 |
| Seventy protesters were arrested at the Kavanaugh Hearing |
By Douglas V. Gibbs
Author, Speaker, Instructor, Radio Host
“Obstructive” is a nice way of putting it. Plans to disrupt the Kavanaugh Hearings were in play long before the committee gathered together in Washington.
As expected, President Donald Trump’s United States Supreme Court nominee is being met with resistance. The Democrats on the floor were doing all they could to stand between Kavanaugh and a seat on the high court for simply two reasons. Trump nominated him, and he has a strict constructionist view of the U.S. Constitution.
In the back of the room where the proceedings were taking place were Democrat Party allies protesting and heckling in a belligerent and unacceptable manner.
Had, hypothetically, Tea Party protesters done the same during the Kagan or Sotomayor hearings, they would have been quickly escorted out of the hall without any questions asked by Obama’s allies. Of course, that did not happen because conservatives have a reasonable sense of decorum.
The heckling reached a crescendo every time Republican Senator Chuck Grassley tried to speak, and began immediately when he tried to call the hearings to order. Rather than recommend removal of the loud crazies in the back of the room, Senator Kamala Harris, a Democrat from California, demanded a delay to the hearings. Democrat Senator Klobuchar (D-Minn.) followed up with another call to delay the hearings.
Delay? Isn’t that what this is all about? The Democrats have a minority in the Senate, and so they can only use thug tactics to stop a hearing for a constitutionalist to join the Supreme Court. If he was a member of Communist Party USA, they’d be all for him.
The excuse for a delay, claimed by Democrats, was not because of the hecklers as much as it was about some documents. They wanted the hearing to adjourn or be postponed because a new set of documents on Kavanaugh’s record had emerged, and they claimed they wanted to have time to study those documents. Senator Corey Booker went so far to demand a cancellation of the hearings.
What about the 700 judicial opinions and more than 10,000 pages that Kavanaugh wrote or joined on the U.S. Court of Appeals; 17,000 pages of Kavanaugh’s non-judicial writings and speeches; and (so far) some 350,000 pages of material related to Kavanaugh’s work as associate independent counsel and associate counsel to the president, of which has been available long enough to be reviewed, and represents more information than that presented regarding the previous five Supreme Court nominees combined?
The problem is that the Democrat Party’s version of what the rule of law is, and the definition of that term by constitutionalists like Kavanaugh, are two different things. The socialists believe in a living and breathing Constitution that can be bent and twisted at the whim of judicial opinion. Kavanaugh believes it to be a firm document, unwavering, and that the law should be applied, not interpreted and legislated from the bench.
