What you see depends on where you stand.
As Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh begins his first full term on the court, perhaps it’s time to look at how he developed.
Remember, Kavanaugh grew up among the prosperous and privileged. After his prestigious prep school he attended Yale and frolicked with the gang at Delta Kappa Epsilon (barred from campus for five years for pro-rape chants and activities ), then graduated from Yale Law School.
He worked for Ken Starr on the Clinton impeachment…
“Like many Americans at that time, I believed that the president should be required to shoulder the same obligations that we all carry,” he wrote in a 2009 law review article, about 10 years after the Starr investigations ended.
“But in retrospect,” he said, “that seems a mistake.”
He worked on the 2000 Florida vote count for George W. Bush, then joined the administration. After years drafting footnotes for the War on Terror he got rewarded with a nomination to the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, DC: it only took three years for Democrat and Republican senators to work out a deal for the ‘partisan’ Kavanaugh to join the court.
Among his decisions and dissents on that court:
He declared that an undocumented teenage girl had no right to terminate a pregnancy and that religious organization shouldn’t be required to provide contraception prescription coverage to their employees.
He declared that the National Security Agency’s warrant-less collection of data on Americans “is entirely consistent with the Fourth Amendment.”
He found a constitutional right for assault rifle ownership within the Second Amendment.
He opposed EPA efforts to regulate air pollution which crosses state lines.
“Verizon New England v. NLRB (2016) – Kavanaugh again wrote a majority opinion rejecting protection for employees who expressed pro-union sentiments during a labor dispute.”
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/07/09/brett-kavanaugh-track-record-675294 & https://www.biography.com/law-figure/brett-kavanaugh & https://abckeystone.org/where-is-brett-kavanaugh-on-labor-issues/
So, by the time of his life time appointment to the U. S. Supreme Court he’d established a track record as a reliable Republican who supported presidential immunity from prosecution; gave government a pretty free hand to spy on Americans; believed Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided; felt it you want to breath safe air you need to move, and, rejects the ‘right’ to express pro-union feelings at work.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch…
Kavanaugh found his wife at work, marrying another Bush administration employee a bit after his 39th birthday. They have two daughters and are active in Most Blessed Sacrament parish and school, on the Maryland and District line in the very fashionable northwest quadrant.
In other words, like dad the Kavanaugh girls will never attend a public school, be forced to flip burgers or stock shelves. They will live among their own kind, rich, prosperous and connected District insiders until they marry well.
Oh, perhaps Kavanaugh might be capable of empathy for the working stiff struggling to raise his three kids and support his wife on $1,000 a week. He might really understand the need to work a job one hates because it’s the only position in town paying above minimum wage. He might even feel the pain of a single mom praying the pantry doesn’t run out of milk before filling her cart.
I’m not placing a bet.
As we’ve seen with Donald Trump and his richly raised ilk, America is not here to help the struggling, no, the government’s job is to preserve wealth and privilege. The current Supreme Court isn’t there for most of us, it works for Brett and his kind.
Glenn Koenen