I'm back. The script is in, though when I finish this, I have to start on another one that's gotta be in on Monday. The headaches have abated. Headaches are a big problem for me because when I have one, I'm still totally conscious that my thinking is not at its best and so I'm much more prone to do something foolish about…well, about anything in my world. Doing something foolish can lead to further headaches…and there's an endless circle you want to end before it begins.
My overall reaction to the whole Brett Kavanaugh thing is mostly one of sadness, as well as frustration that we keep doing this thing to ourselves. I keep remembering when prominent Republicans — Lindsey Graham, loudest of all — were damning Barack Obama as "the most divisive president of all time." Then as now, it seemed to me Obama's "crime" was not giving them every single thing they wanted. He was kind of stubbornly insisting on being President of the United States and to them, that was divisive.
You want to see "divisive?" Look at the guy we've got now. Obama may have had his flaws but saying whatever an angry mob wanted to hear, especially insulting his opponents and any reporter who didn't take dictation from him, was not among them. And now, folks like Jeffrey Toobin — who has a pretty good track record for this kind of thing — are saying Roe v. Wade is going to be overturned. Even if that doesn't happen, the battle over that one is going to make the Kavanaugh fight look like a polite difference of opinion.
One of these days, I'm going to write a piece here about abortion. It will be a very long piece, not something I can write now and still have that script done in 48 hours. But it'll be about an "adventure" I had 30+ years ago helping my then-current lady friend infiltrate an anti-abortion rally. It will also be about how some people want to ban abortion for moral issues and some only because it would be a victory for their side. I fear that's what politics in this country has come to be about: Not what is morally right for us and maybe not even what is good for us…but about who gets to drive the bus at the moment even if they don't know how to drive.
Imagine for a second a Supreme Court nominee who is not partisan; who would look at the laws and the facts of a case and would be a true "swing vote" every time. He or she would not be a reliable, predictable vote…and might well not side with the party of the president who'd appointed him or her. And imagine a Senate that would confirm that nominee unanimously. When I was much younger, that's what I understood a Justice of the Supreme Court was supposed to be.
I don't know how many of them were ever, really truly that or anything close to that…but I know we haven't had one lately and may not see another in my lifetime.
Remember when George W. Bush nominated Harriet Miers to the High Court? There were howls and protests and objections…and not from Democrats. It all came from Republicans who felt that while, yes, she would be Republican, she wouldn't be Republican enough. She wasn't someone Democrats would hate so Bush was forced to withdraw he name and instead, he gave us Samuel Alito. (Sam Brownback — who's been busy destroying Kansas by trying to turn it into a Conservative Utopia — and ol' Lindsey Graham were the leading Republican Senators complaining that Miers' paper trail didn't indicate a desire to always slap down Liberals.)
So that's what our Supreme Court has become. Democrats don't like it now. Republicans won't like it when the next Democratic President nominates they youngest possible version of Bernie Sanders or Maxine Waters they can find. And it won't change because the people against it will always, by definition, be the ones out of power.