Politics, Republicans
President Bush and Republicans are hoping to rally their increasingly disengaged base around the troubled nomination to the judiciary of Brett Kavanaugh, a White House staffer who was heavily involved in the Clinton wars as a staffer for prosecutor Ken Starr — and whose rating by the American Bar Association (ABA) was recently downgraded due to his lack of experience, partly because he has never tried a case that reached a verdict.
Kavanaugh is married to the former Ashley Estes, who was a personal secretary to President Bush, and who serves on the search team for the president’s library in Texas, along with another Bush secretary, Harriet Miers, whose nomination to the Supreme Court was rescinded by President Bush in a storm of criticism from rightwingers last year.
The ABA completed the re-evaluation of Kavanaugh’s professional qualifications last Month:
According to the ABA’s finding, “one judge who witnessed the nominee’s oral presentation in court commented the nominee was ‘less than adequate’ before the court, had been ’sanctimonious,’ and demonstrated ‘experience on the level of an associate.’”
Another lawyer, speaking about a different Kavanaugh court appearance, said he “did not handle the case well as an advocate and dissembled.”
“Other lawyers expressed similar concerns, repeating in substance that the nominee was young and inexperienced in the practice of law,” the ABA said.
Several people described Kavanaugh as “insulated,” and questioned his “freedom from bias and open-mindedness.”
Of course, Kavanaugh’s qualifications to serve as a judge on the presitigous U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit are immaterial to President Bush. Kavanaugh has been a reliable political operative for the GOP and the president over the past decade. The nomination serves both as a cushy reward for Kavanaugh’s past service and as a way for the president to goad his political enemies.
Prior to the hearing into Kavanaugh’s nomination before the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday, New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, said:
“I have deep concerns about this nominee,” said [Schumer].
“If there was a political fight that needed a political foot soldier in the last decade, Brett Kavanaugh was probably there,” Schumer said.
Schumer cited the nominee’s work as a lawyer for independent counsel Kenneth Starr’s investigation of President Clinton, and the 2000 Florida ballot recount.
During the 1990s, Kavanaugh was heavily involved in Starr’s investigations into President Clinton, his family and his staff, including a stint as the lead investigator into the death of Deputy White House Counsel Vince Foster.
Currently, Kavanaugh serves as assistant to the president and staff secretary, which makes him responsible for coordinating all documents to and from the president. Previously, he served for two years as senior associate counsel and associate counsel to the president. In that capacity, he worked on the numerous constitutional, legal, and ethical issues handled by that office.
And yet at the Senate hearings into his nomination yesterday, Kavanaugh denied that he had any knowledge of the questionable or allegedly illegal activies undertaken by President Bush during his time in office:
The nominee told the committee Tuesday he dealt neither with Abramoff nor with the wiretap issue.
He also denied developing legal policy on the physical treatment of Iraqi and other Muslim detainees held in U.S. military custody, which critics said amounted to torture.
Kavanaugh worked at the White House when those polices were developed, which came to light after his initial appearance before the committee in 2004.
“I am not, and have not been involved in rules about [enemy] combatants,” Kavanaugh said Tuesday.
Topics: Politics, Republicans
A Young Republican for America, huh? Somebody oughta check the footage of the paid thugs that the Repubs sent to stage a riot outside the Dade County Board of Election offices. Was Kavanaugh one of the felons who successfully shut down a vote count? If so, let’s affix it proudly to the top of his resume (and laugh his appointment out of the room).
Kavanaugh, like Alter Boy Alito, Michael Hayden, Karl Rove, James Baker, and no doubt countless others, has personality characteristics that endear him to the Bu$h royal family. Here’s the familiar pattern: he’s a SYCOPHANT, a SELF-SERVING EGOIST-in-the family’s services, and, being an arriviste and careerist, a SNOB (but one who knows his place!). In sum, he’s another Bu$h family SERVANT-WHORE. Principle in the pursuit of the public interest — as opposed to the Bu$h royal family’s — would be a LIABILITY to young Brett and the others because it would always threaten to place the lackey on collision course with the Bu$h clan; at the same time, competence on the part of the family servant-whores is of negligible value to the Bu$hes with the all-important exception of situations in which obedience and a penchant for effectual ruthlessness are needed: there, competence is highly prized, being used (literally in any way imaginable) to save the Bu$h family hide from scandal, disgrace, or prison time.(Cf: Baker in Florida in 2000, for one example; Iran-Contra affords others.) And to think that DUH-Byuh is now pushing Jeb for the throne! — Jeb, who would perpetuate this peculiarly pathological and profound corruption! Nauseating! Let’s send at least the current throne-squatter to his deserved hanging for War Crimes at Nuremberg II; thus we might rid the United States of the Bu$h curse once and for all.