As for the judgment of organizations like the ABA, I no longer trust large organizations (any of them, really) as trustworthy judges of personal character. There’s very little way to know which ones are like the Catholic Church/Penn State/Michigan State athletic depts, unless something’s come out about them, and I see no reason to give any large institutions the benefit of the doubt on such an important matter (in terms of personal character, at least).
And if it were in the top 100 lies that trump made, then trump would be a virtue of honesty compared to the reality.
It is just pointing out one more campaign promise that he made that his supporters will not just defend, but even celebrate him breaking.
You are correct in that it is not that big a deal, but only because it is dwarfed by all the other corruption and deceit around his nomination. In a normal situation, it would actually be a pretty significant issue.
If you are a lawyer, and you try to defend your client’s shoplifting by pointing out that it is not as bad as his serial killing, it may not be the best of all possible defenses.
We both agree that “entirely correct” doesn’t remotely describe septimus’ statement that I quoted in post #426, yes?
PolitiFact and I both rate Trump’s statement a “Promise Kept”. YMMV, obviously, but yours, and septimus’ accusation of a “broken promise” here are unconvincing.
ETA: ninja’d by John Mace, but septimus and k9bfriender are still just as wrong.
“Not on the first list” is only half the observation. Not being on the first list but appearing on the second, that is the observation. The observation is that something has changed, because the two things are different.
If I am wrong about that, I welcome your correction, however sternly worded it may be.
My emphasis. It requires some pretty serious twisting and special pleading in order to make the case that he was only talking about the currently vacant seat.
I see your quote there of “the candidate made clear that it only pertains to the seat formerly occupied by Scalia.”, but I do not see where he made that clear, just that it is claimed to be so. He lies and backtracks things he has said all the time, I’m not surprised that this is one of the many lies he has told, I am just surprised that there is so much defense for it.
And yes, he lied about that too, as he then added Grosuch to that list, but that is a separate lie, one that also was defended by trump supporters, but not the one that we are talking about here.
That is utterly irrelevant to this thread.
So, he made that promise before or after you voted for him?
We agree that he had the numbers conflated, but he had the timeline correct.
Do you for some reason see Kavanaugh’s name on that cite, to make it relevant to your claims here, that I am missing? I do not see his name anywhere, so what exactly do you think you are proving, or did you post in the wrong thread?
I do not think that word means what you think it means.
You are not wrong. The different lists are different. The fist list has 11 names on it. The subsequent lists have more names on them. That’s a change. You have observed correctly, and I agree with your observation.
Emphasis added. If you insist on parsing the particulars, then he used that list “as a guide”. If Kavanaugh is significantly different from the folks on that list, then I guess he broke a campaign promise. Is Kavanaugh significantly different?
It’s the Washington Post. I don’t think they made that up, but I guess it’s possible.
Nice try, but of course I didn’t write that Kavanaugh had given a pledge, but that he “has, essentially, pledged”–as indeed he has.
Since you indicate a wish to become educated on this topic, I’ll recommend a couple of non-paywalled articles:
This article focuses on Kavanaugh’s general beliefs that a president’s powers should extend to making his decisions paramount above any existing or subsequent court decision (mainly via “signing statements”), but also touches on his theory that presidents may not be held accountable for crimes or other violations:
Here are a couple of Washington Post articles detailing Kavanaugh’s views on whether Trump should be excused from facing legal consequences of his actions, and on whether Kavanaugh would rule on such questions should he become an Ass. Justice:
The problems with Kavanaugh are his profound disregard for the poor and powerless; his incredible disregard for victims; his insistence that the law owes nothing to injured foreigners, even those in this country–these three intersect in several of his dissents–and his tendency not to want to challenge anyone in authority, ever.
He is a bad judge. He lacks the moral compass needed to be a judge. He would be a sick joke as a justice as he is a sick joke as an appellate judge.
The stuff with the list is simply pointing out that Trump had a reason to add this guy, this amoral flack, well after agreeing to the list conservatives provided him.
So close! But not quite. The part you miss is that a particular name shows up where it had not before. Can we think of any reason why he is promoted from absence to a status of anointment? There is that one thing, about how generous he is in his interpretation of Presidential power. You’ve heard, yes?
Now, here we get into the weeds a bit. People I have read suggest that he is not only exceptional in that regard, he is almost unique. We would need reliable testimony about the others on the various lists. Obviously, if they all shared that view. we could just wad up that speculation and dispose of it, poof! gone!
Or if a majority of those worthies held that view, it would be too weak to crawl into our attention. And of course, if the opposite is true, that he is, in fact, unique in that regard…that’s a whole 'nother thing, isn’t it?
(Just to be ruthlessly honest, I don’t know this, I am told by sources I tend to trust that it is so, but I do not claim authority. I remain, as always, open to evidence.)
The only way this question becomes “silly” is if you have solid evidence. These views are firmly in the centrist mainstream of legal thought? I doubt that, again, relying on sources I have come to trust. If you are firmly convinced otherwise, here’s your chance. Here’s another chance. But silly? No.
Fine. Hypothetically, the 55th most interesting observation about some nominee is, “He wasn’t on a list the President promised to pick from a while back.” The second most interesting thing is, “He objects to politically prosecuting a sitting President more than he objects to a sitting President committing crimes.” The first most interesting thing is, “He objects even to investigating a sitting President more than he objects to a sitting President committing crimes.” Somewhere in the top ten is, “He thinks US corporations should be able to murder foreigners with utter impunity.”
Would you hand that guy a seat on the high court? Really? Because Kavanaugh resembles that guy a little too much.
Seriously, Sanders has been a big believer in the notion that the problems of persons of color in America were largely an outgrowth of class and income, and that racial prejudice as a thing of its own wasn’t a big deal. “Black lives don’t matter much to Bernie Sanders” qualifies as an exaggeration, but no more than that. If that’s the best charge you can aim at Brock, he’s clean AFAIAC.
Yes, I left off the weasel word you used. If you’d like to change your statement to something that doesn’t contain the word “pledge” in it, that’s fine with me.
I’ve been around the block a few times on this particular issue, so I’m quite familiar with that quote. Thing is, it’s not me who needs to be educated about it. He says he thinks Congress should pass a law about this, as your cite explicitly says. You even quoted that part yourself. If he were running for Congress, we might call that a pledge. But he’s not running for Congress, and there is no such law, and so there is no pledge, “essentially” or otherwise.
That sound horrible!! Except for the fact that your selective quoting left off this bit:
So, the charge against him is that he stated something that modern presidents typically do. Not so horrible after all.
Those links don’t work for me. But never mind because:
Yes that’s enough. Enough to be finished since it’s clear you are mistaken.
Well, now you’re bringing up quite a different issue. You’re suddenly talking about how his views compare to the universe of jurists out there, when the issue of being new to the list is only relevant if his views are markedly different from all the others on the list. Are they?
I already cited my source, which is the ABA Standing Committee. Unanimously given Kavanaugh the highest rating they have. Perhaps every single one of them missed Kavanaugh’s dangerous, “almost unique” views, but that would seem odd. Still, feel free to bring your sources to the discussion-- it would help flesh out your argument and allow for a fuller debate. I honestly don’t know how Kavanaugh’s views compare to the other 20-odd folks on the list. But I’m inclined to take the advice of the ABA Standing Committee, which has not been shy in the past of noting judicial outliers.
This must have been when he was working for the widely-admired Javertbot, Mr. Starr, late of Baylor University, Athens on the Brazos. Probably wasn’t that deeply involved in his disgraceful episode. Was just on his way to lunch, and dropped by to argue this minor thingy. Yeah, that must be it.