At the end of work today, I went over to the Senate because the Supreme Court hearings were still going on. Adam talked to Barr, who is the head of all the logistics for any hearing by the Judiciary Committee, and Barr cleared me to go in with no ticket. (And Barr is LDS, who served his mission with Sarah Scott's husband - how weird!) Adam still had to walk me in because we had to go past 3 sets of security guards. You'd think this hearing was ... important! Or something. Anyway, I was in there for about 45 minutes and heard just a couple sets of questions. One of them was from the Good Senator from Texas, who didn't so much ask questions as he did praise Judge Alito. (I thought this was supposed to be the Judge kissing up, not the other way around.) The other Senator we listened to is the Minority Whip (2nd in command for the Democrats) who asked some good questions about the Establishment Cause, which is the separation of church and state. The focus of the questions were two cases which had extremely similar circumstances but received opposite verdicts, so the Senator was asking for the logic behind the different rulings.
The word of the day for Adam and me is "bloviate": to discourse at length in a pompous and boastful manner. Many (all?) Senators bloviate, and the Supreme Court confirmation is prime time for them. Oh brother. I got lucky in the time I was there - not much of that.
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3 comments:
That's so cool you got to attend the nomination hearing Trina! Of course the opposition comes up with the tough or as you put it "good" questions, while the party in power just tries to put the nominee in a good light. Fact is, they have the votes. It's the Republicans' fight to lose.
That's a funny word for what the senators do during these hearings. I call it "grandstanding".
Anyway, I'm actually a fan of these hearings. Sometimes it's like a trainwreck I can't look away from. I listened to the hearing on the way in to work the last few days. I listened to the Roberts hearing a little while back. Oh, and the Clarence Thomas hearing back in the day. Same dance, different dancers. (Okay, some of the same dancers.)
No, not ALL of the opposition comes up with tough/good questions. In fact, a lot of the Dems didn't ask ANY questions - they used pretty much their entire time wind-bagging about how sacred Roe v. Wade is. Very boring to listen to. I just happened to be there for one of the better moments, when it was actually an exchange between the Senator (who happened to be a Democrat) and the nominee on something that was NOT abortion.
Hey, I meant no offense by what I said. The main part of my post was "That's so cool..."
Yeah, the speechmaking on Roe. I was going to bring that up too, but the comment was getting long already.
Did you make it in today?
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