Oh, good grief, New York Times. Timothy Noah highlights this bit of nonsense in the Times’ coverage of Donald Trump’s nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court: “Kavanaugh’s apparent belief that Vince Foster killed himself (i.e., Hillary didn’t kill him) is cited on Page One of the NYT as an example of his sometime moderation.”
Elsewhere, the Times had Yale law professor Akhil Reed Amar all lined up and ready to go in the role of Liberal Who Will Ultimately Be Proven Wrong About Republican Nominee. Back in 2017, Neal Katyal filled that role on Neil Gorsuch, and already looks pretty bad having done so. Amar sticks to safer ground by arguing that Kavanaugh is learned and likes to read history, rather than Katyal’s laughable claim that “if confirmed, Judge Gorsuch would help to restore confidence in the rule of law,”
But Amar—a highly respected legal scholar—starts off with a real howler in this: “The nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to be the next Supreme Court justice is President Trump’s finest hour, his classiest move.”
Yeah, no, sorry. Trump looked at his pre-approved Federalist Society list and liked what he saw in Kavanaugh’s commitment to shielding presidents from investigation. That Kavanaugh is “an avid consumer of legal scholarship” did not enter into the decision, and as excellent as Amar’s legal scholarship may be, he shows himself here to be either a fool when it comes to politics and human nature or just way way too eager to kick off his New York Times op-ed with a memorable sentence.
Donald Trump promised a Supreme Court that would overturn Roe v. Wade and then, of the FedSoc-approved judges who would do that, he picked the one who also opposes any meaningful limits on a sitting president’s power. That’s it. No one other than Senate Republicans looking to rush the nomination through should bother looking for deeper reasons.