In case you need any further proof that Brett Kavanaugh is a partisan hack who should not sit on the Supreme Court

Just four days ago then-embattled nominee Brett Kavanaugh wrote this in the Wall Street Journal:

The Supreme Court must never be viewed as a partisan institution. The justices do not sit on opposite sides of an aisle … I would be part of a team of nine, committed to deciding cases according to the Constitution and laws of the United States. I would always strive to be a team player.

A few days later, he managed to squeak through to confirmation. On Saturday, he was sworn in in a private ceremony, which is how it is usually done with Supreme Court justices.

So what the fuck is this:

President Trump will ceremonially swear in Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh at a prime-time event in the East Room of the White House on Monday evening. The ceremony follows perhaps the most contentious confirmation battle for a Supreme Court nominee in history and the administration is using Monday evening to show voters they can make good on its promises. In front of a room full of reporters, television cameras and Republican lawmakers at 7:00 p.m. Monday, the president will stand next to Kavanaugh and present him to the nation as one of the crowning achievements of his first two years in office.

How can we possibly take Kavanaugh seriously as a neutral arbiter of law when he participates in a purely partisan televised event? And what does it say about his own personal commitment to his own professed neutrality that Kavanaugh would willingly participate in something like this?

ADDING: Just after I hit the button to post this, I saw that Charlie Pierce made the same point. Honestly, I'm surprised that more people aren't howling about this.

How will Trump deal with the Democratic primary?

It occurs to me that when the 2020 presidential election season start (i.e. just after next month's midterms), it will drive President Trump completely nuts. Think about it: the GOP probably won't have a contested primary. Sure, maybe some anti-Trump GOPer, like Evan McMullin, might attempt a primary challenge. But the Republican party is now solidly behind Trump largely because that is where their voters are. So the McMullin campaign won't go anywhere. Meanwhile, the Democrats will have an actual primary contest. Potentially with a large field of new and old faces, some with an already high profile. So when the press gets fixated on the primary season horse race all the attention will be on the Democrats, not the Republicans, and not, more importantly, on Trump.

I don't think he will be able to handle it. He is going to tweet about every twist and turn in the Democratic race. He will try to hold his own rallies and brag about the size of the crowds as compared to Democratic campaign crowds. He might start announcing big events (along the lines of the nothing-actually-happened-beyond-the-hype-and-some-unilateral-US-concessions North Korea Summit earlier this year) in the hopes of hogging the spotlight.

It might be funny to watch someone as desperate to be the center of attention when the center inevitably moves elsewhere. Or it would be if Trump weren't one of the most powerful people in the world. Once you think about it in those terms, it can seem a little scary.

The unlikely but possible down side for the right by shoving Kavanaugh through

As the right crows about their victory in getting Kavanaugh onto the Court, there seems to be little recognition that their tactic produced a real (albeit remote) potential downside. The Kavanaugh hearings revealed that the judge likely committed perjury during his 2006 confirmation hearing for his appointment to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, and he pretty clearly perjured several more times during last month's confirmation proceedings. The way he was rocketed through confirmation while refusing to provide the Senators with most of the documents from his time working at the Bush White House and having a bullshit FBI investigation that found "no collaboration" to the stories of his sexual misconduct when the FBI was contacted by more than 40 witnesses who were never interviewed, has left a lot of Democrats feeling the entire process was a sham.

Even though Kavanaugh is now on the Court, putting him there has damaged the credibility of the Court and has left an "impeach Kavanaugh" movement in its wake. Since the failed removal after impeachment of Samuel Chase, the general consensus is that impeachment of a Supreme Court Justice should only happen in extreme circumstances (not just because the Justice's decisions are unpopular). Perjury is a real crime. Other federal judges have been removed for perjury in recent times.

But removing a judge or justice by impeachment is really hard to do. You need a majority vote in the House of Representatives to impeach, but then a 2/3 vote in the Senate for a conviction. Current projections of next month's election have the Democrats taking the House but remaining the minority in the Senate. A Democratic Senate takeover, however, is possible (currently 538 gives it a 21.6% chance of happening). But if it does happen, the Democrats will have only a bare majority, with 51 out of 100 votes, 53 at most. One of those votes will be Senator Manchin, who just voted to confirm Kavanaugh. I think it is all but impossible to expect Kavanaugh to be impeached and removed in the next two years. That would take not just the Democrats to take the Senate, but also to get Manchin and approximately 16 other Republicans to switch their position on Kavanaugh and remove him from office for something that was already publicized before they voted to confirm him last week.

After 2020, however, the outlook will probably change. I am assuming that Trump remains unpopular (I think that's a fair assumption, and I am fairly sure his popularity will sink much lower if the economy goes South). While the GOP may hang on to the Senate in 2018 because the electoral map favors their party, the Senate map in 2020 favors the Democrats (Republicans will be defending 21 seats in 2020, when Democrats will only be defending 11). Even if the Democrats don't get the Senate this year, if Trump causes a second blue wave in 2020, there's a fair chance that the Democrats could end up with close to 60 seats. Maybe even more. Another wave would also get them the White House and would leave the GOP a rump of a minority party, with plenty of incentives for a few remaining Republican Senators to buck their party line on occasion even on matters of the Supreme Court (just as Manchin just did to save his ass in WV).

At that point, a Kavanaugh removal by impeachment could be a real possibility. If he turns out to be an unpopular justice, if he is associated with Trump and Trump himself is discredited, if the Democrats have regained both political branches of government (that is a lot of ifs, but they all are real possibilities) and if the "impeach Kavanaugh" movement does not lose steam. That last one is where I see the problem.  When the raw feelings of last week fade away, it will be hard to keep up the energy to impeach him years from now when there will be so many other post-Trump messes to clean up. But if the energy can be sustained the makeup of Congress, Kav might be impeached. And if he is, the Democratic president would be able to appoint a successor.

Make no mistake, the scenario I just described is not likely to happen. It is, in fact, very unlikely. But it could happen. It is not outside the realm of possibility. If they had just dropped Kav last week and appointed someone else, another candidate who, no doubt, would vote just as Kavanaugh will on the Court, but who isn't a perjurer, then they would be in no danger of losing the seat whenever the Democrats retake control again.

who do you call when the President of interpol goes missing?

We live in strange times.

Procedural question

This morning the Senate took a cloture vote (i.e. a vote to end debate) on the Kavanaugh nomination, which is a prerequisite for a vote. But then, after the cloture motion passed, Senator Collins took the floor of the Senate and explained why she was voting to confirm Kavanaugh.

Why did it happen in that order? Isn't a Senator giving a speech about why he or she is voting for a nomination of legislation part of the debate? Once they close the debate, why do any Senators get to speak about it on the floor. If the debate is really over, it is just time to vote. If people are allowed to list the reasons they are for or against a proposal after cloture, then cloture isn't really closing debate.

(Yeah I know Collins' speech was infuriated for a variety of reasons, but this question is really nagging at me.)

The U.S. media in a nutshell

The New York Times published a major exposé documenting that the President of the United States committed multiple felonies. Also the President mocked a woman who courageously testified about her own sexual assault and the President’s supporters cheered  Guess which one got the most attention?

The latter is awful, don’t get me wrong. It says a lot about the character of the President and his fans. But it also didn’t tell us anything new and does not establish that the President is a criminal.

If Kavanaugh goes down, I hope Trump listens to Graham

The theory, seemingly prevalent on the right, that liberals are manufacturing sexual assault allegations to keep the Supreme Court from getting a conservative swing vote is really odd. Even if Kavanaugh goes down, his replacement will be replaced by Donald Trump. Prevailing wisdom says that next appointee would probably be Amy Barrett (the one woman on Trump's short list from before he announced Kavanaugh). Barrett is a favorite of social conservatives and is probably more conservative than Kavanaugh. I take it as a given that seat will be filled by an arch-conservative no matter which individual ends up getting confirmed.

It is true that, in theory, if the Democrats beat the odds and take the Senate next month,  the Democratic majority could encourage Trump to nominate a more moderate judge to increase the chances of confirmation. But there are two huge problems with that theory. First, in order for the Democrats to take the Senate that would mean that all three Democrats who voted to confirm Gorsuch will be reelected. Which means the Democrats will not be able to maintain a united opposition to a Gorsuch-like candidate, which is what they would have to do to get Trump to pick a more moderate choice. Second, the theory assumes that Donald Trump is emotionally capable of appointing a compromise candidate. I honestly don't think he has it in him. He will keep appointing rightwingers in his usual dominance display, even if they repeatedly get voted down (and they won't get voted if they don't have other problems like Kavanaugh does). No, even if the Democrats take the Senate, Trump will still get an big-time conservative on the court.

At least he can if he doesn't take Lindsay Graham's advice. The stupid thing about Graham's proposal is that is the only way that I can think of for the Democrats to be able to keep the seat open for the remainder of Trump's term. If Kavanaugh goes down and Trump idiotically appoints him again, after the Democrats get all these electoral gains in part because of the popularity of opposing Kavanaugh, there will be no problem with knocking down Brett a second time, and a third time, and a fourth time. And so on until we can finally get a different president who will appoint someone else.

"Horrible gubernatorial debate moderators for $1,000"

WTF were they thinking?

(via Memeorandum)

UPDATE (10/4/18): Trebek apologizes and in the process reveals that he has never seen a political debate in his entire life:

"I thought that as moderator, I was to provide a certain light-hearted approach while still being able to challenge the candidates on their record or positions," he wrote. "I didn't realize I was to ask a simple question and then let the gentlemen go at each other."

The President successfully negotiated a name change

I wonder what would happen if Congress made one small amendment to the new U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade deal, adding only these words and keeping everything else the same:

"This treaty shall be known as the 'North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)-2018 version.'"

I bet President Trump would veto it.



[Yeah, I realize under "fast track" authority Congress would not have the authority to make any amendments. But I don't know if President Trump had fast track authority for this deal. Obama got fast track in 2015, is that still in effect? I'm pretty sure Trump hasn't sought it since he got into office.]

What's the matter with Kenya?

I get Russia and Israel, but Kenya?

In only three countries — Russia, Kenya and Israel — have attitudes toward the United States improved since 2016, according to the poll.

It is especially weird considering how popular Obama was/is in Kenya.

Trump's legacy

This morning for some reason I started thinking about the legacy of the Trump Administration. The administration will eventually end and the Republican party will eventually move on from Trump. (I'm not sure when, but it will happen). But the time we are in now are going to leave a mark on the party, that will be true even if the party ends up being controlled by people who are at some level anti-Trump has done and want to move the party away from the "aberration" of the Trump years.

I think the Trumpisms that will stick (no matter which faction ends up in control of the GOP) will be the immigration and racism. I think the Trumpism that will either fade away or be openly rejected will be the anti-trade stuff. No matter how much Trump personally likes canceling trade agreements and imposing tariffs, it is bad for business for the elites of the party. They are going to find a way to shove that part of the Trump agenda under the rug as soon as they can. They will stick with the racism and hostility to immigration no matter how politically untenable it becomes with demographic shifts. The bigotry, more than trade, is at the heart of what both the elites and the base care about.

why did Flake flake?

Prevailing wisdom seems to be that the reason Senator Flake suddenly changed his mind about delaying the Kavanaugh vote for an FBI investigation is because of the women who cornered him in the elevator. But did that encounter give Flake a crisis of conscience or was it just because there was a compelling video of the encounter that made Flake look like heartless asshole that was playing on CNN and across social media?

I think it’s the latter, but I guess we’ll never know. Either way, keep filming Flake if you don’t want him to vote like a heartless asshole!