merrick garland or maybe even a more liberal justice would be nominated by hillary clinton. that s not what happened but i think this is a reminder, there s a lot of objectivin iiv democratic senators today. they know they won t keep brett kavanaugh being on the supreme court. some of them may vote for him, i agree what many said. but they want to show the base they are fighting. they want to show democrats out there that this is something they should stay tuned into because this matters and republicans in the senate are treating this process unfairly and they want to wake people up to what the consequences are in two months so that is very present today. i ll be interested to see what people like senator klobuchar bring to the table today. there hasn t been a lot of attention on her line of questioning yesterday but she raised the key question here which is we have this president serving in a time where he could i know he may not be indicted but his whole institution is under an inv
they should live by a different set of laws and she raised that question yesterday. that will come up a lot today. let s take a quick break. the hearing is about to begin. the actual questioning of judge kavanaugh will start. much more right after this.
i don t make decisions by myself. every case has been in a panel of at least three judges. and you learn from each other when you re deciding cases, you work from each other when you re deciding cases and so having collegiality and civility as justice kennedy showed us so powerfully repeatedly with how he conducted himself over the years. so i think i ve tried to be a very collegial judge. i ve tried to be civil.
eighth grade civics about judges interpreting law. the judiciary must continue to be the least political and least dangerous branch. a judge s sole job is to find and apply the law evenly and fairly without regard to the president who nominated him, the senators who voted for him, the parties before him and the political consequences of his judicial decision. so, judge, let s discuss judicial independence from the executive branch. no one, not even the president, is above the law. some of my colleagues have criticized your views of presidential authority suggesting wrongly in my opinion that your views of presidential authority would not allow any meaningful check on completion te please tell us what judicial independence means to you including whether you have any
brett kavanaugh s vote won t be in play the same way which will pull the court to the right on social policy issues and probably executive power issues. we know he won t reveal too much and the one thing that democrats could count on if they can count on anything is something new coming out. something surprising, for example, like what happened with clarence thomas but that didn t sink him and i think that what we ll see is democrats trying to get him to reveal himself but a certain inevitability here. and the other thing we should keep in mind here is the context. for a generation republicans have been able to build up and to make a case to the republican base that the supreme court