Brett Kavanaugh: Evil Carpool Dad

The liberal fury machine has two settings: Off and Kilauea.

Consider the Democratic Left’s volcanic rage over Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. His opponents intelligently could make the argument that, say, he should consider the Constitution more flexible, or exhibit more sympathy for civil-rights plaintiffs. That might lead to a rational discussion. Instead, it’s 30 seconds to Krakatoa.

• Capitol Police on Wednesday arrested 74 people for attempting to block hallways and bar Kavanaugh from meeting with the senators who will decide his fate.
• Senators Joe Donnelly of Indiana and Joe Manchin of West Virginia are the only Democrats who have welcomed Kavanaugh. The Senate’s 47 other Democratic-caucus members, so far, will not even greet him.
• “President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh will be a rubber stamp for an extreme, right-wing agenda pushed by corporations and billionaires,” Senator Bernie Sanders (Socialist, Vt.) said via Twitter. “We must mobilize the American people to defeat Trump’s right-wing, reactionary nominee.”
• “I used to worry that they would turn the clock back to the 1950s,” Hillary Clinton told the American Federation of Teachers, referring to Kavanaugh and his supporters. “Now I worry that they want to turn it back to the 1850s” — when slavery was legal.
• “A Supreme Court with two Trump Justices, both guaranteed to opposed [sic] Roe v. Wade, is a death sentence for thousands of women in the United States,” the Action Network contends.
• “Forget abortion or same-sex marriage,” warns the Daily Beast’s national editor, Justin Miller, “contraception could be banned under Justice Kavanaugh.”
• Hillary Shelton, head of the NAACP’s Washington bureau, believes that “Brett Kavanaugh is a dangerous criminal.” If that’s true, she should call 911 and report him.
• According to former governor Terry McAuliffe (D., Va.), “The nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh will threaten the lives of millions of Americans for decades to come and will morph our Supreme Court into a political arm of the right-wing Republican Party.”
• “Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination presents an emergency — for democratic life, for our safety and freedom, for the future of our country,” an open letter from Yale Law School students, professors, and alumni announced. “Without a doubt, Judge Kavanaugh is a threat to the most vulnerable. . . . If elevated, the judge would pose an existential threat to the government’s ability to regulate for the common good and further twist the First Amendment beyond recognition, using it as a sword to advance his personal political preferences.” In short, “people will die if he is confirmed.”
• University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Harlan Reynolds observed: “As a lawyer messaged me on Facebook today, Kavanaugh will be Hitler, because whoever Trump nominated was going to be Hitler.”

Spooky!

While Kavanaugh’s roughly 300 appellate-court opinions offer the clearest window onto his potential SCOTUS jurisprudence, his personal life should illuminate his temperament. At least by this measure, the Left’s alleged T. rex is a teddy bear.

Kavanaugh is a man of means, by no means. Far from being a corporate billionaire, he has disclosed assets of just $65,000, Bloomberg reports. “It sounds like he’s living on what he earns,” said Larry Noble, the Federal Election Commission’s former general counsel.

“He’s a man for others,” said Monsignor John Enzler, CEO of Catholic Charities in Washington. “It’s all about service.”

Kavanaugh repeatedly has volunteered to hand out food to D.C.’s poor. He signed up months ago to do so at St. Maria’s Meals in July and kept his commitment, just two days after being nominated.

Kavanaugh has tutored students at J. O. Wilson Elementary School. This government-run primary campus in Northeast Washington, D.C., is 82 percent black, SchoolDigger.com reports, and 100 percent of its pupils receive lunch subsidies.

Judge Kavanaugh has championed the professional success of women and minorities throughout the entirety of his legal career.

“On evenings and weekends, you’re likely to find Brett at a local gym or athletic field, encouraging his players or watching games with his daughters and their friends,” explained Julie O’Brien, whose little girl is schoolmates with one of Kavanaugh’s children. “He coaches not one but two girls’ basketball teams,” O’Brien wrote in the Washington Post. “His positive attitude and calm demeanor make the game fun and allow each player to shine. . . . He and his wife, Ashley, support their two daughters and other children at countless school and church functions throughout the year. In the summer, Brett is the ‘carpool dad,’ often shuttling students to and from practices, games, and activities.”

Democrats aim “to make a monster of a mensch,” Senator Orrin Hatch (R., Utah) wrote in Thursday’s USA Today. However, “this is the same man who, every year, takes the little girl of his widowed friend to the school daddy-daughter dance. It’s the same man who has championed the professional success of women and minorities throughout the entirety of his legal career. And it’s the same man who has garnered widespread admiration from jurists and academics on both sides of the political aisle.”

Though he now “wants to pave the path to tyranny,” according to Senator Jeff Merkley (D., Ore.), Kavanaugh was so fair-minded in 2008 that he was hired to teach at white-nationalist Harvard Law School by then-dean Elena Kagan — today a liberal stalwart on the Supreme Court.

“I’m a registered Democrat,” Kavanaugh’s former clerk Caroline Van Zile wrote in USA Today. “Judge Kavanaugh is incredibly qualified to be an associate justice of the Supreme Court. Beyond that, he is a good, kind and fair-minded person. . . . The judge didn’t just teach me about legal principles. I learned a lot about integrity, humility, and kindness, too.” Van Zile also noted: “Indeed, in a profession that often feels overwhelmingly male, the judge has been a champion for women.”

In fact, 25 of Kavanaugh’s 48 law clerks have been women. Several of these females wrote Senate leaders on July 12: “It is not an exaggeration to say that we would not be the professors, prosecutors, public officials, and appellate advocates we are today without his enthusiastic encouragement and unwavering support.”

Kavanaugh was “very interested in making sure that we have a seat at the table. He thought it was important, even necessary,” Kathryn Cherry, one of Kavanaugh’s five black clerks, told the National Law Journal. The Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher associate added: “He urged me to talk more.”

“I am a liberal Democrat and feminist,” Lisa Blatt wrote in Thursday’s Politico. “I have argued 35 cases before the Supreme Court, more than any other woman. I worked in the Solicitor General’s Office for 13 years during the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations.” Blatt wrote of Kavanaugh: “He is supremely qualified.” She continued, “Kavanaugh is a great listener, and one of the warmest, friendliest, and kindest individuals I know. And other than my former boss, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, I know of no other judge who stands out for hiring female law clerks.” Blatt concluded: “Democrats should quit attacking Kavanaugh — full stop.”

Never mind these encouraging words about Kavanaugh. These are the End Days for liberals. President Trump’s performance in Helsinki, according to former Watergate prosecutor Jill Wine-Banks, “will live in infamy, as much as the Pearl Harbor attack or Kristallnacht.” Former CIA chief Michael Hayden equated Trump’s now-reversed illegal-alien family-separation policy with Auschwitz.

Democrats and other Trump haters have capsized FDR’s campaign anthem, “Happy Days Are Here Again.” As their modern remix goes: “Scary days are here again / The fascist plot is clear again / So let’s sing a song of fear again / Scary days are here again!”