Kavanaugh Refuses To Reject Race-Based Exclusion
Nominee declines to condemn Trump’s attacks on judiciary, racial exclusion. WaPo: "Kavanaugh spent nearly 24 hours over two days answering questions, with many of the discussions on Thursday centering in some way or another on President Trump, who nominated Kavanaugh to the high court. Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, including some Republicans, pressed Kavanaugh about his expansive views of presidential power and past writings that concluded civil suits and criminal investigations of presidents would be better delayed until the chief executive left office. The dramatic release Thursday of once-concealed documents from Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh’s tenure in the George W. Bush White House spotlighted the simmering frustrations from Democrats over how Republicans have kept secret vast parts of Kavanaugh’s voluminous paper trail. Tens of thousands of pages from Kavanaugh’s records have been hidden from public view, only available to senators and certain congressional aides in advance of Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings this week. On Thursday, a small sample of the “committee confidential” documents were disclosed after Democratic senators asked that they be approved for public release, raising questions about why the documents had been considered confidential in the first place."
Kavanaugh May Have Committed Multiple Perjuries
Emails show Kavanaugh may have perjured himself at least four times. Daily Beast: "You can forgive Democratic senators for saying 'I told you so.' For over a month, Democrats (and this writer) have complained that the confirmation process of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh is fatally flawed because the records of Kavanaugh’s White House tenure were being redacted by his former deputy, then redacted again by the Trump White House, then redacted a third time by Judiciary Committee chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). As a result, only 7 percent of Kavanaugh’s White House records have been released to the public—compared to 99 percent of Justice Elena Kagan’s, a nominee of President Obama. On Thursday, with the release of a half dozen emails by Grassley and several more by Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), the Democrats have been proven right. Brett Kavanaugh has misled the Senate at least four times, and the censored emails have been withheld not because of national security or executive privilege, but, at least in part, because they make Kavanaugh look bad."
Kavanaugh's Assault-Weapon Guntopia
Brett Kavanaugh wants you to bear his assault weapon. Bloomberg: "Kavanaugh said there is 'no meaningful or persuasive' distinction between a semi-automatic pistol and a semi-automatic rifle. He went on to compare a ban on a class of arms, such as assault weapons, to 'a ban on a category of speech.' It takes a peculiarly willful blindness, in a land uniquely beset by gun massacres, to claim semi-automatic rifles and semi-automatic pistols are indistinguishable. There is perhaps no more eloquent refutation than the 58 dead and more than 800 injured at a Las Vegas concert last October. The killer chose rifles over pistols for a reason: superior lethality. Furthermore, if there’s no distinction, then a right to 'bear' arms openly would seem to entail the right to openly parade an AR-15. And since an AR-15 is essentially not concealable, even a concealed-carry law would yield a similar result. Kavanaugh’s assertion that categories of guns are equivalent to categories of speech may be the surest mark of gun culture’s influence. Break the claim down to essentials, and bullets equal words. Everyone, no matter how nutty, dangerous, addled or enraged, has a right to speak, don’t they?"
Black Caucus Says Kavanaugh Threatens Voting Rights
Black Caucus says Kavanaugh nomination is threat to voting rights. Axios: "The Congressional Black Caucus and civil rights leaders on Thursday denounced Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court, saying his vote would be a threat to voting rights — pointing to the South Carolina voter ID law he voted to uphold. Advocates highlighted Kavanaugh's refusal to answer Sen. Kamala Harris during Wednesday's confirmation hearing on whether he thinks Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) is constitutional. Think Progress reports that Kavanaugh sought to downplay the significance of the 2013 Shelby County v. Holder ruling, which invalidated a key VRA provision that had long required states with a history of racial discrimination to seek federal approval before changing their voting laws. The Obama administration had blocked the South Carolina law, saying it would disenfranchise thousands of black voters and violate the VRA. But the state, arguing it would deter voter fraud, sought approval from a federal court. Kavanaugh wrote in a 2012 opinion that it 'does not have a discriminatory retrogressive effect' and 'was not enacted for a discriminatory purpose.'"
How Voter ID Laws Disenfranchise Voters
For older and poor voters, getting the right ID can be especially tough. NPR: "Nearly three dozen states require voters to show identification at the polls. And almost half of those states want photo IDs. But there are millions of eligible voters who don't have them. A 2012 survey estimated that 7 percent of American adults lack a government-issued photo ID. While some organizations have sued to overturn these laws, a nonprofit organization called Spread The Vote has taken a different tack: It helps people without IDs get them. And people over 50 years of age have presented some of their biggest challenges. On a recent Tuesday morning in Austell, Ga., 53-year-old Pamela Moon tried to get a replacement for an ID she had lost. She worked with a Spread The Vote volunteer at the Sweetwater Mission. The group sends volunteers to the mission every other Tuesday, so that people who come for food and clothes can get help obtaining a Georgia ID at the same time. Georgia is one of seven states with particularly strict voter ID requirements, which demand that voters show a government-issued photo ID in order to cast a ballot in person. Advocates for voter ID laws argue that showing identification at the polls reduces the incidence of voter fraud, although studies have repeatedly shown that in-person voter fraud is extremely rare. Moon never had a driver's license. 'I can drive,' she said, but she never got her license, 'cause I can't afford to buy no car.'"
