Advise and what now
By 
Matthew Kacsmaryk is, among other things, walking evidence that pretty the only thing a Republican judicial nominee can do to get rejected by a Republican-majority Senate is the slightest shred of evidence that he might not vote the party line in every case:
A federal judge at the center of high-stakes litigation over nationwide access to abortion medication has an unusual redaction on his financial disclosure reports — one of the few ways judges publicly report potential conflicts of interest.
U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, who suspended government approval of the drug mifepristone in a case that has reached the Supreme Court, lists his most valuable investment as a holding in a single stock worth at least $5 million. The name of the company, however, is blacked out.
Kacsmaryk said in a statement Friday that the redactions were approved by the Administrative Office of the Courts “after reviewing the relevant rules and applicable threats.”
The private company, he said, is not headquartered or operated in Texas and has never been a party in the Northern District of Texas, where he sits. “The Clerk’s Office has the name of the entity, actively screens incoming cases, and I would be automatically recused from any cases involving this entity,” Kacsmaryk said.
What information judges report or omit from annual disclosure forms has become a flash point for court transparency advocates, who say the federal judiciary — and the Supreme Court in particular — lacks accountability to the public. In response to complaints from Congressional Democrats, leaders of the federal court system are reviewing whether Justice Clarence Thomas violated federal ethics laws by not disclosing his lavish travel and real estate deals with Texas business executive and GOP donor Harlan Crow.
Legal ethics experts characterized Kacsmaryk’s redactions as highly unusual and said withholding the name of a stock undermines the purpose of the disclosure system. Stephen Gillers, an ethics expert at New York University Law School, said litigants need to know the identity of the investments a judge holds to decide whether they should seek that judge’s recusal from a case.
“Removing that name is exactly contrary to the reason we want it revealed,” Gillers said. “If there’s one thing you want to know in a financial disclosure form, it’s where the judge has his or her investments.”
Imitation is the sincerest form of etc.
Incidentally, I have long assumed that Brett Kavanaigh’s baseball season ticket debts were paid off by the First National Bank of Mom and Dad, but it would be nice to know for sure!