“It would appear that Kavanaugh has finally come to recognize what has been apparent to some of us all along. Namely, that Trump’s immigration crackdown actively imperils the rights of many U.S. citizens.
Good for Kavanaugh, right? Better late than never? Well, maybe. Because it is also worth noting that Kavanaugh’s December opinion makes no reference to his September opinion. How should we make sense of this mysterious and rather glaring absence or omission?
…
It seems impossible that these two Kavanaugh opinions are unrelated to each other. So what are we left to conclude about their connection? What is Kavanaugh not saying about the link?
One conceivable conclusion is that Kavanaugh now seeks to walk back his unfortunate past statement without explicitly acknowledging his past misjudgment.
Another conceivable conclusion is that Kavanaugh now hopes to apologize for butchering the Fourth Amendment without doing any actual apologizing. Call it a mea culpa minus the mea.
Needless to say, none of this reflects well on Kavanaugh and his possible motivations. Perhaps we’ll get a more forthright account from him in a future case.”