11 July 2018

AND THE BOUQUET OF ROSES GOES TO ...

No, this piece is not about the mawkish TV reality special announcing the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to take Anthony Kennedy's seat on the Supreme Court. It's about my distant "relationship" to Brett Kavanaugh.  Small world.

Listening to NPR on the boat this morning. Wind blowing SSW at the Point, ebb tide running NNE, creating the major chop rocking the L34 while I drifting eels in the slop. The eels and I were bearing up, but the striped bass were off their feed. But at least I was learning stuff on the FM radio.

For instance, while a panel of so-called smart people debated whether Brett Kavanaugh would be the fifth vote to repeal Roe v Wade,  I learned the nominee did write one opinion involving abortion: earlier this year, a seventeen yr-old illegal immigrant was in the custody of HHS. (Can you imagine a more ironical name for this disreputable agency than "Health and Human Services?" That's like calling the White House "The Ministry of Truth.'')  The teen-ager discovered she was in her 8th week of pregnancy, and sought an immediate abortion. The Trump administration's HHS refused to let her go to a doctor for that purpose. The ACLU obtained a District Court order directing HHS to permit the medical visit and the government appealed! In two appeals, the Circuit Court ultimately affirmed, but Judge Kavanaugh dissented. He opined that the "federal government has permissible interests in favoring fetal life."

Think about this, please. The Trump administration, and Brett Kavanaugh, wanted to exercise their power to force this incarcerated teen-age girl to have a baby. Then what? HHS would then have two prisoners? Two people to deport? Theoretically at least, Jess Sessions could have two people to charge with crimes under "Zero Tolerance?" Of course, after forcing the girl to have a baby, the United States government would take it away from its mother.  

Or perhaps the teen age girl could find a coat hanger in jail?

The Trumpers were so determined to prevent this abortion they sought the intervention of the Supreme Court, but by the time the case got up there, the deed had been done and the case was mooted. The Trump administration was so angry, they asked the Court to sanction the girl's lawyers!


In another case, Kavanaugh voted to make it more difficult for women who worked for religious organizations to have access to insurance-covered contraception.

Okay, unlike his prior boss Justice Kennedy, Kavanaugh is categorically opposed to abortion and contraception.  What does that have to do with me?  A stretch, but I was struck by the following remote connection:


Now I am sure you remember the blog I wrote in December about our Oregon lawsuit against extremists who believed they had the right to publish posters that threatened to murder physicians who provided legal abortions to their patients. There was a chapter about that case in my book as well. 

For those of you who have not committed all my former blogs to memory, the following paragraphs may refresh your recollection.;


"I plead guilty to a mild case of schadenfreude when I read about the resignation of Judge Alex Kozinski, of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Current count of accusers is 15, but the word is "everyone knew." He was accused of a wide range of misconduct, all of which had the central theme of humiliating his female clerks, running the gamut from feeling up stunned young women, to sharing his private porno collection alone in his chambers with one of his clerks and asking her if the images turned her on. You get the picture.

Kozinski's name is familiar to many in the legal profession. Ten years earlier, he was criticized by a judicial panel  for maintaining a publicly accessible website containing pornographic images, [picturing women as cows, masturbation, etc. He admitted he had maintained the stuff "for years"] but arrogantly ignored the criticism. He was outspoken and loved the camera, was revered by conservatives, and had been a very prominent person in judicial circles. Upon his recommendation, his clerks won sought-after Supreme Court clerkships.


Back to our abortion case in 1999: After a three-week trial, the federal jury found the posters to be a true threat, not protected by the First Amendment. The jury imposed upon the defendants the largest monetary verdict in the history of the State of Oregon, and the trial judge, affirming the correctness of the verdict, entered an injunction barring further threats.
...  
But two years after trial, a panel of three conservative judges, in a decision we thought motivated by abortion politics, voted to reverse the judgment and dismiss our complaint.

Kozinski wrote the appellate court's opinion. My suspicions about his disrespect for a woman's right to choose were confirmed when he led his panel's reversal concluding,

"If the defendants' statements merely encouraged unrelated terroriststo kill the doctors, it was protected speech. 

That would be the case, he wrote, even if,

"by publishing the doctors' addresses, the defendants made it easier for any would-be terrorists to carry out the gruesome mission."
...

An en banc Ninth Circuit panel later rejected the Kozinski's alarming views, and reinstated the trial court decision. Kozinski, of course, dissented."

--------------------------

What else did I learn while fishing this morning?

I learned that Brett Kavanaugh had clerked for Alex Kozinski in 1991. I have also learned that Kozinski recommended Kavanaugh to Kennedy, and Kozinski and Kavanaugh thereafter continued a close relationship and worked together screening and hiring clerks for Kennedy. 

Okay, so at least fifteen women said Kozinski was a disgusting letch, and that "Everyone knew.

Fair to ask then, what did Kavanaugh know and when did he know it?  

President Trump left that information out of his Monday night show.