Comment by scrollaway | Hacker News Reader

Comment by scrollaway | Hacker News Reader

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I'm not the person you're replying to but I find it terribly sad to see how much you folks (Americans) lowered the bar to accepting someone into the supreme court.

Partisanship is ok. Off-the-handle emotional responses are ok. Continuous strings of allegations "no big deal cause we don't have a cryptographically-signed videotape of it".

That 2400 law professors [0], groups like Human Rights Watch [1], the National Council of Churches [2], or even (republican) Justice Stevens himself[3] vehemently oppose his nominations, that raises no alarm bells.

I don't get it. I'm pretty sure nearly everyone shrugging this stuff off had even heard of Kavanaugh before, and yet HE is the one who must be appointed to this lifetime position of Supreme Court Judge. HE is the one who meets the standards to reside over the country's most important cases.

What is it about this guy you like so much? Could it be that your party is telling you "it's all a democrat ploy" and you're just... following orders?

I don't even know why republican voters care this much. There's far more capable and better-suited republican candidates available if Kavanaugh is rejected. Or do you think this sorry excuse of a judge is what "best of the best" looks like?

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/10/03/opinion/kavan...

[1] https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/10/05/human-rights-watch-oppos...

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2018/10/04/national-...

[3] https://edition.cnn.com/2018/10/04/politics/supreme-court-ju...

It comes down to this: they believe that he’ll swing the court in favor of their chosen policies, be it restricting abortion or whatever else. If Bill Cosby or Ted Bundy were in a position to do that, they’d defend them too. It’s not about good faith arguments, it’s 100% about the end result, and the ends justifying the means.

But again... there isn't a shortage of republican-leaning judges who are far more fit to be a Supreme Court Justice.

My reading is that the GOP is making a big deal out of this because it looks really bad for them if Kavanaugh gets voted off. And furthermore, they run the risk of not being able to confirm a republican judge after the midterms (and we're not even sort of pretending the court is nonpartisan anymore...)

I see what you mean, but as you say their midterm elections are coming up, and no one knows if the Republicans will still have the necessary votes after. If Kavanaugh doesn’t get through, their chance to force someone like him onto the court may go with him. Beyond that I don’t think you can underestimate just how little a lot of senators care about what Kavanaugh did to women in his youth. Chuck Grassley, Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham... they seem like people for whom conscience is just a formality.

Mostly they want to be re-elected, and they want to feed their shrinking base lots of red meat to inspire a bigger turnout. As I said, if Ted Bundy on the court could do that for them, they’d try to make it happen.

No one actually cares what any of those organizations say. Literally no one, not republican or democrat, could care any less what they say unless they happen to align with their political ideology.

Second, the notion of "republican candidates" or "republican justices" (Stevens was not a conservative, or right leaning, he simply happened to be appointed by a republican president) as justices on the supreme court shows an absolute misunderstanding of the purpose of the institution.

There is a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of the court betrayed by this comment. The court is supposed to be non-partisan and not beholden to politicians. The left has cranked up the smear machine in response to every Constitutionalist judge nominated to the court since (and including) Clarence Thomas -- it only appears "republican" or "democrat" because republican presidents appoint judges more often who respect the Constitution as it was written and democrat presidents appoint judges more often who believe the Constitution should be rewritten through the misuse of the judiciary.

Kavanaugh will be a party line vote, and a lot of it will be reaction to the left wing of the senate's behavior in the judiciary committee. note that the right does not, in general, do this -- Kagen, Sotomayor, and Ginsburg were all significant majority votes in spite of their political ideology differences.

Elections have consequences (that's a quote from President Obama), and Constitutionalist judges are being nominated. The smear machinery is going to be brought against any Constitutionalist judge, no matter who it is, because of the political controversy over Roe v. Wade, which is in reality what this entire confirmation circus at this point is about.

At this point the US Senate has in essence abdicated its role in advice and consent to the President and turned confirmations into a political farce -- that's not how it's supposed to be, no matter what political ideology one may hold.

> Literally no one, not republican or democrat, could care any less what they say unless they happen to align with their political ideology

You're projecting. People do care. Republican voters at large, don't, and consequentially think that nobody else does. This isn't a "but the democrats are the same!" kind of thing. That "smear machinery" you talk about was not there during Gorsuch's nomination. We're talking about someone who's not qualified to be judge, and if he were an ultra-liberal, he would not be any more qualified.

Please take a hard look at what you just said in your post and think about how crazy and indoctrinated you sound. You're literally dismissing what an ex-supreme justice has to say on the matter of who is qualified to be on the supreme court.

And yes I do understand the nonpartisanship of the supreme court. cf my comment here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18149174). But if it's nonpartisan, why is the GOP so intent on electing this guy, of all people? Not a more competent republican, not a more competent democrat, or independent. This guy.

Again I have to stress this: I have no horse in this race. If the US burns, it doesn't affect me in the slightest. I'm watching from the outside, how people fall for propaganda; kinda like you watch North Koreans fall for propaganda, because that's all they hear, all they see, all the time.

Be more curious and open minded... that either scares you (and that should make you think), or it doesn't, and if so, go for it. Be the north korean who takes the risk.

I said organizations, Justice Stevens is not an organization.

Those organizations have no authority or credibility anywhere. Democrats care about what they say this week because they align with their political ideology -- which as I said should not be a factor in this discussion. Read carefully what I actually wrote.

Many people who want justices on the court who follow the Constitution disagree with Justice Stevens. That's just the way it is, and Justice Stevens was never a Constitutionalist Justice. You misunderstand him, believing him to be a "republican judge" when the concept of such a thing should not exist.

Those who hate Kavanaugh's "politics" are likely to get what they asked for if they are successful in keeping him off the court. Judge Barrett is so far to the right of him she makes him look like a communist -- and the knives are already out for her because she's a Catholic.

Judge Kavanaugh is actually somewhat of a moderate, if you read his decisions. He's simply unlikely to vote to keep Roe v Wade, and he's replacing the swing vote on that issue that has kept it in place for the last 20 years or so, and thus the knives have to come out -- Gorsuch wasn't quite so controversial (although they tried with him as well), because he was replacing an already conservative justice. In fact, Gorsuch is probably a bit less so than Scalia was. Scalia was a consensus builder, but he was famous for his absolute dedication to the doctrine that the Constitution is a dead document and it means exactly what it says and nothing further.

> Democrats care about what they say this week because they align with their political ideology

What Brett Kavanaugh's former classmates, or a bunch of law professors, have to say on the matter is indeed irrelevant for most things. But it is relevant here.

Just like you would want to listen to computer security experts when talking about computer security laws.

I mean, I see what you're saying, and yes I agree with you that either way there's no free PR for those with "opposed political values" these days. But it's still relevant.

> You misunderstand him, believing him to be a "republican judge" when the concept of such a thing should not exist.

I want to clarify my earlier statements, and this goes for Stevens as well as Kavanaugh. When I say "Republican judge", I mean "Judge appointed by republicans, with an implicit political calculation that they will uphold pro-republican decisions". This is what has become of the court and there's no pretense around it anymore, and why I was saying in my initial post that I find it sad.

But if we agree that nonpartisanship is important, then I do not understand how you defend the actions of a man who, instead of addressing allegations in a calm and composed way, cried, yelled, and blamed "the democrats" for "a revenge for the clintons". How the fuck is that nonpartisan?

The ABA actually endorsed him, and that carries a great deal more weight than what a bunch of law professors say. Again, partisans being partisan.

Maybe you've never been accused of something like what Judge Kavanaugh was accused of. In general, his defense was relatively rational and composed for what it was. And the comments about the democrats and the Clintons was probably correct -- he knows where all the bodies are buried on that front having been in the Bush White House.

The whole thing has been a democrat hatchet job from the day he was nominated.

I'm not a democrat or a republican by the way -- I think in general most of the people in the government from both parties tend to be power hungry narcissists.

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