Bill Press: God save the Supreme Court
Only once have I had the honor of attending a session of the United States Supreme Court.
Only once have I had the honor of attending a session of the United States Supreme Court. Once the justices filed in, I was stunned by the booming voice of the marshal of the court.
“The Honorable Chief Justice and the Associate Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States,” he proclaims at every court hearing. “Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! All persons before the Honorable Supreme Court of the United States are admonished to draw near and give their attention, for the Court is now sitting. God save the United States and this Honorable Court.”
It’s a quaint tradition, but hopelessly outdated. For whether this “honorable court” is saved today is not up to God, but to Republican members of the United States Senate, who must choose — in voting on Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court — between doing what’s best for Donald Trump and the Republican Party or what’s best for the country and the court.
There’s no doubt what’s best for the country and the court: Senators should reject Brett Kavanaugh, unless he does the honorable thing and withdraws his nomination first.
Only a week ago, Kavanaugh appeared to be on an easy glide path to victory, having zigzagged his slippery way through confirmation hearings without necessarily telling the truth, but without making any major gaffes, either. Then came the letter from Christine Blasey Ford, a psychologist and professor in clinical psychology at Palo Alto University, which turned everything upside down, transforming Kavanaugh from certain winner to potential loser.
Even before Ford’s bombshell accusation, there were other good reasons for rejecting Kavanaugh. He had clearly not told the truth, under oath, about at least three issues. In his 2006 confirmation hearing for the appeals court, he testified that, as associate counsel in the George W. Bush White House, he was not involved in discussions on torture. Not true. Emails later revealed he’d been charged with examining how the Supreme Court might rule on the torture of detainees. He also denied any involvement in three controversial Bush judicial picks: Jim Haynes, Charles Pickering and William Pryor. Not true. In fact, he took part in vetting all three.
Most significantly, Kavanaugh assured several senators, including Sen. Susan Collins (RMaine), that he considered Roe v. Wade “settled law,” implying he’d oppose any effort to overturn it. Again, not true. In an email written in the Bush White House, he ridiculed the notion of “settled law,” noting that the “Court can always overrule its precedent, and three current justices on the court would do so.”
Then there’s the mysterious issue of tens of thousands of dollars in credit card debt held for over a dozen years — which the White House attributed to buying season tickets for friends to the Washington Nationals — but which suddenly disappeared just before his nomination. How’d he suddenly pay off that debt? Did he, as Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) queried, have a gambling addiction? The Senate Judiciary Committee left all questions about his finances unanswered.
Any of those issues alone would derail any other Supreme Court nominee. But the accusations of sexual assault by Christine Ford are the most serious of all. In many ways, it’s a replay of the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill conflict of 1991. With one big difference: Thomas was accused of sexual harassment in the workplace, which was bad enough. Kavanaugh’s accused of attempted rape, which, even if committed by a drunken teenager 36 years ago, should disqualify anyone from the nation’s highest court.
Sadly, one thing hasn’t changed. When it comes to sexual abuse, Senate Republicans are just as clueless and just as demeaning of women today as they were in 1991. They refuse to take Ford’s allegations seriously. They insist on their artificially imposed deadline of confirming Kavanaugh before the midterm elections (when they might lose control of the Senate). Before hearing her testimony, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) accused Ford of being “mistaken” and “mixed up” — the same things he said about Anita Hill.
At this point, Republicans seem determined to ramrod through the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh, despite the serious charges against him. But they do so at their own peril — given that women are the driving force in the mid-term elections and, for them, the #MeToo movement is such a paramount issue.
By supporting Roy Moore and Donald Trump, the Republican Party’s already known as the party of sexual harassment and abuse. After putting a known sexual predator in the White House, do Republicans really want to put an accused sexual predator on the Supreme Court? If so, American women will have their revenge on November 6.