Know Your SCOTUS: Attempted Rapist Brett Kavanaugh is Caught Lying. Again.
Jesus, guns, and abortion--and the Supreme Court is just getting started.
It’s been quite a week in the news, hasn’t it? Former president Trump flinging plates in the White House dining room; Trump wrenching the steering wheel away from his own Secret Service henchman; Trump demanding that metal detectors be taken down so his heavily armed supporters can flood the field for his war speech (and enhance his crowd size—he’s just plagued by phallic insecurity, isn’t he, poor lamb).
So, you get a hall pass if you didn’t catch everything that recently happened on the judicial side of American politics.
It’s a lot to unpack.
The day before Justice Samuel Alito handed down the Court’s decision to ban abortion, our five supremely Catholic and conservative SCOTUS justices ruled that any qualified citizen of the United States is entitled to openly carry a firearm. Even states like California and New York, where open-carry is forbidden, are now forced to stand down.
Quite the intellectual contortion, I must say. Even before the Civil War, states’ rights have been the avowed goal of the conservative movement. In the sweep of a pen, the Trojan Horse that has been deployed within the Supreme Court—justices Alito, Thomas, Barrett, Kavanaugh, Roberts, and Gorsuch—have overturned states’ rights in the matter of open-carry only to restore them the very next day when they kicked the right to determine whether women can receive a safe legal abortion back down to the state level.
Bewildering, isn’t it?
The day after that, emboldened by their success, drunk with power, and giddy to know that millions of liberal tears were soaking liberal pillows, the Court ruled the state of Maine cannot exclude religious schools from a tuition assistance program. No states’ rights there! It is also a perverse and unholy conflation of church and state. Need I remind everyone that religious organizations pay no taxes and are not required to be transparent in any of their financial dealings?
There was a time when churches weren’t allowed to donate money to political campaigns, but that never stopped them from instructing their congregations to do so. During Donald Trump’s reign of terror presidency, he ordered executive agencies to stop enforcing the Johnson Amendment, a law that prevents section 501(c)(3) entities from supporting or opposing political campaigns. Executive Order 13798, issued May 4, 2017, prevents the disclosure of donors’ identities, especially when said disclosure might jeopardize a church from losing its tax-exempt status.
In a further erosion of the separation of church and state, the Court ruled this week in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District that a public high school football coach had the constitutional right to pray at the 50-yard line after his team’s games.
If only I had words to convey how farcical that is to secular humanists like me. Even assuming that Jesus existed or has sovereignty over earthly affairs, the idea that he would trouble himself over a high school football game—a game, for heaven’s sake, not even something impactful like the war in Ukraine or childhood leukemia—is shockingly surreal. How this dreck made its way to the Supreme Court proves we’ve appointed bridge trolls to the judiciary, not justices.
No wonder confidence in the Supreme Court is at an historical low.
Part of the blame must be laid at the feet of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a man whose Senate confirmation hearing was so fraught, so contentious, so wildly combative, the whole world held its breath while it watched in horror. Kavanaugh’s name was advanced in 2018 by President Trump to fill the position vacated by retiring justice Anthony Kennedy.
And from that point forward, it was game on.
Eleven days after Trump nominated Kavanaugh, a psychology professor at Palo Alto University named Christine Blasey Ford met with her congressperson, Anna Eshoo, to report that Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her in the summer of 1982 when they were both teenagers. Eshoo reported the matter to California Senator Dianne Feinstein, a ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which was tasked to oversee Kavanaugh’s nomination. Blasey Ford stated that she wanted her story and her identity to be kept secret, but given what was at stake for the nation politically, there was little chance of that happening.
In August, Blasey Ford was asked to take a polygraph test administered by a former FBI agent. No lies were detected.
Two other women, Deborah Ramirez and Julie Swetnick, reported similarly drunken assaults, one at Yale University, the other at various house parties in the Washington, D.C. area during the years 1981-1983. So many years later, it was difficult to corroborate these accusations, but a baseline pattern emerged: Brett Kavanaugh was an overgrown frat boy who drank too much and sexually assaulted women.
Just for the record, Kavanaugh submitted to no polygraph tests.
None of that was reason enough for Republicans to take their collective foot off the gas. Kavanaugh was confirmed to the Supreme Court by the narrowest margin in American history.
One of the deciding votes was cast by Senator Susan Collins of Maine who set up a meeting with Judge Kavanaugh. According to her, Kavanaugh worked vigorously to reassure her that he was no threat to the landmark abortion rights ruling—which was really what everyone was up in arms about anyway.
According to notes taken by multiple staff members during that meeting, Kavanaugh said, “Start with my record, my respect for precedent, my belief that it is rooted in the Constitution, and my commitment and its importance to the rule of law. I understand precedent and I understand the importance of overturning it.
“Roe is 45 years old, it has been reaffirmed many times, lots of people care about it a great deal, and I’ve tried to demonstrate I understand real-world consequences. I am a don’t-rock-the-boat kind of judge. I believe in stability and in the Team of Nine.”
It was bullshit. All of it. Kavanaugh knew exactly why he’d been nominated to the Supreme Court. He was there to overturn Roe. He was there to serve as the “swing vote” on issues of particular Constitutional stickiness, at least in theory; in reality, he was there to throw his weight behind whatever the other conservative justices wanted from him. He lied about his intentions just like he lied about having gotten drunk and sexually assaulting women.
To be fair, it is this writer’s considered opinion that Kavanaugh is not the idealogue that Gorsuch, Alito, Thomas, Barrett, and Roberts are. There is usually enough humanity left in your garden variety alcoholic to feel empathy for other people—a quality that’s clearly missing in the others. But Kavanaugh lacks the backbone and intestinal fortitude to be a hero. His vote has already been bought and paid for. He is what he always was and will forever be: an overgrown frat boy waiting for the next good kegger.
Kavanaugh is, however, the weak link in the chain of autocracy that is now strangling the Supreme Court. In a roomful of adults, he is the child.
Knowing that might come in handy as we move forward.
And we have miles to go before we sleep.
I read all comments, so be sure to leave yours in the comments section below.
Copyright © 2022 Stacey Eskelin
I remain convinced that the Dobbs leak was by a clerk of one of the conservative Justices, to prevent Roberts from persuading Kavanaugh to join him in affirming the Mississippi law at 15 weeks without overturning Roe. Kavanaugh is, as you say, the child on the court - Roberts may very well have been able to peel him off Alito's position. But once it was leaked, he couldn't change his vote without looking weak. He has even less backbone than Roberts.
And so here we are <sigh>.
Stacey, Thank you for another cogent, extremely well articulated piece detailing the disaster we have in SCOTUS and nailing the issue with Kavanaugh. I agree with every word you wrote. I’m so angry. I cannot believe that this is the country I have loved and served in uniform. I don’t recognize America. Truly America is not united nor is it recognizable as the America I have loved and served.