Brett Kavanaugh's Confirmation Hearing

[GreyhoundFan]

"128 arrested after anti-Kavanaugh protest on Capitol Hill"

Spoiler

Protests Monday against the confirmation of Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh on Capitol Hill ended with 128 arrests, authorities said.

Winnie Wong, a liberal activist and senior adviser to the Women’s March, said one protest began on the steps of the Supreme Court around 8:30 a.m. before moving to the office of Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who some believe can be persuaded to vote against Kavanaugh.

After some demonstrators shared stories of sexual assault, about two dozen were arrested outside Collins’s office, Wong said, before protesters moved on to the office of Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), a critic of President Trump who is retiring and is seen by some as another possible “no” vote on the nominee.

The protest eventually moved to the rotunda of the Russell Senate Office Building. Women in Yale University sweatshirts — Kavanaugh attended law school there — shouted, “We believe the women.”

“This is a group effort led by seasoned activists and organizers,” Wong said. “We are close to victory.”

[Kavanaugh vows to fight misconduct allegations as Trump and Republicans dig in]

The U.S. Capitol Police said in a statement that 128 people were arrested and charged with unlawfully demonstrating.

Ady Barkan, an activist who has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and was among those arrested, said protests would continue until Kavanaugh withdrew.

“The fact that we are going to win and that Kavanaugh will not be confirmed is proof of how important it is to always fight even when people say there is no chance of winning,” he said.

At a protest in Dupont Circle, dozens of people, including staff members of the National Women’s Law Center, stood in the rain with signs that read “Believe Survivors.”

Diali Avila, senior coalition manager with the National Women’s Law Center, said the protests would “continue uplifting the stories of survivors."

“If we stop the hearings, [Kavanaugh’s] nomination could show in this case all the victims that have experienced some sort of sexual assault or misconduct … that your experiences matter,” she said.

The protests came after two women accused Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct. Earlier this month, Christine Blasey Ford said Kavanaugh groped her while drunk at a party when they were in high school, covering her mouth when she tried to scream. On Sunday, Deborah Ramirez, Kavanaugh’s classmate at Yale, said he exposed himself at a party when they were both first-year students. Kavanaugh has denied the allegations.

 

[fraurosena]

Let's hope this is more than just words and he follows through and withdraws his endorsement.

Yale Law professor who endorsed Kavanaugh says he has second thoughts

Quote

A Yale Law School professor who initially endorsed Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court and testified his support for Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearing now says he has second thoughts about the nominee.

“I still stand by what I have said about Kavanaugh’s uniquely impressive judicial and scholarly record over the last dozen years,” Akhil Reed Amar wrote in Yale Daily News Monday.

But, Amar said, the sexual assault allegations against Kavanaugh have made him question his support.

“But now that serious accusations have arisen about his conduct in his teenage years, I believe that these accusations deserve the best and most professional investigation possible — even if that means a brief additional delay on the ultimate vote on Judge Kavanaugh, and even if that investigatory delay imperils his confirmation,” he added.

Kavanaugh was thought to have an easy road to confirmation shortly after his hearing, but his confirmation has come under fire following the sexual assault allegations of two women being made public this month.

Christine Blasey Ford, now a 51-year-old professor in California, went public with her allegation earlier this month that Kavanaugh assaulted her at a party when the two were in high school in the 1980s.

The New Yorker reported Sunday that Senate Democrats were investigating a claim from Deborah Ramirez that Kavanaugh exposed himself to her during their time as students at Yale. Both women have alleged that Kavanaugh was drunk in each incident.

Michael Avenatti, the lawyer for Stormy Daniels in her suit against President Trump and his former lawyer Michael Cohen, tweeted Sunday that he is representing a third woman with “credible information regarding Judge Kavanaugh.”

[Avenatti's tweet]

“n the long run this additional investigation is the best way forward, not just for the Court and the country and Kavanaugh’s accusers, but also for Kavanaugh himself. If the investigation’s facts and findings support him, then he will join the Court in the sunshine and not under a cloud. If instead the investigation uncovers compelling evidence against him, President Trump should be ready with a pre-announced back-up nominee,” Amar wrote.

Kavanaugh has strongly denied the allegations of sexual misconduct on multiple occasions, most recently during a Fox News interview on Monday. 

Ford and Kavanaugh are both expected to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Kavanaugh isn’t entitled to a Supreme Court seat, just as men aren’t entitled to sex"

Spoiler

Last week, columnist Dennis Prager made the disgusting suggestion that Brett Kavanaugh belongs on the Supreme Court, even if Christine Blasey Ford’s accusation that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her in high school is true. Evangelist Franklin Graham called her charge “not relevant.”

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), a longtime Senate Judiciary Committee member, also implied Ford’s allegation was irrelevant, saying that even if what she says is true, “I think it would be hard for senators to not consider who the judge is today. That’s the issue: Is this judge a really good man? And he is. And by any measure, he is.”

At the Values Voter Summit on Friday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the man who, more than anyone, will determine whether Kavanaugh is confirmed to the high court, said, “In the very near future, Judge Kavanaugh will be on the United States Supreme Court,” adding, of Ford’s anticipated hearing, “We’re going to plow right through it and do our job.”

Then, Friday night at a campaign rally in Springfield, Mo., President Trump called Kavanaugh a “fantastic man” and said “he was born — you talk about central casting — he was born, they were saying it 10 years ago about him, he was born for the U.S. Supreme Court. He was born for it. And it’s going to happen,” adding, “We have to fight for him, not worry about the other side, and, by the way, women are for that more than anybody would understand.”

It’s as if they feel Kavanaugh is owed a lifetime seat on the highest court in our nation, allegations be damned.

We don’t know what, if anything, happened in the early 1980s between Kavanaugh and Ford, who told The Washington Post that Kavanaugh drunkenly held her down, with another teenager present, covered her mouth and tried to take off her clothes. We don’t know what, if anything, happened between him and Deborah Ramirez, who told the New Yorker that at a drunken party during their Yale undergrad days, he thrust his exposed genitals at her face in front of other classmates. I’m uncomfortable with any suggestion that we should automatically believe either Ford or Ramirez. I support them coming forward and calling for thorough investigations.

But what we certainly know is that Kavanaugh doesn’t have a right to a Supreme Court appointment, any more than men have the right to do what they want with women’s bodies. Yet when we talk about Kavanaugh as not only qualified for a seat on the high court but also as though he’s entitled to it, the discussion, unintentionally or not, replicates our debates about sexual assault in general.

Let’s step back: Of course, some sexual assaults are committed by psychopaths, but the fact that sexual assault is such a widespread phenomenon (1 in 3 women in the United States will experience some form of sexual violence in their lifetime) reflects the reality that sexual assault is a product of widespread social and cultural beliefs and assumptions. Once upon a time, under the backward legal concept of “coverture,” women were legally the property of men; during slavery in the United States, rape of black women by white men was appallingly common and accepted; marital rape wasn’t codified on the books as a crime in all 50 states until 1993.

Thankfully, over time, laws and norms have changed. And in some ways, we’ve moved forward as a society — but not nearly as much as we like to think. It’s only recently that mainstream culture started embracing the idea of “affirmative consent,” that a woman doesn’t consent to sex simply by being present, or merely by not uttering the word “no,” or because of what she’s wearing, or by being flirtatious — that she alone gets to say whether she consents to sexual contact, subject to reconsideration at any stage of an interpersonal interaction.

But to some Kavanaugh defenders, consent almost seems irrelevant. Even if Kavanaugh assaulted Ford in the way she says, the attack she describes could be categorized, according to Carrie Severino, chief counsel and policy director for the Judicial Crisis Network, as “boorishness” or “horseplay.” Chalk it up as “stupid, bad or drunken behavior,” tweeted former GOP congressman Joe Walsh. As the saying goes, it’s “boys being boys”: to get not only what they want but also what they think they deserve. Which, according to this logic, isn’t sexual assault at all, but typical, red-blooded behavior by rightfully dominant men. “If somebody can be brought down by accusations like this,” a lawyer close to the White House told Politico, “then you, me, every man certainly should be worried. We can all be accused of something.”

But what Ford alleges isn’t horseplay. It isn’t — at least, for heaven’s sake, shouldn’t be — typical. It’s illegal. It’s immoral. It’s cruel. And if true, what Ford and Ramirez have alleged reflects a mind-set that what men want is all that counts. And on one level, those waving the accusations away as mere obstacles on the way to Kavanaugh’s inevitable coronation reflect the same.

No matter how much it appeared, until last week, that he was cruising toward confirmation, the process isn’t over. This isn’t a criminal trial, it’s a Supreme Court confirmation. Both before and after these allegations surfaced, it was on Kavanaugh to demonstrate to Americans, via our elected representatives, that he’s worthy of lifetime tenure on the highest court in the land. Not the other way around.

On Monday, though, Kavanaugh wrote to the chairman and ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, affirming his intention to come before the committee this week, “to defend my integrity and my name” against what he calls “smears.” Which he should — defending himself in an impartial hearing is something he is entitled to do. But his description of the allegations against him as a “frenzy” to “block this process and a vote on my confirmation,” and his characterization that they “debase our public discourse,” is getting too far ahead of where we are. Hearing Ford’s account isn’t a block on the process; it’s an essential part of the process. And what she and Ramirez have said doesn’t debase public discourse; it’s exactly the discourse we should be having.

To see it otherwise is to ratify male entitlement, the notion that what men want and what they’re entitled to are the same thing. That is how much of our society operates: Men can keep bulldozing through life, misogyny fueling inevitability while evading accountability. But this situation is different. Kavanaugh isn’t owed a lifetime position on the most powerful court just because Trump or McConnell say so, because he’s already a federal appeals court judge, he “went to Yale Law School” or is a swell “carpool dad” and already seemed likely to be confirmed. It’s not yes, yes, yes until someone says no. Just as at any drunken dorm party, it’s no until everyone involved affirmatively says yes.

Last week, Trump complained to Fox News’s Sean Hannity: “I don’t think you can delay it any longer. They’ve delayed it a week already.” Apparently, the guy who once gleefully said he can “grab ‘em by the p----” feels entitled to have his nominee sail through. But the Senate still hasn’t given its consent. No matter how preordained that once seemed, the answer can still be no.

 

[fraurosena]

So true this. 

 

[AuntK]

Well hell, if they are going to actually campaign for a seat on the Supreme Court like he is running for Congress, let's amend the Constitution and make the Justices elected positions! (Not lifetime, though)

[GreyhoundFan]

"‘How’d you find me?’: Mark Judge has been holed up in a beach house in Delaware amid a media firestorm"

Spoiler

Bethany Beach, Del. — Mark Judge has been conspicuously absent for more than a week: Named as the only witness to an alleged sexual assault by Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh, he has not been seen and has said little beyond a statement released by a lawyer saying he recalled no such incident.

A high school friend of Kavanaugh’s, Judge has been absent from his Maryland residence for days as Democratic lawmakers and accuser Christine Blasey Ford have demanded that Republicans summon him before the Senate Judiciary Committee to answer questions under oath.

On Monday, a Washington Post reporter found Judge holed up in the house of a longtime friend in Bethany Beach, nearly three hours away. A car in the driveway contained piles of clothing, a collection of Superman comics and a package addressed to Judge at the Potomac home where he lived three years ago.

“How’d you find me?” he said.

The reporter gestured to the car packed with belongings. Judge declined to comment further.

Barbara “Biz” VanGelder, Judge’s lawyer, said she instructed him to leave the D.C. area last week because of an onslaught of criticism and media questions. At the time, the conservative blogger’s life and writings were beginning to come under scrutiny, leading to charges of misogyny and worse.

“I told him to leave town. He is being hounded. He is a recovering alcoholic and is under unbelievable stress,” she said. “He needed for his own health to get out of this toxic environment and take care of himself.”

VanGelder said Judge waited to leave town until after the hearing date and witnesses were announced.

Judge, 54, has chronicled the debauchery of his 1980s high school years as a student at Georgetown Prep, where he and Kavanaugh were self-proclaimed members of the “100 Kegs or Bust” club.

In his 1997 memoir, “Wasted: Tales of a Gen X Drunk,” he wrote of high school “masturbation class,” said he “lusted after girls” at Catholic schools and referenced a passed-out “Bart O’Kavanaugh,” who drank too much and once threw up in a car.

[‘100 Kegs or Bust’: Kavanaugh friend, Mark Judge, has spent years writing about high school debauchery]

On Sept. 16, The Post published an article in which Ford identified herself publicly for the first time and detailed her claim that, in the early 1980s, Kavanaugh pinned her to a bed and groped her at a high school party as Judge looked on. By her account, no one else was in the room.

Kavanaugh has denied the allegation.

While negotiating her possible appearance before the Judiciary Committee, Ford’s legal team has urged the panel to compel Judge to testify, while Republicans have insisted that the hearing be limited to Ford and Kavanaugh.

Ford’s supporters noted that hearing from witnesses would more closely resemble how the committee handled Anita Hill’s accusations against Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas in 1991.

“The Republicans refuse to even put him on the witness list so we can ask any questions about what he remembers,” Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) said on ABC’s “This Week.” “. . . I think the Republicans have shown their uneasiness with their own defense by refusing to allow Mark Judge to testify.”

In a letter to the committee, Judge said that he did not wish to speak publicly and that he has “no memory of this alleged incident.”

“Brett Kavanaugh and I were friends in high school but I do not recall the party described in Dr. Ford’s letter,” Judge wrote. “More to the point, I never saw Brett act in the manner Dr. Ford describes.”

Republicans held to their position. “No reason to” call him, said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.). “He’s already said what he’s going to say.”

On Sunday, the Judiciary Committee chairman, Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), wrote to Ford’s lawyers that only the committee “determines which witnesses to call, how many witnesses to call, in what order to call them, and who will question them. These are non-negotiable.”

Ford and Kavanaugh are now scheduled to testify Thursday — without Judge.

 

[Cartmann99]

The Faux interview for anyone who hasn't seen it yet:

 

[AmazonGrace]

I don't know what Mark Judge could testify about without perjuring or incriminating himself

I wonder if anyone will come forward they had consensual sex with him. That would make him a liar too. Seems like a stupid claim but I guess he can count on his people to blame her for putting out.

[formergothardite]

I wonder what his wife is really thinking. Did she really think he was a virgin who did nothing wrong in college? 

[AmazonGrace]

She looks a bit skeptical to me.

 

[Howl]

1 hour ago, fraurosena said:

So true this. 

I've been wondering about this since I saw the first ad on TV, with some woman saying what a wonderful guy he is; this was weeks before the shit hit the fan. 

I'n addition to the sexual issues, why isn't anyone talking about the alcohol issue?  Besides the "partying", several people have noted that they saw him incoherently drunk in high school and college -- a quiet guy who had a personality change when he drank heavily, which he seemed to do a fair amount.  Did he quit drinking at some point and has gone on to lead a sober life, drinking temperately or not at all?  I know people who left behind the hard partying, heavy drinking lifestyle after college. 

Is he a high functioning alcoholic?  Is it possible that he drank so much that he had alcoholic blackouts and really does not remember any of this? Inquiring minds want to know.  

 

 

[AmazonGrace]

Brett Kavanaugh is a broken record.

https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2018/09/24/brett-kavanaugh-transcript-interview-fox-news-martha-maccullum/1415548002/

In the transcript he says 17 times that he just wants a fair process

 

[Cartmann99]

38 minutes ago, Howl said:

Is he a high functioning alcoholic?  Is it possible that he drank so much that he had alcoholic blackouts and really does not remember any of this?

I've been pondering this same thought. The thing that bothers me about him not remembering anything though, is his high school yearbook. Why would he have all of those inside jokes on his yearbook page, if he has no memory of the things he does under the influence of alcohol? I guess it's possible that he and friends decided together what they wanted their profile pages to say, and he just went along with what they were going to do, but that  just feels off to me.

Did Kavanaugh's parents refuse to be interviewed? I'm just surprised that somebody like Sean Hannity isn't doing an interview with them.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

29 minutes ago, AmazonGrace said:

In the transcript he says 17 times that he just wants a fair process

What he leaves out is that he wants a fair process for him. It doesn't matter if it's not fair for anyone else.

[AmazonGrace]

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/09/25/white-house-lashes-out-feinstein-838942

GOP hired a female attorney to question Ford but they're not saying who it is.

Cornyn is not even pretending that he's going to give Ford a fair shake:

Quote

"There’s no reason to delay this more, unless something new comes out of the hearing on Thursday," said Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn of Texas. "As you can tell, people are coming out of the woodwork making incredible, uncorroborated allegations and I think you can just expect that kind of nonsense to continue."

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

A good one from Jennifer Rubin: "What more evidence of contempt for women is needed?"

Spoiler

We don’t yet have enough evidence to say definitively whether Brett M. Kavanaugh attacked Christine Blasey Ford when both were in high school. By contrast, we have evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump’s Republican Party has adopted misogyny as an election strategy.

Consider Trump’s rant Tuesday directed at the second woman to step forward to accuse Kavanaugh of sexual assault. He labeled her as part of a “con game.” Regarding Deborah Ramirez, Trump declared, “And now a new charge comes up, and she says it may not be him and there are gaps. And she was totally inebriated, and all messed up, and she doesn’t know. ‘It might have been him, or it might have been him.’ ‘Gee, let’s not make him a Supreme Court judge.’ ” He then went on to bemoan the damage to Kavanaugh’s life.

This echoes the language used to defend former GOP Senate candidate and accused child molester Roy Moore. It brings us back to Trump’s defense of Rob Porter, former White House staff secretary and accused spousal abuser. We’re back to denying and defaming Trump’s own accusers. The men are the victims. The women in league with the media are conniving or loony or both. Forget the evidence; the women are always lying.

While other Republicans don’t use quite the same language, how different from Trump’s attack was Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) declaration on the floor that this is all a “smear job”? How different is Sen. Lindsey O. Graham’s (R-S.C.) assertion that the women’s claims must not be investigated and that all men are potential targets for false accusations? They don’t care what Ford says — she can talk, but they won’t listen. 

It’s more than lack of decency or regard for victims here. (By the way, imagine treating the victim of a robbery or attempted murder in such fashion. No, this is the special brand of anti-victim venom stored up for women who complain.) This is a deliberate tactic to engage the GOP’s base, who Republican officials suppose is equally outraged that a woman should ruin Kavanaugh’s life by bringing up something as, well, trivial in their book as sexual assault.

Republicans shed the pretense of fairness and brag about their refusal to take female victims seriously. They cannot contain themselves and do not want to, for this is a party saturated in testosterone and white male grievance. It thrives on wailing over mainstream media reporting facts it doesn’t like. The Republican Party reincarnates the Red Scare, but rather than communists, everyone is in league with one another to bring down white men. Historic victims of injustice, they are. That’s the sales pitch — that’s it! — to its Fox News-hypnotized base. White men are victims; if we don’t destroy critics, we’re done for.

The Supreme Court fight is no longer so much about whether Kavanaugh gets confirmed but whether anyone in the GOP Senate — or rather, two of them — calls a halt to the deliberate strategy of insults, attacks and meanness. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) can differentiate herself from Trump and McConnell — and has — by calling for an FBI inquiry. That is taking the allegations seriously and treating the victims fairly. She may choose to vote to confirm after all is said and done, but if she and others vote without an inquiry, she is no better than Trump and McConnell.

A vote with no investigation, without a key witness (Mark Judge, who is just hanging out in Delaware), without calling Ramirez to testify, vindicates the Trump/McConnell strategy in which women are used as fodder in the culture wars. It’s okay, they bet, to abuse women politically and verbally for the sake of getting the base riled up. That is what is at stake. It’s time to decide who is an enabler and who’s an advocate for fairness and basic human decency.

 

[Cartmann99]

FYI:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[AmazonGrace]

This hearing is a sham 

 

[candygirl200413]

They're going to confirm him.

[AmazonGrace]

Ramirez lawyer says they're not at all interested in talking to her

[AmazonGrace]

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[fraurosena]

Not that i will change anyone's predisposed perspective. 

Kavanaugh accuser Christine Blasey Ford offers Senate four people who corroborate her assault claims

Quote

The attorneys for Christine Blasey Ford have sworn and signed declarations from four people who corroborate her claims of sexual assault by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

In documents sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee and obtained by USA TODAY, Ford’s attorneys present declarations from Ford’s husband, Russell, and three friends who support the California college professor’s accusation that Kavanaugh pinned her to a bed, groped her and attempted to pull off her clothes while both were high school students in 1982.

The declarations will be used by Ford’s attorneys during a committee hearing on Thursday that could determine the fate of Kavanaugh’s embattled nomination. He's also facing a second accusation of sexual assault from Deborah Ramirez, who claims Kavanaugh exposed himself and pushed his genitals into her face at a drunken party during the 1983-84 academic year at Yale University.

Kavanaugh has flatly denied all accusations, including during a national television interview on Fox News on Monday night.

In her declaration, Adela Gildo-Mazzon said Ford told her about the alleged assault during a June 2013 meal at a restaurant in Mountain View, California, and contacted Ford’s attorneys on Sept. 16 to tell them Ford had confided in her five years ago.

“During our meal, Christine was visibly upset, so I asked her what was going on,” Gildo-Mazzon says in her declaration. “Christine told me she had been having a hard day because she was thinking about an assault she experienced when she was much younger. She said she had been almost raped by someone who was now a federal judge. She told me she had been trapped in a room with two drunken guys, and that she had escaped, ran away and hid.”

According to her declaration, Gildo-Mazzon has known Ford for more than 10 years and considers her to be “a good friend.”

In another declaration, Keith Koegler said Ford revealed the alleged assault to him in 2016, when the two parents were watching their children play in a public place and discussing the “light” sentencing of Stanford University student Brock Turner.

“Christine expressed anger at Mr. Turner’s lenient sentence, stating that she was particularly bothered by it because she was assaulted in high school by a man who was now a federal judge in Washington, D.C.,” Koegler said.

“Christine did not mention the assault to me again until June 29, 2018, two days after Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his resignation from the Supreme Court of the United States,” he said.

On that day, Koegler said Ford revealed to him in an email that the person who had assaulted her in high school was President Donald Trump’s “favorite for SCOTUS.”

In his response email, Koegler wrote, “I remember you telling me about him, but I don’t remember his name. Do you mind telling me so I can read about him?”

Ford’s emailed response: “Brett Kavanaugh.”

In his declaration, Koegler said he met the Fords while coaching their son’s baseball team more than five years ago.

In another declaration, Rebecca White, a neighbor and friend of more than six years, said Ford revealed the alleged assault against her in 2017.

“I was walking my dog and Christine was outside of her house,” White said. “I stopped to speak with her, and she told me she had read a recent social media post I had written about my own experience with sexual assault.

“She then told me that when she was a young teen, she had been sexually assaulted by an older teen,” White continued. “I remember her saying that her assailant was now a federal judge.”

In his declaration, Ford’s husband said he learned of his wife’s experience with sexual assault “around the time we got married” but that she didn’t share details until a couple’s therapy session in 2012.

“I remember her saying that her attacker’s name was Brett Kavanaugh, that he was a successful lawyer who had grown up in Christine’s home town, and that he was well-known in the Washington D.C. community,” Russell Ford said.

He said his wife was “afraid” Trump would nominate Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court and was “very conflicted” about whether she should come forward with her story.

“However, in the end she believed her civic duty required her to speak out,” Russell Ford said. “In our 16 years of marriage I have always known Christine to be truthful person of great integrity. I am proud of her for her bravery and courage.”