Below is my column in The Hill newspaper on the rising pressure on Sen. Susan Collins over her vote on Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. There is considerable anger over Collins maintaining that she would never vote for a nominee hostile to Roe v. Wade but refusing to acknowledge the widespread view of Kavanaugh as not only hostile to the reasoning of Roe but appointed by a president who promised only to nominate an anti-Roe justice. As with Neil Gorsuch, Collins appears inclined to vote for Kavanaugh despite her oft-repeated pledge. She insists that she is comfortable after Kavanaugh told her that Roe is “settled” law. However, many have put Collins’ position as falling somewhere between hopeful thinking and willful blindness. As discussed below, the unsettling thing about settled law is that only five votes make anything truly settled on the Court.
Adding to the political dimension are polls showing that the hearings did not produce a bump for confirmation. The latest polling shows 38 percent in favor of Kavanaugh and 39 percent opposed.
Here is the column: Continue reading “A Bill Comes Due: Susan Collins Faces Rising Demands To Fulfill Her Promise To Vote Against A Presumed Anti-Roe Nominee”
I will have the pleasure of participating in the annual Supreme Court review today previewing the upcoming October term. The other panelists will be former Solicitor General Gregory Garre, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund President and Director-Counsel Sherrilyn Ifill. Associate Dean (and Supreme Court litigator) Alan Morrison will moderate the panel.
Yesterday, we 
Below is my column in The Hill newspaper on the controversial declaration of Sen. Cory Booker (D, NJ) that he was taking his “Spartacus” stand in releasing a restricted, non-public document regardless of the consequences. Well, it was not quite a dramatic as suggested since the document was in fact already public. As should come as no surprise to many of you who know my love for military history, I did however appreciate the reference.
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The opening day has finally arrived for many of us who are football fans. However, if there was hope to have a season without the highly divisive anthem controversy, those hopes were dashed as the 
Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos was sentenced Friday to just 14 days in prison for lying to the FBI despite the position of Special Counsel Robert Mueller that he should spend at least six months in jail. The position of Mueller appeared to reflect a view that Papadopoulos was not as cooperative (or perhaps productive) as a witness. In the end, Papadopoulos appeared in an almost hostile position vis-a-vis Mueller. 
Below is my column in The Hill newspaper on the Kavanaugh confirmation hearing and the opening statement of Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse attacking the conservatives on the Supreme Court as a virtual ideological cabal. I have always found Whitehouse an articulate and insightful member of the Congress. He was not alone in these attacks. However, I found the attack on the current justices to be unwarranted and distorted. There is a tendency when you disagree with a decision like Hobby Lobby to conclude that the motivations of the justices must therefore be raw politics. The possibility that the justices, including Justice Kennedy, are following a coherent jurisprudential view is dismissed in favor of partisanship.
In an 
Former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore has long been an perpetual litigation machine. Indeed, Moore and his wife appear to have created a cottage industry out of being themselves — getting people to give them huge amounts of money to fight their enemies. 
The hysteria and hypocrisy that characterizes modern American politics seems to be worse by the day on both sides of the political aisle. One of the latest examples of distemper is an attack on the woman who was placed behind Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh for his hearings. Handlers will often put someone over the shoulder of a nominee for the right optics to reflect his supporters. With attacks over his view of Roe v. Wade, it is not surprising that the White House chose a young former female clerk of Kavanaugh named Zina Gelman Bash. Bash however found herself being called a white supremacist for flashing an “OK” gesture associated with the “white power” movement. It seems clearly to be just the arbitrary positioning of her hands but liberal bloggers like Amy Siskind, president and co-founder of the feminist advocacy group New Agenda, went into full riot over the alleged reveal of Bash’s white power links. The problem is that Bash has Jewish roots and Mexican heritage and has absolutely no ties or association with such groups. She simply crossed her arms and fingers during the long hearing. It is the ultimate sign of our times in how we have lost all decency and decorum in our politics. 
Below is my column in The Hill on the continuing promotionals for “The Notorious RBG.” I have long been a critic of this trend toward celebrity justices and the discomfort over these campaigns is not simply about Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The culture of the Court is changing and I do not believe it is changing for the better.
Texas recently 
This weekend I discussed a surprising, and unreported, allegation made on CNN by former Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili against the latest cooperating witness of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, former Republican lobbyist and Paul Manafort associate, Sam Patten. Saakashvili preceded me on CNN and accused Patten of threatening to ruin him if he went public with allegations about Patten’s work with Russian interests in Georgia. Since Saakashvili could easily be called as a rebuttal witness to Patten, the threats could be viewed as witness tampering. Saakashvili viewed them as outright Russian-style blackmail. Since I ran that column, I have heard from a great number of people on both sides, but I received an email this morning from Christina Pushaw, who identifies herself as Saakashvili’s representative. Pushaw sent the underlying material supporting Saakashvili’s charges and confirmed that they have given the allegation and evidence to the FBI today. The complaint to the FBI only magnifies the problems for both Patten and Mueller that I discussed earlier. A submission to the FBI, including a criminal allegation, comes with added penalties for false statements or submissions. Both sides in this dispute have been the subject of serious criminal allegations in Europe. Yet, such communications (if true) from a cooperating witness would unlikely be approved by prosecutors. Mueller’s team is about to present its prosecution of Paul Manafort for witnessing tampering for contacting potential witnesses to shape their accounts. That creates a rather awkward situation when its most recent cooperative witness is allegedly the subject of a complaint to the FBI.
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