Facebook Employees in Uproar over Executive Who Backs Brett Kavanaugh

Mark ZuckerbergFacebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has come under fire recently due to a top Facebook global policy executive’s decision to support Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and appear at his hearing. One prominent executive claims Facebook is an “apolitical” company.

According to the Wall Street Journal, hundreds of employees at the social media firm Facebook have expressed their anger about top global policy executive, Joel Kaplan’s decision to support Brett Kavanaugh at his upcoming hearing. Employees questioned CEO Mark Zuckerberg directly about the Kavanaugh-supporting executive in a weekly question-and-answer session held last Friday, Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg — a vocal Hillary Clinton supporter — also apparently weighed in on the issue.

An internal discussion thread was reportedly filled with hundreds of comments. Many Facebook employees were critical of the executive’s decision to support Kavanaugh. The topic became an issue after a photo of Facebook’s Head of Global Policy Joel Kaplan appeared to show the executive present at Kavanaugh’s hearing last Thursday. This resulted in an internal discussion about how Facebook’s executives felt about the #MeToo movement, freedom of speech, and President Trump.

Zuckerberg was relatively non-committal in his response to the employee’s issues, stating that he wouldn’t have made the same decision as Kaplan, but that his presence at the hearing did not violate any of Facebook’s company policies and that Zuckerberg was aware that Kaplan and Kavanaugh had been longtime friends. This, however, did not satisfy employees and the internal debate still continued with Zuckerberg and Sandberg planning to address the employees issues at a town hall meeting on Friday.

One employee stated: “This fire has been burning for a full week now.” Kaplan reportedly appeared defensive in his initial response, stating that he took the day off, but the executive’s tone shifted as further controversy over his appearance arose. Many were angered over Kaplan’s appearance at the hearing as since the 2016 election, Facebook has discouraged employees from expressing their political opinions publicly, but now the company’s head of global policy was appearing at a hearing that had become extremely politicized over recent weeks. …

Click here to read the full article from Breitbart.com/California

Kavanaugh Hearing Shines Light on CA Senate Contest

Dianne FeinsteinIn any normal election cycle, the state’s race for governor would be in the spotlight for California’s voters and media. But, this is not a traditional political era we are living through, and the dramatic, emotional hearings over confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court has made California’s senators the center of the political world.

The different styles of California’s U.S. Senators were on display at the confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week. Before the compromise that delayed the nomination vote for a week, California senator Kamala Harris walked out of the proceedings. Senior senator and ranking minority member Dianne Feinstein remained in her chair.

Harris’s walk out had as much to do with her presidential aspiration as it did with her objections to the committee’s direction. As the San Francisco Chronicle’s Matier & Ross reported, Harris has been busy using the Kavanaugh hearing as a tool to build lists of potential supporters around the country.

Feinstein on the other hand was the center of the Kavanaugh confirmation storm charged by Republican colleagues with engineering a strategic political hit against the nominee by holding Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s accusatory letter of sexual assault until right before a final vote on Kavanaugh. Feinstein denied any skullduggery and advocated for the ultimate compromise to bring in the FBI investigators.

Watching from across the country, California voters have the opportunity to endorse the Feinstein approach or kick her out of office with someone more in the Harris mold.

Feinstein’s opponent in the senate contest, State Senator Kevin de Leon, assuredly would have walked out of the meeting with Harris. In fact, if you listen to his rhetoric, he would not have been in the meeting at all but would have been out in the hallway with anti-Kavanaugh protestors.

De Leon’s campaign highlighted the recent PPIC poll that has him now 11 percent behind Feinstein, half of what he trailed her by in the previous poll.

One interesting aspect of the poll is that about a quarter of Republican voters queried said they did not intend to vote in this Democrat vs. Democrat contest. However, of those Republicans who did name a preference, the state senator who has put out an agenda far to the left of Feinstein actually had a small lead among Republicans.

Much of de Leon’s standing with Republicans reflects their lack of knowledge for his policies and familiarity with the long-servicing Democratic U.S. Senator.

Oddly, the turn of events in Washington could continue to help de Leon if some Republican and conservative voters who plan to sit on their hands instead of voting decide that Feinstein is culpable in the attack on Kavanaugh—especially if, in the end, he is rejected as a court nominee. Retribution could come in the form of a vote for de Leon.

On the other hand, Feinstein’s actions, if given credit by liberal voters for sinking Kavanaugh, could strengthen her hand with a segment of the Democratic Party voters.

Regardless, how this comes down, already political expectations have been turned upside down when the state’s governor’s race now playing second fiddle to the U.S. Senate contest.

ditor and co-publisher of Fox and Hounds Daily.

This article was originally published by Fox and Hounds Daily.

Eight big problems for Christine Blasey Ford’s story

Supreme CourtChristine Blasey Ford’s allegations against Brett Kavanaugh are serious. She is accusing him of violent attempted rape. “I thought he might inadvertently kill me. He was trying to attack me and remove my clothing,” she told The Washington Post, recounting the alleged incident at a high school party “one summer in the early 1980s.”

But her story is also growing less believable by the day. Here are eight reasons why it’s hardly “anti-woman” for senators to question her account at Thursday’s hearing:

1) For starters, Ford still can’t recall basic details of what she says was the most traumatic event in her life. Not where the “assault” took place — she’s not sure whose house it was, or even what street it was on. Nor when — she’s not even sure of the year, let alone the day and month.

Ford’s not certain how old she was or what grade she was in when she says an older student violently molested her. (But she doesn’t plead inebriation: She described having just “one beer” at the party.)

2) Ford concedes she told no one what happened to her at the time, not even her best friend or mother. That means she can rely on no contemporaneous witness to corroborate her story. …

Click here to read the full article from the New York Post

U.S. Justice Foundation: Trump Heralded for Kavanaugh Nomination

Brett Kavanaugh Donald TrumpPresident Donald Trump is being heralded for his nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to replace retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy on the United States Supreme Court.

On Tuesday, the United States Justice Foundation, a nonprofit public interest, legal action organization, praised President Trump for Kavanaugh’s nomination, saying that he had delivered on his campaign promise to nominate well-qualified conservative judges that would faithfully follow the Constitution.

“Judge Kavanaugh is an outstanding choice with impeccable credentials,” said James Lacy, a former Reagan Administration General Counsel and a spokesperson for US Justice Foundation. “Judge Kavanaugh’s exceptional record makes clear: he follows the law and does not legislate from the bench.”

An All-American jurist, Kavanaugh currently serves on the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, where he has established himself as an effective and respected “judge’s judge”. Judge Kavanaugh is also considered mainstream by the legal community – with more than 210 judges citing just 100 of his insightful opinions.

“From the start of his career, he’s applied the Constitution faithfully, even when that made him a lonely voice,” author J.D. Vance wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. “He has done so with particular tenacity on the issue that matters most to the president: taking power away from unelected bureaucrats and returning it to elected officials.”

Judge Kavanaugh: Well-Qualified, Respected by Both Sides of Aisle

Judge Kavanaugh’s strongest support will likely come from the legal community, which has praised him for his work to advance diversity and mentor young lawyers.

“Judge Kavanaugh is the #1 feeder judge of clerks to the Supreme Court. He sends clerks to almost all the justices, on both sides of the aisle — ‘a sign of the deep respect that his possible future colleagues have for him,’” David Lat, founding editor of Above the Law, wrote prior to his nomination.

When President George W. Bush nominated Kavanaugh for the U.S. Court of Appeals, Kavanaugh was initially rated “well qualified” by the American Bar Association. The organization eventually bowed to pressure from liberal special interest groups and downgraded Kavanaugh to “qualified.”

Chairman Steven Tober, then-chairman of the 14-member American Bar Association committee, affirmed that Kavanaugh was “indeed qualified to serve on the federal bench.”  “This nominee enjoys a solid reputation for integrity, intellectual capacity and writing and analytical ability,” he wrote. “The concern has been and remains focused on the breadth of his professional experience.”

After graduating with honors from Yale College in 1987, Judge Kavanaugh graduated from Yale Law School in 1990, where he was a Notes Editor on the Yale Law Journal. He clerked for Justice Anthony Kennedy of the Supreme Court, Ninth Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski, and Third Circuit Judge Walter Stapleton.

“Judge Brett Kavanaugh, President Donald Trump’s new nominee for the Supreme Court, is a whip-smart legal conservative,” National Review editorialized in support of President Trump’s selection. “As a judge in the highest-profile appeals court in the nation, he has shown an exemplary dedication to the rule of law.”

Precedent: Ginsburg Confirmed in 57 Days

Historically, the United States Senate has acted swiftly to confirm nominees of Kavanaugh’s caliber and qualifications. In 1993, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Bill Clinton’s liberal choice to replace Justice Byron White, was confirmed in just 57 days and by a bipartisan 96-3 vote.

Democrats are unlikely to extend the same courtesy to Kavanaugh. According to a recent US Justice Foundation report, Democrats are politicizing the independent judiciary with excessive delays of a diverse cohort of judicial appointments.

“After a historic first year of reforming the judiciary, President Donald J. Trump’s supremely-qualified judicial nominees are now stuck in the swamp,” the USJF concluded in its June 2018 report, “America Needs Great Judges”. “Swamp politics are harming the American people by delaying the swift and independent administration of justice.”

Advice and Consent: Resistance Opposed Before Kavanaugh Finished Speaking

Under Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution, the President “shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, judges of the Supreme Court, and all other officers of the United States, whose appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by law.”

 Yet, members of the anti-Trump Resistance are unlikely to faithfully uphold their constitutional obligations. It took California’s far left U.S. Senator Kamala Harris less than 20 minutes to announce her opposition to Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court.

“Trump’s Supreme Court Justice nominee, Judge Kavanaugh, represents a direct and fundamental threat to the rights and health care of hundreds of millions of Americans,” Harris tweeted minutes after Kavanaugh’s nomination. “I will oppose his nomination to the Supreme Court. #SCOTUSpick.”

An attack website, Stopkavanaugh.com, was registered anonymously on June 28 and had moved into full attack mode before Kavanaugh could even finish speaking at his nomination announcement. The website is funded by the far-left extremist special interest group, Demand Justice.

Other members of the left wing resistance expressed hope that Kavanaugh’s nomination could be derailed.

“The fluke of good fortune would be for Kavanaugh to turn out, over the course of hearings, to be such a fiasco of a choice that even Republicans would defect,” T.A. Frank, a Vanity Fair contributor, wrote. “Maybe Kavanaugh turns out to be in a cult that requires, say, punching horses in the face, and claims and counterclaims run for months.”