Remember when Sen. Mitch McConnell blew off the second stimulus response bill to take a long weekend back in Kentucky? Yes, it was just under three weeks ago, but in novel coronavirus time that’s 30 years. Anyway, Mitch took that long weekend just as the shit was hitting the fan to celebrate with Brett Kavanaugh and a guy named Justin Walker, who McConnell had secured a federal judgeship for just a few months previous. Now, thanks to that undeserved promotion, Walker is up for a much bigger job: Trump has nominated him to the powerful U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Kavanaugh, who was in Kentucky with McConnell for the party, recommended Walker, who had been one of his clerks. Which was about all Walker has done. At just age 37 and a law professor, he had never in his life tried a case. The American Bar Association rated him as unqualified because of his inexperience—he hasn't even been out of law school long enough to qualify by their standards. When he was nominated, McConnell said Walker was "unquestionably the most outstanding nomination that I've ever recommended to Presidents to serve on the bench in Kentucky." And he promptly bulldozed the nomination through.
Enough of this. Please give $1 to our nominee fund to help Democrats and end McConnell's career as majority leader.
Now he's saying—about a guy who has served for just 5 months and never been in a courtroom before that!—"I think you cannot credibly argue that Justin Walker is not a judicial all-star." Certainly the ABA could credibly argue that.
On top of all that's infuriating about this nomination is the fact that right now—in the middle of a pandemic—they're pushing a guy to the second most powerful court in the land who is notoriously opposed to the Affordable Care Act—as much as his former boss, Kavanaugh. That and the fact that McConnell is still trying to get judges crammed onto the bench—and leaning on current judges to retire so he can get even more extremists in—in the middle of a pandemic and economic crisis.
And he's doing all this while telling the suffering and unemployed of the nation to pound sand, he's done enough for them.