1. For the first time I can remember, a leading Democrat opened the door to investigating a sitting Supreme Court justice. This has the makings of a strategy by which Dems set themselves against a court they will have lost for a generation should Brett Kavanaugh he confirmed.
2. CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Sheldon Whitehouse Thursday: “If the Democrats win back the House and/or the Senate, Democrats will investigate what happened, the charges that Professor Ford is laying out, even if that means investigating a [sitting] Supreme Court justice?”
3. Whitehouse: “I am confident of that.”
4. This is new. Or newish.
5. The impeachment of state and federal judges used to be fairly common in the 19th century, but the practice grew rare during the 20th century, according to Governing columnist @AlanGreenblatt.
6. New Hampshire's legislature, he wrote, “made a habit of clearing out the entire state Supreme Court, doing so on at least five occasions.” The impeachment of Supreme Court justices was extremely rarer, but it happened. governing.com/topics/politic…
7. I’d imagine this has something to do with a changing of political consensus. When the more the parties and courts grew out of sync, the more likely it was people sought to remove judges. The more in sync they were, the less incentive there was to remove.
8. A Supreme Court featuring Kavanaugh is going to be out of sync with the entire country. When that happened in the past, Emily Bazelon wrote, “unpredictable counterforces have been unleashed.
9. @emilybazelon: "The judiciary is supposed to be the least dangerous branch of government, but when it falls out of step with the public, it can nonetheless strain the constitutional order—and the country—to the breaking point.”
10. Emily's piece. nytimes.com/2018/08/22/mag…
11. Those “unpredictable counterforces” might come in the form of congressional investigations into Kavanaugh’s history, a history that his Republican patrons don’t want to investigate, because in doing so, they risk unearthing inconvenient facts.
12. If the Republicans prevail, and I still think they are going to, it might be in part thanks to Kavanaugh himself, who appears to have played a role in a disinformation campaign* against Ford.
13. According to the Post, “Kavanaugh and his allies have been privately discussing a defense that would not question whether an incident involving Ford happened, but instead would raise doubts that the attacker was Kavanaugh.”
14. In brief, the conservatives are pushing a case of mistaken identity. Kavanaugh’s friend, @EdWhelanEPPC, served with him in the Bush administration and has been advising his confirmation effort.
15. On Thursday evening, Whalen “publicly identified another high school classmate of Kavanaugh’s as Ford’s possible attacker,” the Post reported.
16. Whalen, the Post said, “pointed to floor plans, online photographs and other information to suggest a location for the house party in suburban Maryland that Ford described. He also named and posted photographs of the classmate he suggested could be responsible.”
18. Now, it’s one thing for partisans to attack a woman’s credibility for complicating a confirmation process. That’s a decision the GOP will pay for on Election Day.
19. But it’s quite another thing for a Supreme Court nominee himself to have participated in the Republican Party’s attack on a woman complicating his rise to power. That’s a mark of character, a kind of character that’s out of sync with the needs of the country.
20. I’ll close with Ronald J. Kroszynski, who wrote “The Case for Impeaching Kavanaugh.” nytimes.com/2018/09/20/opi…
21. He said: “The House Democratic leadership should pledge now that if they win a majority, they will conduct an impeachment investigation, to get to the truth.
22. Krotoszynski: Doing so today would make clear to the Senate Republicans that if they rush to judgment, in the absence of a full and fair investigation, there will still be an investigation.”
23. So many thanks for reading this thread. Please sign up for my newsletter, the Editorial Board. Or if you like, subscribe for the year! Thanks. stoehr.substack.com/p/plain-talk-a…
