RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/cory-booker-and-democratic-norms-1536276103

When he was mayor of Newark, Booker was considered to be the light at the end of the Lincoln Tunnel….now he’s just another political hack….rsk

Democrats have been acting out at Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing, but Cory Booker is distinguishing himself in a crowded field. The New Jersey Senator released confidential documents in what he admitted was a violation of Senate rules, and his distortions need correcting.

Questioning Judge Kavanaugh on Wednesday evening, Mr. Booker referred to an email the judge sent while in George W. Bush’s White House counsel’s office. Republican Mike Lee interjected that Judge Kavanaugh didn’t have a copy of the email, which was marked confidential. The papers are shielded from the public under the Presidential Records Act, but Mr. Bush has allowed Senators and staff to read them.

Mr. Booker complained that an email with the subject line “racial profiling” shouldn’t have been withheld. “This wasn’t personal information. There’s no national security issue whatsoever,” he intoned. “The fact that we’re not allowing these emails out, as we have asked, as I have asked,” is evidence that “the system is rigged.” On Thursday Mr. Booker released the documents to TV fanfare and dared Republicans to punish him for it.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-anonymous-resistance-1536276239

One consequence of having such a polarizing and personally flawed man as President is the degree to which his opponents justify their own destructive excess in response. An example is Cory Booker consciously violating Senate rules Thursday in an attempt to deny Brett Kavanaugh a Supreme Court seat. (See nearby.) Another is the decision by a “senior official” to publish an op-ed in the New York Times describing the internal government “resistance” to Donald Trump.

Let’s stipulate that publishing an article with an anonymous byline is sometimes worth doing, and we have done it ourselves. In 1991 we shielded the name of a woman who was raped amid the debate over publishing the names of victims. We have published op-eds protecting the identities of writers who could face arrest or worse at the hands of dictators or terrorists, while informing readers that the author was using a pseudonym.

We don’t recall offering anonymity to someone in government or American politics, though perhaps we have and we can’t say we would never do so. It would depend on the circumstances. The op-ed in this case doesn’t meet those standards, not least because it isn’t news. The fact that senior Administration officials have been trying to block Mr. Trump’s uninformed policy impulses, and mute his self-destructive anger and narcissism, has been reported hundreds of times.

Using funerals for political purposes has a long, but not distinguished, tradition. In 44 B.C. eulogist Mark Antony claimed to Roman mourners that he came to bury Caesar. But his speech created a frenzy and ended up ensuring a death warrant for the once “honorable” Brutus.

In contrast, aside from the commemoration of the deceased, Americans mostly have seen funerals as solemn reminders of how frail and transitory life is for all of us, and how our shared fates should unite even the bitterest of enemies.

Sixteen years ago, on the eve of the 2002 midterm election, and at a time when the United States was beginning to divide over the Afghanistan intervention and a looming Iraq war, Sen. Paul Wellstone (D-Minn.) tragically died in a plane crash.

Wellstone’s Minnesota funeral was meant to be a commemoration of a life of public servant well lived. But the funeral service was soon hijacked by partisan speakers and ended up a loud and often grating political pep rally.

The message to mourners of all beliefs and persuasions was to translate their grief into votes for progressive candidates like Wellstone. Popular discontent over news of the politicalized funeral may well have explained why, two weeks later, the in-power Republicans actually picked up seats in George W. Bush’s first midterm election.

At the recent eight-hour, televised funeral of iconic singer Aretha Franklin, many of the speakers such as Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson turned the event into a political wake—calling for everything from increased voter registration to tighter standards on drinking water.

Activist and professor Michael Eric Dyson embarrassed himself with adolescent hits against President Donald Trump: “You lugubrious leach, you dopey doppelganger of deceit and deviance, you lethal liar, you dimwitted dictator, you foolish fascist.”

On the next day, the televised state funeral for Sen. John McCain likewise soon became just as political.