On the recordOctober 5, 2018
I come before this body this evening after having heard several remarks from a number of my distinguished colleagues, whom I like, whom I respect, whom I admire, and with whom I greatly and substantially disagree on many matters discussed tonight. Just in the last little while I have heard arguments presented first by the Senator from Maine, a good friend of mine, who made some arguments that he put into roughly four categories. He opposes Judge Kavanaugh on the basis of judicial philosophy, on the basis of his refusal to agree anticipatorily to certain types of recusals, to the absence of documentation he claims was available to the committee, and to Judge Kavanaugh on issues of demeanor. I would like to address each of these allegations in turn. First, with regard to judicial philosophy, my friend from Maine--who truly is a friend--explained that, in his view, Judge Kavanaugh was unacceptable because, among other things, he counts among those he admires, among his judicial role models, the late William Rehnquist, Chief Justice of the United States. The reason that is apparently a bad thing, according to my colleague from Maine, is that this somehow indicates that he would view himself sort of as an umpire, calling the balls and the strikes, reading the law on the basis of what it says rather than on the basis of what he or anyone else might wish were the law.…
