Watching the confirmation hearing of Judge Kavanaugh before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee in the fall of 2018 on his nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court brought back memories of an incident that took place in Communist Cuba. Both occurrences proved to be partisan spectacles that turned out to be harmful to democracy, decency, and plain fairness.
Just when the majority of Cubans were waiting for signals that would help them understand what type of leader Fidel Castro would be and what type of government to expect in the future, a revolutionary trial was held in February of 1959 and forty-three aviators, pilots, gunners and mechanics of the former Cuban Air Force were charged with bombing a village in Santiago de Cuba. Fidel demanded the death penalty by firing squad for most of them.
Despite the fact that all members of the military court who tried the case were rebel officers of the Raul Castro column, the defendants were found innocent of the crimes charged.
Fidel Castro had a meltdown and immediately rejected the verdict. He proclaimed that “revolutionary justice is not based on legal precepts, but on moral conviction.” He added: “I’m not obligated to any legal precedent. Here there is no other justice than the revolutionary one. Here there is no other Constitution that the willingness of the Revolution. I am the Commander in Chief of the Revolution before I am the Prime Minister.”
Fidel ordered another military tribunal, the initial verdict was revoked, and the defendants were condemned to thirty years of hard labor under the most severe conditions. Ignoring all judicial principles, the defendants were not allowed to be present at the second military tribunal.
More than seeking justice, Fidel sought revenge. And this trial was the precursor for the turning of Cuba into a Communist Gulag that has brought much suffering to many Cuban families for close to sixty years.
Turning over to the confirmation hearings of Judge Kavanaugh, the Democratic Senators were not interested in seeking the truth. Their goal was to play politics with the nomination – despite all the misery that they brought to the accuser (Dr. Christine Blasey Ford), the accused (Judge Brett Kavanaugh), and their families.
Judge Kavanaugh’s qualifications as a legal scholar made him superbly qualified to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court. He served for twelve years as a judge on the second most powerful court in the country. He’s penned over 300 opinions while on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. He attended the prestigious Yale Law School, served as associate counsel to the White House, and as a law clerk to Justice Anthony Kennedy.
But the Democrats were not interested in Justice Kavanaugh’s qualifications. In fact, back in July of 2018, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer indicated that “I will oppose Kavanaugh with everything I’ve got.” Obviously, he would have been happy only if President Trump nominated a candidate to the U.S. Supreme Court in the likeness of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Well, like President Obama once told House Republic Whip Eric Cantor on January 23, 2009, “Elections have consequences, and at the end of the day, I won.” President Trump won the 2016 election, and he gets to place conservative judges in the U.S. Supreme Court.
A number of Democrats in the Judiciary Committee -- Senators Mazie Hirono (Hawaii), Kamala Harris (California), and Richard Blumenthal (Connecticut) -- went on the record and stated that they believed the allegations that Dr. Ford lodged against Judge Kavanaugh before she and Judge Kavanaugh testified in front of the U.S. Judiciary Committee on September 27, 2018. They obviously ignored the Constitutional due-process rights and the presumption of innocence legal doctrine that is afforded to every U.S. citizen.
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Following is the Senate's roll call that took place on October 6, 2018, on the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh as a Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. See: https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=115&session=2&vote=00223. Find your senators on the list, and vote to replace those who voted "nay" at the upcoming Nov. 6 midterm elections. For those living in Florida, Senator Marco Rubio voted "yea" and Senator Bill Nelson voted "nay."
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