Sen.
Booker (D-NJ) questions nominee Judge Kavanaugh on his
“Racial Diversity” views
Sen. Cornyn (R-TX) had threatened to expel Sen. Booker from the Senate
(A very bad move - We the People have a right to know the truth)
Updated
from NBC News, and just before the original story below – makes for a very
good read:
Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) defended the decision
to keep “committee confidential” documents private, saying that redactions were
often needed to protect personal information.
A Grassley aide told NBC News shortly after the
exchange that the email Booker referenced was now eligible for release, and no
longer considered committee confidential.
Original post and stories here from Vox.com
and also from Roll
Call.com here:
The
designation: “Committee Confidential” itself is not uncommon...
If is used
for intelligence hearings since a fair share of documents that are classified
can be labeled as “committee-confidential.”
What is
uncommon is the way that Kavanaugh’s documents have been vetted and designated,
re: The National Archives would usually lead this process, but because their
approach would purportedly take too long, Bill Burck (a private attorney for former
President George W. Bush) ran and expedited a parallel process, and that
process is what DEMS have repeatedly pointed out as completely unprecedented.
Sen. Durbin
(D-IL): “By what right, by what authority can Mr. Burck designate a document as
“committee-confidential” – he as the consent of the Republican committee.” The
exceedingly partisan nature of that process has infuriated DEMS – as they say
it offers no insight into how things are done and it chips away at the previously-established
methods for doing that same thing.
Sen.
Feinstein (D-CA): “There is no process for determining “committee-confidential”
– it used to be that both sides had to concur. Now, this is just simply not the
case. “Committee-confidential” becomes kind of a crock. For all I know, some
Republican staffer could have made this decision. It becomes a way for the
majority to put all information through a strainer.”
Background: From
the beginning, DEMS have objected to the timeline GOPers have used to usher
Kavanaugh onto the Supreme Court before midterm elections even without fully
releasing documents related to Kavanaugh’s time in the Bush White House and not
as a District Judge, and that conflict has been simmering ever since Kavanaugh
was nominated.
He served as
both White House counsel and staff secretary during the Bush administration. As
staff secretary, for example — a time that he’s characterized as
a formative experience for his judicial practice, it is possible that
he engaged with millions of documents, a trove that DEMS have been interested
in mining.
His
extensive document trail is one of the reasons GOP Majority McConnell
(R-KY) warned before his nomination that Kavanaugh could take longer to confirm
because the number of pages is said to run into the millions and McConnell
feared could hand Senate DEMS an opportunity to delay the confirmation vote
until after the new session of the court begins in October.
But once Kavanaugh
was nominated, Senate Republicans changed their tune.
Now, and in
the interest of expediting his confirmation process, they have decided to skip
a great number of documents usually released as a matter of transparency,
including the ones from his time as staff secretary.
My 2 cents: That is the heart of this story and
confirmation process – and. it is potentially a very serious dilemma for the
GOP this way: They constantly preach openness, candidness, transparency, and dedicated
service to the people – but is method clearly shows their hypocrisy and total
BS on a grand scale. Seeing it for what it is up to the people – the ones they
profess to serve.
So, I say, put up or shut up, or better yet: Get the hell out office
with your petty BS phoniness.
Please do or say as much as possible to get involved in
this mess and maybe help to straighten things out and anyway you … this
divisiveness in name of democracy for the people must stop. But, how – that is
the $64,000 question isn’t it?
Thanks for stopping by.
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