As if the stunning hypocrisy of Republicans allowing a Supreme Court nomination to go forward with less than three months until midterms — when Barack Obama was denied even a hearing on his last nominee — Brett Kavanaugh pulled a disgraceful stunt that should be disqualifying enough on its own.
As he was leaving the first day of his hearing for lunch, Trump's SCOTUS pick was confronted by Fred Guttenberg, who introduced himself as the father of Jaime Guttenberg, one of the victims of the tragic Parkland shooting. Kavanaugh disregarded his outstretched hand, opting instead to simply turn around and walk away.
No acknowledgement. Not even a handshake. To the father of a murdered teenage daughter.
To be clear: this is a nominee for the Supreme Court of the United States publicly snubbing a surviving relative of a 14-year-old girl murdered in her school, the result of years of staunch Republican protectionism and fetishization of guns over people. If confirmed, Kavanaugh is likely to entrench those same dangerous – and fatal – policies.
Notwithstanding Kavanaugh's extremist ideology or the exceptionally secretive process by which Republicans have released (and often withheld) his records, his behavior when asked for a simple handshake is evidence enough that this man's inhumanity should preclude him from serving on any bench, much less the Supreme Court.
We, the undersigned, demand that the United States Senate reject Brett Kavanaugh to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States after he failed to show even a modicum of human decency.
