During his Senate confirmation hearings for the stolen Obama appointment to the Supreme Court, Neal Gorsuch repeatedly sanctimoniously testified that he could not answer a lot of democratic senators’ questions because, “As a judge I cannot get involved in politics.” (Reminiscent of John Roberts testifying that he would just call “balls and strikes" like an objective umpire, before he went on to gut the voting rights act.) At one point Gorsuch high-handedly, self-righteously replied to Al Franken, “Since I became a judge ten years ago, I have a canon of ethics that precludes me from getting involved in any way, shape, or form in politics.”
Well, isn't that swell? Or it might be if it was remotely accurate (and remember this judge was under oath.) Depite Gorsuch's holier-than-thou “canon of ethics," Trevor Noah documented on his show just two cases where this was patently untrue. After Gorsuch’s court decided the infamous Hobby Lobby case in 2013, Gorsuch went out of his way to write an additional separate opinion expressing the view that he would like it to be even easier for employers to refuse to pay for their employees’ birth control, and therefore not have to obey public laws which still apply to privately held, family owned religiously bigoted companies like Hobby Lobby. What Gorsuch wrote was called a separate opinion because that's exactly what it was: his opinion about a political subject, like those found on the editorial pages of newspapers. Or in the 2014 case of Riddle v. Hickelooper, Gorsuch's court knocked down a campaign finance regulation, and Gorsuch again wrote a separate opinion, which he didn’t have to, advocating that courts should be much harder on all such campaign laws. As Noah pointed out, those were not legal rulings, but Gorsuch’s political opinions, which constitute hypocrisy, if not perjury, after he insisted under oath that he does not “get involved in politics.”
Frankenalso recounted the case of a truck driver whose vehicle broke down in sub-zero temperatures, and in danger of freezing to death the driver unhooked the rig and drove the cab to safety. The driver was subsequently fired by his employer and sued, but Gorsuch ruled against him (and in favor of money interests and companies over people, as republicans always do) even though the man’s life was at stake. Franken tried to ask other committee members what they would have done in the same circumstances as the driver, but found no unbiased or honest republican sympathy. As one who “previously made a career identifying absurdity,” Franken vehemently stated he knew it when he saw it, and “this was absurd,” leading him to doubt Gorsuch’s judgement.
The republicans on the committee gave Gorsuch a much easier time with probing, vitally relevant questions like how much Gorsuch enjoyed fishing. And no one has probably ever heard any Supreme Court nominee utter the words, “Gosh,” “Golly,” and “My goodness” so many times that it would have been enough to make even Jimmy Stewart throw up. Meanwhile, Ted Cruz sat in the hearing with a drooling smile like he was having a wet dream in his pants. Noah suggested it might even be enough to make Cruz reconsider his prejudice against homosexuality.
FILIBUSTER this guy!!!!!!!!! Senate republicans went low denying Obama’s nominee even a hearing, and now they’re supposed to get away with it and be rewarded with a lifetime SCOTUS appointment? NO!