Biden's disdain for originalism

 In an earlier post this morning (I've been on a posting tear so far today; it must be the coffee), I said that after giving the matter much thought, I'd concluded that the nomination, hearings and confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett of a similar originalist should occur before the November election. I gave my reasons.

We can now add to those another great reason: Joe Biden would / will be a disaster in the matter of judicial appointments:

Supreme Court nomination hearings have gone from serene to savage, thanks largely to Joe Biden.

As head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, he presided over the infamous Robert Bork hearings. His smearing of Bork for his original-intent judicial philosophy transformed hearings for Supreme Court nominees into bloody ideological battles. Henceforth, all conservative nominees were subjected to “Borking.”

Brutal to Bork from the start, Biden treated him not as a serious judge but as a stooge for what Biden called the “Reagan-Meese” agenda. Biden’s transparently unfair treatment of Bork was so bad even The Washington Post editorialized against Biden at the time:

While claiming that Judge Bork will have a full and fair hearing, Senator Joseph Biden this week has pledged to civil rights groups that he will lead the opposition to the confirmation. As the Queen of Hearts said to Alice, "Sentence first—Verdict Afterward."

How can he possibly get a fair hearing from Biden, who has already cast himself as the role of prosecutor instead of a juror in the Judiciary Committee? If there is a strong, serious case to be argued against Judge Bork, why do so many Democrats seem unwilling to make it and afraid to listen to the other side?

In a forecast of what his own judiciary would look like, Biden opposed Bork not because he lacked the legal credentials to be on the court – Bork was considered one of the leading legal scholars in the country – but because Bork didn’t conform to Biden’s view of a good judge as a leftwing legislator from the bench.

Biden lectured Bork: “Will we retreat from our tradition of progress or will we move forward, continuing to expand and envelop the rights of individuals in a changing world which is bound to have an impact upon those individuals’ sense of who they are and what they can do?...In passing on this nomination to the Supreme Court, we must also pass judgment on whether or not your particular philosophy is an appropriate one at this time in history.”

Bork parried that judges aren’t supposed to interpret the law in light of the current political zeitgeist but according to its original meaning. “If a judge abandons intention as his guide, there is no law available to him, and he begins to legislate a social agenda for the American people,” said Bork. “That goes well beyond his legitimate powers. He or she then diminishes liberty instead of enhancing it. The truth is that the judge who looks outside the Constitution always looks inside himself and nowhere else.”

But Biden didn’t listen. He scoffed at Bork’s originalism and played dirty. Borrowing a page from Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), Biden portrayed Bork as a wild-eyed Puritan prepared to break down bedroom doors. In his memoir Promises to Keep, Biden congratulates himself for this low strategy. He recalls testing his portrayal of Bork as an enemy of “privacy” at a mall in Delaware: “People who knew me would walk up and say, ‘Hey, Joe,’ and I’d ask them if they thought married couples had the right to use contraception. They looked at me like I was crazy. ‘Of course!’ And when I asked why, none of them said the right to privacy. They all said, ‘The Constitution.’”

This emboldened Biden in his gross caricature of Bork. Biden was in effect punishing Bork for not revising his jurisprudence to accommodate the left’s agenda of cultural change.

Democrats and Project Lincoln conservatives like to frame Biden as a beacon of moderation and decency juxtaposed against the bombast and chaos of Trump. Biden is no such thing. His capacity for nastiness is well-documented, and this is probably Exhibit A. 

 

Ben Sasse is such a cool guy

I know he comes in for abuse from ugly bullies like Kurt Schlichter, but anybody who is not ate up with attitude can see that he is one of the top-ranking good guys.

Take, for instance, what he did in this hearing:

For some reason, Democrats love to ask President Trump's judicial nominees about their religious backgrounds. Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE) was worried that U.S. district judge Peter Phipps, nominated to serve on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, would be no exception. So, he launched a preemptive strike at Wednesday's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing and asked Phipps about his membership in the Knights of Columbus (KoC), a Catholic fraternal organization, and whether it has anything to do with his nomination. After all, Democrats have obsessed over the group in recent years.

Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE) admitted to being puzzled such line of questioning.

“Judge, did you get questions for the record about being a member of the Knights of Columbus?” Sasse asked. “This is a new tradition around here evidently, trying to figure out if people are members of religious organizations.”

"Yes, associated with my district court nomination," Phipps acknowledged. He said he does "not" know why.

Sasse described the Knights of Columbus as a harmless organization that organizes "community service...fish fries, and pool parties," leading him to pose a more humorous inquiry.

"Are you now or have you ever been involved in the organization of a fish fry?”

And one of the Senate's most prominent Western civilization-haters responded with Pavlovian predictability:

“To be clear, no senator on the Democratic side has ever suggested that a member of any organization is per se unfit for the bench, only those who cannot be fair and impartial,” said Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI).

But, National Review called her bluff. Just a few months back, Hirono told judicial nominee Brian Buescher she was worried about his relationship with KoC.

"The Knights of Columbus has taken a number of extreme positions," Hirono said before asking the nominee to promise to "end" his membership with this organization "to avoid any appearance of bias."  

Ben Sasse - demonstrating the art of having fun while fighting.

 

Kavanaugh has proven he's no pure originalist; consider what it means that the Left savaged him anyway

Face it. You knew that what Josh Hammer is saying in his latest piece for the Daily Wire was true a year ago. You had your hopes up that the Very Stable Genius's second Supreme Court pick would be Amy Coney Barrett, Mike Lee or some similarly credentialed originalist.

I'm not sure I'd go as far as Hammer did in a February column in which he called Kavanaugh a "DC swamp creature," but consider the track record he lays out in this latest piece:

At various times since ascending to the highest court, Kavanaugh has now been positively wobbly on issues ranging from Planned Parenthood funding to capital punishment to criminal defendants' rights to products liability to antitrust liability. While we have a small total sample size, we now have a sufficient breadth of indicia so as to, at minimum, sound an early alarm. As a rule of thumb, if a Republican judicial nominee votes this often against conservatives' jurisprudential lodestar, Justice Clarence Thomas, then there is likely something seriously wrong.

But as I argued on Monday, Kavanaugh's squishiness was so eminently foreseeable. The great irony to the Left's vile, personally vindictive, morally destructive, all-hands-on-deck, scorched-earth campaign to destroy Kavanaugh the man was always that Kavanaugh the jurist has always been a jurisprudentially moderate Republican judge. A longtime GOP establishment golden boy with lifelong inside-the-Beltway credentials and Bush White House alumnus status, Kavanaugh has always been best described as "Karl Rove in a robe." It was certainly no aberration that Kavanaugh was the federal appellate judge who took it upon himself to craft the legal roadmap to uphold the Obamacare "tax" mandate.

In short, it is misguided to ascribe Kavanaugh's slow start to some desire, post-character assassination campaign, to grovel before and make amends with the Left. Kavanaugh is not betraying his true self in a ham-handed effort to curry favor with what Andrew Breitbart famously dubbed the Democrat-media complex. Instead, the reality is that this is simply who Brett Kavanaugh is. It brings me nothing but agony, but the reality is that those on the Left who fear that this presently constituted Supreme Court will overturn Roe v. Wade — I'm looking at you, Jeffrey Toobin — ought to not fear. Brett Kavanaugh, like fellow squish and Obamacare apologist Chief Justice John Roberts, is maybe a "safe seventh vote" to overturn Roe. 

Hammer goes on to list and elaborate upon three lessons conservatives ought to draw from this, and I recommend your contemplation of them.

But the point I'd make here is a bit more basic: The savagery and lies that were heaped upon Kavanaugh during his confirmation process demonstrate just how much leftists hate anything or anyone even one micro-inch to the right of the ideological center line. There were two types of leftists inflicting the savagery: Those who knew that Kavanaugh was not the rock-ribbed originalist that conservatives had hoped to get nominated but saw that he had to be eviscerated anyway, and those (and this is a far greater number) who are not nearly so well-informed but are just instinctively reviled at any judicial nominee not put forth by one of their own. In short, if a Republican nominated the judge, he or she must be icky and probably wants to make The Handmaid's Tale a reality.

So the path forward ought to be clear. Go ahead and nominate the judges much closer to our ideal. The brutality inflicted by the Left can't be any worse than it was for an iffy nominee like Kavanaugh.

Which, by the way - ahem, are you listening, Republicans? - is why the Right ought to nominate actual conservatives for offices from president on down to city council member. They are easier to defend than people without much of a discernible rudder.

Some things still go very right in 2019 post-America

Like this:

The Senate on Wednesday confirmed Neomi Rao, President Donald Trump's pick to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, to fill the spot previously held by Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Rao was confirmed in a 53-46 vote, with not a single Democrat voting in her favor. Democrats criticized her decades-old opinions on sexual assault, culled from an opinion piece she had written for her college paper, the Yale Herald, in 1994.  If a woman "drinks to the point where she can no longer choose, well, getting to that point was a part of her choice," Rao wrote of sexual assault.

Senate Democrats decried Rao's nomination both in hearings and on Twitter in the days leading up to the vote. Just hours before the vote, Sen. Dick Durbin (D., Ill.) aired his opposition on Twitter.

"Today the Senate votes on the nomination of Neomi Rao to serve on the D.C. Circuit Court for life. She has minimal experience practicing law-no trials, no appeals, only one brief filed in U.S. court-and her writings on race, sexual assault, and other issues are deeply troubling," he wrote.

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.), on the other hand, praised Rao when he spoke before the vote, calling her "another of the president’s excellent choices to serve as a federal judge."

"In testimony before our colleagues on the Judiciary Committee, she demonstrated a commitment to maintaining the public trust, and upholding the rule of law," McConnell said.

The conservative advocacy group Judicial Crisis Network released a statement supporting the confirmation.

"Thank you Leader McConnell for standing up to Senate Democrats’ bullying tactics and spearheading Neomi Rao’s confirmation," said Carrie Severino, JCN chief counsel and policy director. "Rao’s experience and intellect make her uniquely qualified to fill Justice Kavanaugh’s shoes on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Rao will fairly apply the law and honor the Constitution; she'll be a phenomenal judge serving on one of our nation’s highest courts." 

The VSG's enthusiasts' strongest argument is the consistently high caliber of his judicial appointments. We'd have been in a world of hurt with Madame Bleachbit's choices in this area.

Friday roundup

Otto Warmbier's parents are pretty outraged at Very Stable Genius's taking Kim at his word that Kim did not know about Warmbier getting tortured into a comatose state. It's particularly outrageous when one considers that the VSG brought the Warmbiers to the 2017 State of the Union address.

At Quillette, a public high school teacher compares and contrasts her experiences in three New York schools, and concludes this:

It is not poor teaching or a lack of money that is failing our most vulnerable populations. The real problem is an ethos of rejection that has never been openly admitted by those in authority.

Why should millions of perfectly normal adolescents, not all of them ghettoized, resist being educated? The reason is that they know deep down that due to the color of their skin, less is expected of them. This they deeply resent. How could they not resent being seen as less capable? It makes perfect psychological sense. Being very young, however, they cannot articulate their resentment, or understand the reasons for it, especially since the adults in charge hide the truth. So they take out their rage on the only ones they can: themselves and their teachers.

They also take revenge on a fraudulent system that pretends to educate them. The authorities cover up their own incompetence, and when that fails, blame the parents and teachers, or lack of funding, or “poverty,” “racism,” and so on. The media follow suit. Starting with our lawmakers, the whole country swallows the lie. 

Why do precious few adults admit the truth out loud? Because in America the taboo against questioning the current orthodoxy on race is too strong and the price is too high. What is failing our most vulnerable populations is the lack of political will to acknowledge and solve the real problems. The first step is to change the ”anti-discrimination” laws that breed anti-social behavior. Disruptive students must be removed from the classroom, not to punish them but to protect the majority of students who want to learn.

John F. DiLeo at the Illinois Review on the failure of Ben Sasse's born-alive infant bill to pass the Senate:

 Let us never again question the arguments of the slippery slope.  Every law is indeed a potential foundation for future expansion; we need to think carefully about every policy choice, before setting it in motion.  Abortion in hard cases paved the way, first, to abortion on demand for any reason, and now even to an act which can only be called infanticide.

We rightly attack the Nazis for their gas chambers, the Phnom Penh for their killing fields, the Soviets for their dekulakization.  We rightly hate the memories of Bloody Ban Tarleton for executing surrendering colonial soldiers, and the 19^th century czarist pogroms.

But we have truly lost our moral compass, if we refuse to protect the most innocent among us, our newborn children, from being killed by people who profess to be doctors.

They can use a scalpel, or a chemical, or even just a table, and leave the newborn on a shelf to die of exposure, and in some states, there’s nothing we can do about it.   The newest instrument of the abortionist is the oldest murder weapon of all – exposure.

A friend of mine has a great blog called Unremarkable Miracles. Every post is a gem. They're usually long, thoughtful rumination on experiences he's had in the course of his daily life. He's done a number of things over the years. I first really got to know him when he owned a wine bar and I used to put together small jazz groups to play there.

Important Avner Zarmi piece at PJ Media entitled "Why Trump's 'Style' Matters." A taste:

Worse, Mr. Trump has a personality that simply brings out the worst in both his more avid supporters and his opponents. He inspires and exacerbates "resistance" at every level, and is an intensely polarizing figure. Having spent the last two years dividing the country to an extent unprecedented since the end of the Civil War, now he calls for bipartisanship. A major part of the problem will be that the country simply cannot afford, e.g., a new "infrastructure" program, despite his grandiose campaign rhetoric. Nothing -- and I repeat, nothing -- has been done to address the appalling national debt and deficit caused by current levels of government spending. Indeed, the much-vaunted tax cut coupled with increased military spending (which, I'll grant, was necessary) without serious reforms to the entitlement programs that are already over 60% of federal spending has simply blown a wider and deeper hole.

So glad that Naomi Roa's nomination to the DC Court of Appeals has cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee. This aspect of it is particularly heartening:

Both Committee Republicans who had expressed doubts about Rao — Sens. Joni Ernst and Josh Hawley — voted in her favor. Ernst had indicated some time ago that her concern about Rao’s student writings on rape had been assuaged after meeting with the nominee.

Hawley’s concern was more serious. He sensed in her fairly recent academic writings more sympathy for “substantive due process” than a solid conservative should have. Substantive due process is a doctrine that can be used to invent rights not found in the language of the Constitution, such as the right to an abortion. Hawley had also heard that Rao was personally pro choice. 

According to my sources, Rao failed to assuage this concern during an initial private meeting with Hawley. However, when they met a second time, shortly before today’s vote, Rao must have talked more expansively about the writings that concerned Sen. Hawley. In any event, Hawley says he came away from the discussion satisfied that, as he put it, Rao believes the meaning of the Constitution is “fixed.”

Writer Barrett Wilson has a great piece at The Federalist called "After My Social Justice Friends Dropped Me, Conservatives Took Me In."  A taste:

Recently, I went to have a beer with one of my friends from my former life as a social justice crusader. He’s one of the few left-leaning friends I have left since I was mobbed and shamed out of my lefty, social justice community for “toxic behavior” on Twitter (in a straight-up Justine Sacco-style event). He’s a great guy, and he’s still friends with my old friends, so when we meet, it’s a secretive thing.

As I was on my way, I started thinking about just how many people I had lost in my life over the last year or two. It’s got to be in the hundreds. People who have known me for 20 years or more, who said they loved me, who took care of me and let me take care of them, are all mostly gone now. For many, it’s a matter of their own social survival. Guilt by association is a h-ll of a thing.

As I was starting to tally the people I have lost touch with, another thought occurred to me: I probably have more conservative friends than liberal friends now. For a lifelong “bleeding heart” liberal, this is quite the unexpected life development. I decided to tweet something to that effect.

I tweeted: “Since I was mobbed out of my social justice community, I’ve found that conservatives are more kind, forgiving, and open-minded people than my old crew. I’ve found friendship and acceptance despite disagreement. I can’t get in trouble anymore for saying so—so I’m saying so.” 

One for the death-rattle-of-western-civilization file: Prince Harry and Meghan Markle intend to raise their kid in a "gender fluid" way and "won't be imposing any stereotypes."

The Kavanaugh situation - today's thoughts

1.) Ronan Farrow, who had established himself as a good investigative journalist, has badly discredited himself with the New Yorker piece, which NBC, the New York Times and the Washington Post took a pass on.

2.) Ramirez huddling with her leftist lawyer for several days to "assess her memories" is about as lame as it gets.

3.) This, several paragraphs in:

One of the male classmates who Ramirez said egged on Kavanaugh denied any memory of the party. “I don’t think Brett would flash himself to Debbie, or anyone, for that matter,” he said. Asked why he thought Ramirez was making the allegation, he responded, “I have no idea.” The other male classmate who Ramirez said was involved in the incident commented, “I have zero recollection.”

In a statement, two of those male classmates who Ramirez alleged were involved in the incident, the wife of a third male student she said was involved, and three other classmates, Dino Ewing, Louisa Garry, and Dan Murphy, disputed Ramirez’s account of events: “We were the people closest to Brett Kavanaugh during his first year at Yale. He was a roommate to some of us, and we spent a great deal of time with him, including in the dorm where this incident allegedly took place. Some of us were also friends with Debbie Ramirez during and after her time at Yale. We can say with confidence that if the incident Debbie alleges ever occurred, we would have seen or heard about it—and we did not. The behavior she describes would be completely out of character for Brett. In addition, some of us knew Debbie long after Yale, and she never described this incident until Brett’s Supreme Court nomination was pending. Editors from the New Yorker contacted some of us because we are the people who would know the truth, and we told them that we never saw or heard about this.”

4.) Ford says she's afraid to fly. Did she stay put in Hawaii the whole time she was attending the state university there?

5.) She wanted to stall in order for creatures like Ramirez and Avenatti to enter the fray.

6.) Grassley's effort to accommodate Ford was impressive last week. Give her enough rope. But giving her until Thursday of this week was a conciliatory gesture too far.

7.) Michael Avenatti's charge of high-school-rape-gangs is not only ludicrous but should result in his disbarring.

8.) Democrats are savages. They have dog vomit where normal people have souls. They think it's a hoot that they are scarring Kavanaugh's children for life, destroying our social fabric, our Constitutional order, and anything recognizable as the United States of America.

9.) This is all about protecting the "right" to rip people's limbs from their torsos and vacuum the brains out of their skulls. That right must be protected because leftist women resent being of the gender with bodies in which people gestate. They see God's sacred design for them as an inconvenience that gives them a more limited set of options than men have.

10.) Senate Republicans have to confirm Kavanaugh. If they don't, they will face a bloodbath in November. They'll be living up to the image of fecklessness Pubs have had for decades. They'll be showing that they really don't understand that this is war of the most ruthless and brutal sort. LITD has always found and still finds Donald Trump objectionable (see next post - the one on tariffs), but listen up, you dweeby little twits, this is how we got him.

Kavanaugh

Roundup of takes today:

Joe Cunningham at Red State:

The biggest issue with all these revelations is Feinstein’s behavior. She’d had the accusation since July and sat on it, apparently feeling it wasn’t that big a deal. All of her Democratic colleagues were unaware and, in fact, Democratic staffers admitted to being blindsided by the reveal and completely baffled as to why she held it.

David French at NRO:

 Do not count me among those who would minimize this alleged assault. I went to a high school that had more than its share of drunken parties, and my classmates could do crazy and stupid things, but an act like this was beyond the pale. This isn’t “boys will be boys.” Actions have consequences, and it’s hardly unjust to tell a person that if he mistreated another human being like this — even a long time ago — he has to remain “merely” a judge on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Since Kavanaugh has denied the story, however, the question of whether the event is so egregious that it should disqualify him is moot. At the very least, if the attack happened, he should be disqualified for lying.

Yet unless all parties start telling the same story, there is no way to know for certain if this event occurred. We don’t need certainty, however, to make a decision on whether a man should sit on the Supreme Court. I have the same standard for Brett Kavanaugh as I did for Roy Moore, for Donald Trump, for Bill Clinton — or for any other politician who’s accused of misconduct. Is it more likely than not that the allegation is true?

Given the totality of the evidence, I believe it is more likely than not that Bill Clinton committed rape and sexual harassment. I believe it is more likely than not that Donald Trump has committed sexual assault. I believe it is more likely than not that Roy Moore engaged in sexual misconduct with underage girls. But the evidence against Kavanaugh falls far short of the evidence arrayed against each of these men. So far at least it falls far short of the evidence against virtually any other politician or celebrity who has faced consequences during this #MeToo moment. Here’s why:

First, one way to help test the veracity of old claims is to ask whether there is any contemporaneous corroboration. Did the accuser tell a friend or family member or anyone about the alleged assault when it occurred? With Clinton, Trump, Moore, and many other politicians and celebrities, there was ample contemporaneous corroboration.

Here, there was not. According to the Washington Post, “Ford said she told no one of the incident in any detail until 2012, when she was in couples therapy with her husband.”
That’s almost three decades of silence — three decades when memories can grow cloudy and recollections can change.

But even the allegedly corroborating notes of the therapist raise a separate problem. They actually contradict her story on a key detail. According to the Post, “The notes say four boys were involved, a discrepancy that Ford says was an error on the therapist’s part. Ford said there were four boys at the party but only two in the room.” Nor do the notes mention Kavanaugh’s name, even though her husband says Ford named Kavanaugh in the sessions.

Those are important discrepancies, and if six years ago she told the therapist four men and says two men now, that suggests that her memory of the event may be suspect.

As a former trial lawyer, I can tell you that while neither notes nor memories are infallible, in a contest between contemporaneous notes and later verbal testimony about those notes, the content of the written notes usually prevails. Juries are extremely skeptical of witnesses who contradict written notes — after all, the notes are taken when the words are immediate and there isn’t the overwhelming pressure of a trial to conform your testimony to the desired outcome.

At least the investigation seems somewhat manageable. If there were only four boys there, who were the other two? Let’s hear from them. In fact, investigators should interview everyone else at the party.

Yet given all the years that have passed, would it be possible to find anyone who remembers being at that party? Would they remember any details at all? If someone saw Kavanaugh stumbling drunk at the party, that would obviously bolster Ford’s account. If another attendee says, “He was totally sober and with me the whole time,” that helps Kavanaugh. But the odds of getting details that precise are long indeed, and there is always a chance that a motivated classmate might lie — for either person.

Finally, there are no other allegations of sexual misconduct against Kavanaugh. If there’s one thing we’ve seen time and again, it’s that one allegation often triggers a cascade of additional claims. There seem to be precious few men who engage in serious sexual misconduct just once. If this was the kind of behavior that Kavanaugh engaged in, then look for more people to come forward. If no one does, however, we’re left with a sole claim, made by an opposing partisan (Ford is an outspoken progressive), that Kavanaugh strenuously denies, that lacks any contemporaneous corroboration, and that is contradicted in material respects by her therapist’s own notes. 

That does not add up to “more likely than not.”

David Marcus at The Federalist:

One thing is clear: Kavanaugh and Judge are making a claim in direct opposition to Ford’s. This is not a case where people are remembering an incident differently. Judge and Kavanaugh flat-out deny it ever took place. And absolutely no contemporary evidence contradicts their claim. Nobody at this supposed long-ago party remembers anything like this taking place. In fact, Ford has no idea where the party was, or when it happened.

This is a real problem. Imagine yourself accused by a woman of assaulting her 35 years ago. You would naturally say, “When? Where?” If she said “I don’t remember that, I just remember you groping me,” how would you respond? Wouldn’t you want specifics? If her memory so clashed with yours, wouldn’t you want some evidence? Well, the evidence is lacking. Liberal outlets like Mother Jones are accusing Judge, and by association Kavanaugh, of being drunks, calling their memories into question. That’s not good enough, especially as Ford may have been drunk herself.

So here we are. After a lifetime of good service, Kavanaugh is being thrown under the bus of a single vague accusation.  Feinstein could have raised this months ago, could have made it a point of questioning during the hearings. She didn’t. Maybe Traister is right, and she refused because she is complicit in the patriarchy, but I doubt it. I think she knew it wasn’t a strong enough allegation.

San Francisco Chronicle editorial board:

 Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s treatment of a more than 3-decade-old sexual assault allegation against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh was unfair all around. It was unfair to Kavanaugh, unfair to his accuser and unfair to Feinstein’s colleagues — Democrats and Republicans alike — on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Erick Erickson at The Resurgent:

If I were Kavanaugh's team, I'd have Brett hold a press conference, take no questions, and say: 

"The Senate should spend Tuesday and Wednesday before this week's vote and hold open hearings on this and interview Ms Ford and me. I cannot say more strongly that I vigorously deny the charges than that I vigorously deny the charges. But Ms. Ford clearly believes something happened to her in high school and though I again am adamant that I was not involved, perhaps a full and open hearing might either reveal that something happened and through the witness of public spectacle we can find an assailant or, at a minimum, provide Ms. Ford some closure. Again, I categorically deny the accusation against me. I did not do this. But we should not dissuade people from coming forward and I think a refusal to hear someone who makes such an accusation could hurt others who might be discouraged from coming forward. I look forward to answering the Senate's questions and showing the Senate I did nothing wrong and I have nothing to hide."

But me personally? I do not think the Senate should hold a public hearing on a single, uncorroborated 35 year old allegation. It sets a terrible precedent for future, single sourced accusations that lack evidence.

I'd never want to foreclose on the guilt or innocence of either an accuser or an accused person, but a whole lot of circumstances about this seem funny. Feinstein's timing. Ford's politics (she's a Dem donor of the Bernie variety).

There's some stuff floating around out there that needs more corroboration, such as the 1996 situation in which Kavanaugh's mother, as a judge, ostensibly ruled against Ford's parents in a foreclosure case. And some stuff that, in the course of corroboration, proves to be a nonstarter, like the former students who claim their professor Ford was "dark and vengeful." It turns out it was another Professor Ford on the faculty.

LITD isn't inclined to think this leads us to a conclusion that Kavanaugh has some secret Harvey Weinstein side to him. There are all the former students, friends and law clerks who have signed statements vouching for his character.

But, as we say, the moment for drawing conclusions is not yet.

One - make that 120-plus - for the good-move side of the ledger

Squirrel-Hair's saving grace is that he takes seriously the counsel of serious people.

This is obviously the case with regard to this move:

Having filled a Supreme Court vacancy, President Trump is turning his attention to the more than 120 openings on the lower federal courts. On Monday, he will announce a slate of 10 nominees to those courts, a senior White House official said, the first in what could be near monthly waves of nominations.
The White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, said the nominations were a vindication of a commitment Mr. Trump made during the campaign “to appoint strong and principled jurists to the federal bench who will enforce the Constitution’s limits on federal power and protect the liberty of all Americans.”
The administration continues to draw on lists of 21 potential Supreme Court nominees, put together with the help of the conservative Federalist Society and Heritage Foundation, that Mr. Trump issued during the campaign. But it is looking at other sources, too, the White House official said. Mr. McGahn, who has supervised the selection of the nominees, is looking for scholarly credentials and “intellectual boldness,” among other qualities, the official added.
Jonathan H. Adler, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University, said the appeals court picks on Mr. Trump’s list included “incredibly strong nominees” who were within the judicial mainstream and should “have an intellectual influence on their courts.”

A look at a few of these stellar picks:

 . . . attorneys Kevin Newsom for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, John Bush for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit and perhaps most notably Notre Dame law professor Amy Coney Barrett for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit.

Newsom clerked for Supreme Court Justice David Souter, served as the solicitor general of Alabama and wrote a well-regarded article for the Yale Law Journal, “Setting Incorporationism Straight: A Reinterpretation of the Slaughter-House Cases.”

Barrett clerked for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, served for six years on the Advisory Committee for the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure and has an impressive scholarly record.

Bush is an accomplished litigator and president of the Louisville Lawyers’ Chapter of the Federalist Society. He served on the Sixth Circuit’s Advisory Committee on Rules from 2012 to 2015.

In addition to the appellate nominees noted above, Trump is poised to nominate Damien Schiff of the Pacific Legal Foundation to the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. Among other things, Schiff successfully argued Sackett v. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Rescuing the overall federal bench from activist Freedom-Haters may be the best part of  S-H's  legacy.