Having read U.S. Supreme Court decisions now for over 45 years, I have concern about justices who lack any apparent ability to show a shred of empathy for others and who feel that only their views and beliefs are correct and should, therefore, be imposed on the entire nation and its citizenry. The late Antonin Scalia was such a justice. Now, the nation is faced with privileged, white, straight male nominee to the Court who sees Scalia as an icon and who just as frighteningly sees the occupant of the White House as basically above the law while in office. That he was Trump's pick is no coincidence, in my view, especially due to his views on presidential exemption from prosecution and meaningful oversight. Brett Kavanaugh also seems likely to favor the evangelical goal of rolling back LGBT rights and granting special privileges to those I call Christofascists. Given the growing likelihood of Trump's criminality - and possible treason - being more fully exposed, Senate action on Kavanaugh's nomination needs to be delayed. In addition, a more full review of his past actions, including the anti-gay marriage agenda launched by George W. Bush's administration, needs to be allowed. At present, Republicans are opposing a full examination and suggesting there is something to hide from public review. A column in Huffington Post argues why we need to know about Kavanaugh's past actions:
GOP leaders recently decided they wouldn’t request records that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh authored, generated or contributed during his time as White House staff secretary under President George W. Bush. And they’re not budging from this position.Their change in course came after a July 24 meeting between Trump White House counsel Don McGahn and Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, the substance of which isn’t known.
Last Friday, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) criticized his GOP colleagues for the curious and troubling about-face and took them to task in a letter to McGahn. He asked if McGahn had spoken with Kavanaugh about the records, as well as Bush’s personal attorney, Bill Burck, who is advising the former president on the release of his administration’s documents.
Democrats have rightly charged that it’s an appalling conflict to have Burck, who worked with Kavanaugh in the Bush administration, overseeing the release of the records. It’s also enormously problematic that Burck is McGahn’s personal attorney as well and is representing him ― in addition to former Trump advisers Reince Priebus and Steve Bannon ― in special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of the Trump campaign’s possible ties to Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election.
But the issues don’t end there. As Rachel Maddow noted on Twitter, Leahy also asked if McGahn had “reason to believe any of the records relate” to several pertinent issues, including “a proposed constitutional amendment to define marriage as a union between one man and one woman.”
Leahy’s letter calls into question the roles Kavanaugh and Burck played during the Bush administration and, more specifically, what involvement they had in the constitutional ban on same-sex marriage vigorously promoted by Bush-era Republicans ― a ban the Bush White House came to support in its first term.
Marriage equality and the broader fight for LGBTQ rights are continually put before the Supreme Court today, so it’s crucial for the public to know about Kavanaugh’s past ― and appropriate for senators to ask questions about it. After all, there’s no way Kavanaugh and Burck, two key figures in the Bush White House, weren’t at the center of discussions about this controversial amendment.
Kavanaugh, as White House staff secretary during that time, was certainly in the thick of these interactions and discussions. After Bush was re-elected, the president continued to give speeches in support of “a ban on same-sex marriage.” And controversy exploded in 2005 over revelations that the administration had paid right-wing columnists to promote its positions on marriage and the family.
By Trumpian standards, this scandal may seem like nothing, but the national uproar lasted for days. Bush was forced to address the issue, publicly urging his Cabinet secretaries to stop paying what amounted to thousands of dollars to radio host and columnist Armstrong Williams and syndicated columnist Mike McManus.
Also on the payroll: Syndicated columnist Maggie Gallagher, who received an additional $20,000 in a federal contract to write a report titled “Can Government Strengthen Marriage?” for a private group. She even testified before Congress promoting Bush’s policies. (In 2007, Gallagher would go on to co-found and lead the National Organization for Marriage, the driving force behind the movement against marriage equality that helped pass California’s Proposition 8 and other statewide gay marriage bans.)
Marriage equality is the law of the land today. But it continues to be challenged, not only by those who want to treat gay couples differently, like anti-LGBTQ bakers and other business owners, but by those who want to send the issue back to the states to decide.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, Trump’s first appointee to the Supreme Court, has invited state challenges to the Obergefell marriage equality ruling in a recent dissenting opinion. As I’ve noted, Gorsuch revered the late Justice Antonia Scalia, who, like Gorsuch, was an originalist . . . . Kavanaugh, who gave a speech in 2016 calling Scalia a “role model” and “hero.”
In that speech, Kavanaugh also pointed to Scalia’s dissent in Obergefell (Scalia called the ruling a “threat to American democracy”) as an example of what he liked about Scalia’s judicial philosophy. Scalia, he said, viewed the court as having “no legitimate role ... in creating new rights not spelled out in the Constitution.”
So what, exactly, are Republicans afraid the public will see in the Kavanaugh records from the Bush years, when the White House supported and promoted a federal marriage amendment?
[T]he public should also know which issues Kavanaugh worked on in the Bush White House, how they may relate to cases coming before him, and if he would recuse himself from those cases.
The fact that there are likely hundreds of thousands more pages of records to review with regard to Kavanaugh, which will take more time, is no excuse. This is a lifetime appointment to the highest court in the land. The American public has the right to see how Kavanaugh interacted with, and perhaps weighed in on, one of the most important civil rights issues of our time.
No comments:
Post a Comment