‘Total Meltdown’

Here’s some of that potentially portentous exchange between Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) and Brett Kavanaugh last night:

When this New York Times oped was released yesterday afternoon I was in the process of having a wisdom tooth removed. So I didn’t hear anything about it until the early evening. So when I got to reading it we were already into people’s 2nd or 3rd impressions of what to make of it. I’ve been reading it over and I want to share a few thoughts about its potential authorship.

First, a few points of context. I say ‘faux-resistance leader’ because I see this exercise primarily as one of anticipatory self-exculpation. As things look darker and darker for the President we are beginning to see the first glimmers of the argument that those who should be tainted forever by their association with President Trump may actually be “unsung heroes” who were resisting from within.

Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) was casting a lot of aspersions on Brett Kavanaugh. Will she deliver the goods?

I wanted to follow up on my post below about Kavanaugh being a made to order Justice, courtesy of the Federalist Society and the rest of the conservative judicial incubation infrastructure. One highly knowledgeable reader of ours, who comes out of the DC legal world, notes more specific points: specifically, the way Kavanaugh’s grooming and incubation was conducted for the specific purpose of a) being absolutely certain that he was a strict right-wing ideologue, with no hidden dimensions of possible heterodoxy unexamined and b)that he was clean as a whistle, not only with no scandals but no paper trail that would cause undue problems. No more emerging heterodoxy like Kennedy and Souter. No more flame-outs like Bork.

From TPM Reader XX (true initials witheld) …

For all the talk about Kavanaugh’s judicial extremism, what stands out to me most about him is that he was essentially raised in a test tube for the purposes of serving on the Supreme Court. Of course, these two facts are not exclusive of each other. They are more the means (test tube incubated Justice) and the end (made to spec conservative maximalist Justice). But he is uniquely this way. He was born and bred in Republican DC. He was given the right education. He has been guided from his twenties through a cursus honorum of titles, clerkships, offices, Republican political appointments, judgeships and more.

Check out the latest updates from the Kavanaugh hearing in Livewire.

Kavanaugh’s faces Senate grilling today, and Paul Manafort’s legal team is back before Judge Amy Berman Jackson ahead of his next trial. Here’s more on that and other stories we’re following. (Updated.)

Day 2 of the Kavanaugh hearing began with protestors interrupting.

Tierney Sneed is in the hearing room, and will spearhead our daylong coverage.

Trump couldn’t have been this awesome if what Woodward wrote were true, Sarah Huckabee Sanders says. Watch.

After a long day of throat-clearing Tuesday, the confirmation hearing for Brett Kavanaugh starts in earnest today, with potentially 12+ hours of questioning from senators.