{"id":25745,"date":"2018-07-11T20:59:13","date_gmt":"2018-07-12T00:59:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/?p=25745"},"modified":"2018-07-13T20:04:02","modified_gmt":"2018-07-14T00:04:02","slug":"theres-so-much-you-dont-know-about-brett-kavanaugh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/2018\/07\/11\/theres-so-much-you-dont-know-about-brett-kavanaugh\/","title":{"rendered":"There\u2019s So Much You Don\u2019t Know About Brett Kavanaugh"},"content":{"rendered":"

The New York Times<\/em> has the opinion piece There\u2019s So Much You Don\u2019t Know About Brett Kavanaugh, And you probably won\u2019t until it\u2019s too late<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\nFirst, the questions everyone wants answered: What is his judicial philosophy? How does he approach interpreting the Constitution and statutes? Does he agree with the decision in landmark Supreme Court cases like, say, Brown v. Board of Education, which outlawed racial segregation in public schools, or Griswold v. Connecticut, which established a constitutional right to privacy? There\u2019s no reason, despite their protestations, that nominees for the highest court in the land can\u2019t give the public straight answers to these questions and many more like them \u2014 several, including Chief Justice Roberts himself, did so in the past.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Naked Capitalism<\/em> has an article with an excerpt from Anthony Kennedy’s opinion in the Citizen’s United Supreme Court case. Their article is Anthony Kennedy and Our Delayed Constitutional Crisis<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n [W]e now conclude that independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption. \u2026<\/p>\n

The fact that speakers [i.e., donors] may have influence over or access to elected officials does not mean that these officials are corrupt. \u2026<\/p>\n

The appearance of influence or access, furthermore, will not cause the electorate to lose faith in our democracy.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If Senate Democrats could get the nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, to read this passage aloud, and ask him to explain the logic of Kennedy’s opinion, then we would know all we need to know about the nominee.<\/p>\n

\nJuly 13, 2018<\/p>\n

If the appearance of ellipsis in the above quote makes you wonder what was left out, I looked this up in the opinion on CITIZENS UNITED v. FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISSION as published by the Supreme Court<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\nWhile a single Bellotti footnote purported to leave the question open, 435 U. S., at 788, n. 26, this Court now concludes that independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption. That speakers may have influence over or access to elected officials does not mean that those officials are corrupt. And the appearance of influence or access will not cause the electorate to lose faith in this democracy. Caperton v. A. T. Massey Coal Co., 556 U. S. ___, distinguished. Pp. 40\u201345.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In my mind the ellipsis was not meant to deceive and it did not deceive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The New York Times has the opinion piece There\u2019s So Much You Don\u2019t Know About Brett Kavanaugh, And you probably won\u2019t until it\u2019s too late. First, the questions everyone wants answered: What is his judicial philosophy? How does he approach interpreting the Constitution and statutes? Does he agree with the decision in landmark Supreme Court […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[166],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-stevegsposts","czr-hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25745"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25745\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25750,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25745\/revisions\/25750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}