Massive coalition of 40 million Christians wants Kavanaugh GONE.
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Fentoine Lum
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Dear Senators: The Opposition to Brett Kavanaugh Includes Churches, Law Professors, and Conservatives — Even His Own Friends
https://theintercept.com/2018/10/05...ssors-and-conservatives-even-his-own-friends/
The opposition to Brett Kavanaugh that has gotten the most attention is, naturally, the Senate Democrats who are voting against his Supreme Court nomination, and members of the #MeToo movement who believe Christine Blasey Ford and Deborah Ramirez when they say Kavanaugh drunkenly assaulted them in high school and college, respectively.
But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Across the country, a diverse array of prominent individuals and organizations has come out against Kavanaugh, quite publicly and quite surprisingly. That even includes friends of his. Unlike the political divide on Capitol Hill, which is predictably stark with the exception of a few wavering senators, the national opposition to Kavanaugh’s elevation to the Supreme Court includes a startling number of church groups, including Mormons and Christians. Conservative scholars and legal figures — such as former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, a lifelong Republican appointed to the court by a Republican president, Gerald Ford — have also spoken out against the nominee.
“I think that his performance during the hearings caused me to change my mind,” Stevens said on Thursday.
Stevens, who retired from the high court in 2010, was referring to Kavanaugh’s bitter and tearful attacks during his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week. In his prepared remarks, Kavanaugh railed against the Democrats who had vocally opposed his nomination. He even invoked a plot for revenge by supporters of Bill and Hillary Clinton, who resent his previous work for Ken Starr, the special prosecutor who led the campaign to impeach Bill Clinton in the 1990s. “He has demonstrated a potential bias involving enough potential litigants before the court that he would not be able to perform his full responsibilities,” Stevens told retirees in Boca Raton, Florida. “For the good of the court, it’s not healthy to get a new justice that can only do a part-time job.”
While Kavanaugh’s nomination had initially moved forward with broad support from religious organizations, that’s changed as a result of the sexual assault allegations, as well as the widespread impression that he lied during his testimony about having received stolen Democratic emails while working in the Bush White House, and that he misrepresented his drinking habits and the meanings of what appeared to be problematic remarks he made in his 1983 senior yearbook. Shortly after Kavanaugh’s testimony last week, a major Catholic magazine issued a surprising call for his nomination to be withdrawn.
“For the good of the country and the future credibility of the Supreme Court in a world that is finally learning to take reports of harassment, assault and abuse seriously,” the editors of America Magazine wrote in an editorial, “it is time to find a nominee whose confirmation will not repudiate that lesson.” On Thursday, Mormon Women for Ethical Government, which has dozens of offices across the country, issued a statement that, while not explicitly calling for Kavanaugh’s nomination to be voted down, called on the Senate to only seat judges “of the highest character and caliber who respect the law both professionally and personally.”
The National Council of Churches, which represents 100,000 congregations and 45 million church-goers, issued a blunt demand for Kavanaugh to step aside after his testimony. “Judge Kavanaugh exhibited extreme partisan bias and disrespect towards certain members of the committee and thereby demonstrated that he possesses neither the temperament nor the character essential for a member of the highest court in our nation,” the NCC statement said. It continued, “We are deeply disturbed by the multiple allegations of sexual assault and call for a full and unhindered investigation of these accusations.”
After initially expressing strong support for him, three of Kavanaugh’s former law clerks unexpectedly moved toward opposition to his nomination after the allegations of sexual assault emerged. In a Monday letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, the three clerks wrote that “we have been deeply troubled by those allegations and the events surrounding them and were encouraged by the initiation of a formal FBI investigation.” They submitted their letter before the FBI completed its investigation on Thursday. Though Republican senators applauded the FBI’s efforts, Democratic senators who read the investigation sharply criticized it because a large number of people who wanted to talk to the FBI, including Ford and Ramirez, were not contacted.
Kavanaugh’s nomination initially received widespread support from his former high school classmates at Georgetown Preparatory School, and from former classmates at Yale University, where he was an undergraduate, as well as a law student. But in the wake of the assault allegations and his testimony, that support began to crumble, too. More than 125 alumni of Georgetown Prep have signed a petition of support for Ford, calling on other alumni to come forward with information about sexual assaults Kavanaugh was involved in. “Our silence serves no one,” the petition states.
Former students and professors at Yale have also spoken out. Three of Kavanaugh’s close friends from Yale wrote a startling op-ed in the Washington Post on Thursday, with the headline, “We Were Brett Kavanaugh’s Drinking Buddies. We Don’t Think He Should Be Confirmed.” They argued that Kavanaugh flat-out lied in his testimony about not drinking heavily at Yale. “We felt it our civic duty to speak the truth and say that Brett lied under oath while seeking to become a Supreme Court justice,” they wrote. “That is our one and only message, but it is a significant one. For we each believe that telling the truth, no matter how difficult, is a moral obligation for our nation’s leaders. No one should be able to lie their way onto the Supreme Court. Honesty is the glue that holds together a society of laws. Lies are the solvent that dissolves those bonds.”
More broadly, several thousand law professors across the country signed a letter against his nomination, stating about his testimony, “Judge Brett Kavanaugh displayed a lack of judicial temperament that would be disqualifying for any court, and certainly for elevation to the highest court of this land.” And just today, the American Bar Association notified the Senate that it was re-opening its evaluation of Kavanaugh’s fitness to serve as a result, again, of his testimony last week.
What follows is a list of people and organizations that have opposed Brett Kavanaugh’s elevation to the Supreme Court of the United States:
•Letter signed by 2,400+ law professors
•40 Harvard law professors
•900 female law school faculty professors
•160 Maine lawyers and law professors
•Alaskan female attorneys
•47 Yale faculty
•Yale Law School alumni and students
•Retired Justice John Paul Stevens
•Three former Kavanaugh clerks
•88 Maine writers
•The National Council of Churches
•Mormon Women for Ethical Government
•America Magazine
•Kavanaugh’s former Yale classmate
•Havard law professor Laurence Tribe
•Alumni of Georgetown Prep
•Benjamin Wittes — “I Know Brett Kavanaugh, but I Wouldn’t Confirm Him”
•1,600 men in a full-page New York Times ad
•Evangelical minister Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove
It does not qualify him but neither does it disqualify him, especially when compared to the 32 hours of hearings.
According to the ABA in September, 2018: "To merit the Committee’s rating of “Well Qualified,” a Supreme Court nominee must be a preeminent member of the legal profession, have outstanding legal ability and exceptional breadth of experience, and meet the very highest standards of integrity, professional competence, and judicial temperament. The rating of “Well Qualified” is reserved for those found to merit the Committee’s strongest affirmative endorsement.
This ABA report should tell us more about a twelve-year career on the bench than one afternoon of somewhat childish remarks.
doesn't matter. he will be confirmed, and serve for the next 30 years.
PostmodernProphet
fully immersed in faith..
and yet you continue proving it.....
USFREEDOM911
MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN
ftfy
hvilleherb
Verified User
Huh?
Evangelical Christian leaders like Falwell and Robertson have been inspirational. They are leaders who Christ himself would be thrilled with.
PostmodernProphet
fully immersed in faith..
I don't expect to see that many tele-evangelists in heaven........
moon
Satire for Sanity
Now that's interesting. What happens to a Justice if he/she is convicted of a crime while serving.
it wont happen. stop living in a fantasy world. you will have justice kavanaugh for the rest of your life and there is nothing you can do about it.
Ya gotta wonder if even an idiot like you think this to be so.
moon
Satire for Sanity
Nah- he has to go, just like temporary president Trumpo.
The country isn't going to live with the stain of this Grand Old Pervert choice.
Expect more investigations.
PostmodernProphet
fully immersed in faith..
we expect fewer Canadians.....
Where is the NRA when it's needed then? All right-wingers are liars, all and every day.
once again, this type of talk shows how deranged you guys are now. you will never get rid of kavanaugh. you need like a super majority in the senate. lol. never happen. american will not approve either. it's over, you lost.