It is my responsibility to be a steward of the Article I branch, to preserve the separation of powers and to curb the kind of executive overreach that Congress has allowed to fester for the better part of the past century. I stood by that principle during the Obama administration, and I stand by it now.
Washington Post Op-Ed 25 Feb 2019 — Senator Thom Tillis
For someone who argued passionately in this opinion piece for the Washington Post not too long ago, one can’t help but wonder where in the world *THAT* Senator Tillis has gone only to be replaced by one that seems absolutely determined to allow the very Article II overreach squad to prove conclusively by word and often quite illegal deed that Congress is at best an inconvenient impediment to holding the Executive Branch accountable to adhering to the Constitution and the rule of law.
You know, that silly thing that they swear an oath to defend against all enemies foreign and domestic?
But if we’re truly honest with each other, should we really be surprised that the Senator Tillis in front of the cameras and on the op-ed page likes to talk tough theoretically defending the interests of the North Carolina citizens who sent him to that cozy talking shoppe on the north side of the Capitol building has a habit of disappearing when it’s time for actual courage of conviction to replace the hot air and press releases?
We’ve had plenty of examples starting with that rather infamous op-ed which really has not aged particularly well!
The opinion piece was in response to then President Trump who had declared a national emergency in order to circumvent Congressional opposition to his desire to build a wall on the southern border.
Fixed fortifications are a monument to the stupidity of man.
General George S Patton
You talked a good fight…and then all of a sudden voted to support President Trump subverting the will of Congress and that epic monument to the stupidity mankind is capable of which is a southern border wall that at best might inconvenience the illegal immigration and drug trafficking but will do little at stopping those same immigrants or drugs at the many other ways of entering this country over thousands of miles or by air.
Seriously? You were willing to abdicate your zealous defence of Congressional prerogatives and roll over for *THAT*?!?
As we write, we are in the midst of a great national debate over the course our country will take in the coming years. The Presidential election is well underway. Americans have already begun to cast their votes. As we mourn the tragic loss of Justice Antonin Scalia, and celebrate his life’s work, the American people are presented with an exceedingly rare opportunity to decide, in a very real and concrete way, the direction the Court will take over the next generation. We believe The People should have this opportunity.
…
Because our decision is based on constitutional principle and born of a necessity to protect the will of the American people, this Committee will not hold hearings on any Supreme Court nominee until after our next President is sworn in on January 20, 2017.
Letter to Senate Majority Leader dated 23 Feb 2016
Then there was that lovely argument you made multiple times in 2016 about confirming a nominee to the Supreme Court in an election year when votes were already being cast in the wake of the death of Justice Antonin Scalia and even signed onto a letter to then Senate Majority Turtle Mitch McConnell that you would be part of a group to withhold your support for any hearings to confirm a new Justice to fill his seat until after the inauguration on 20 Jan 2017.
That allowed the Senate to successfully stonewall President Obama’s nominee Merrick Garland to replace Scalia for *MONTHS* until Trump’s election ensured that Garland’s nomination was dead and Justice Gorsuch was nominated and confirmed instead.
But then fast forward to September 2020 when Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away after complications from cancer literally six weeks from the general election.
Where was Senator Tillis when Mitch McConnell pulled off one of the most astounding feats of hypocrisy we’ve ever seen in the Senate that wasn’t in “Mister Smith Goes To Washington” and rammed through the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett in *39 DAYS* well after voting had started?
Oh yes…voting his “principles” and “conscience” to confirm her to a lifetime appointment that has been party to a dramatic erosion of civil rights and democratic principles in the Roberts court culminating in proclaiming that the President is actually a monarch without fear of any accountability for criminal acts as long as they can be considered official acts of the presidency.
How many women have you (amongst many others, to be fair) to thank for being part of a hypocritical process that essentially relegated them to being second class citizens with no agency over their own bodies due to two Justices that should never have been nominated and confirmed and Justices that would have been certainly would never have voted to overturn Roe v Wade?
I’m sure they’ll take comfort from your principled position on Supreme Court nominees in a Presidential election year as opposed to the rights of voters who duly had elected a President in both cases who would have never nominated either Gorsuch or Barrett.
At least there wasn’t a pesky election looming over Kavanaugh’s nomination and confirmation but that would be another case where a woman actually dares to step forward on the record only to become the latest reason why most women don’t tend talk about being abused because it’s often a no-win scenario for them. It certainly was for Professor Christine Blasey Ford and the other brave women who dared to challenge Kavanaugh’s nomination who were ill-served by the Judiciary Committee’s zeal and the FBI’s lack of it in doing a credible investigation to ram through the nomination anyway.
This leads me to the most recent flip-flop and abdication of any pretense at defending the Senate’s prerogatives when it comes to presidential nominees to the Cabinet, in particular Pete Hegseth to be the Secretary of Defence.
He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.
United States Constitution Article II, Section 2
I would ask whichever Senator Tillis would care to answer where in the “Advice and Consent” clause does it say that the Senate should rubber-stamp all such appointments and nominations regardless of actual qualifications and ability and moral character?
I will confess that I’ve not been particularly impressed with the quality of President Trump’s nominees to fill out his Cabinet for the start of his second term.
If I’m really being honest, the vast majority of them are not of the moral quality, capacity for compassion, and intellectual calibre of either of these two Labradoodles.
Mistletoe (the apricot coloured Labradoodle on the left) is easily one of the most intelligent dogs I’ve ever known in my life. She’s exceptionally clever and picks up on new tricks faster than I’d ever imagined possible but she’s also quick to give you a big hug and all the love you can stand.
Mocha (the chocolate coloured Labradoodle on the right) isn’t in Mistletoe’s class of book smarts but she does have a diabolical cunning that will surprise you and she’s a pretty awesome cuddler who is happy to take up residence in your lap until she gets distracted. Which is often. SQUIRREL!
Either of them are far more intelligent and compassionate than the entire Cabinet currently being assembled and confirmed.
Thankfully Matt Gaetz’s travesty of a nomination went down in flames before the Senate could rubber-stamp him to be the nation’s preeminent law enforcement officer with a record of dodgy if not outright criminal behaviour that would defile the office of Attorney General.
Unfortunately, the other nominees on offer from Mr Trump have been rather uniformly dreadful (Gaetz’s replacement nominee Bondi who doesn’t seem to be a firm believer in electoral reality) if not outright dangerous to democracy and the rule of law (Russell Vought who was an author of “Project 2025” whose anti-democratic principles which should care the living daylights out of Congress as well as the American people and Kash Patel with his “enemies list” that he somehow wants us to think isn’t a Nixon-style enemies list).
Pete Hegseth’s as Secretary of Defence was an early opportunity to send a very clear message that the Senate’s “advice and consent” does not mean the Senate willfully rubber-stamps whatever dangerously unqualified and unsuitable political stooges and sycophants who will execute any illegal orders they get that President Trump can send them.
I do not discount Hegseth’s service in combat in the least. But just because you’ve been a soldier in combat does not mean that you’re necessarily qualified to lead an organisation of three million fellow citizens in uniform and those that support our armed forces with a budget larger that would rank the Pentagon 20th in the world compared to the gross domestic product (GDP) of other countries. I also don’t doubt his passion for modernising our military which sorely needs it and he certainly is much closer to the soldier’s view of military life than most who would lead a branch of the armed forces or the Department of Defence itself.
But before he’d even come to the committee for hearings, there was a persistent pattern of allegations of very concerning behaviour at pretty much every job that were they committed when he was still in uniform could have seen him referred to Article 32 proceedings under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) with specifications to offences under Article 112 (drunkenness and other incapacitation offences), Article 120 (rape and sexual assault generally), and Article 133 (conduct unbecoming).
Given some of the statements he’s made publicly about the President who has nominated him when Trump was President previously, you could probably add Article 88 (contempt toward officials) to a long list of worrying charges and specifications.
It’s one thing if the allegations are a one-off that is vastly outweighed by the rest of the evidence of the person’s character (obviously within reason depending on what is being alleged) or way in the past during a period when a lot of us are young, angry, and stupid.
But when you’re seeing reporting that seems credible that shows a consistent pattern of behaviour at every job along the way, that’s a very concerning trend that needs to be thoroughly investigated by an arms-length and independent enquiry that can establish actionable facts rather than rumours or hearsay. Hey kids, that sounds like a job for the FBI…at least the one that used to do independent and impartial investigations that I remember from a while ago.
A real vetting process also starts with Senators asking the nominees the really hard questions about matters they’d be expected to deal with if confirmed and that the nominees actually provide cogent and reasoned answers so that the Senate and the American people can be reasonably assured that the nominee is a person of good character and are truly looking to serve the needs of the people of this country.
Sadly, the confirmation hearings in the various committees did the exact opposite. This is one of the few instances I’ve ever seen where a nominee interviewing for a high-level job refused to answer even basic questions, genuflected absolute fealty and obedience to the President that nominated them, and on occasion attacked Senators as part of refusing to answer the question they were asked…and still managed to actually get the job.
Performances like that in a job interview here in the real world would have gotten one booted out of the building and the chances of landing the job being precisely zero.
You’re expected to think very carefully about who gets confirmed to those positions and actually do your Constitutional duty to ensure the ones that are confirmed are the best available and capable of doing the job on behalf of the American people. These are serious positions with awesome powers and responsibility and is not something that should be given to amateurs or people of questionable character.
I had genuinely thought that you were going to do just that when you signaled that you had reservations on confirming Hegseth’s nomination with promise to investigate additional information that came your way from Danielle Dietrich.
Your public statement after the confirmation vote indicated you’d made a series of calls and tried to find a person to corroborate her allegations but was unsuccessful in doing so. There is no reason for me to not take you at your word that you did this conscientiously.
The letter that Hegseth sent to you in reply to additional written questions prior to that vote was at best defensive (not particularly surprising) but what really caught my eye was his assertions of that Samantha had stated that “no physical abuse” had occurred. This appears twice and that phrase was underlined which was striking because it may well have been intended to mean exactly what those words say but as someone who is well aware that not all abuse is physical and often the worst abuse isn’t physical at all…that might have been construed as a way of parsing the words much in the way a certain notorious President asked for the definition of a particular word during an impeachment proceeding.
So essentially we were given a “pinkie swear” by Hegseth that he won’t be drunk whilst on duty as Secretary and that all of those allegations were from anonymous and faceless accusers who just have it in for him which ignores the accusers who actually did come forward and were publicly named.
I’m not convinced that’s good enough for the honourable men and women who serve our country in it’s Armed Forces.
Here in North Carolina, we have a very proud tradition of supporting our military. I was born at Fort Bragg (as it was then known but even though the new name is at best “meh”, can we please dispense with spaffing off another massive pile of money to change it back?) and I’m quite proud of being an Army brat. The experiences of life alongside an officer and the lessons learnt along the way are ones I’ll always cherish as long as I live.
But even if I hadn’t been an Army brat, there is no disputing that the military has a large and welcoming home in our state and these men and women deserve to have leaders who will have their backs and ensure they have everything they need for whatever mission comes their way. They need to be sure that when the call comes to the Joint Chiefs or the Secretary of Defence, it’ll be answered by someone who is sober, capable, and morally above reproach.
There were enough questions of this nominee well before that confirmation vote and just accepting him at his word vis-a-vis alcohol abuse during stressful times which will only get more stressful in the job he’s now got is a risk I would not be willing to take with the lives of our military or their families.
The Senator Tillis I expected to show up and actually stand up for the military here in North Carolina and elsewhere…didn’t.
So what really happened here?
Your statement afterward leaves many questions and too few answers.
But I think I’ve got a pretty good guess about the sustained pressure to toe the line that came from the White House and other surrogates of the President that came your way.
Pressure that is likely exacerbated by the Supreme Court’s epically stupid decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 310 (2010) which the outright buying of the presidency by the wealthy who probably made it clear you could expect a primary challenger funded with what the likes of Musk or Bezos would consider a tip at their favourite restaurant to bury your re-election campaign financially.
Your desire for keeping your job should not trump (no pun intended) what would have been in the better interest of our soldiers and sailors with a clear message that Congress and specifically the Senate are not going to be pushed around and relegated to being a rubber stamp of the executive branch.
This was an opportunity to show President Trump and his cronies that the Constitution and the American people come first and what we’ve seen is that your interests and the interests of the wealthy are far more important and that the current Congress is unable or more likely unwilling to say *NO* to a largely lawless and chaotic administration when they desperately need to do so.
I’d welcome you to feel free to prove me wrong.
I’d also welcome you to actually find a spine to go with your so-called convictions and at least stop confirming people to high office who are too dangerous, incompetent, or sycophantic and have no earthly reason to be there!