Thirty minutes. We will return at 1:17 Grassley says.
We are getting going again.
Grassley calls the idea we have 6% of Kavanaugh's documents but 99% of Kagan's "fuzzy math."
As a commenter has noted, former Arizona senator Jon Kyl -- Kavanaugh's "sherpa" through the confirmation process -- will apparently be nominated to fill the late Senator John McCain's seat.
His basic points has to do with how the denominators were calculated for Kavanaugh and Kagan, and he continues with the idea that many of Kavanaugh's past emails are irrelevant.
Sen. Klobuchar, D-Minn., now speaks.
Klobuchar: No trial would go forward if one side got a 40,000 document dump the night before.
Klobuchar: Executive privilege has never been used before to block access to Senate of documents.
Klobuchar: This is not a normal confirmation hearing. We have been asked to give advice and consent, when administration has not consented to making sufficient documents available.
Klobuchar: This is an abdication of the role of the Senate and a disservice to the American people.
Kavanaugh's poker face, no matter who is talking or what else is going on, is just as impressive after lunch as it was before.
Klobuchar: We are witnessing seismic shifts in our democracy. Our democracy faces threats we never would have believed could occur not long ago. A foreign adversary interfered in our recent election, and it's asking again.
Klobuchar: We need to figure out your views about whether a president is above the law.
Klobuchar: There were many highly credentialed judges who could have been chosen instead of you, but the president chose the one with the most expansive view of presidential power imaginable -- in which a president can declare a law unconstitutional.
Klobuchar: Divine right of kings ended with Magna Carta in 1215. After American Revolution, checks on presidential power were a major part of the Constitution.
Klobuchar: Will Kelly Gregory, in audience, who has stage 4 breast cancer -- will she have access to medical treatment? That's what's at stake today.
I'm back in the room a few minutes late. Chairman Grassley doesn't kid around. Taking my somewhat secret shortcut to the Dirksen cafeteria, I ran into Kavanaugh's wife, Ashley, and his parents in a hallway. Farther down the same hallway, a loud anti-Kavanaugh protest was going on, not anywhere particularly near the hearing room.
Klobuchar: My dad convinced me to spend a morning in a courtroom watching a routine calendar of criminal cases. It was nothing glamorous, but it was important. I realized that morning that behind every case there is a story and a person, no matter how small. Each decision the judge made affected that person's life.
I wrote an essay about it when 17, Klobuchar says. To be part of an imperfect system, to better it, was a job worth doing.
Klobuchar: Will this judge administer the law with equal justice to all citizens?
Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Nebraska
Sasse: Good news, bad news.
Senator Sasse provided some of the livelier moments during the Gorsuch hearing, including when he gave Gorsuch a hard time for having said "bigly."
Sasse: Bad news -- you've been accused of hating women, children, clean air, clean water, an "existential threat" to nation.
Sasse: "This dribble is patently absurd." The good news is that it is absurd, and the American people don't believe it. The people who know you better give you high praise.
Sasse: If the "deranged comments" aren't about you, why do we speak in this way?
Sasse: The reason these hearings don't work is not because of Donald Trump. They have worked for 31 years. This is a 31-year tradition. There's nothing new the last 18 months. The hysteria is coming from the fact that we have a misunderstanding about the role of the Supreme Court in American life.
Sasse: If they are just politicians, I welcome my colleagues to introduce legislation ending lifetime tenure. But until that's introduced, I don't believe my colleagues really believe they are just politicians.
Sasse: In these hearings, we should go back to "schoolhouse rock civics" for our kids.
Sasse: 1. Legislative branch is center of politics. 2. It's not. Why? Because of authority delegated to the executive administration. 3. This transfer of power means people yearn for a place where politics can actually be done. Hence, the Supreme Court as substitute political battleground. 4. We need to restore the proper duties of constitutional system.
Sasse: Let's not start with Article III (which sets up the judiciary). Let's start with Article I. It's Article One for a reason. This is the institution dedicated to political fights. Protests before the Supreme Court mean out political system is not healthy.
Sasse: We believe in limited government because we believe in freedom, souls, love. Those aren't about power, which is how the government acts.
Sasse is not a lawyer, but he does have a PhD in American history from Yale.
Sasse: How did we get to a place where the legislature has given away its power? A lot of authority kicked to "alphabet soup" bureaucracy.
Sasse: What we mostly do in this body is give power to administrators to give law-like regulations.
Sasse: This is why there are so many fights about the administration and the judiciary because Congress doesn't finish its work.
Sasse: Giving away power to administrative agencies is a good strategy for incumbency. Congress has decided to self-neuter.
Sasse: This means that the people are cut out of power.
Sasse: The Supreme Court becomes our substitute political battleground. Because people can't navigate the bureaucracy, they turn to the Supreme Court. We look for nine justices to be super-legislators. When people say they want empathy from justices, they are wanting justices to take up the political role.
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