Tuesday, July 29, 2003

The administration has nominated Brett Kavanaugh and Janice Brown to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, often considered the nation's most important court after the Supreme Court. Mr. Kavanaugh, 38, would be one of the youngest federal judges and has no judicial experience. The main items on an otherwise thin résumé are Mr. Kavanaugh's loyal service to Mr. Starr during the divisive investigation of President Bill Clinton and, later, his loyal service as an assistant to President Bush, in which capacity he has helped engineer the confirmation of the administration's judicial nominees....

...In analyzing Mr. Kavanaugh's record, senators should look for positive evidence that he is fit, by experience and temperament, for high judicial office. Given the vast number of federal and state judges, seasoned lawyers and academics who could be named to the circuit, it is hard to believe that Mr. Kavanaugh is the most qualified candidate available.


--editorial in today's New York Times

Just in case you forgot about Kavanaugh's work on the Starr team, here's an excerpt from Jeffrey Toobin's book A Vast Conspiracy:

The Grounds [the “Grounds for an Impeachment” section of the Starr Report] was principally the work of Brett Kavanaugh, a lawyer from Kirkland & Ellis [Starr’s law firm] and a former Supreme Court law clerk, who was perhaps the most favored of Starr’s young male proteges. In one amazing stretch of the Grounds, Kavanaugh cited Lewinsky’s sex deposition in thirty-four consecutive footnotes, and he included some material that even the [Starr Report] Narrative’s authors judged too viciously unnecessary to mention. For example, after the description of the December 31, 1995, tryst, Kavanaugh’s team dropped the following deadpan footnote: “After the sexual encounter, she saw the President masturbate in the bathroom near the sink.” Such details had no conceivable relevance to Congress’s duty, but were rather designed to humiliate Clinton.

Ah, those traditional conservative values.

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