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Brett Kavanaugh has been confirmed as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. The vote was 50-48 in favor of Kavanaugh.
Senators Collins, Flake, and Manchin had already announced their intentions to confirm Kavanaugh before the vote was held. Senator Lisa Murkowski, who was previously ready to vote "no", agreed to vote "present" instead so that Senator Steve Daines could attend his daughter's wedding instead of being present in the Senate to support Kavanaugh.
SCOTUSBlog: Kavanaugh confirmed as 114th justice
Nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court
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President Trump Nominates Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the US Supreme Court
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @01:44AM (8 children)
Ironically, if he did do it, admitting so would have tanked his nomination.
He said that no job was worth what he and his family were put through. But is doing the right thing worth losing the job and being tarnished forever?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @02:14AM (5 children)
As it stands, his reputation is in tatters and he's likely to be impeached and removed from office the first chance the Dems get at it. He's a bit lucky in that the Dems will have to pick up like 20 seats in the Senate as well as win the house in order to make it happen, but any decisions that he makes are going to be suspect and the cost to the court's credibility is staggering.
The only way in which this makes any sense is either as an f you to Democrats or as a way of delegitimizing the Supreme Court as it continually slaps Trumps plans down for violating various constitutional rights.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday October 07 2018, @02:40AM (4 children)
Thankfully, SCOTUS doesn't have to give a flying fuck about credibility. They are damned near utterly unaccountable and damned near the final word on any given subject; congress would have to amend the constitution to overturn one of their decisions.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @04:58AM (1 child)
really? seems luke there was a SC decision. a certain Justice Scalia gave the losers advice for how to argue it. ans said if Congress passed a law...
Well those things happened. the losers got another similar case back to the SC, and, lo and behold, Congress had passed a law, and... Citizens United vs US.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday October 07 2018, @02:44PM
That wasn't exactly overturning then, was it? There's a significant difference between "you can't do this" and "you can't do this that way".
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @03:49PM (1 child)
The SCOTUS does not have it's own enforcement army. Literally, the only power they have comes from our agreement to follow whatever their rulings are.
If enough of us decided to say, just fuck it, we don't have to listen to those partisan hacks any more, there's nothing they could do to stop it.
This is an extremely dangerous game that the GOP has been playing the last few decades where they nominate jurists that aren't competent to be on any courts to life time appointments while cock blocking the much more qualified picks that the Democrats have been nominating.
This puts us in dangerous water as the court increasingly wades into things like settling Presidential elections and voting rights.
If our vote doesn't count, then on what basis should anybody expect change without a bloody insurrection?
(Score: 2) by BK on Monday October 08 2018, @01:27AM
Over the last few decades.... for at least a half century, SCOTUS has increasingly become involved in areas that are as much (or more) policy as law. Left, Right, or Other, this has been a dangerous game.
The problem with the approach of 'winning' your issue through the courts is that your counter-parties have no investment in the solution. Generally, when the same things are done legislatively, the 'losing' party wrings some concession or whatever so that, even in defeat, all of the stakeholders win a bit. Winning in the court leaves the losers plotting to do the same back to the winner.
The GOP aren't alone in selecting activist judges to the court(s). It has taken at least two to manage this particular tango.
...but you HAVE heard of me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 08 2018, @01:08AM (1 child)
You may find this incredible but there are some for whom retaining a modicum of integrity is far more important than getting a hold of the levers of power. Yeah, I know such people are few and far between, but they do exist. Just sayin'.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 08 2018, @01:26AM
Too bad somebody like that could never get appointed to SCOTUS in this political climate.