A humorous call for bipartisanship

CHUCK Schumer, it seems, has quite a sense of humor. In talking with reporters last week about the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, Schumer said this: “We’d much rather follow the bipartisan process … now Republican obstruction requires an extraordinary response.”

That first line was especially funny — Democrats in the Senate would much rather work arm in arm with Republicans on the Kavanaugh nomination. This from the man who from the outset has urged his fellow Democrats not to meet with the nominee. (A few have done so anyway, and Schumer plans to follow suit this week — seven weeks after the nomination.)

The “obstruction” that has Schumer, D-N.Y., so worked up relates to documents from Kavanaugh’s three years as staff secretary to former President George W. Bush. In that job, Kavanaugh forwarded to the president the work of others in the administration and government. As many have noted, those papers relate to Bush’s decisions, not Kavanaugh’s.

Democrats insist that’s not the case, that instead the documents have the potential to disclose Kavanaugh’s involvement with issues such as warrantless wiretapping and torture.

Schumer and the rest of his bipartisan brethren are conveniently ignoring the fact that when Elena Kagan was nominated to the Supreme Court by former President Barack Obama, the administration turned over zero documents about her time in the Solicitor General’s office. The documents were described as relating to executive branch deliberations on legal issues.

“The staff secretary’s documents are much less relevant to legal matters than those from the SG’s office,” The Wall Street Journal noted in a recent editorial.

Democrats also aren’t happy that documents from Kavanaugh’s time in the White House counsel’s office are being vetted by a former colleague from the Bush administration. But the Obama administration used a similar arrangement during Kagan’s nomination.

Senators wound up reviewing about 173,000 pages on Kagan. The total was roughly 182,000 for Neil Gorsuch, who was confirmed last year. Senators have already been given far more than that on Kavanaugh, with tens of thousands still to come — and, senators have access to the most valuable insight into Kavanaugh’s qualifications, the 300-plus opinions he wrote as a member of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

This isn’t enough for Schumer, who literally is threatening to make a federal case out of the nomination. He has promised to file suit in the coming weeks against the National Archives if it fails to meet the party’s Freedom of Information Act request. The Archives says there are “several million pages” of documents on Kavanaugh, and that it isn’t able to comply.

All of this is being couched as an effort to ensure transparency. That’s a canard. The goal of Schumer and his bipartisanship-loving lieutenants is come up with a way — any way — to push Kavanuagh’s confirmation hearing past the midterm elections. It’s scheduled to begin Sept. 4. Republicans should keep it there and work to get this highly qualified nominee to the high court sooner rather than later.