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(Permanent Musical Accompaniment To The Last Post Of The Week From The Blog's Favorite Living Canadian)
The Great State O'Maine has one great senator, and it's not Susan Collins. It's independent Angus King, who was fed up with the nomination process afforded Brett Kavanaugh weeks before everyone else was. He thought the nomination ill-conceived and the process ludicrously hasty, and that was before boofing had become part of our national political conversation. After his colleague, Susan Collins, gave up the store on Friday, King-aka The Mustache Of Righteousness-took to the floor of the Senate and delivered his own verdict.
Let's just say that the Maine delegation in the United States Senate is not unified on the subject of Brett Kavanaugh.
The FBI report that I reviewed today does not confirm or contradict Judge Kavanaugh’s statements, nor does it undermine the credible testimony of Dr. Ford. For me, my decision is based on Judge Kavanaugh’s record, which indicates an overly rigid judicial philosophy that would threaten protections for healthcare, personal liberty and a women’s right to choose, the environment, and campaign finance laws; it is based on his refusal to recuse himself from any cases that may come before the court involving presidential power as it applies to the President who nominated him for the seat; it is based on his partisan behavior during last week’s hearing, which does not match the temperament and impartiality needed to serve on our nation’s highest court; and it is based on the voices of Maine women who in recent weeks have shared with me their deep concern about this nomination. Based upon what I’ve seen, read, and witnessed, I remain a no vote on his confirmation.
Collins's speech is going to go down as a landmark in the annals of congressional smarm. It was too long. It was badly delivered. It made little or no coherent sense. Beyond the aesthetic, it was a suicide note delivered on behalf of her entire political identity.
This was perhaps my favorite passage-and by "favorite," I mean, "completely detached from any possible empirical reality on any plane of existence in this particular universe."
My fervent hope is that Brett Kavanaugh will work to lessen the divisions in the Supreme Court so that we have far fewer 5-4 decisions.
My fervent hope is that I will awaken tomorrow with six pounds of gold in each of my shoes, but I'm not counting on leprechauns.
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The only people who acquitted themselves well in this prairie dog town were Heidi Heitkamp and Lisa Murkowski, who looked at the same evidence King did and came to the same conclusion-that even if you ignore the what Dr. Christine Blasey Ford came forward to tell the Senate, this is a guy who by temperament alone doesn't deserve the promotion he now apparently will get, and that even if you ignore the privilege-fueled tantrum he directed at the Senate Judiciary Committee, this is a guy whose judicial philosophy was not nurtured in academia or in the actual practice of the law, but in the rage-furnaces of modern conservative Mordor, and that these, taken in tandem, make him somebody who shouldn't be allowed within five blocks of the Supreme Court.
Moreover, and this is just what we all need, no matter whether he's confirmed or not, the stories about him are going to keep piling up, which in turn will make the FBI's perfunctory seven-day "investigation" look ever more like at best inadequate, and at worst, a deliberate cover-up. For example, from The New York Times:
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