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The first hours of questioning of Brett Kavanaugh in his Supreme Court confirmation hearing were infuriatingly predictable, in which he gave mushy answers and Republicans senators lobbed him plenty of softballs like Grassley's opening question of what makes a good judge and why would he be one. Gosh, that's a head-scratcher. Kavanaugh used the opportunity to say he'd be totally independent, no deference to the unindicted co-conspirator in the Oval Office, no not at all. He also took the opportunity to say he thinks Brown v. Board of Education is a good example of judicial independence. Oh, and he's a "pro-law" judge and that will make him independent.
Then Grassley threw him the opportunity to lie about Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the supposed "Ginsburg Rule" in which she supposedly set the precedent of saying justice candidates shouldn't say anything of substance in their hearings which totally a lie. For the record, she said she would not want to speculate on future cases in this setting, but she also made her views on abortion and Roe v. Wade very clear: "[Abortion] is something central to a woman's life, to her dignity. It’s a decision that she must make for herself. And when government controls that decision for her, she's being treated as less than a fully adult human responsible for her own choices."
Then it was Sen. Dianne Feinstein's (D-CA) turn, in which she pushed him on assault weapons and on Roe, and whether he viewed it as "settled law." Kavanaugh dissented on a 2011 ruling upholding Washington D.C.'s ban on semiautomatic weapons, and Feinstein asked his reasoning. He said he was following Supreme Court precedent and in his view because semiautomatic guns are widely possessed and in "common use," they can't be banned. Feinstein, incredulous, asked if numbers of weapons determine common use of weapons. Kavanaugh ended up by saying that he would pretty much draw the line at machine guns.
Answering Feinstein on Roe, Kavanaugh said it is "settled as a precedent of the Supreme Court entitled to respect under stare decisis," (the principle that when an issue has been settled by a previous decision, it sets a precedent that should not be departed from) but then launched into a discussion of Planned Parenthood v. Casey, as a reaffirmation of Roe. Casey, however, reaffirmed the basic right in Roe, but strongly limited its protections. That's Kavanaugh saying in not so many words that he's open to adding new precedents that would eventually gut Roe.
So there's two key issues settled, or not. Kavanaugh thinks machine guns should be where regulation of weapons start and is perfectly willing to keep on chipping away at Roe.