Does He Get A Parade Too?

UPDATE: Featured on Mike’s Blog Roundup at Crooks & Liars.

Tonight, for the THIRD time, the public and oh-so-photo-oppey THIRD swearing in of Brett Kavanaugh was held.

Who is standing in the center of the picture that ought not be there?

Saturday Night, in case Russians attacked or the national legal database was overtaken by ransomware, he’d already been sworn in TWICE.

Brett Kavanaugh was sworn in as America’s 114th Supreme Court justice in a private ceremony at the Court on Saturday night, hours after a 50-to-48 Senate vote to confirm him. Chief Justice John Roberts administered the constitutional oath, and retired Justice Anthony Kennedy administered the judicial oath, according to a Supreme Court statement, “so that [Kavanaugh] can begin to participate in the work of the court immediately.”  ~ New York Magazine

Emphasis added. WHAT, pray tell, could be so deathly important that a normal, business-hours Monday swearing-in would be precluded?

Can you say “photo op”?

The first ‘official’ swearing-in. photo credit: Supreme Court

The first, and what ought to have been the only official swearing-in needed from Chief Justice John Roberts.

And once, from the Justice he was succeeding, and the Justice he’d clerked for, and possibly the Justice who had accepted him as part of a ‘deal’ to retire, AND the Justice who’d retired in strange circumstances, having already HIRED his law clerks for this term,  Justice Kennedy.

Because, you know, cooties.

Chief Justice John Roberts administered the constitutional oath and retired Justice Anthony Kennedy administered the judicial one. Kavanaugh is replacing Kennedy on the bench and once served as his law clerk. ~ New York (Rupert Murdoch) Post

And, maybe because of the closest vote on a Supreme Court confirmation in over 130 years.

Why so many swearings of oath? Do they believe Kavanaugh is such a liar that multiple oaths might dissuade him? Or, is it merely because this is less about a Supreme Court vacancy and is more about a circus?

Then, Sunday, one imagines, Kavanaugh whisked himself to the Supreme Court, where his secret Little Orphan Annie decoder ring, when combined with Thomas’ and Alito’s and Gorsuch’s and Roberts’ allowed them, at long last, to access the secret panel leading to the inner chamber where they could immanentize the eschaton.

The haste was unseemly, of course, just as the ENTIRE process was unseemly at EVERY. SINGLE. STEP. OF. THE. WAY.

In my experience, beginnings are important things, because they contain the “seed” of the entire process. And the seed of Justice Kavanaugh’s tenure on the Supreme Court has been corrupt, venal and perhaps criminal. One stops to consider that a former Justice has either NEVER or virtually never, ever, ever, ever opined that a nominee was unfit to serve on the court. And yet Justice Stevens did just that.

Stevens, a lifelong Republican who is known for falling on the liberal side of several judicial rulings, praised Kavanaugh and one of his rulings on a political contribution case in the 2014 book “Six Amendments: How and Why We Should Change the Constitution.”

“At that time, I thought (Kavanaugh) had the qualifications for the Supreme Court should he be selected,” Stevens said. “I’ve changed my views for reasons that have no relationship to his intellectual ability … I feel his performance in the hearings ultimately changed my mind.”

But what is important is WINNING. Never mind that the entire notion of fair process, fair proceedings and fair debate was made a mockery of by this Kangaroo Court of a “confirmation.” Never mind what Stevens wrote in his dissent to the infamous (and shameful) 2000 Bush v. Gore:

 The endorsement of that position by the majority of this Court can only lend credence to the most cynical appraisal of the work of judges throughout the land. It is confidence in the men and women who administer the judicial system that is the true backbone of the rule of law. Time will one day heal the wound to that confidence that will be inflicted by today’s decision. One thing, however, is certain. Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year’s Presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the Nation’s confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law. [Emphasis added.]

No: what matters is the photo-op (with Trump front and center) for that most Pravda-esque “Look! Justice Kennedy is swearing-in Comrade Kavanaugh! We comrades can all see the continuity that our great leader, First Citizen Trump has brought to U.S. courts systems! All hail the revolution. We are all brothers with blue-collar billionaire Trump!”

Again: the entire process was toxically political in the manner that Bush v. Gore was toxically political (Gore won, by the by, according to the recount that the news consortium paid for).

When you make a mockery of the very process you’re trying to control (the law, in this case) then the law no longer carries the authority it once carried. When no one believes in the law, anarchy prevails. But what we don’t acknowledge is just how very very important it is to BELIEVE in the law for law to work.

So, we have, at the end of a clownish and blatantly unfair process, a strange, triumphal clown car, disgorging its contents thrice to show how this has all been legit and above-board and maybe some gloating and crowing, too, just to show how “fair-minded” the newest justice of the court of (increasingly) injustice actually is.

Enjoy your moment in the sun.

It may well, because of your actions, be soon blotted out entirely.

At least as far as THIS species is concerned.

After all, Conservatives AND “Christians” (in quotes so as to be inclusive of “rapture” heretics and other snake-handlers) are TERRIFICALLY OPPRESSED by society at large and a huge majority that, somehow, is never represented in voting numbers. (Gosh, that’s odd, isn’t it?)

What TRULY matters is installing Kavanaugh on SCOTUS.

Ignore the strange manner in which Kennedy was ‘retired.’ (He had already hired his clerks for the next term, which started on Monday.) And that Kavanaugh was a Kennedy clerk. No quid pro quo there. No double dealings. No backroom whisper. Nosiree. Ignore that. Nothing to see there. Move along. Move along.

Ignore the 100,000 pages of PUBLICLY OWNED AND PAID FOR documents detailing Kavanaugh’s George W. Bush Inside the War Crimes and Torture White House activities. No partisanship there. Nosiree. You can take conservatives’ word that there’s nothing to see. Why would they ever want to hide anything?

May we repeat the refrain from the Vietnam War: we destroyed the village in order to save it.

It is the only way to save poor, oppressed, misunderstood, kindly, generous, noble, pious, faithful, decent and endlessly goodly and godly conservatism.

Reagan be praised.

And one day, perhaps we can honestly intone: Ford’s in his flivver and all’s right with the world.

But shouldn’t Justice B. Kavanaugh get a parade?

Courage.