial set aside,” one that he believed conservative members of the court would find unconstitutional.  That didn’t just upset Booker but it also offended Hirono, since native Hawaiians are beneficiaries of affirmative action programs.  In addition to getting that note into the public domain, Booker was also trying to appeal to Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski, who sees herself as an advocate for Alaska’s native American population. Booker’s willingness to put himself on the chopping block got knocked down later in the day after  Bill Burke, the outside lawyer assigned to clear Kavanaugh’s papers claimed that, just hours before possibly without Booker’s knowledge, he had approved the release of the documents that caused the uproar. It’s worth noting that Burke’s role in the Kavanaugh confirmation process is another one of those things that taints the hearings as he is hardly an unbiased arbiter, he is also the lawyer representing White House Counsel McGahn, former Chief of Staff Priebus and Steve Bannon in the Mueller investigation.  Another one of Kavanaugh’s emails, this one concerning Roe v Wade also made it into the hearing yesterday.  In that note Kavanaugh proposed editing a draft letter, to be signed by a number of anti-abortion women back when George W Bush was president, to delete a line that said “it is widely accepted by legal scholars across the board that Roe v Wade and its progeny are the settled law of the land” because he wasn’t “sure that all legal scholars refer to Roe as the settled law of the land at the Supreme Court level since the Court can always overrule its precedent, and three current Justices (now four) on the Court would do so.” That edit appeared to conflict with Kavanaugh’s testimony and the assertions that he has made to reassure the very gullible pro-choice Republican Senators, Murkowski and Collins, that he views Roe as a super precedent that he would never vote to overturn even though everyone except for Collins and Murkowski knows that he was selected by Trump because of expectations that he would.  His later reference to birth control as “abortion inducing drugs” was even more disturbing, who but the most ardent anti-abortion advocates ever use that term?  Sadly, later in the day Collins said that she hadn’t heard anything that would change her view about Kavanaugh’s suitability for the court and Murkowski said that she’d been too busy on other things to pay much attention to the day’s events.  Collins is however facing brushback at home, pro-choice groups have already started to raise funds for any pro-choice candidate who decides to run against her in her next election. Senator Kamala Harris followed up on the questioning she initiated on Wednesday night, again asking Kavanaugh if he’d ever spoken with a member of Trump lawyer Marc Kasowitz’s law firm about the Mueller investigation.  This time Kavanaugh had a more prepared response, it’s still unclear if Harris knows something more about any improper discussion he may have had.   In other testimony Kavanaugh left the distinct impression that he had no problem with homemade 3-D guns or almost any other guns for that matter and that he kind of likes the idea of an all powerful president, one that can only be punished for his crimes through impeachment or after his term ends.   

Anonymous:  Trump is clearly steaming about this week’s anonymous NY Times Op-Ed so much so that last night during a Montana campaign rally he failed to get the word anonymous out of his mouth despite at least two very awkward garbled attempts.  In an effort to distance themselves from the Op-Ed a number of senior aides, cabinet members and intelligence heads released statements denying that they were its author, some even claimed that nothing the piece was at all true, while others tried to preserve their credibility by just uttering a quick “no” and moving on.  At last count the list of deniers included Pence, Pompeo, Coats, Nielsen, Mattis, Mnuchin, Perry, Haley, Sanders, Carson, Azar, Acosta, and DeVos, and Haspel. By now a few more names have probably been added to that list.  Though the list is impressive, its totally worthless because as shown by the Watergate experience where Mark Felt publicly denied for years that he was Deep Throat even though he was, the Op-Ed writer would probably have no trouble public denying his or her authorship until he or she decides to come forward or is convincingly outed.  Trump who is now convinced more than ever that the only people he can trust are family members, is considering ways to trap the writer.  Senator Rand Paul, that “great” libertarian, suggested that Trump demand that everyone in his orbit take a polygraph test which is pretty funny since no one in the administration, especially the commander in chief could ever pass any such test.  As to members of Congress, most Republicans continue to shrug off the contents of the Op-Ed because who cares if the country is being run by an crazy man anyway. One outlier is Senator Ben Sasse, one of the few Trump critics who isn’t leaving Washington in January, who said that “It’s just so similar to what so many of us hear from senior people around the White House, three times a week.”  Democrats have been far less sanguine than their Republican colleagues, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, never one to pull any punches, called for the cabinet to invoke the 25^th Amendment even though we all know that is not going to happen anytime soon, if ever. As to others in the administration, Axios reports that at least a dozen current officials loved the Op-Ed so much so that they wish they had written it.   While in Montana, in addition to attacking the failing NY Times, and bragging about his astounding accomplishments, the ones that place him right next to Abraham Lincoln as the greatest president ever or so he says, Trump also managed to mention the plug that he received from his good friend North Korean strongman Kim Jung Un who expressed his “unwavering faith” in the great and powerful Donald J Trump.  Trump is all in on Kims right now.  Kim Kardashian has been back to the White House for meetings with Ivanka and Jared, the only two advisors that Trump still trusts unequivocally, apparently she is pushing for the pardon of another one of her pet inmates and is now considered a valued expert on all things related to prison reform, a key Jared project.  

Child Separation:  Somewhere around 600 children are still separated from their parents and now the Trump administration has announced plans to circumvent the Flores Settlement Agreement that has been in effect since 1997.  That agreement limits the amount of time that young children can be held in INS detention facilities to thirty days. The government argues that to meet the terms of the Flores agreement they were “forced” to separate kids from their parents so the Trump solution isn’t to terminate the “zero tolerance” program that led to the child separation problem in the first place or to release the families with or without ankle monitors but instead it’s to keep the families with young children together in detention facilities for indefinite periods of time.  This is just another one of those Trump policies that will end up in the courts, possibly making up to the Supreme Court providing just another reason to be concerned about Brett Kavanaugh’s likely confirmation.