CommentsFIRST PERSON-One question Supreme Court justice candidate Brett Kavanaugh has never been compelled to answer is, if he is so innocent of the alleged sexual charges alleged by Christine Blasey Ford and others, why has he not offered to or been required to submit to a polygraph test like Blasey Ford did?
With the notable exception of California Senator Kamala Harris' questioning of Kavanaugh by the Senate Judiciary Committee last Thursday, no one has posed this important question or compelled an answer as a precondition for proceeding with Kavanaugh's candidacy for the U.S. Supreme Court.
While the use of a polygraph is restricted for consideration in civil and criminal judicial proceedings, due to questions of reliability, there is no such restriction for using a polygraph in a job interview to determine the reliability and honesty of a candidate for employment. Being vetted for a lifetime position on the Supreme Court involves one of the most critical job interviews in the country, especially when considering that the Senate’s upcoming decision could set the court in a conservative direction for the next 30 years. The high court needs to act as a filter, a check on the powers of the other two branches of government.
So far, Kavanaugh and the Republicans have been able to skirt the issue of a polygraph before his nomination is put to a vote. It is also worth mentioning that Kavanaugh himself has done a complete 180 degree turn on the use and admissibility of polygraphs, which is common knowledge to both Republicans and Democrats who are considering his candidacy to sit on the Supreme Court. Yet nobody except Senator Harris says anything?
Looking at Senator Kamala Harris' questioning of Supreme Court candidate Brett Kavanaugh, it is clear that Kavanaugh is being evasive, avoiding answering straight forward questions about whether he had a conversation about the Robert Mueller with attorneys intimately connected with President Trump, who is a prime concern of that investigation.
But what is most telling about this exchange is Senator Lee's coming to Kavanaugh's defense, trying to ward off Senator Harris' questions by talking about the proliferation of lawyers in Washington using the word “metastasize,” a word normally used to describe the spread of a disease like cancer.
Ironically, Senator Lee could not have picked a more apt term in describing the plethora of corporate interest lawyers who have succeeded in compromising our system of checks and balances that is built into the Constitution to protect the body politic. If corporate interests succeed in putting Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court and establishing an ultra-conservative majority, they will irreparably compromise and eliminate any vestige of true democracy in which final power is supposed to be vested in the people.
(Leonard Isenberg is a Los Angeles, observer and a contributor to CityWatch. He was a second- generation teacher at LAUSD and blogs at perdaily.com. Leonard can be reached at [email protected].) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
