Previously, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanagh’s hearings in September 2018 were a high, or perhaps, I should say, low water mark in this regard, but we have to give the good Senators credit for outdoing themselves at least.
Over the past several decades, Senate confirmation hearings have transformed from staid, boring, if-not-banal formalities into a bizarre combination of near-fact free, irrelevant grandstanding and political preening with the primarily goal of creating a “gotcha” moment that either sinks a potential nominee or raises the profile of the questioner, setting the stage for higher political office, hopefully both. Previously, most would probably agree that Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanagh’s hearings in September 2018 were a high, or perhaps, I should say, low water mark in this regard, essentially devolving into anything and everything the advise and consent clause in the Constitution wasn’t supposed to be. Even beyond the bizarre allegations that a teenage Kavanagh ran a gang rape ring in high school, where he and his upper class white male friends competed with one another to complete the devil’s triangle, engaging in the equivalent of a homosexual tryst for kicks, the sight of Senators embarrassing themselves in a desperate attempt to seize the spotlight continues to amaze. Who can possibly forget New Jersey Senator Cory Booker demanding the release of classified documents Mr. Kavanaugh had written in 2002 while part of the second Bush Administration, claiming “I am Spartacus,” or as close as he would get considering the real Spartacus was literally crucified for mounting a rebellion against the Roman Republic? Seriously, the dude was a former slave turned revolutionary hero turned martyr and cautionary tale because he wanted to read something that was written sixteen years earlier and has no bearing on anything at that point? Overall, the hearings themselves might’ve spent more time on what the nominee had done in high school, whether he’d drank a beer, and what nicknames he had for his friends than anything else. So much so, that Saturday Night Live’s satirical take, featuring Matt Damon as Justice Kavanaugh, seemed dangerously close to real life. For example, the real Justice Kavanagh was forced to make a statement prior to his confirmation, where he actually said in front of a Senate Committee of all places, “I drank beer with my friends. Almost everyone did. Sometimes I had too many beers. Sometimes others did. I liked beer. I still like beer. But I did not drink beer to the point of blacking out, and I never sexually assaulted anyone. There is a bright line between drinking beer, which I gladly do and which I fully embrace, and sexually assaulting someone, which is a violent crime. If every American who drinks beer or every American who drank beer in high school is suddenly presumed guilty of sexual assault, it will be an ugly new place in this country. I never committed sexual assault.” Mr. Damon as Brett Kavanaugh put it this way, “Look, I like beer, OK? I like beer. I like beer. Boys like beer, girls like beer, I like beer. I like beer.” When he was mockingly asked if he ever drank “too many beers,” Mr. Damon responded, “You mean, was I cool? Yeah!” When asked if ever drank so much he blacked out, “I don’t know, did you? Did you ever black out?”
For better or worse, it seems the Senate has managed to outdo itself with last week’s hearings for Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Kash Patel, and Tulsi Gabbard, coming hot on the heels of another disreputable series the week before. If Mr. Damon opened by joking he was going to start out at ten and get to fifteen real fast, these started out at Spinal Tap’s infamous eleven, and simply didn’t stop, dispensing with anything resembling relevant questions and instead choosing to focus on who could be either the loudest and the most insane. How else can you explain Senator Maggie Hassan, yelling at Mr. Kennedy while agreeing with him that the science is sometimes wrong, only to conclude that we must trust the settled science anyway? “Sometimes science is wrong,” she proclaimed accurately, but then continued. “We make progress. We build on the work and we become more successful, and when you continue to sow doubt about settled science, it makes it impossible for us to move forward.” While no one will ever know precisely what point she was trying to make – how does anyone know they’re wrong unless someone sows doubt? – she at least asked a couple of questions somewhat related to the topic at hand given Mr. Kennedy might ultimately become head of the Department of Health and Human Services. Alas, some of them were purely rhetorical, it seemed. “Please do not suggest that anybody in this body of either political party doesn’t want to know what the cause of autism is. Do you know how many friends I have with children who have autism?” Senator Hassan queried to herself. “The problem with this witness’s response on the autism cause and the relationship to vaccines is because he is re-litigating and churning settled science so we cannot go forward and find out what the cause of autism is and treat these kids and help these families.” Senator Bernie Sanders took a similar approach, questioning Mr. Kennedy about his support for a group opposed to the mass vaccination of children, one he is no longer even a part of. Apparently, this group raises money by selling “onesies.” “Right now, on their website as I understand it, they are selling onesies, these are little things, clothing for babies. One of them is titled, ‘Unvaxxed, Unafraid.’ Next one, and they’re sold for twenty six bucks a piece by the way. Next one is ‘No Vax, No Problem.’ Now you’re coming before this committee and you say you are pro-vaccine. I just want to ask some questions,” he said, before continuing to grandstand, commenting yet again on the prices as if he was concerned gouging was at play, “and yet your organization is making money selling a child’s product to parents for twenty six bucks which casts fundamental doubt on the usefulness of vaccines. Can you tell us,” he finally got around to asking, “that you will, now that you are pro-vaccine, that you’re gonna have your organization take these products off the market?” “Senator,” Mr. Kennedy replied, “I have no power over that organization. I’m not a part of it. I resigned from the board.” Regardless, Senators Hassan and Sanders deserve at least some credit for staying on topic unlike their colleague, Senator Mazie Hirono, who bizarrely opens every hearing with a question about the nominees sexual history and has for several years “I ask the following two initial questions of all nominees who come before any of the committees on which I sit to ensure the fitness of the nominees. Since you became a legal adult, have you ever made unwanted requests for sexual favors or committed any verbal or physical harassment or assault of a sexual nature? Have you ever faced discipline or entered into a settlement related to this kind of conduct?” Incredibly, there was at least one Senator who never actually got around to asking a question in the first place, preferring to pontificate instead, then simply yielding the floor for even more pontificating.
Perhaps needless to say, even when Senators, sometimes of both parties, actually landed on a line of questioning, whether it was relevant to nominee’s role or whether it simply descended into badgering and hectoring remained the far more important questions. For example, President Trump’s nomination of former Democrat, Tulsi Gabbard, for Director of National Intelligence has caused consternation on both sides for the perception that she has taken anti-American positions on some matters of intelligence gathering and foreign relations in general. Of particular interest was Edward Snowden for some reason, the man who first revealed the unlawful extent of the National Security Administration’s domestic spying program, complete with the government obtaining and perusing the metadata of every cell phone call in the country. Like most fair minded Americans, I believe Ms. Gabbard’s opinion on Mr. Snowden is complicated. On one hand, we understand that he broke the law to reveal this secret and subsequently absconded to Russia, beyond the reach of United States justice. On the other, he revealed a massively illegal program, the largest and most intrusive of its kind in the history of the known universe at the time, and one never authorized or contemplated by Congress, even assuming it didn’t run afoul of a strict interpretation of the Bill of Rights. Thus, we can understand that Mr. Snowden broke the law, but we can also appreciate that he exposed a program of massive scope that wasn’t supposed to exist in the first place. As Ms. Gabbard herself put it, honestly in my opinion, “Edward Snowden broke the law, but he also, even as he broke the law, released information that exposed egregious, illegal and unconstitutional programs that are happening within our government that led to serious reforms.” Though these events occurred more than a decade ago and have absolutely no bearing on the future of American intelligence, they remained an obsession last week with more than Senator questioning whether or not Ms. Gabbard felt Mr. Snowden was a “traitor” for some bizarre reason. “Was he a traitor at the time when he took America’s secrets, released them in public and then ran to China and became a Russian citizen?” asked Republican Sen. James Lankford in what CNN described as “a lengthy line of questioning that described the broad sense of the intelligence community that Snowden’s actions were tantamount to treason.” “I’m focused on the future and how we can prevent something like this from happening again,” she replied, including the potential to reduce future incidents like Mr. Snowden’s by “making sure that every single person in the workforce knows about the legal whistleblower channels available to them.” For some reason, Mr. Lankford claimed this answer wasn’t sufficient, insisting he was “kind of surprised” and warning that it raised “a lot of questions.” “I thought that was going to be an easy softball question, actually,” the Oklahoma Republican said. His Democrat colleague, Senator Michael Bennet was described by CNN as “visibly angry” when he pursued the same line of questioning. “Yes or no, is Edward Snowden a traitor to the United States of America?” “As someone who has served in uniform in combat, I understand how critical our national security is,” she attempted to reply, before he cut her off, insisting “Apparently, you don’t.” “This is when the rubber hits the road,” the Senator said, raising his voice. “This is not a moment for social media,” he added with no sense of irony whatsoever. It’s not a moment to propagate conspiracy theories or attacks on journalism in the United States. This is when you need to answer the questions of the people whose votes you’re asking for,” presumably however irrelevant. To quote former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, what difference does it make at this point whether he’s technically a traitor, especially when Ms. Gabbard admits he broke the law? Does anyone except these Senators care?
Similarly, Kash Patel’s hearings to potentially become the next FBI director were almost completely lacking in discussing anything he might or might not do in the position. After both the Inspector General and a Special Counsel identified multiple glaring errors, inconsistencies, and potential political bias in the agency, up to and including the falsification of information provided to obtain surveillance warrants on a Presidential Candidate and then a President, and given a recent terror attack on US soil following hot on the heels of two assassination attempts on a former President while the FBI appeared to have been transformed into a social media monitoring operation, one might think Senators would’ve focused their attention on what reforms the new director might implement to prevent such abuses and incidents in the future. Instead, the focus flailed wildly between whether Mr. Patel has an enemies list, what he thinks of the January 6 pardons that aren’t in his purview, and whether President Trump lost the 2020 election and whether he would suitably stand up to President Trump. “I have no interest, no desire, and will not, if confirmed, go backwards,” he said. “There will be no politicization at the FBI. There will be no retributive actions taken by any FBI.” “As for January 6, I have repeatedly, often, publicly and privately, said there can never be a tolerance for violence against law enforcement,” he told lawmakers, adding “I do not agree with the commutation of any sentence of any individual who committed violence against law enforcement.” Senator Adam Schiff, he who falsified evidence on the January 6 Committee hearings and repeatedly lied about having conclusive evidence Donald Trump colluded with Russia, even went so far as to ask that Mr. Patel stand up and apologize to the US Capitol Police officers “guarding you today.” Incredibly, he was even asked about the ever present boogeyman of QAnon, which perhaps more so than anything sums up the current state of the Senate’s vaunted advise and consent responsibilities. Perhaps, we should pass an amendment to update the clause to rave and rant? I’m reminded of the great quip from Attorney Joseph Welch, who asked Senator Joseph McCarthy at his infamous hearings, “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?” but what’s the point? The question is rhetorical as Senator Hassan’s: We all know these guys and gals have no decency at all. Mr. Kennedy and Ms. Gabbard are former Democrats. If they’d been nominated by a Democrat President, the same people attacking them last week would’ve been praising them as unconventional picks with the outsider perspective the country needs at this time. They were, however, nominated by a Republican and sadly, that alone tells you all you need to know.
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 