As a Supreme Court appointment battle looms, can we acknowledge how awful the politics of identity are?
INOT, N.D. — Justice Stephen Breyer, who was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court by President Bill Clinton, has announced that he’ll be stepping down from the court.
Thus commences what I hope will be a boring and routine appointment process for his successor. The battle royals that have encompassed past appointment proceedings, notably the hearings for Justice Brett Kavanaugh, have been a national disgrace.
Remember when former North Dakota Sen. Heidi Heitkamp told us she could discern Kavanaugh’s guilt in the phony-baloney accusations sexual assault against him not through a review of the relevant facts, few and tenuous as they were, but because of his body language ?
I’m not sure the word “disgrace” does justice to that travesty of a proceeding.
Anyway, Joe Biden is president now. He can nominate who he sees fit, though he should be mindful that his party currently has only a technical majority in the Senate, thanks to Vice President Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking votes.
