Washington

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer continued a scorched earth approach to the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, forcing the Senate to shut down for the day by objecting to a floor motion by his Republican counterpart, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

"Republicans are trying to jam through, with as little scrutiny as possible, a lifetime appointment to the nation's highest court, with the power to affect the lives of Americans for a generation," said Schumer on the Senate floor Wednesday.

Schumer objected to McConnell's proposal to waive a rule that prevents Senate committees from hearings that go beyond two hours while the Senate is in session. After Schumer spoke up against what otherwise would have been a routine motion, the Senate's top Republican then had little choice but to adjourn.

Schumer cited what has become one of the central mantras of the Democratic assault on the nomination of the 53-year-old D.C. federal appeals court judge picked by President Trump off a list prepared by the conservative Heritage Foundation and Federalist Society: Senators have not received all documents on Kavanaugh's service in the George W. Bush White House, and 42,000 pages that were delivered arrived late Monday, leaving Senators little time for review.

"That's why it's so important for the Senate and the public to review the nominee's record because health care, a woman's freedom to make medical decisions, civil rights, voting rights, marriage equality - all hang in the balance."

Schumer tossed his grenade as the Kavanaugh hearings grinded their way through Day 2, with members of the Senate Judiciary Committee getting their first chance to question the nominee.

Although virtually all Republicans and even some Democrats are likely to vote in favor of confirmation, a few slips by Kavanaugh could be sufficient to sway some Senators.

Lurking in the background is residual bitterness among Schumer and other Senate Democrats over McConnell's 2016 shutdown of President Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland, the chief of the appeals court on which Kavanaugh now sits. Obama nominated Garland, a liberal, to replace conservative stalwart Justice Antonin Scalia, who died abruptly in February 2016.

McConnell's refusal to give Garland a hearing and a vote bore fruit for Republicans after President Trump won the 2016 election. The high court seat that otherwise would have gone to Garland instead went to Neil Gorsuch, a conservative.

With Kavanaugh now in line to replace retired Justice Anthony Kennedy, a longtime swing vote, the court could well take a sharp turn to the right on contentious issues ranging from abortion to health care to workers' rights.

As the leader of minority Senate Democrats whose options for derailing the nomination are limited, Schumer has become the strategy formulator-in-chief. But he finds himself walking a tightrope between traditional Senate deference and comity, and a demand from Democratic constituencies that he do everything in his power to halt Kavanaugh's momentum.

The Brooklyn native seemed to answer the question of which side he is on, saying: "We will not consent to business as usual on the Senate floor today."

Meanwhile at the hearing Wednesday, Kavanaugh sought to portray himself as a thoughtful non-partisan jurist who judges cases before him on the basis of the Constitution, the law and relevant Supreme Court precedents. But he went out of his way to insist he's not some kind of Dickensian automaton who operates in a world of words divorced from reality.

"I do not live in a bubble," Kavanaugh said. "I live in the real world. I understand how people are affected by these issues."

For the second day in a row, protesters interrupted the proceedings with shouts of "this is a sham," and "Stop Kavanaugh." One of the protesters hustled out of the hearing room by police wore the red-and-white uniform from the "Handmaid's Tale," a televised dystopian vision of a society in which women are forced into sexual servitude.

Democratic senators did their best to land blows on Kavanaugh, citing opinions he authored as an appeals court judge and some of the records of Kavanaugh's White House years that were turned over to the committee. Several senators keyed in on a law review article in which Kavanaugh argued that president's should not become embroiled in criminal proceedings while in office, and that impeachment is the only route for addressing allegations of criminal conduct by a president.

Kavanaugh defended himself, characterizing the article as more of an academic exercise born of his experience on the staff of Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr, which investigated President Clinton in the 1990s, and his service in the Bush White House after 9/11.

"I was talking about something for Congress to look at, if they wanted to," he said in response to questions from Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., sharply questioned Kavanaugh about whether as associate White House counsel under Bush, he was privy to memos on Democratic judicial-nominee strategy that were stolen from his office by a Republican staff aide. Leahy also pursued how much Kavanaugh knew about controversial Bush administration policies including CIA use of torture on suspected terrorists detained by the military in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

Leahy touched on what might be the Kavanaugh hearings' ultimate Catch 22: Senators are in possession of 142,000 pages of documents marked "committee confidential," meaning senators cannot refer to them in questioning nor quote them publicly. He suggested some of the documents might contradict Kavanaugh's denials of involvement in policy formulation on torture or receipt of stolen documents.

At the White House, President Trump told reporters he had watched some of the hearings and thought Kavanaugh was "totally brilliant."

Democrats, he said, are "grasping at straws."

Democrats "should embrace him because you're never going to find better in terms of talent or intellect than what you have in Brett Kavanaugh," he said.

Although the hearings often got wrapped up in legal technicalities, there were a few light moments. Asked by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., what he was most proud of, Kavanaugh replied being a "good dad, a good judge."

"And a good husband," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the committee's senior Democrat. The hearing room erupted with laughter.

dan@hearstdc.com