While the three branches of government are supposed to maintain a healthy independence, that doesn’t mean senators and Supreme Court justices can’t maintain friendships. Take the new book club of Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Judge Brett Kavanaugh.
After a particularly aggressive line of questioning from Durbin about his level of involvement in crafting former President George W. Bush’s policies on torture, Kavanaugh gave thanks. More specifically, he literally said thank you for a piece of literature:
A spokeswoman for Durbin told me afterward that the book currently sits on the shelves of five different Supreme Court justices.
“Sen. Durbin has given that book to everyone he’s met who has been nominated to the Supreme Court,” Durbin’s communications director, Emily Hampsten, explained. “He’s given it to Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Samuel Alito, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Justice Elena Kagan, Justice Neil Gorsuch, Harriet Miers, Merrick Garland, and most recently, Judge Kavanaugh.”
Kavanaugh was not specific about how long the book took him to read, but it is 528 pages long. Durbin quipped that he must have had time to finish it because on the night he started it, “obviously the Nationals weren’t playing.”
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