WashPo: Trump's corruption is staining everything...

[triron]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/blogs/plum-line/wp/2018/09/20/trumps-corruption-is-staining-everything-now-its-about-to-stain-the-supreme-court/?__twitter_impression=true

[DonViejo]

1. That's an op-ed by Greg Sargent, not an editorial from the Washington Post as your subject suggests

[calimary]

5. HOWEVER, it's a very good thing that stuff like this is getting out there.

Getting out in print, on camera, on radio,in the public square.

This is the kind of thing that very much NEEDS to be said, read, and SPREAD.

[DonViejo]

6. But misidentifying the source of the opinion does absolutely NO good.

[GeorgeGist]

8. Greg Sargent works for WAPO.

[DonViejo]

9. No! Really!??!!!

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

2. And the op-ed makes a point I haven't seen before:

Even if the FBI did an investigation, neither Trump nor the GOP senators would accept its findings if they uncovered something negative about Kavanaugh:

....the president is, of course, all but certain not to ask the FBI to look into this further. But the point is that, even if he did, he would not accept any FBI findings if they were not entirely to his liking. And Republicans are so protective of this president that they would not accept them, either, let alone buck the president by calling for the FBI to get involved again in the first place.

The fact that Trump “just called the FBI a cancer,” Weiner noted, confirms that “his hatred for the FBI, and Senate Republicans’ slavish devotion to him, make the question of the FBI’s involvement a nonstarter.”

The bottom line is that a legitimate fact-finding role for the FBI in this process is simply not possible with this president in office, and Trump’s corruption is the root cause of this. Because of it, there could not be such a fact-finding effort in this case even if both parties were to agree that it is desirable. And Republicans — who now claim that testimony from only Ford and Kavanaugh will be sufficient, to keep the dispute shrouded in “he said, she said” uncertainty — are complicit in creating this state of affairs, in which bringing an external, neutral fact-finding effort to bear on this process is essentially unthinkable.

Kavanaugh very well may be entirely innocent, of course, but this only underscores the point further. The absence of that neutral effort to determine the truth — which is the direct outgrowth of Trump’s corruption of the rule of law for his own personal ends — will forever be a question mark over the process, should Kavanaugh be confirmed. After all, if you presume Kavanaugh’s innocence, that inevitably also means this absence leaves doubt lingering over his ascension that should have been dispelled.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/blogs/plum-line/wp/2018/09/20/trumps-corruption-is-staining-everything-now-its-about-to-stain-the-supreme-court/?__twitter_impression=true

[gratuitous]

4. "Will forever be a question mark . . ."

As Dick Cheney would say, "So?" Has any of Justice Thomas' Supreme Court jurisprudence been invalidated? Does anyone think that Neal Gorsuch loses sleep over the corrupt process that placed him on the court? Do the media spend any time at all - and I emphasize "ANY" - on these tainted justices?

Answer: No.

Kavanaugh will enjoy the same lifetime appointment, the same deference for his office, the same precedence for his written opinions, that Oliver Wendell Holmes, Felix Frankfurter, and Thurgood Marshall received. The media won't give a tin shit once he's elevated to the high court.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

7. Yes and no - Kavanaugh will be confirmed whether or not Dr. Ford testifies

and whether or not the FBI investigates; and opinions he writes, if joined by enough justices to form a majority, will have the same legal effect as any other Supreme Court opinion. But there's still a cloud over Clarence Thomas, who ended up on the court under similar circumstances. He was manifestly unqualified in the first place - a mediocre judge who was appointed only because he was the only conservative black federal judge GHW Bush and the GOP could find to "prove" they weren't racists. For ten years he never asked a single question during oral argument, breaking his silence only after the death of Scalia. (He claimed it was because he was ashamed of his accent as a kid - which might have been true at one time, but if you're on the damn Supreme Court you just have to get your shit together and do your job.) More importantly, his jurisprudence is nothing short of bizarre. It's an even more out-of-the-mainstream version of Scalia's originalism, the notion that the Constitution must be interpreted as if it's still 1787. His opinions, mostly dissents in which no other justice joined, are evidence of his judicial extremism: More about that here: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/02/opinion/contributors/clarence-thomas-supreme-court-conservative.html

Thomas' extreme conservatism is consistent in the larger sense with his retrograde opinion of women as evidenced by his harassment of Anita Hill and others. Gorsuch is another originalist, although so far he doesn't seem quite as extreme as Thomas - time will tell. But Kavanaugh's appointment under a such a cloud - even worse than Thomas' - goes to the very legitimacy of the court by adding to the perception already raised by Thomas that unqualified and/or ideologically extreme justices can be appointed by a president and a servile Senate that cares only about a particular agenda.

[Autumn]

3. The republicans in power were corrupt before Trump came along.