Brett Kavanaugh's Confirmation Hearing

[fraurosena]

WHAT !?

This is outrageous.

 

[formergothardite]

They are going to confirm him no matter what. Short of someone producing photographic evidence by Friday they will rush to get this confirmation done. Photographic evidence will just slow them for a bit, they aren't letting this slip through their fingers. They have been playing the long game and getting the SC is one of the ultimate goals. 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"What Brett Kavanaugh should have said"

Spoiler

As observers of political conflict, we’re all used to being fed absurd spin by the plateful. But even by our ordinary degraded standards, the interview Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh gave to Fox News yesterday was remarkable in its disingenuousness.

This is too bad, because Kavanaugh had an opportunity to not only be at least somewhat honest and far more persuasive than he actually was but also to make a thoughtful contribution to the question we’re now confronting, about how to judge a person’s youthful character (or lack thereof) against the person they have become.

Let’s begin by acknowledging that even if the allegations made against him by Christine Blasey Ford and Deborah Ramirez aren’t true, it’s pretty clear that as a young man Brett Kavanaugh was not a saint. He went to a private high school full of entitled rich boys whose leisure activities revolved around heavy drinking and  sexual exploits, real or attempted. No one familiar with that suburban D.C. private school scene in the 1980s is remotely surprised by the descriptions in the book written by Kavanaugh’s friend Mark Judge (“Wasted: Tales of a GenX Drunk”) or the others from people who grew in that milieu who have shared their own stories on social media.

The New York Times has examined Kavanaugh’s yearbook. His entry seems to contain lots of coded references to drinking and partying, along with one reference to him being a “Renate Alumnius.” This is a reference to a girl from a nearby school, whose name appears 14 times in the Georgetown Prep yearbook as other boys claimed to be “alumni” of hers.

We all have ideas about what this means. It’s the kind of cruelty that it sometimes seems only teenagers are capable of. This can fairly be read as all these boys insinuating that they had sexual encounters with this girl, to boast of their own manliness and shame her as a slut. It’s not friendly, and it’s not a harmless joke. It’s horrific.

If Brett Kavanaugh were the man he claims to be, the man who has “always treated women with dignity and respect,” he’d say, “I look at that now and I feel nothing but shame. It was stupid and cruel, and all young men need to know that heaping scorn on a woman for being sexually active, or claiming she is whether it’s true or not, is absolutely unacceptable. It’s not what a real man does, it’s what a boy with a twisted view of manhood does.”

But that’s not what Kavanaugh said. He had a spokesperson release a statement saying “He admired her very much then, and he admires her to this day,” and that the reference is merely to the fact that he and the woman once attended a high school event together. That is an obvious lie. You and your buddies don’t get together to put jokey references to being an “alumnus” of the same girl in your yearbook because you admire her.

And how does Kavanaugh describe his time in high school? Here’s what he said to Fox:

I went to an all-boys Catholic high school, a Jesuit high school, where I was focused on academics and athletics, going to church every Sunday at Little Flower, working on my service projects, and friendship, friendship with my fellow classmates and friendship with girls from the local all girls Catholic schools.

And yes, there were parties. And the drinking age was 18, and yes, the seniors were legal and had beer there. And yes, people might have had too many beers on occasion and people generally in high school – I think all of us have probably done things we look back on in high school and regret or cringe a bit, but that’s not what we’re talking about.

That Kavanaugh managed to offer this description of his virtuous high school years with a straight face is truly remarkable. There may have been a beer or two that “people” drank, of course in strict adherence with the law, but Brett was probably in church or working on his “service projects” at the time! Later in the interview, he waved away another question about binge drinking in high school by saying, “I was focused on trying to be number one in my class and being captain of the varsity basketball team and doing my service projects, going to church.” What a nice boy.

Now on to college. When asked about Deborah Ramirez’s accusation, that he shoved his penis in her face during a drunken dorm room party, Kavanaugh said this:

If such a thing had happened, it would’ve been the talk of campus. The women I knew in college and the men I knew in college said that it’s inconceivable that I could’ve done such a thing.

But the New Yorker reporters spoke to multiple people who said they did hear about such an incident at the time. They didn’t directly point to him, but the idea that an upstanding fellow like Kavanaugh would never do such a thing is questionable to say the least. Kavanaugh’s freshman roommate says “although Brett was normally reserved, he was a notably heavy drinker, even by the standards of the time, and that he became belligerent and aggressive when he was very drunk.” Kavanaugh joined the DKE fraternity, which was notorious for heavy drinking and misogyny. By his own account — not someone else’s, Kavanaugh’s own — his time at Yale Law School also involved serious binge drinking.

During this process, many conservatives have asked plaintively whether people should really be held responsible for the sins they committed when they were 17. The answer is that what you did then matters, but so does what you think about it now.

And Kavanaugh doesn’t seem to have done any thinking at all. So let’s imagine he were to say something like this:

I’m not proud of everything I did when I was young; I doubt any of us are. But growing up means learning from our mistakes, in part so we can help our children grow into responsible adults. When I look back now I realize that my friends and I reveled in our own privilege — we were male, white, rich, and destined to have limitless opportunities laid before us. We drank too much. We treated the young women we knew like objects, or potential conquests, or the butt of jokes. We certainly didn’t empathize with them. If we had, we would have understood how our own behavior made them feel; how it could make them feel vulnerable, degraded, even victimized. We would have understood that those feelings can stay with a person for life, and be a source of pain and anguish, even if you were never the victim of a crime.

We can look back now and say that we can’t expect that kind of empathy from a teenager. But it’s exactly what we should expect. Even if we weren’t capable of it then, today’s teenagers can be, if we use our own failings to teach them to be better than we were. That’s what I’ve tried to do as an adult.

That wouldn’t turn the Democrats worried about the near-certainty that he’ll vote to overturn Roe v. Wade (among other things) into advocates for his nomination. But rather than making the ridiculous claim that as a young man he was brimming with all the wisdom, forbearance and deep respect for women we expect of a mature adult in 2018 — which no one can possibly believe — at least it would demonstrate that over the course of his life he has indeed learned something and become a better person than he was. But apparently that’s too much to ask.

 

[AmazonGrace]

Maybe NBC ought to have a shadow hearing

 

[formergothardite]

If she pressed charges against him, would that have the chance to stop this? 

[AmazonGrace]

Why was Mr Goodyshoes grounded?

[Howl]

1 hour ago, formergothardite said:

They are going to confirm him no matter what. Short of someone producing photographic evidence by Friday they will rush to get this confirmation done. Photographic evidence will just slow them for a bit, they aren't letting this slip through their fingers. They have been playing the long game and getting the SC is one of the ultimate goals. 

My thinking exactly.  Unless there is an account of a more contemporaneous bad act, Brett Kavanaugh will take the oath in a matter of days.  We're not alone in wondering about his current drinking habits and financial status, but it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.  "They" want this guy and "they" are going to get this guy and it has to be done before mid-terms. I don't think there will be a Republican defector, although Susan Collins must realize that her political future is in jeopardy if she votes for him.  There is a fundraising group dedicated to her defeat in the mid terms if she votes for Kavanaugh.  However, there may be a lot of Republican $$$$ to counter that fundraising effort to reward her for her pro-Kavanaugh vote. 

That the Republicans are in TOTAL control of this process is obvious.  They are shutting Democrats out of the hearing process Thursday.   

24 minutes ago, AmazonGrace said:

Why was Mr Goodyshoes grounded?

Heh.  I'm guessing his mom unearthed this out of his high school stuff she kept stored in the attic.  If so, she has just won a titanic and ongoing epic battle over "why are you still keeping all of this stuff?".

[formergothardite]

Even if they bring up evidence of more recent assaults, they aren't stopping. They have made it clear that they are getting him confirmed no matter what. We need to then start looking to the future and how to change how the SC is handled. The current system is broken and the American people are going to have to start electing people who will fight for real change. 

[fraurosena]

48 minutes ago, formergothardite said:

If she pressed charges against him, would that have the chance to stop this? 

Of course not. Sheesh. Even if it irrefutably turns out he's a psychopathic mass murder, it wouldn't stop them from confirming him to the SC.

This is all about protecting the presidunce. Nothing more and nothing less.

Why? Well, it's all rather simple really. If the presidunce has to testify to Mueller, then the presidunce will spill the beans and tell them everything. And that everything includes all the nefarious, and in my estimation quite probably traitorous things the Repugliklans have done and are still doing right now. So if the presidunce goes down, they will go down. That is why they are so hellbent on confirming Kavanaugh, someone they have blackmailed, have paid off, to do their bidding. 

No matter what, come hell or high water, Kavanaugh will be confirmed on Friday. 

[formergothardite]

14 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

No matter what, come hell or high water, Kavanaugh will be confirmed on Friday. 

[AmazonGrace]

He may be a rapist but he's our rapist

[AmazonGrace]

Avenatti is out with new allegations 

 

[formergothardite]

Isn't there some way to start an investigation without Congress asking the FBI? Congress isn't going to do that, no matter what. 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[AmazonGrace]

No idea if this is legit but holy heck if it is 

 

[fraurosena]

These tweets by Sam Stein and Seth Abramson are about Mark Judge, whom all the accusers (to date) have named as a witness, co-conspirator and perpetrator.

Although common logic and the rule of law would indeed dictate that Congress should subpoena Mark Judge, and that under normal circumstances he most certainly would be, we all know it won't happen any time soon.

I do wonder if criminal or civil charges could be made against Mark Judge by any (or all) of the accusers. Going after Judge would lead to a discovery process, the results of which would then also implicate Kavanaugh (and any other participants). Even though Kavanaugh is sure to be already confirmed to the SC by then, that still doesn't mean he is above the law. Civil or criminal charges can still be made against Kavanaugh too, no matter what his status is. If Judge were to be found guilty, it would bolster impeachment procedures against Kavanaugh, and he could ultimately be removed from the SC.

[AnywhereButHere]

Even appointing Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court will taint that body for the foreseeable future. Having him appointed and then bringing charges against him and possibly impeaching him will be catastrophic. In their blind zeal to get their pick through, they are irreparably damaging (destroying) everything our country is supposed to stand for.

[Rachel333]

Wow, so there  are now THREE women who have come forward publicly about being victims of Brett Kavanaugh, and according to the most recent woman, Julie Swetnick, there are many more women who were victims of Kavanaugh from his high school days alone.

And say what you will about Michael Avenatti but he sure does deliver on his claims.

Also relevant: Kavanaugh and Judge were not alone and there are quite a few other men, many of whom probably hold prestigious positions now, who also raped girls while they were in high school. I'm sure they are very invested in Kavanaugh not being held accountable for his behavior.

[fraurosena]

Orrin Hatch, member of the Jucidiary Committe that is so determined to confirm Kavanaugh to the SC, has more reason than one for doing so.

A Supreme Court Case Could Liberate Trump to Pardon His Associates

Quote

A key Republican senator has quietly weighed in on an upcoming Supreme Court case that could have important consequences for Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.

The Utah lawmaker Orrin Hatch, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, filed a 44-page amicus brief earlier this month in Gamble v. United States, a case that will consider whether the dual-sovereignty doctrine should be put to rest. The 150-year-old exception to the Fifth Amendment’s double-jeopardy clause allows state and federal courts to prosecute the same person for the same criminal offense. According to the brief he filed on September 11, Hatch believes the doctrine should be overturned. “The extensive federalization of criminal law has rendered ineffective the federalist underpinnings of the dual sovereignty doctrine,” his brief reads. “And its persistence impairs full realization of the Double Jeopardy Clause’s liberty protections.”

Within the context of the Mueller probe, legal observers have seen the dual-sovereignty doctrine as a check on President Donald Trump’s power: It could discourage him from trying to shut down the Mueller investigation or pardon anyone caught up in the probe, because the pardon wouldn’t be applied to state charges. Under settled law, if Trump were to pardon his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, for example—he was convicted last month in federal court on eight counts of tax and bank fraud—both New York and Virginia state prosecutors could still charge him for any crimes that violated their respective laws. (Both states have a double-jeopardy law that bars secondary state prosecutions for committing “the same act,” but there are important exceptions, as the Fordham University School of Law professor Jed Shugerman has noted.) If the dual-sovereignty doctrine were tossed, as Hatch wants, then Trump’s pardon could theoretically protect Manafort from state action.

If Trump were to shut down the investigation or pardon his associates, “the escape hatch, then, is for cases to be farmed out or picked up by state-level attorneys general, who cannot be shut down by Trump and who generally—but with some existing limits—can charge state crimes even after a federal pardon,” explained Elie Honig, a former assistant U.S. attorney in New Jersey. “If Hatch gets his way, however, a federal pardon would essentially block a subsequent state-level prosecution.”

A spokesman for the senator denied that his brief was inspired by the Mueller investigation, noting that Hatch has “worked for years to address the problem of overcriminalization in our federal code” and wants the Court “to reconsider the rationale” for the doctrine “in light of the rapid expansion of both the scope and substance of modern federal criminal law.”

But while Hatch has earned his bona fides in the arena of criminal-justice reform, the timing of his filing is nevertheless significant. For months, the Gamble case has been analyzed through the lens of the Mueller investigation, and Brett Kavanaugh, Trump’s nominee to replace the retired Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, could be on the bench by the time the Court reconvenes this fall. The justices decided to hear the case one day after Kennedy announced his retirement.

On its face, Gamble is entirely unrelated to the Mueller probe. It arose from the prosecution of Terance Martez Gamble, who was convicted of robbery in Alabama in 2008. His conviction meant that he could not legally own a firearm, but police found a gun in his car after pulling him over for a broken taillight in November 2015. Both state and federal prosecutors charged Gamble with the same offense—being a felon in possession of a firearm—based on the same incident, resulting in an extension of his prison sentence. He has repeatedly appealed, arguing that the dual convictions violate the double-jeopardy clause.

The federal government, meanwhile, has argued that overturning the dual-sovereignty doctrine would upend the country’s federalist system. It’s further claimed that the phenomenon of overcriminalization—which Hatch has railed against—makes states’ ability to preserve their own sphere of influence and prevent federal encroachment on law enforcement more important, not less.

Paul Rosenzweig, a former senior counsel on the Whitewater investigation who serves as a senior fellow at the conservative R Street Institute, said he thinks the Hatch brief is “wrong substantively.” “If overfederalization of crime is a problem, we should stop overfederalization,” Rosenzweig said. “Hatch’s answer is to end federalism.”

But he cautioned that the case’s implications may not be as significant as they seem. “It is at least plausible that if the Court gets rid of the [doctrine], it would mean that an acquittal in state court would prevent a second trial in federal court and vice versa,” Rosenzweig told me. But Trump’s pardon power is “explicitly limited in the text of the Constitution to pardons for ‘offenses against the United States,’” Rosenzweig said. If that language is interpreted to mean federal criminal offenses specifically, a Trump pardon wouldn’t protect against a state criminal prosecution, he said, no matter what happens to the double-jeopardy clause in Gamble.

Amid this legal murkiness, “overall” one thing is clear, Rosenzweig said: “A result overturning 200 years of dual sovereignty would very much muddy the waters.”

 

I'm quickly posting this before reading it. my comments will follow after I have.

 

[Rachel333]

Kavanaugh is saying he doesn't even know who Julie Swetnick is. I actually wonder if he's telling the truth about that and the rapes were so common that he doesn't even remember who the victims were.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/26/kavanaugh-denies-allegation-this-is-ridiculo

Quote

This is ridiculous and from the Twilight Zone. I don't know who this is and this never happened.

 

[fraurosena]

From Kavanaugh's prepared testimony in my previous post:

"Allegations of sexual assault must be taken seriously. Those who make allegations deserve to be heard."

The above infers that not only should Dr. Blasey Ford be heard, but also Ms. Ramirez and Ms. Swetnick. Will they get their chance? Nah, of course not!

Other than that, there's nothing noteworthy to be read in his testimony. It's basically what he stated in that Faux interview the other night. Whining about being smeared, gaslighting, and denials. That's about it. 

[formergothardite]

If he drank heavily he really might not remember all this stuff. But he will remember drinking a lot, something he probably doesn't want to testify under oath about. 

[fraurosena]

Yes, indeed, he should be impeached right now. But he won't be.

 

[Rachel333]

And now Trump is tweeting about this.  It's apparently the first time he has mentioned Avenatti by name in a tweet.