DEMS/GOP/NOMINATIONS/SENATE/SUPREME COURT/TRUMP PEOPLE: “Brett Kavanaugh emerged from two days of tough questioning in the Senate Judiciary Committee without making any obvious missteps that could imperil his confirmation as the justice who will pull the Supreme Court to the right and hand Donald Trump a generational presidential legacy. He avoided ceding ground on the most contentious issues, either by saying he wanted to keep ‘three zip codes’ away from politics or by arguing that he could not comment on ‘hypothetical’ cases that could come before him on the nation’s top bench. Kavanaugh refused to say whether a sitting president must respond to a subpoena — not an academic issue in the age of Trump. He declined to agree to Democratic calls for him to recuse himself from any cases related to the Russia investigation. And he would not say where he would come down on abortion, amid expectations among conservatives he would like to overturn Roe v. Wade. But Democrats did not walk away from a deeply divisive hearing with nothing. Top lawmakers showed vigor in cross examining Kavanaugh and by portraying him as Trump’s man on the court and may have at least partly lived up to expectations of the party’s fired up base for a show of backbone ahead of the mid-term elections.”
–Stephen Collinson, “Booker releases Kavanaugh documents but GOP insists they were already cleared,” CNN Politics, CNN.com, September 6, 2018 10:33 pm