ICYMI: Murkowski on C-SPAN’s “Alaska Weekend”
Supreme Court Vacancy and Responsibly Developing Alaska’s Energy Resources
U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) recently interviewed with C-SPAN’s Washington Journal to discuss what her chairmanship on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee brings to Alaska, how she’s educating her colleagues on the opportunities and challenges in Alaska, and her process of vetting the Supreme Court nominee, Judge Brett Kavanaugh. The segment aired during C-SPAN’s “Alaska Weekend” as part of the C-SPAN Nationwide Roadshow.
(Click here and image above for full interview.)
On Supreme Court Nominee: (Click here for full video on question and answer)
(Excerpt) “…But trying to trying to identify or distill out that there is one issue that for me will guide my determination on this nomination, or any future nomination, for the United States Supreme Court, that’s not how I operate. I have been looking at Judge Kavanaugh and his record holistically just as I did with every other justice that I’ve had an opportunity to weigh in on. Whether it was Justice Kagan or Sotomayor or Gorsuch or Judge Roberts.
“I am perhaps taking more time than some would like me to. Some on the right would say you need to be deciding right now that you’re going to be supporting him, and those on the left would say you need to decide right now that he is just not acceptable. I don’t operate that way. I will take my time. I will be thoughtful.
“I’m not going to be able to ask him a question on ‘what will you do in X case.’ I would not ask that question and he would not answer that question. So what I’m trying to do is discern if Judge Kavanaugh has the qualities that I think we’re all looking for in a judge. The judicial temperament, the character, the intelligence, the balance, the desire to truly follow the law, rather than to try move things in a more predetermined or perhaps more political outcome.
“I’m going to do my own work on this and I’m going to do what Alaskans expect me to do which is to be thorough and thoughtful.”
On Responsible Development of Alaska’s Energy Resources: (Click here for full video on question and answer)
(Excerpt) “…The changes in the technology that have come about in the past four decades plus - so one well can dive down and spoke out in an area up to eight miles in radius now - that’s what our technology is delivering to us, so you don’t see it on the surface.
“We want to be able to access a resource that is below the surface, do so in a way that is efficient, is clean, is environmentally sound, and allows for the continued subsistence activity of the Native people who live in the region.
“There is a balance that goes on in Alaska that I am proud to talk about – because we have made sure that the balance is there for the people first who live there, who need not only the jobs, the resources, but the economy that comes with it.”
