{"id":15023,"date":"2017-03-26T16:48:25","date_gmt":"2017-03-26T20:48:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/?p=15023"},"modified":"2022-08-01T07:42:57","modified_gmt":"2022-08-01T11:42:57","slug":"transcript-senate-hearings-for-justice-collins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/2017\/03\/transcript-senate-hearings-for-justice-collins\/","title":{"rendered":"Transcript: Senate Hearings for Justice Collins"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sen. Grassley<\/em>: Judge Collins, welcome to this Committee hearing.\u00a0 The Committee respects your experience and we wish to assure you that you will receive a fair hearing in this chamber — but we do have some concerns.<\/p>\n

Me<\/em>:\u00a0 Of course you do, and thank you Senator Grassley.\u00a0 But before we begin, I was just wondering… could we skip all this and go straight to Senator Franken’s questions?<\/p>\n

\"Judge<\/a>Sen. Grassley<\/em>:\u00a0 That’s not the way it works here in the Senate Judiciary Committee, Judge Collins, but nice try.\u00a0 Your statement suggests that you are an activist<\/em> judge, wouldn’t you agree?\u00a0 But hold on, before I give you a chance to answer my question, I\u00a0need to recite a seven-minute speech to impress my constituents from Iowa and my contributors\u00a0 from AARP.\u00a0 My staff worked on it all night.<\/p>\n

Me<\/em>:\u00a0 Of course, Senator.\u00a0 I understand.\u00a0 I will try to be respectable.<\/p>\n

Sen. Grassley<\/em>:\u00a0 Thank you, Judge Collins.\u00a0 Now…<\/p>\n

[Sen. Grassley rambles for eleven minutes.\u00a0 Eyelids flutter.\u00a0 Sen. Franken taps his tablet to see if his Netflix subscription has expired<\/em>.]<\/p>\n

Sen. Grassley<\/em>:\u00a0 …and now that I have done my best to make Judge Collins feel small and unworthy and uncooperative, I yield to the Ranking Member.<\/p>\n

Sen. Feinstein:<\/em>\u00a0 Thank you, Mr. Chairman.\u00a0 Judge Collins, allow me to welcome you to this hearing and let me assure you that we will treat your nomination impartially.<\/p>\n

Me<\/em>:\u00a0 Uh-oh.\u00a0 I mean, thank you.<\/p>\n

Sen. Feinstein:<\/em> Judge Collins, are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party of the United States?<\/p>\n

Me<\/em>:\u00a0 No… um, well, I once went to a party at my brother-in-law’s place, and it was sort of like a commune, but, uh, that was almost forty —<\/p>\n

Sen. Feinstein:<\/em>\u00a0 Judge Collins, thank you.\u00a0 Let the record show that Judge Collins disavows Communism and I direct that the remaining twenty-three pages of my remarks be entered into the Committee record.<\/p>\n

Sen. Grassley<\/em>:\u00a0 So ordered.\u00a0 The Chair recognizes… oh, wait a minute, let me put on my bifocals… okay good.\u00a0 The Chair now<\/em> recognizes the Senator from Utah.<\/p>\n

Sen. Hatch<\/em>:\u00a0 Say my name please, Mr. Chairman.<\/p>\n

Sen. Grassley<\/em>:\u00a0 The Senator from Utah has five minutes.<\/p>\n

Sen. Hatch<\/em>:\u00a0 My time doesn’t start until you say my name.\u00a0 Say it.\u00a0 Go on.<\/p>\n

Sen. Grassley<\/em>:\u00a0 Oh, come on.\u00a0 I know you’re the Senator from Utah.\u00a0 We just had lunch together the other day, or last month maybe.\u00a0 You made some sort of joke about Mormons.<\/p>\n

Sen. Hatch<\/em>:\u00a0 Well, this is an outrage.\u00a0 I ask the Parlementarian to rule the Chair’s remark about Mormons out of order, and I again ask that the Chair recognize me by my honorific and name, if he is in fact able to do so.<\/p>\n

\"Hatch<\/a>Sen. Grassley<\/em>:\u00a0 I will remind my Colleague and Friend, the Senator from Utah, that both of us are 83 years old.\u00a0 Is there some kind of bee in the Senator’s bonnet today?<\/p>\n

Sen. Hatch<\/em>:\u00a0 Say my name.\u00a0 Look, I’ll even give you a clue.\u00a0 It rhymes with Hatch<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Sen. Grassley<\/em>:\u00a0 Senator Match from Utah is recognized for five minutes.<\/p>\n

Sen. Hatch<\/em>:\u00a0 Thank you, Chairman Assley.\u00a0 Now, Judge Collins.\u00a0 I have looked over your judicial record and I have found it to be quite sparse.\u00a0 Quite<\/em> sparse, in fact, if I may say so for dramatic effect.\u00a0 So sparse that my staff could not discover one case you ever decided, let alone a case that you ever argued.\u00a0 So, Judge Collins, please satisfy the jaded curiosity of this Committee — have you ever practiced in any jurisdiction in the United States?<\/p>\n

Me:\u00a0<\/em> Well… piano, but reluctantly.\u00a0 I stopped practicing soon after I learned F\u00fcr Elise<\/em>.\u00a0 That would have been in Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n

Sen. Hatch<\/em>:\u00a0 So, that being the case, would you not admit that you would be the least qualified person to sit on the Supreme Court since, say, Mister Softee.\u00a0 Isn’t that right?<\/p>\n

Me:\u00a0<\/em> I didn’t realize that Mister Softee — excuse me, I mean Justice Softee<\/em> — had been a member of the Court until you mentioned it just now, Senator.\u00a0 I will consult my notes after the hearing and I promise to give the Committee a definite answer.\u00a0 Or, I will come back to the Committee and whistle the Mister Softee tune for you.<\/p>\n

Sen. Grassley<\/em>:\u00a0 Your time is up, Senator from Utah.<\/p>\n

Sen. Hatch<\/em>:\u00a0 Chairman Grassley, it hasn’t even been two minutes.<\/p>\n

Sen. Grassley<\/em>:\u00a0 Seemed long enough to me, Senator.\u00a0 Maybe my stopwatch would run a little more slowly if you had voted for my ethanol subsidy.\u00a0 The Chairman recognizes Senator Franken from Minnesota for five minutes.<\/p>\n

Me: <\/em>Finally!<\/p>\n

Sen. Grassley<\/em>:\u00a0 Excuse me, Judge Collins?<\/p>\n

Me:\u00a0 <\/em>I said, fine with me, Chairman.<\/p>\n

Sen. Grassley<\/em>:\u00a0 Good.\u00a0 Senator Franken.\u00a0 I caution you, this is a confirmation hearing for a Supreme Court Justice.\u00a0 This is serious business, so no joking around.\u00a0 Go ahead, Senator.<\/p>\n

Sen. Franken<\/em>:\u00a0 Okay, Old Man.\u00a0 [Franken pauses for effect, then nods toward Grassley<\/em>.]\u00a0 Heh heh, just kidding, Chuck.\u00a0 I was going<\/em> to say, “Thank you, Mr. Chairman.”\u00a0 But then I\u00a0thought, wouldn’t it be funnier to refer to the Chairman as “Old Man.”\u00a0 Especially since “Old Man” would be the only true thing anyone has said in this room all day.\u00a0 It was a joke, but it was still true.\u00a0 Get it?\u00a0 No?\u00a0 OK, I’ll have to work on that one.\u00a0 Anyway, Judge Collins, welcome to these proceedings.<\/p>\n

Me<\/em>:\u00a0 Hello, Senator Franken.\u00a0 Always enjoyed you.\u00a0 Is it still the Al Franken Decade?<\/p>\n

Sen. Franken<\/em>:\u00a0 Heh, heh.\u00a0 Well, it’s more like the Donald Trump Debacle, but I’m the one who’s not supposed to make the jokes around here, Judge Collins.\u00a0 Remember that.<\/p>\n

Me<\/em>:\u00a0 Yes, Senator.<\/p>\n

Sen. Franken<\/em>:\u00a0 So, my colleague Senator Match [Franken grins<\/em>] from Utah has raised serious concerns about your background and your lack of experience.\u00a0 I would like you to please tell the Committee, how did<\/em> you become a judge?<\/p>\n

Me<\/em>:\u00a0 Well, I have written a blog for six years now.\u00a0 So I have made quite a few judgments — not only about politicians, but marketers, financial advisers,\u00a0small-town newspapers, internet commenters, artists, the list goes on and on.\u00a0 And I judge myself too.<\/p>\n

Sen. Franken<\/em>:\u00a0 You mean you criticize yourself?\u00a0 Is that possible?\u00a0 No one here does that.\u00a0 [Franken looks left and right with mock incredulity.<\/em>]<\/p>\n

Me<\/em>:\u00a0 I would say that I am faux-critical of myself when I am not faux-promoting myself.\u00a0 There are times — just now in fact — that I seem to do both at the same time.<\/p>\n

Sen. Franken<\/em>:\u00a0 Now, you said in your written testimony, you are a liberal and an atheist.\u00a0 You do realize that no professed atheist has ever been appointed to the Supreme Court.\u00a0 What makes you think an atheist, such as yourself, should have a seat on the Bench?\u00a0 Wouldn’t you be afraid that your chair would catch fire, or that demons would fly out of your robe and up Justice Alito’s nose?<\/p>\n

Me<\/em>:\u00a0 What I would worry about, if I had a seat on the Bench, would be Justice Ginsburg putting a whoopee cushion on it.<\/p>\n

Sen. Franken<\/em>:\u00a0 Judge Collins, you are a remarkable man.\u00a0 I almost said that you are as remarkable as I am, but that would not be true, because I had my own decade.\u00a0 So, maybe you’re not all that remarkable.\u00a0 Mr. Chairman, please strike my remarks on remarkable. Instead, I would like to use the balance of my time to share something that I just wrote as Judge Collins was talking.\u00a0 It’s a little limerick.\u00a0 Here goes:<\/p>\n

There was a rich man from New York, who refused to eat any pork.\u00a0 He wasn’t a Jew,\u00a0 Muslim or Hindu, he just didn’t have the right fork.<\/em><\/p>\n

Heh heh, how was that?<\/p>\n

Me<\/em>:\u00a0 Was that a question for me?\u00a0 Yes, that was very clever, Senator.\u00a0 I assume that this limerick refers to President Trump?<\/p>\n

Sen. Grassley<\/em>:\u00a0 The Chair thinks this so-called line of questioning has gone far enough.<\/p>\n

Sen. Franken<\/em>:\u00a0 I have no further jokes, Mr. Chairman.\u00a0 I mean, Old Man.\u00a0 [Franken grins.<\/em>]<\/p>\n

Sen. Grassley <\/em>[slams gavel<\/em>]:\u00a0 This committee is in recess until after lunch… how’s that? We already had lunch?\u00a0 What was for lunch?\u00a0 Hope it wasn’t corn.\u00a0 I would hate to forget eating corn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sen. Grassley: Judge Collins, welcome to this Committee hearing.\u00a0 The Committee respects your experience and we wish to assure you that you will receive a fair hearing in this chamber — but we do have some concerns. Me:\u00a0 Of course … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humor","category-commentary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15023"}],"version-history":[{"count":46,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15023\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15108,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15023\/revisions\/15108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}