Jeff Bryant has studied Brett Kavanaugh’s writings and has concluded that, if confirmed for the Supreme Court, he will join the other conservative justices in knocking down the last remnants of the long-established tradition of separation of church and states. This will be a great victory for Betsy DeVos and others who have been working overtime to direct public funding to religious schools.
He writes:
“As the son of a public-school teacher and a volunteer tutor of students in Washington, DC, the Kavanaugh narrative may come across as friendly to public schools, but Kavanaugh was raised in elite private schools and has nothing in his record that would indicate a strong support for public education.
“His history of legally undermining the separation of church and state is a fact not in dispute. In his work with the Federalist Society – the rightwing project that has largely engineered today’s high court and compiled the list of potential nominees for Trump – Kavanaugh has led its “School Choice Practice Group” and “Religious Liberties Group.” These groups help the Federalist Society craft its legal arguments on the unconstitutionality of excluding religious options from school choice programs.
“Among the primary targets for these groups is to repeal amendments in 39 state constitutions that prohibit direct government aid to educational institutions that have a religious affiliation. This argument already has the Supreme Court’s partial consent, given its ruling last year that ordered a New Mexico Supreme Court to reconsider a decision barring religious schools from a state textbook lending program.
“Kavanaugh also has a history of supporting school vouchers that allow parents to use public taxdollars to pay tuition for private, religious schools. In 2000, he represented then Florida Governor Jeb Bush to push through the state’s first school voucher program, which was eventually struck down by the Florida Supreme Court in a 2006 decision.
“But just as Kavanaugh and his conservative colleagues were being stymied in state courts, they were blazing a legal pathway for federal support of school vouchers.
“Religious Is ‘Secular’
“In an appearance on CNN in 2000, Politico reports, Kavanaugh “predicted … that school vouchers would one day be upheld by the Court.””
As public money flows to unaccountable religious schools, which hire uncertified teachers, use textbooks that teach religious propaganda, or don’t teach any English, Republican lawmakers may come to regret the monster they created.
Thomas Jefferson urged his friend many years ago to preach “a crusade against ignorance.” It was Jefferson who first referred to a “wall of separation between church and state,” the better to protect both church and state.
He would be appalled to see that wall disappear.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
[Whomever writes this stuff must be getting a good salary.] Here is what the WH says about Kavanaugh:
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Broad support for Judge Kavanaugh pours in
Last week, President Trump nominated Judge Brett Kavanaugh to succeed Justice Anthony Kennedy on the U.S. Supreme Court. The diverse and widespread support that has poured in for Judge Kavanaugh since shows that President Trump made the right choice.
Eighteen of Judge Kavanaugh’s female law clerks, 26 state Attorneys General, and more than 160 members of the Yale University community have signed letters praising his unsurpassed qualifications for a seat on the Court. “In our view, the Judge has been one of the strongest advocates in the federal judiciary for women lawyers,” his former clerks wrote. “I look for the best,” Judge Kavanaugh said at the White House last week. “We are proud that so many of those hires have been talented women.”
The letter from a majority of our Nation’s state Attorneys General sums up the case for Judge Kavanaugh clearly and concisely: “Throughout his career, Judge Kavanaugh has demonstrated an abiding commitment to the principles and freedoms on which our country was founded, and an unshakable respect for the proper role of the courts within our constitutional structure.”
……
QUOTE
“What matters is not a judge’s political views, but whether they can set aside those views to do what the law and the Constitution require. I am pleased to say that I have found, without doubt, such a person.”
Donald J. Trump
President of the United States of America
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What would anyone expect his former clerks to say? “He never once molested me.”
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The question is not whether people like him, but what he will do about crucial issues, like abortion, the environment, civil rights.
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🙂
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Here is more about the wonderful support Kavanaugh is receiving. Something is wrong.
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In their words: Support for Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination pours in.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/statements-support-judge-brett-kavanaugh-pour/?utm_source=link
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The question is not who supports him, including his former law clerks, but where he stands on issues that affect the lives of Americans.
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I liked Al Franken’s take. One of the very first things that Brett Kavanaugh said after being introduced by Trump as his pick was:
“no president has ever consulted more widely or talked with more people from more backgrounds to seek input about a Supreme Court nomination”
Judge Kavanaugh sounds as dishonest as Trump’s personal physician who later admitted that Trump dictated his dishonest claim that “If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency”
There are no conditions on that statement that Kavanaugh claimed as fact. Kavanaugh told the American people that no President had EVER consulted more widely. Ever.
Franken made the very good suggestion that Kavanaugh should be asked — under oath — what evidence he weighed to be able to tell the American people that he knew for a fact that no President had ever consulted more widely or talked with more people from more backgrounds? And as someone who was just chosen – how would Kavanaugh have the information as to every person the President consulted?
Did Kavanaugh tell the American people something that was blatantly untrue because Donald Trump told him it was true and Kavanaugh accepts everything Trump says as “factual evidence” by which he will make his judgements regardless of whether it is a lie or not?
Will Kavanaugh commit perjury and lie under oath? Will Kavanaugh admit he was exaggerating in order to make Trump look very good? (And as a follow up – does Kavanaugh believe that is what Supreme Court nominees do — praise the President for doing such a good search to find them even when they know it is not true?) In either case, that speaks volumes about Kavanaugh’s fitness to be a Supreme Court Justice.
I hope one of the Democrats ask in a very matter of fact way “What evidence convinced you that you should tell the American people that you know in no uncertain terms that no President has ever consulted more widely than President Trump?” And Kavanaugh should offer up the “evidence” he uses to make judgements like that so the American people can understand how Kavanaugh decides what is fact and what is not.
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Thanks Diane!
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Brett Kavanaugh is your typical right-wing judge. He’s an “originalist,” a wholly made-up judicial ideology with no sound research or historical basis. Kavanaugh is as far right as Antonin Scalia was, or even more so. Here’s how FiveThirtyEight described him:
“”Kavanaugh would likely represent a reliably conservative voice and vote on the high court, tipping its balance significantly to the right for years to come…With Kavanaugh’s confirmation, the country would enter the age of the solid, 5-4 conservative majority… He rules consistently in favor of business and employers and against government regulations and agencies. Over the years, Kavanaugh has authored a number of rulings reining in Obama-era environmental regulations…Congress, in Kavanaugh’s view, is the only branch of government capable of holding the president criminally accountable.”
And while Kavanaugh claims he will treat each case “with an open mind,” that’s just a lie. He won’t. He’s tied to his made-up ideology.
Two academic researchers described his judicial history this way:
“According to a deep, data-driven survey of his writings from the bench, he is an uncommonly partisan judge, even compared to other federal appeals court judges…On the circuit court, Kavanaugh tended to dissent more often along partisan lines than his peers, according to our research. He justified his decisions with conservative doctrines far more than his colleagues, citing politicized precedents consistent with other Republican-appointed judges…Kavanaugh is not your average justice. On the evidence derived from the content of his decisions, he is more radical than his colleagues.”
Journalist Ari Berman, who has written extensively about voting and voting rights, tweeted this about Kavanaugh:
“Kavanaugh calls Rehnquist ‘my first judicial hero.’ Rehnquist gave literacy tests to black & Hispanic voters in Arizona in 1960s, supported all-white primaries in Texas, opposed Brown v Board of Education & said Plessy v. Ferguson (‘separate but equal’) was constitutional”
Rehnquist, like Scalia, was never fond of the 14th amendment’s equal protection clause. But in Bush v. Gore (2000), Rehnquist, like Scalia, all of a sudden found a new interest in it, agreeing with the conservative Court majority that “T]he Florida Supreme Court‟s interpretation of the Florida election laws impermissibly distorted…” The gold standard of Florida election law that Rehnquist and his conservative comrades found “impermissibly distorted” was that votes should be counted if voter intent could be discerned. When the Court conservatives interceded and stopped the vote recounts in Florida, they claimed that Bush would suffer “irreparable harm” if the recounts went forward. Justice John Paul Stevens noted that “counting every legally cast vote cannot constitute irreparable harm.”
To clarify that they didn’t really like the 14th amendment’s equal protection clause, the conservatives on the Court said that it applied to voting only in this particular case, and Scalia was said to have called this reasoning – though he went along with it – “a piece of shit.” Yeah, it was. And that decision, along with rampant voter suppression and the refusal to count overvotes (where voters punched or bubbled “Gore” and then wrote in the name “Gore”) gave a supposedly democratic election to Bush. What followed? Large supply-side tax cuts. 9/11. A war in Iraq over weapons of mass destruction that didn’t exist. Huge budget deficits as Bush and the Republican Congress refused to pay for the war. The destabilization of the Middle East. And then the trashing of the economy.
All of this is apparently just fine and dandy with Brett Kavanaugh.
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The Supremes have been completely compromised, especially when you consider the plan to make lower court appointments ASAP and with as little fanfare as possible so that the ideological positions of the nominees get as little press as possible.
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I shudder at that thought of extremist religious groups insinuating themselves like terminal cancer throughout the US government.
I do not trust any religions when their false-prophet leaders they think they know what is best for everyone else.
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I’m glad someone found this ruling on Kavanaugh.
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Kavanaugh’s court decision on Yucca Mountain could be campaign issue in Nevada Senate race
BY DINO GRANDONI..WaPo
with Paulina Firozi
…But there is one spot in that record that may haunt Heller: an opinion penned by Kavanaugh compelling the federal government to move forward with a nuclear waste storage project deeply unpopular in his home state of Nevada.
Five years ago, a three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ordered the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to consider an application to store nuclear waste within a remote mountain about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
Writing for the majority, Kavanaugh wrote the NRC is “simply flouting the law” by refusing to consider the plan for a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain. “The underlying policy debate is not our concern,” Kavanaugh added.
The decision adds new fodder to the razor-close Senate race in Nevada, a swing state that two years ago Hillary Clinton won by just 2 percentage points.
Like most elected officials in Nevada, both Heller and his Democratic opponent, Rep. Jacky Rosen, oppose storing nuclear waste within its borders. They argued that a state without a single nuclear power plant should not be forced to host the nation’s spent nuclear fuel…
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Here is Senator Joe Donnelly’s [D-IN] take on Kavanaugh. Donnelly is afraid to say anything. I worry about his actually voting to confirm Kavanaugh.
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July 18, 2018
Dear Ms. Ring,
Thank you for taking the time to contact me about the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to be a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. As your Senator, I recognize that the constitutional responsibility to provide advice and consent on presidential nominees is one of my fundamental duties.
As you likely know, on June 27, 2018, Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement from the Supreme Court. On July 10, 2018, President Trump nominated Judge Brett Kavanaugh of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to fill the vacancy created by Justice Kennedy’s retirement.
Judge Kavanaugh has served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit since 2006. Prior to his appointment to the bench, Judge Kavanaugh clerked for Judge Walter Stapleton on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, for Judge Alex Kozinksi on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and for Justice Anthony Kennedy on the U.S. Supreme Court. He also worked in the Department of Justice’s Office of the Solicitor General and in the Office of Independent Counsel Kenneth W. Starr. In addition, Judge Kavanaugh spent several years serving in the George W. Bush Administration, including as Senior Associate Counsel and as Staff Secretary to President Bush.
I have long said that the confirmation of a Supreme Court justice should not be taken lightly and deserves careful consideration and open debate. I believe that part of my job as a Senator is to thoroughly consider judicial nominations, and I will continue to take the same approach as I have previously in reviewing a nominee for a Supreme Court vacancy. I will carefully review and consider the record and qualifications of Judge Kavanaugh in the coming weeks. As I do, I will be sure to keep your thoughts in mind.
It is a privilege to represent you and all Hoosiers in the Senate. Your continued correspondence is welcome and helps me to better represent our state. I encourage you to write, call, or email if my office can ever be of assistance. You can also check out my Facebook page, follow me on Twitter, or visit my website. Please note when contacting my Senate office that I am only able to respond to questions or concerns related to official Senate business. As such, this letter addresses the issues you raised, which relate to my work in the United States Senate.
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Carol,
It sounds like he is a yes vote.
I heard this morning that Kavanaugh has stated on video that he thinks the special counsel statute is unconstitutional. He will be a vote to terminate the Mueller investigation.
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