by Abdul-Hakim Shabazz
Although I’ve been married for more than nine years, I have to admit that for about 45 minutes last week, I fell in love with another woman. Her name is Susan Collins, and she’s from Maine.
You might actually know her because she is a U.S. Senator from Maine, who used common sense and logic into being the deciding procedural vote to get Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the floor of the Senate so he could be confirmed as the next Justice on the Court.
It was Collins who took a step back and looked at all the facts surrounding allegations of sexual misconduct against Judge Kavanaugh and reached the conclusion that while Dr. Christine Blessy Ford, Kavanaugh’s accuser, might have been attacked, it wasn’t Kavanaugh. And she pointed to the lack of corroborating witnesses to back up her point.
Collins also a made it a point to go through Kavanaugh’s legal record. She looked at cases he ruled on matters like the Affordable Care Act. She looked at articles Justice Kavanaugh had written regarding whether a sitting President was protected from civil and criminal prosecution; by the way, Kavanaugh wrote he wasn’t.
She also sent a reality check to both Kavanaugh’s hardcore detractors and supporters who think he might start overturning long-established legal precedents, that absent a need to correct a “grievously wrong decision” say like one to end the policy of “separate but equal” a long-established precedent is not something to be trimmed, narrowed, discarded, or overlooked.
Collins also defended the integrity of her colleague Diane Feinstein who was accused of leaking the confidential letter that started all this and she chastised whoever did the leak. She also came to the defense of Judiciary committee chairman Charles Grassley and his staff when their characters were called into question.
And most importantly, and what sealed the deal for me, was her warning about the super-hyper partisan atmosphere we are in these days that brings nothing but dysfunction to our political system and would shock the consciences of our founding fathers.
Who could not be in love her? In a time and era where facts and logic are usually the first casualties of any political fight with civility and decorum right behind them, an elected official actually stands up and sets the record straight.
Unfortunately, that’s not good enough for the hyper-partisans who were so mad at Collins’ vote that they have reportedly raised nearly $3 million to defeat her in the 2020 election. Give me a break. Luckily for Collins, she is well known for her constituent service and won’t be known as a one-issue candidate and should be in an excellent position to take on any challenger down the road. But that fact that this would even be necessary underlines how ridiculous our political system has gotten, and why for 45 minutes on Friday afternoon, I fell in love with another woman.
*Apologies to Madonna and Rosanna Arquette.
Abdul-Hakim Shabazz is the editor and publisher of IndyPolitics.Org. His opinions are his own, but you are free to adopt them as your own.
