The winners and losers of the Supreme Court confirmation By Jonathan Turley

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The winners and losers of the Supreme Court confirmation
By Jonathan Turley, opinion contributor — 10/06/18 09:00 AM EDT

“Horror has a face … and you must make a friend of horror.”

When the character Colonel Walter Kurtz spoke those words in the film “Apocalypse Now,” he described the secret to his success, his epiphany that decency and humanity no longer have a place in war. His words could well describe the aftermath of the Supreme Court confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh. As Kurtz explained, the key is to transcend morality and allow people “to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling, without passion, without judgment, because it is judgment that defeats us.”

Once the “most deliberative body in the world,” the Senate has finally reached its apocalyptic moment of total political war without judgment. Kavanaugh and his chief accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, are both faces of the horror of a process designed to release people from any consideration of fairness or empathy, to leash the primordial instincts of voters. That, perhaps, will forever change our confirmation process.

For weeks, people enjoyed uninhibited rage on both sides. The original confirmation hearing itself was virtually devoid of substantive discussion of Kavanaugh’s jurisprudential views. Citing the Ginsburg rule, Kavanaugh repeated judicial platitudes about respecting precedent while declining, as did prior nominees, to give direct answers. I have long criticized the Ginsburg rule and the modern confirmation process. These hearings, however, began badly and ended as a nightmare.

Republicans hit a new low on the standard of disclosure by allowing the White House to withhold an unprecedented amount of material from Kavanaugh’s record. Democrats then joined the race to the bottom by withholding Ford’s allegation until the last minute. Both sides then tore into each other and the witnesses. Senators in both parties declared that they believed either Ford or Kavanaugh before any testimony was heard. Senator Cory Booker (D-N.J.) maintained that it really no longer mattered if Kavanaugh was innocent or guilty, while Senator Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) said that she would weigh Kavanaugh’s views on the Constitution in deciding whether to believe his denials of being a sexual predator. On the other side, Republicans imposed a five minute rule that made the questioning by a female prosecutor into a national joke.

The biggest winners?

more
https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/410198-the-winners-and-losers-of-the-supreme-court-confirmation

[IsailedawayfromFR]

Seems like this misses a lot of points.

In the big picture, the big loser is the rule of law wherein people are innocent until proven guilty.