Senate Republicans have announced plans to push for a quick vote on Brett Kavanaugh, whose nomination for a powerful appeals court judgeship has languished since 2003. There are good reasons the nomination has been kept on hold. Mr. Kavanaugh was unqualified then, and he is unqualified now. Moreover, since his Senate hearing in 2004, new issues have been raised that he should be questioned about, including what role, if any, he played in Bush administration policies like the National Security Agency's domestic spying program.
Mr. Kavanaugh has been nominated to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, often called the nation's second most important court.
A young lawyer with paltry courtroom experience, Mr. Kavanaugh does not have the legal background appropriate for such a lofty appointment. What he does have is a résumé that screams political partisanship.He worked for Kenneth Starr, the independent prosecutor, and helped draft possible grounds of impeachment against President Bill Clinton. He became a partisan in the impeachment battles that followed, co-writing an op-ed article in 1999 that presented Mr. Starr as an "American hero," while railing against a "presidentially approved smear campaign against him." Mr. Kavanaugh has spent much of his legal career since then in the Bush White House, where he helped select many of the administration's far-right judicial nominees.
Since Mr. Kavanaugh's nomination was first considered, information has come to light about a number of troubling policies that he could have had a hand in, including domestic spying, torture and rendition of detainees to other countries. Senate Democrats would like to question Mr. Kavanaugh about these programs, and about what connection he had, if any, to the Jack Abramoff scandal.http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/03/opinion/03wed1.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print
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