Update: There are nine white men asking questions of one white man right now at the hearing. Some committee members are missing, but, yeah.pic.twitter.com/EWUpH16FS5
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Next up: Sen. Whitehouse. He starts by asking about fact-finding by trial courts and whether that is a separation of powers issues.
Whitehouse similarly asks about the question presented and whether narrow language is a separation of powers issue.
Whitehouse asks about "dark money." Gorsuch says it's money not spent by a candidate or party. Whitehouse adds that it's unknown source.
Whitehouse asks about the "campaign" to confirm Gorsuch and what he knows about it. G: "I've heard a lot about it from you, others."
G: "I know there's a lot of money being spent on both sides." W: "I wouldn't leap to that conclusion just yet."
W: "Do you know if your friend Mr. Anschutz is contributing?" G: "I don't." W: "Does it matter?"
Disclosure plays important function, Gorsuch says, but adds that disclosure also "can be used as a weapon to silence people," citing NAACP.
W: "Do you think that we on this panel out to know who is behind that (the campaign for Gorsuch)?" G: That's a matter of policy.
Whitehouse says that Gorsuch could ask the funders of the campaign to name themselves. Gorsuch says that's "politics," and up to Congress.
Whitehouse, on Citizens United: "They got deeply involved in politics." Gorsuch responds that the justices were trying to apply the 1st Am.
Breaking: With Klobuchar's arrival, we have a woman here. With 13 white men.
(One man left as I was typing, so, 12 now.)
Whitehouse asks if G regrets the $ in the confirmation campaign. "Senator, there's a lot about the confirmation process that I regret."
He goes on to say that Byron White's confirmation hearing lastes 90 minutes & he smoked. Whitehouse presses. "Senator, it is what it is."
That was weird.
It is recognized, Gorsuch says, "there may be limits when it chills expression."
Although Gorsuch earlier said it's in Congress' hands, he now says it ends in ct: "It's a dialogue. It's a separation of powers dialogue."
This seems important to me. He earlier was pushing back on Whitehouse by saying it was up to Congress, then says it would end up in court.
Whitehouse asks why group opposed Garland and supported Gorsuch with millions of dollars.
Gorsuch: "You'd have to ask them." Whitehouse: "I can't because I don't know who they are. It's just a front group."
We now have 14 white guys and one white woman at this hearing questioning one white man up for a SCOTUS seat. Don't @ me.
Now up: Sen. Mike Lee.
Lee made a joke about politicians being blood-sucking parasites. So.
I think Lee is upset with Whitehouse's line of questioning.
Gorsuch, with prompting from Lee to pushback against Whitehouse, says, "Nobody speaks for me. I'm a judge. I speak for myself."
"I always think that the family that skis together stays together ..." - a thing just said by Gorsuch
"We're now like David Foster Wallace's fish," Gorsuch says. "We're surrounded by the rule of law, it's in the fabric of our lives."
"A very important question," Gorsuch says of cameras in the courtroom. Says more cameras in the past few weeks than in his entire lifetime.
Gorsuch will not give his view on cameras in the Supreme Court, instead saying, "I would want to hear the arguments."
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