By: Sarah Sheinker, Opinions Editor<\/p>\n
If you have been listening to the news lately, or even glanced at a newspaper, you would know there was a huge scandal surrounding the recently confirmed Supreme Court justice, Brett Kavanaugh. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Mrs. Casper gave an overview of Kavanaugh himself and his sexual assault scandal. We started at the beginning – who is Brett Kavanaugh? He was President Donald Trump\u2019s nominee to fill the seat of retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy. Kavanaugh previously served as a United States Circuit Court Judge to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. \u00a0As far as everyone knew at the time of his nomination, he was qualified, and there was nothing that could disqualify him. <\/span><\/p>\n We then moved on to how he was nominated. Casper said, \u201cSo when they do that vetting process they have the Senate Judiciary Committee do a search, they also have the President\u2019s advisors searching, and then you have certain senators who are looking at people too. Everyone is giving their input and they get what\u2019s called the \u201cshort list\u201d of candidates. From there they start looking at their background. They will look into anything the FBI has collected, anything they have ever written, any decisions they have ever made. They start digging into their past and anything that might jump out such as a criminal record because they don\u2019t want to get to this part of the process and get a surprise, which of course they did. And then usually what happens is the president will meet with them and have what we call the Litmus Test. It is a closed-door conversation where they try to find out where each nominee stands politically and where they lie on certain issues.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Finally, we discussed the details of the sexual assault scandal. Dr. Christine Blasey Ford is an American professor of psychology at Palo Alto University. When Dr. Ford saw Brett Kavanaugh\u2019s name on Trump\u2019s shortlist for the Supreme Court, she contacted her congresswoman, Anna Eshoo (D-CA), and <\/span>The Washington Post<\/span><\/i>. Eshoo and Ford went to Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), where Ford shared that when Kavanaugh and her were both in high school, he sexually assaulted her. Ford was very clear that she did not want her name to go public. Despite Ford\u2019s best efforts her name eventually went public, and she told <\/span>The Washington Post<\/span><\/i> to publish her story.<\/span><\/p>\n Kavanaugh denied all of Dr. Ford\u2019s allegations as \u201ctotally false and outrageous.\u201d After a brief FBI investigation, the Senate decided to proceed with Judge Kavanaugh\u2019s confirmation, and he was confirmed by a full Senate vote of 50-48 on October 6th.<\/span><\/p>\n To gain a glimpse of how River Hill students may feel about this current event, two twelfth grade students, one liberal and one conservative, were asked to give their opinions on Kavanaugh\u2019s nomination both before and after the scandal, as well as the Senate\u2019s decision to confirm him.<\/span><\/p>\n The liberal student feels concerned about Kavanaugh\u2019s views and the impact they will make on our country. \u201cA more conservative Supreme Court worries me, as a lot of his views could take away our individual liberties\u2026 most notably abortion rights.\u201d The student feels that Kavanaugh is not a respectful choice for the Supreme Court and is not suitable for the bench. \u201cWhether or not the assault happened, he is arrogant and seems to feel he is entitled to serve on the Court rather than viewing it as an honor.\u201d The student feels it was clear during the televised Senate proceedings that Kavanaugh acted unprofessionally and showed anger towards the Democratic Party, which means he can no longer be neutral. \u201cHe will always have a bias towards the people who attacked him [the Democrats].\u201d The student was not surprised Kavanaugh was confirmed and feels \u201cit is wrong in the same way that it is wrong that Merrick Garland isn\u2019t on the Court.\u201d Merrick Garland was nominated by President Obama to serve on the Court when Justice Antonin Scalia died, but the Senate declined to even begin Judge Garland\u2019s confirmation process. <\/span><\/p>\n The conservative student feels that Judge Kavanaugh was a good candidate with good conservative views. The student was happy about his views on abortion, saying, \u201che\u2019s pro-life and I liked that.\u201d The student feels the same way about Kavanaugh after the scandal as he did before, noting, \u201cI feel bad his reputation was tarnished\u201d and \u201c[the Senate] went through a complete process, and everyone is innocent until proven guilty.\u201d The student believes the Senate was right to confirm Kavanaugh, and that \u201cthere is no proof that he did anything wrong and has always been a credible man.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n The issue of Brett Kavanaugh\u2019s nomination has led to many heated discussions at the kitchen table and will continue to do so because he will serve a life term. Kavanaugh\u2019s scandal brings up not only on the huge issue of sexual assault in our country but also the growing problem of political polarization. The major questions left are what will become of our Supreme Court and our country. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By: Sarah Sheinker, Opinions Editor If you have been listening to the news lately, or even glanced at a newspaper, you would know there was a huge scandal surrounding the recently confirmed Supreme Court justice, Brett Kavanaugh. \u00a0 Mrs. Casper gave an overview of Kavanaugh himself and his sexual assault scandal. We started at the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":1107,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[315,286,281,282,358,357,269,301],"class_list":["post-1106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion","tag-highschool","tag-journalism","tag-news","tag-opinion","tag-political","tag-politics","tag-rhhs","tag-teens"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/brett-kavanaugh.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1106"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1106\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1108,"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1106\/revisions\/1108"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}