Mental pygmy, Cory Booker, believes he is somehow being "heroic" for openly violating Senate rules by releasing e-mails classified as confidential because he delusionally "thinks" they somehow show Brett Kavanaugh as being on the wrong side of racial profiling.
"This is about the closest I'll ever have in my life to an 'I am Spartacus' moment," said Booker.
BWHA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA - what a ridiculous BUFFOON!!!
http://hotair.com/archives/2018/09/06/booker-boot-senate-im-going-violate-rules-defeat-kavanaugh-no-matter/
... Claiming that a memo classified as confidential by the Judiciary Committee would blow the lid off Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation hearing, Booker insisted that he'd risk his Senate career to expose it. The memo apparently dates back to the Bush administration and has something to do with racial profiling, at least according to Booker. ...
John Cornyn didn't take long to skewer Booker for grandstanding on behalf of his presidential ambitions:
And rightfully so.
Running for president is no excuse for violating the rules of the Senate or of confidentiality of the documents that we are privy to. This is no different from the senator deciding to release classified information that is deemed classified by the executive branch because you happen to disagree with the classification decision. That is irresponsible and outrageous.
No senator deserves to sit on this committee, or serve in the Senate in my view, if they decide to be a law unto themselves and willingly flout the rules of the Senate and the determination of confidentiality and classification. That is irresponsible and conduct unbecoming a senator.
So what was the memo? It's already been released and posted on Scribd, so it's not confidential any longer. It's a discussion among Bush administration officials, Kavanaugh included, in early 2002 about racial profiling, in part related to airport security. In fact, Kavanaugh wanted race-neutral security measures put in place, but acknowledged that an interim screening process might need to focus specifically on potential al-Qaeda members:
Another memo from August 2001 was on an entirely unrelated issue - compliance with the Supreme Court decision in Adarand, which stated that any race-based policies had to withstand "strict scrutiny." Replying to another analysis of Department of Transportation programs, Kavanaugh predicted they would not withstand a challenge under Adarand:
Despite Booker's suggestion in the hearing, none of this has to do with the kind of "racial profiling" that involves law enforcement and African-Americans. The only other topic raised was the demand to recognize Native Hawaiians as a protected minority for Small Business Administration programs, which Kavanaugh cautioned would run afoul of Rice v Cayetano and the Constitution if done "because of their race/ethnicity alone[.]" Kavanaugh worked on Rice while in private practice, and his side won at the Supreme Court in 2000, just a couple of years prior to this exchange.
None of these seem terribly problematic, although all three clearly qualify for executive privilege exceptions - internal discussions for policy questions. The first example might prove the trickiest to explain seventeen years after the 9/11 attacks, but with the anniversary coming up on Tuesday, perhaps not even so much so. That discussion took place just four months after 3,000 Americans got murdered by AQ terrorists, and many people wanted security tailored specifically to find other AQ and affiliated terrorists.
In other words, this was a case of manufactured outrage, one which demonstrates precisely why discussions under executive privilege are usually kept confidential. The result of Booker's grandstanding will undoubtedly be, as Mike Lee warned in the hearing, that the Senate Judiciary Committee will get a lot fewer documents in the future and presidents will make much broader executive privilege claims to make sure of it.
Nevertheless, Booker got his "Spartacus moment," for what it was worth. Or perhaps it's more of a "Venus de Milo (or Modern Selfie)" moment, as demonstrated by sculptor Anna Uddenberg. I can't think of a better image to represent this outburst today, or over the past week in this hearing. What an embarrassment.
Yep - that's a perfect likeness of Cory Booker at the Kavanaugh hearing.
Update: Looks like Booker won't get another Spartacus moment:
After Booker released the emails, Grassley's office formally made them public, along with dozens of other committee confidential documents that Democrats had asked to be released. It was not immediately clear whether their official release would affect Booker's possible liability for making them public earlier.
Grassley might have been required to release them in order to allow committee members to discuss them publicly - and to allow Republicans to refute Booker's earlier suggestion that this had to do with racial profiling of African-Americans by law enforcement. Still, it seems like a reward for bad behavior, which only incentivizes more of the same. Don't expect presidents to trust the Judiciary Committee with these documents in the future.
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