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I'm assuming this will be the politics thread, sorry if derailing:
Manafort has flipped.
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Vaguely on topic, Moonves is apparently the first Fortune 500 CEO claimed by metoo. So there's that.
Didn't Manafort flip a couple days ago? Do we really need to derail that annoyingly?
He did. I've seen no discussion of it.
ugh why am I commenting so much. Why am I procrastinating? Oh well:
On Franken, can I suggest a comparison?
What if a cop were in the habit of grabbing the asses of women he encountered when doing police work, say, witnesses he interviewed? Should he be fired?
Franken is, like the cop, a person vested with an enormous amount of state power, and when meeting constituents in public, is, like the cop, performing a job function with the people he is supposed to be serving. I really don't get ambivalence about this. It is a very serious problem if a large swath of your constituency can't be sure they can approach you without being assaulted. It's not separate from the job in some way; it's a very basic failure at the minimal responsibilities.
(Whatt I think clouds the Franken situation a little is that the *first* accusation was ambiguous and it was unclear how much to credit it. The later ones were not.)
I am deeply sorry to have stomped on the sophisticated and obviously time-consuming analysis presented in the OP.
Caitlin Flanagan, of all people, had a piece where she says she was almost raped by a boy in a similar way, and so she completely believes the story. But that the guy who assaulted her apologized, apparently sincerely, later and that was enough for her to forgive him. That sort of apology is too late now for Kavanaugh, but would have made a difference.
Now? Aside from the fact that I don't want him on the SC for any reason, if that was the only bad thing about him? Something along the lines of "I did it, I wish I hadn't done it, and I'm sorry. I knew it was wrong at the time, but it was a different time and a poisonous social setting with a poisonous set of standards -- it felt to me as if I was being a jerk rather than doing something importantly wrong. Since that time I have learned better, and our society has improved, to the point that I hope a boy like the one I was then wouldn't be able to convince himself that trying to force a girl to have sex with him was just being pushy, rather than what it was, which is attempted rape."
Something like that? I think might be enough for people to treat the offense as a thing of the past.
I'm ambivalent about Al Franken's ousting, still.
Kavanaugh has taken away my last shred of ambivalence about Franken. I was talking to a female colleague, roughly the same age as me and Kavanaugh, whose sympathies are politically liberal, but who thought it was a real reach to go back all those years and punish someone for having been a drunk high schooler. That's the sort of thing that kids do, she told me.
And she's not wrong! This sort of behavior at that time was not particularly unusual, though I hasten to add, it's not the sort of thing that my friends and I did.
Did anyone find Franken's behavior shocking, in the sense that once the accusations were out there, you didn't believe them? And unlike Kavanaugh, Franken can certainly talk the talk. This is just the way men (and boys) were brought up.
It's a big advance if we can de-normalize this sort of thing, and the people who tossed Franken out of office have acquired the moral authority to insist on it with people like Kavanaugh.
3: yes, on Friday I think.
On the OP, the position over here (which I think is a good one) is that any criminal conviction bars you from being a judge, except for very minor offences (traffic offences is the example given) and I think that's a good rule. Therefore, logically, we should hold to the position that any crime (except very minor ones) should bar you from being a judge - even though this isn't a workable rule.
VSOOBC a bit, the question came up: what's the worst crime that a US person has committed and still become a judge? Wiki provides a list of crimes committed by judges after they became judges, which isn't quite the same thing. Judge Roy Bean, the Law West of the Pecos, shot at least two people dead under various circumstances that may or may not qualify as murder, and was arrested for attempted murder over a third incident but never tried because he escaped from prison.
Its fucked up that I remember always hearing about Booker T. during Black History Month, but never W.E.B.
5: I definitely suspect that my residual ambivalence is rooted in internalized misogyny and gut feeling that women can handle it/suck it up/etc and is not defensible. I can expound on it, though - it's related to the crushing impotence of watching politicians ruin everything and be so goddamn destructive. Getting politicians in place who will vote for the right policies seems to be such a monstrously tall task - what if this standard is so high that we lose marginal numbers of politicians and it ends up making the critical difference on key policies going forward?
Again, this isn't defensible. I get that this is how change happens and this needs to change, etc. But it's where my mind goes despite that.
I also think the fact that Kavanaugh is about to perjure his ass off about this should be disqualifying in its own right.
A different point, which is definitely not exculpatory, is that I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that Kavanaugh sincerely does not remember. That's how this kind of thing works - people of the marginalized class blur together indistinctly, you abuse them without a second thought. He wasn't torn up about this - he surely was so cavalier that he literally never thought about it again.
Was going to say something like 8.1. Now even if she forgave him that doesn't mean we all have to, but I'd bet that had he genuinely and sincerely apologized years ago there's a very good chance it would never become public.
I do agree with 13. And with the W. administration stuff.
13: He's already perjured his ass about other topics.
Sorry that was me. Forgot I'd reset my browser recently.
Tia's right about Franken, and politicalfootball is right that ousting Franken was necessary to give us the credibility to hold the line on Kavanaugh.
To put my prior long comment into different words -- it isn't complete nonsense for Kavanaugh to say (if her were going to address the situation honestly, which he isn't) that he was a teenager behaving in a way that wasn't particularly odd in his social context (even then, he was being a scary asshole, but not a terribly unexpected or surprising one). What would get me to possibly see him as redeemed would be a recognition from him that the norms of that social context were evil, and it's necessary to stamp them out where they still exist.
I really don't see how anybody can do that in the context of being Trump's pick. Otherwise, it's probably a possibility.
I have a great deal of regret about Franken, but no real ambivalence. He was my guy. I thought he was a great politician and I wanted him to be president, but then the guy I thought he was turned out not to exist. I don't think he's a monster now, but what he did, or does, cannot stand. I can't and won't get past that.
"Why Not Me?" is still the funniest book I ever read.
I certainly expected that after Franken was kicked out, Republican operatives would come out with stories about other Democratic Senators and they would have to be kicked out too, and this time not replaced with other Democrats. But that didn't happen. Maybe the problem isn't as bad as we think. Although it seems to be pretty bad in statehouses, where malefactors don't get much press scrutiny.
It's too much that Kavanaugh's alibi is a guy who compulsively writes cartoonishly pompous books and conservative magazine articles that read like Rod Dreher imitating Norman Mailer. And that guy's name is "Judge". Really, [insert joke here about "the writers" as if this is a TV show]
Yeah. It's weird saying #notallmen all the time, but the poisonous thing about this sort of behavior isn't that all men do it, it's that a surprisingly large, but not objectively all that big, percentage of men do, and a much much much larger percentage of men and women treat it as ordinary and no big thing. If you start holding the line and insisting that sexually abusing people is important misbehavior, you lose some men in powerful positions, but nothing like most of them.
24 is me as well. He's the only politician I ever knocked on doors for. Every time I sent an angry email to Klobuchar for taking a stupid stand, I'd end up sending one full of praise to him for being on the right side. I'm so incredibly pissed off that he fucked up like this.
The situation in the OP is tough because it's a classic he said-she said. I don't see any way that issue can actually be resolved absent other women coming forward.
For Kavanaugh specifically the answer is even easier. Part of what you'd want is genuine remorse backed up with a commitment to change things for the better. Now not everyone has an obvious opportunity to make such a change, but Kavanaugh did: he could have blown the whistle on Kozinski.
28.last: Not sure I quite agree, depending on how we define "most". ISTM that the last year has shown substantial pluralities of Catholic priests (and nuns!) and powerful Hollywood men behaving abusively. In terms of working entertainers, the fraction is much smaller, but it seems like once power starts accruing, wicked behavior starts multiplying. Guys like Rose and Lauer were ostensibly "talent", but were treated by their networks as bosses, with far more power than a TV actor.
Maybe the reason there hasn't been quite such an avalanche of rapey politicians is that most don't actually wield all that much power. I mean, maybe I'm wrong, but I don't get the sense that some House backbencher can blackball people at will the way that seems to be common in Hollywood.
The more important factor is that the parties actually do vet these people, and it's hard for monsters to get through--even on the R side--because that's a liability. I don't think that McConnell knew about this*, but he did, in fact, push back against this nomination, because he was risk-averse. The same dynamic would apply to Joe State Rep who's known to get handsy at the office and doesn't have any special qualifications. Easy enough for the party to put its thumb on the scales and filter (many/most) of those guys out.
As for why Joe State Rep gets away with it at the clearly less powerful position in Capital City, the simple answer is culture and lack of sunlight. Congressional staffers are chummy with national political reporters; I don't think anybody pays attention to state-level staffers, except for the Chiefs of Staff for leaders, who aren't exactly the typical victims.
*the 65-woman letter suggests otherwise, but IMO the balance of evidence is that that was a poorly-organized, rushed bit of fluff (which apparently many signees have disavowed), not a well-prepared piece of emergency counterattack
32 got off on a tangent. My point is that, among a few groups, I think the number of bad actors is large, and when you add in the number of the actively complicit (not "turn a blind eye", but aiding and abetting), you're approaching a true majority. I think all men are awful, but that the incidence isn't uniform across all parts of society, even the ones that seem on the surface to resemble Hollywood (power, money, high profile).
30 is good.
To the OP, I don't actually think it's possible for Kavanaugh specifically to make this good, not only because of 30, but because his entire life has been a tribute to the kind of shithead he was in HS. I mean, the OP kind of says it, but I think it's important: no longer being the kind of person who'd do what he did means becoming a completely different person. I've never done anything disqualifying for high office, but I certainly did things I'm not proud of. I didn't "outgrow" them--which to me implies losing interest, the way one does in Adam Sandler songs--but I grew, as a person, and now find those behaviors troubling, evidence of damning selfishness. And that's apparent in my life. It's been a very long time since I've done anything I'm ashamed of, or would mind being public (aside from commenting here, obv).
It's too much that Kavanaugh's alibi is a guy who compulsively writes cartoonishly pompous books and conservative magazine articles that read like Rod Dreher imitating Norman Mailer. And that guy's name is "Judge". Really, [insert joke here about "the writers" as if this is a TV show]
For real. BART O'KAVANAUGH.
It's amazing what a shithead Kavanaugh is. Perjuring yourself before congress, when you're a judge, no less, is a big fucking deal. Not just anyone does that blithely. Holding your hand over someone's mouth to muffle her screams is a big fucking deal. Even most date-rapey guys wouldn't do that. But Kavanaugh does these things and doesn't even blink. Let's give him a super powerful lifetime appointment! You have to keep reminding yourself how fucked up our government is.
Nothing like having a son caught up in the juvenile justice system to make one advocate forgetting stuff that happened pre-adult. Even to the point of forgiving perjury decades later on such conduct.
[Unlike my son, Judge Kavanaugh apparently wasn't prosecuted--although if he was his record would almost certainly have been expunged and we wouldn't know about it. Also unlike, he was pre-adult but not pre-teen.]
Your son got prosecuted as a preteen!?! What on earth happened, if you're comfortable saying and I totally understand if you aren't.
...and what advice do you have for me keeping Pokey out of the legal system?
To the OP, I don't actually think it's possible for Kavanaugh specifically to make this good, not only because of 30, but because his entire life has been a tribute to the kind of shithead he was in HS.
It's not possible for Kavanaugh to make this good as in 30, because he's a Republican. His supporters want him to show absolute conviction in his stance that this woman is a liar and she has been enlisted by Democrats to bring this up at a very convenient time and exploit our society's unfair bias toward women who claim to have been assaulted.
To the OP, I don't actually think it's possible for Kavanaugh specifically to make this good, not only because of 30, but because his entire life has been a tribute to the kind of shithead he was in HS.
It's not possible for Kavanaugh to make this good as in 30, because he's a Republican. His supporters want him to show absolute conviction in his stance that this woman is a liar and she has been enlisted by Democrats to bring this up at a very convenient time and exploit our society's unfair policy of believing all women who claim to have been assaulted.
Yeah, I was wrong about Franken's ouster. At the time it was pretty scary to lose one of the only effective Democratic politicians, but others seem to have stepped up.
I continue to be a little unsettled by the absence of a path to forgiveness for people on the wrong side of progressing social norms. LB, how did you feel about Franken's apology?
I forget who I saw say this on Twitter (I think about Louis CK), but I think it's very helpful if you're feeling uncomfortable about issues around a path to forgiveness: "His second chance was the second time he harassed someone."
It was shit. He said he's a warm huggy person and he's sorry that made some women feel badly? That's not an apology.
I think he was a terrific politician, and I'm not particularly shocked that he didn't really apologize, but an apology that doesn't recognize intentional wrongdoing isn't an apology. (If you really disagree that you did anything wrong, you can tactfully maintain that position. But it's not an apology, and it's only acceptable if you can convince your audience that you didn't act wrongly and no apology is due.)
I think this mantra is good for this moment, both Kavanaugh and the overall moment. You don't win by losing, or lose by winning.
Once upon a time, I was also a racist. B/c hey, that's how they grow them in Weatherford, TX. But I grew out of it, and when I realized how racist I'd been, I was appalled. So in addition to no longer being a racist, I wrote about my racism and told several friends over the years, about the particular egregious act that I committed, back when I was 16. I didn't take out newspapers ads: just told a number of people over the years (and wrote a few blog posts) about it. And I'm no longer a racist, at least, I sure don't think so.
There is no record of KavENOUGH ever expressing any remorse in any manner either public or private, about this shocking crime, and he's certainly a misogynist bastard in every way, shape, and form. He has not atoned in even the merest way.
And that is applying a standard to KavaNOT that is the MOST generous to him that one could POSSIBLY apply. In reality, what I did (said) and what he did, are wildly incomparable. One cannot compare uttering a racist epithet, with attempted rape. And we don't know how many other victims of this predator are out there, damaged and afraid to speak out.
Heebie, I feel like I have to say something about your "residual misogyny" thing.
Getting politicians in place who will vote for the right policies seems to be such a monstrously tall task - what if this standard is so high that we lose marginal numbers of politicians and it ends up making the critical difference on key policies going forward?
I want to suggest you're thinking of this the wrong way around. In some Nordic country, the govt(?) wrote that in order to achieve true gender equality, they needed to bias selection toward women -- b/c there were so many structural barriers in the way of women already. This is 100% right. I would ask you to consider that it isn't the Franken that we might lose, that is most problematic, but the ARMIES Of Elizabeth Warren, Berta Caceres, Emma Gonzalez, Stacy Abrams, Nancy SMASH!, etc. Just take the case of Elizabeth Warren! If that isn't a strong, strong argument for finding and supporting women, for ensuring that every place of power is a safe place for women, I just don't ..... That imbecile Larry Summers talks this wacky game about how men are more prone to be high achievers ("outliers") than women. But the entire system is designed to shave off women's high achievement. and WE suffer for it, we the polity, we the nation. I mean, dammit, dammit, dammit, I want Kamala Harris to RIP KavaNEVER a new one SO BADLY. She's so much damn better than Trey "checkout my hairstyle" Gowdy it makes me SCREAM.
We LOSE NOTHING when we turf out grabby, harrass-y, rapey men.
On Kavanaugh, I think the hostile culture his mentor actively fostered makes it likely something on the same continuum persisted will into adulthood.
Hmm, I just reread his resignation speech and, yeah, that was not an apology. Nevermind on that one.
And on some level, no hard feelings. Noting he did seems to have damaged anyone terribly badly, and he chose to step aside fairly gracefully rather than make more trouble about it. But if you're looking for a path to redemption through public contrition and acceptance of wrongdoing, Franken didn't particularly try.
Caitlin Flanagan, of all people, had a piece where she says she was almost raped by a boy in a similar way, and so she completely believes the story.
Dahlia Lithwick wrote this yesterday (in a generally excellent column
For the men who commit these acts, the clock starts never. Consider Brett Kavanaugh's statement on the matter, released Monday morning: "This is a completely false allegation. I have never done anything like what the accuser describes--to her or to anyone. Because this never happened, I had no idea who was making this accusation until she identified herself yesterday." For most of their lives, what they may have done never even occurs to them. They were drunk. Or they forgot. Or they were alone. Or they were in a group. And people will cover and apologize and excuse them. People will say, "Thirty-five years ago? He was a child." And they will forget that 35 years ago, she was also a child--except that she has lugged this around on her back for decades and only got brave enough to tell anyone six years ago.
Most of the women I know spent Sunday afternoon recalling a time a man grabbed her at a party and covered her mouth and rubbed against her. It happens so damn often than we all have the same story. But we didn't report it in real time because that's just what it is, and boys will be boys, and also we will soon learn that if we come to report it in men's time, we will be told we were too late. We are all always too late, because if we really were worried about these types of transgressions, we would have had the wherewithal to stop them before they even happened. Once you have become a victim, you are already too late.
To the OP, I do feel, in myself, a process of gradually changing expectations. In the case of Franken, I was supportive of him until the 3rd or 4th accusation and then I figured he would probably have to go, but I wasn't at all sure how that would work and what the process would be. As I said at the time I think the process ultimate reached the appropriate outcome and it did feel like a case in which people were figuring out what they needed to do as it went along.
In terms of Kavanaugh, I don't have any mixed feelings because I didn't want him to be on the Supreme Court anyway, but I can understand how people who do want him to be on the Supreme Court could be genuinely unsure about the best course of action at this point.
But people learn by doing. After a couple of cases like this, people will have a better sense of how to proceed and we'll see what that means (and some people will be unhappy with whatever new script gets written, and will continue to contest it).
Keep in mind the first rule of Republicanism- it's all bad faith projection (Krugman even has a column on it today.). So while I believe the women who've come forward in all the recent accusations, I believe a point will come when a conservative woman in a plausible position (worked with a target Dem politician) will in fact make up a not-readily disproved accusation and conservatives will be all "how bout them apples libtards!" and we'll have to think about how to handle weaponized accusations in such a way that it doesn't harm all the real victims out there.
This is to say nothing about Bill Clinton who continues to fuck things up for everyone in the present based on his decades-old behavior.
i have been wondering the last few months whether the guys who have over the years offered to give me an "in" to kozinski's movie nights and other great "access" opportunities have at any moment feel gross about having been enthusiastic volunteer procurers. id' guess not, but who knows.
this is a large country with a hell of a lot of people in it. turfing out people like franken and kavanaugh isn't going to eat into the talent pool in any deleterious way - but it just might upset the rancid structures of for climbing the greasy pole.
and for all the lawyers commenting or lurking here, i strongly suggest you go here: http://www.powells.com/searchresults?keyword=courtney+milan and start dropping dollars. no need to read 'em, but heidi bond deserves all our gratitude.
Outside of the lawyers here, none of us can afford a book.
Inside of the lawyers, Amazon won't deliver.
@22 Doubly so because of the egregious way the accusations against Bill Clinton were handled.
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This is definitely counting chickens, and but I love the possibility that average Republicans are so bubbled and complacent they don't see the urgency of voting November.
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Mossy, if you're going to prematurely derail a thread, make it about more current political events, like a discussion of things that are mushroom shaped.
Only a small percentage of mushrooms are mushroom shaped.
I deeply regret googling to find out what 60 was talking about.
I didn't get it at all.
Twice in as many days. I'm getting old.
It was weird to wake up to (I assume this doesn't violate the sanctity of off-blog communication) Stormcrow retweeting an old Nintendo promotional tweet.
I find that I have a small glimmer of hope that Kavanaugh's confirmation will get derailed --but not any well-thought out ideas on what happens after that. Reasons to think so are:
1) DJT will jettison without a thought if he thinks it becomes a liability for him. Not clear right now which is worse for him. I think everyone is semi-hunkered down right now waiting to see if any other shoes drop. (I thought I saw where some clerks might have something to say...but not finding it now. Given his Kozinki ties and his general dickishness on almost all fronts I'm going to guess that it was borderline hostile workplace at best.)
2) This comes on top of his revealing himself to be a lying dick with not scruples*. ...but then I recall that it is those characteristics which led in large part to his nomination.
So now I am glum I don't think Satan is through with us yet.
*I think a permanent ban from government of anyone involved with the Starr team (or the Republican congressional investigations during that time) would have served us well. fucking Ken Fucking Starr** being sought out for comment on Kavanaugh is beyond dispiriting***.
**Starr does know forgiveness for past sexual sins well, he hand his wife wrote a letter in support of a teacher at their daughter's elite private school who was drummed out for much earlier sexual infractions.
***You know media people, maybe some questions or acknowledgement of his being drummed out of Baylor in disgrace for his egregious mishandling of sex crimes might be RELEVANT TO THE QUESTION AT HAND.
64: And I became aware of that via a retweet from Felix Gilman. (I forget if what was about to write next would have been a wolfson discretion error. (Or whether that just was.))
For a moment there I thought the tall man with the wide hat had made an appearance, but no. Still in the farce leg of history.
65.1: Ah, here's the story on Kavanaugh's ludicrous feigned ignorance of Kozinski's antics.
Sanai told The Intercept that at least two federal employees had information to provide the committee about Kavanaugh, including one who spoke directly with Kavanaugh about it. Sanai said that he did not hold Kavanaugh responsible for Kozinski's behavior, but rather that his claim of ignorance was not credible and could be contradicted by witnesses. Kavanaugh's credibility has become a central issue in his confirmation, as he has "unequivocally" denied allegations that he sexually assaulted Christine Blasey Ford when both were in high school.
Yes. Lying under oath is a pretty easy disqualification for any judicial office. You'd think, at least.
Another reason that he might* be in trouble is that there is a divided defense.
1) Blanket denial. (Kavanaugh's statement for instance).
2) And rough horse play (the physical analog to locker room talk).
Interesting and perhaps disturbing moment a short time ago as Carrie Severino, spokesperson of the Judicial Crisis Network, was interviewed on CNN. The JCN is the central campaign arm for Republican judicial nominations. The Federalist Society grooms and chooses the nominees. The JCN runs the campaigns, runs political ads in Senators' states, as necessary. Here Severino argues that it's not clear that what Ford describes wasn't simply "rough horse play" as opposed to attempted rape.
*Assumes a rational world not in evidence, however.
I find that I have a small glimmer of hope that Kavanaugh's confirmation will get derailed ...
My hope is that the Republicans are in a hurry and Democrats are able to demonstrate that they have the leverage to drag out the nomination process for Kavanaugh and so the WH withdraws the nomination.
I also don't know what happens after that but I assume they'd nominate somebody else who's just as bad.
A month ago it felt like Kavanaugh was 100% inevitable. We can't do better unless we push, one battle at a time.
Yglesias has a good piece on how the Kavanaugh thing shows Democrats were right to dump Franken.
"rough horseplay"? She wasn't a freshman getting paddled as initiation at his boarding school. What is wrong with these warped traditionalists?
39 et al: Yes, my boy was nine when it happened, 10 when he was charged. Initially the charge was unlawful touching of a minor. The alleged victim was a girl of the same age who lives on the block. They had been friends since infancy. They weren't caught -- she first described the incident or incidents several months later when suffering several months later from something like PTSD.
Of course consent is irrelevant with a nine year old victim. Intention may also be irrelevant with a nine year old perpetrator. My son claimed that she did the same things to him, so the girl should also be prosecuted, but our lawyer didn't think that filing a criminal complaint against her would be at all helpful.
There was initially a small risk of landing on a sex offender registry, which probably would have led to our family becoming expats.
Anyway, it was pleaded down to misdemeanor harassment, with a "mixed disposition," not a guilty plea, that would be dismissed after two years of probation. We paid a small fine, switched him to a private school, and took him to a therapist for a few years (the last two were required by the court but would have happened anyway). He completed his probation without incident before finishing elementary school.
It's on my mind today because he's 15 and now eligible for expungement of his record. We're trying to get the process completed before he gets his drivers' licensee, because there are some things you don't want to pop up on the police check the first time you get a speeding ticket.
The odds are excellent that he won't be nominated for the Supreme Court, but if he's ever under consideration for anything of that sort he may decline the opportunity.
*But not quite all, and it differs in different states and sometimes laws change. This may be a problem some day.
Crap. Please change the above to President Harrison.
Can someone outside Congress just indict Kavanaugh for perjury at this point?
At least not that I every heard of.
It's astounding, really. A sitting federal judge has perjured* himself on three separate things in the space of a week? The rot is really deep.
*Ok, maybe strictly not (yet) on two of them. But still.
That's just really awful Harrison. I don't know how that's allowed to be prosecuted.
76: Had to move to a private school, or just move schools?
There is absolutely nothing someone who did what Kavanaugh did could do that would make him a suitable candidate for the Supreme Court. We practically disqualify people from consideration for the Supreme Court based on anything less than perfect SAT scores at age seventeen (since this will put them on a track that does not include Harvard/Princeton/Yale law) so there's no doubt in my mind that a rape he attempted at age 17 shouldn't disqualify him. Questions about how to rehabilitate and reintegrate criminals into society are hard ones. The question of whether that reintegration should put them on the Supreme Court is an easy one.
With that kind of attitude you're never going to find a respectable Republican.
Probably true, which is why they're so insistent that this isn't a big deal. They really mean it when they say "if he goes down over this, who do we have left in the party?"
I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that Kavanaugh sincerely does not remember. That's how this kind of thing works - people of the marginalized class blur together indistinctly, you abuse them without a second thought. He wasn't torn up about this - he surely was so cavalier that he literally never thought about it again.
I agree this is possible, but I don't actually buy that it's probable. Setting aside drunkenness, the suite of behaviors is way beyond the sort of thing non-psychopaths do without a second thought. Like, we all do and say things that mean zero to us but end up resonating with others. But I don't think that, even for assholes, that extends to attempted forcible rape. The only way it would would be if he did it so often that they all blend together.
On a related note, I'm a touch surprised that no others have come forward yet--as with Franken, when there's one, there's almost always more. And nothing about this sounds like a one-off to me, especially not with the context of Bart O'Kavanaugh, Party King. But it's early days, and not many voluntarily walk into the shitcannon.
The only way it would would be if he did it so often that they all blend together.
I guess I was presuming this, and you're right that it's surprising others haven't ventured forward. I wonder how early he started dating his wife.
90: Oh yeah, if this was his MO, then the only way he'd remember her specifically would be if she were one of the only ones to successfully resist. I can't even bear to think of the possibilities.
I had taken you to mean that this was neither his usual behavior, nor memorable.
I now understand 60. I'm glad I'm too old to have much of a youthful memory of Mario.
Minivet is right in 73. Fight all the battles and run out the clock.
Yeah, I felt mild remorse about losing Franken, but the Democratic position now is so much stronger for having done so.
(Minivet, I owe you an answer to your earlier question. Sigh. Bonds are bad ways to fund water; the bond author is unethical; I hate at least one of the designated uses for the money. There are also good uses for the bond money in there. I can't support it, but I expect it to pass. I won't be bummed when it does.)
Oh yeah, relevant to the Franken subthread: Friday night, a couple buddies and I watched Smokey & the Bandit, which holds up surprisingly well*. Then I got home and wanted to stay up a bit later, and Netflix offered Stripes.
Holy shit, does that NOT hold up. It was awful. All male gaze, all the time. Hot chicks who help our heroes bacuse they've seen the poster and know they're the stars. Beyond-gratuitous T&A. I bailed before the midpoint, which is when I think it gets funnier (and also IIRC there are no more women at all, so that part tones down), but I'll never watch it again. It's irredeemable.
Oh, and this is relevant because this was Franken's milieu as a young man. Seeing it again made his behavior seem a lot less surprising. They were such fucking pigs, and they were so celebrated for being pigs.
*it helps that there are basically 3 characters: Smokey, Bandit, and Sally Field, and Field doesn't hardly interact with anyone but the Bandit, and the two of them are totally horny for each other. There's no smarm, just charm.
Well sine adult-hood a lot of the vulnerable people he's been around socially are part of the same rascist-legal industry. so obviously coming forward now would completely destroy your career in that field.
95: I expect you're right and we'll hear (if we live that long since these people are basically my contemporaries) the truth when these people start to retire or die.
I like the argument in 86. Republicans can't find one judge who didn't sexually assault someone? (Given Clarence Thomas, perhaps not.) There aren't that many justices, and it's not something he's owed that is being stripped away. He gets to go back to being a rich white dude with what I imagine is a very nice life. He didn't get his right to vote stripped, he's not unemployable due to a felony conviction, he's going to pull through. Maybe they should look harder for conservative female justices. I suspect they are much, much less likely to have skeletons in their closets.
They're also much less likely to vote against Roe, probably.
So Grassley actually proposed that she sit at the table next to the man she accused of attempted rape? Is he naturally that much of an asshole or did he make a special effort in this situation?
For no good reason, I will finish the story.
The obvious question, at least to me, is why were the police involved. and even more, why did a prosecutor take it on?
There was a weird class dynamic going on. We were neighbors with babies the same age, so we socialized a bit but we weren't a good fit. We were well off upper middle class professionals, commuting to the big city and not very connected in town. Her father lived in the house he grew up in, worked in construction but was also chief of the volunteer fire department so he knew the police. I think they didn't like us, and/or didn't trust us to discipline our son. I don't know much about the D.A., but I guess he didn't want to cross the local police.
And then there's the related threatened private lawsuit claiming negligent supervision, which probably happened. Our homeowners policy ultimately paid for her psychiatric care and set up a trust, available when she's 18, which I really hope she uses to go to college (it's less than my son's college fund, but enough). I'm glad she has that, she really did suffer and everyone should have a college fund, but. Whether that motivated her parents I'll never know.
Last lesson will be totally unsurprising to anyone here. The outcome could have been a great deal worse if we weren't white and well off. Juvenile Court appearances go better when the kid speaks standard English and parents are present and suitably dressed. Probation visits required a parent to take an afternoon off to drive the kid. An expungement lawyer costs about $3000.
Holy moly.
Is it well-understood what actually transpired between the two of them? It sounds like you do think your son violated her?
As an older white male it is reassuring that Bill Shine is part of the the team coaching Kavanaugh for his testimony. And so uplifting to see the interests of my demographic cohort finally represented in the halls of power.
[Eliminationist rhetoric barely repressed.]
103: It's really something when the nominee is denying and the surrogates are saying "if it happened it wasn't a crime.". Makes me think they know something I only assume.
I'm reminded, at the other place, of a letter my then-mentor (I was just over a month into my legal career) sent to Biden in 1991. What's astonishing, looking back, is that anyone would have really thought that Hill's performance at the job she had before going to work with Thomas had any real bearing on whether she was telling the truth about how he acted when she worked for him.
The smear machine's motto, though, is 'any port in a storm.' Or is it 'contrary evidence cannot possibly be valid'?
106: You know, I think I remember that specifically (or at least that there were contradictory assessments of her performance and that the view of your mentor was much more credibly supported.
Fucking assholes.
Also, the Hill fiasco is a significant reason (among a bunch of others) why I am adamantly opposed to Biden as 2020 Dem nominee.
BTW, there is a woman who has posted on Facebook that she knew the folks and recalls the incident being talked about at school.
106: It's kind of interesting. Was Burke lying or did he honestly confuse the one black woman associate with the other black woman associate? I suppose lying is worse, but the other possibility isn't good either.
Well, if it comes down to Bloomberg, Biden and Avenatti, I think I'd go with Biden.
102: I had the pleaure of sitting win with my son's police statemnt, and some other conversations, and also watching the girl's videotaped interview. Touching, which is against the law, was essentially undisputed, and they knew what they were hiding, suggesting they knew what they were doing was wrong. Technically he violated the terms of the statute, although according to him, she did also (she wasn't asked about that). But really, nine years old?
Anyway, a good warning for everyone's kids around that age. Some states have minimum ages for prosecution.
Mine doesn't.
Wow. It doesn't sound like a situation where one kid has been physically abused in the past and is acting out that domination on another kid, however. It sounds much more like kids exploring.
Do you have an opinion on her PTSD? It sounds like an unexpected outcome. Like, did something else compound it?
I assumed records from the juvenile justice system were automatically sealed at 18 - weird that it's allowable but you have to pay a lawyer for it.
(It looks like California has been making it a lot easier over the last few years, fee-free, and an automatic process in some cases once probation is completed.)
110 In a big law firm, lots of young lawyers come and go,* and after 10 years, it's not shocking to me that someone wouldn't be able to keep them straight.
* I think there was a lot more of this in the pre-internet era, when you needed to send young lawyers -- as I was sent to do even in 1991/2 -- to the library to read select cases in book after book of the reporters looking for oddball factual circumstances that wouldn't show up in the digests.
Good Jamelle Bouie piece setting the handling of Kavanaugh in the context of the overall lack of culpability for elite fuckheads everywhere.
Watching the machinery of elite power operate on behalf of Kavanaugh is both a lesson in who is entitled to second chances and absolution as well as an illustration of larger conflicts over the limits and boundaries of accountability. And read in that light, Kavanaugh is the perfect vessel for a view that puts the most privileged and powerful beyond the reach of public account.
I can't deal with serious issues right now, so I'm going to glom onto Stripes. If you had asked me which famous comedy of that era held up the worst, I would have guessed Stripes. It seemed dumb even at the time.
Something I wonder about is the Fast and the Furious movies. They are as male-gaze-y as any movies I've ever seen, and they're not even that old. It's not like people don't notice, but they seem to give it a pass because the movies are classified as dumb fun.
In reading about Kavanaugh, I had been running across, and deliberately avoiding, this Caitlin Flanagan link. Turns out to be quite good, and another datapoint supporting the idea that people who lack empathy can have their perspective improved by suffering misfortune themselves.
Yet when I drive over people's toes, I'm the asshole.
Something I wonder about is the Fast and the Furious movies. They are as male-gaze-y as any movies I've ever seen, and they're not even that old. It's not like people don't notice, but they seem to give it a pass because the movies are classified as dumb fun.
It's the flip side of when people criticize NPR - it's only got problems because we're holding it to a higher standard than most news shlock.
NPR is freaky to listen to because all the women sound the same.
Fox News is also freaky that way.
117: Maybe not the whole franchise from the beginning, but I've read to the effect that FAF also has a good proportion of female gaze. I asked a male superfan and he concurred.
In an idealized sex-positive feminist world, wouldn't there still be room for male gaze-y stuff, so long as it's sufficiently ghettoized, not seen as the norm/expected, and balanced out by sexualization of men/from non-male perspectives? If you have finite energy to attack this stuff, it makes more sense to go against something that is normalizing sexualizing women in all contexts (like Fox News's leggy blondes), as opposed to something that is over-the-top stupid fun that at least tries to sexualize the guys a little bit.
dalriata@124: re: the "male gaze"
I'm a guy, and a red-blooded Texas-raised guy, at that. So I can't say what the female gaze is. But I know this: I listened once to my sisters (1yr, 10yr, 13yr younger than me) talking about Mark Wahlberg, and "all that and a bag of chips". It was clear to me then, and is clear to me now, that there is a female gaze. Someday, that female gaze will be as empowered as the male gaze is -- I predict that'll happen when the population of the C-suites and all executive ranks of the Fortune 500 is 51% female [population of -each- separately, not merely averaged together], and not before.
And sure, once that happens, I think things'll be fine.
JP Stormcrow: huzzah! Yes indeed! It was disqualifying! I'm sure he's got very nice properties, but we don't want a man who could do that to a female victim of harassment, as head of the Executive branch. Period.
I listened once to my sisters (1yr, 10yr, 13yr younger than me) talking about Mark Wahlberg, and "all that and a bag of chips". It was clear to me then, and is clear to me now, that there is a female gaze.
I remember watching The Saint (with Val Kilmer) and being amused that the movie treated him the way that so many movies treat the female lead ("Oh, you've fallen in the water, you're in danger of hypothermia. We'll have to get you out of those wet clothes immediately").
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Like, has anyone seen any of the Fast and the Furious movies? It's not just you have hot actors that you get to check out. You have one or two female characters, and then a zillion montages of street races that have a zillion women standing around as eye candy. The women in porn are less sexualized.
Here's a random example. You have one minute of random tits and asses, and then the two characters show up.
It's like a Beyonce video if Beyonce was a car.
At least somebody reads my fanfiction.
Despite the fact that I am basically a humorless feminist who ruins all sorts of movie and tv-watching experiences by pointing out when sexual assault is occurring, for some reason the Fast and the Furious movies don't bother me too much. My husband is a car guy, so I've seen them all, and most of them multiple times. I'm not really sure why the gratuitous T&A don't bother me in this case, though.
The women are probably there to let heterosexual men hide the fact (mainly from themselves) that they are being sexually aroused by cars and/or Vin Diesel.
If you're not on Twitter or don't check it out much, you might want to head over there and do a search on Ed Whelan. It's been interesting tonight.
It's the kind of cutting, insightful legal thinking that a person gets from working with Scalia.
That shit is in-fucking-sane. The "logic", such as it is-
"Not far from the country club" in the context of suburbs can only mean less than 3.6 miles, which is the closest the people named as being at the party lived. Therefore someone who lives closer than that must have been the host, oh here's someone, and the floor plans for his house (he actually used Zillow) look like every other god damn house in that neighborhood because we're talking cookie cutter rich suburbs with their shitty entry foyer architecture but hey it vaguely matches her description of the incident and since all the guys had bad 80s haircuts as shown in the yearbook photos the real rapist was obviously this middle school teacher in Atlanta. But he makes very clear he's not actually accusing anyone because he might be sued.
And WaPo is hinting that this "defense" might have been hacked up in consultation with Kavanaugh, since there's been coordinated messaging on the whole Evil Spock theory of lookalikes and that poor girl just must have mixed up who molested her.
I mean, a key piece of evidence he claims is literally that there was a BATHROOM across the hall from a BEDROOM unlike any other house in suburban Maryland CANT YOU SEE IT SHEEPLE?? If the foyer was lit you must acquit!
But he makes very clear he's not actually accusing anyone because he might be sued.
I'm not a lawyer, but I have my doubts that will work.
To be fair to Whelan, to win he really only needs to convince people who think that George Soros pays people to live as bereaved parents of murdered children in order to enact very modest gun control efforts.
To win, all they need is for the Republican Senators to stick together and go full speed ahead. They've been pretty good at that so far. They have no shame.
Twitter is a shithole where stuff like this can be disseminated, but at the same time the mockery being thrown at the guy is of the highest quality. And the deer in headlights (which happens quite a lot in suburbs, believe me, I'VE BEEN THERE) look of Whelan's supporters is excellent- Doubthat can see that the dude's gone off the deep end, but says he's known him for a long time so there MUST be more to it than the insane strings-on-a-corkboard he's posted.
135.last: So, two days ago, Kathleen Parker had a piece in the Post that, in retrospect, was teasing Whelan's story.
I read that this morning and thought it was absolute trash. After seeing this: wow, Republicans really are something.
The Douthat tweet was hilarious, though.
JMM is excellent, he's finding all the smug Republican assholes who got a preview of this in the last couple days and cryptically tweeted smarmy "just wait and see..." bullshit thinking they had a Matlock moment teed up. Echo chamber indeed. Including Jonathan "the Moops invaded Spain" Adler of specious ACA argument fame.
I sort of wonder how much you'd have to pay a junior high school teacher to get them to be quiet for a while and to not sue. Having a junior high student around the house, I'm guessing "enough to retire from teaching junior high school."
i mean, one isn't bad. I can't imagine a whole room of them.
I'll admit to having had a moment of doubt Monday Tuesday but otherwise I've been sure BK was going to get confirmed, and I'm pretty sure even now. OMG what damaged goods he is, though. It takes a lot for a Supreme Court justice to actually cost votes in an election, but this guy might just pull it off.
I'm putting down my prediction now that Trump is going to endorse the shit out of the Whelan story.
I'm now wondering if Whelan has that bad of judgement or if he's aware of evidence that isn't yet public which makes the evil-twin theory his best bet.
Either seems likely. Or both.
I'm honestly a little confused about why suddenly the village is basically laughing at Whelan. If Trump had tweeted the exact same thing they'd all be pretending to take it seriously, right?
There's not a whole lot of enjoyment to be had lately. Watching the "respectable" conservatives actively jump into the sewer they used to "never Trump" is about all you get.
Also, last night was the first time I thought there was any possibility of the nomination failing.
148: Ford saying that she knew both of them and had even visited the other guy in the hospital means that his ace card would have to be something that completely discredits Ford. And if he had that, why would he need to do this song and dance?
I meant that he knows there's more evidence to support Ford.
So this morning the President is tweeting* about it -- actually it's clearly not him, as any idiot can see -- so maybe the Whelan thing has backfired enough to panic them. I think we're still in a place where Sen. Collins is a yes vote, and if she stays in, none of the rest of them can afford to be the one to kill the nomination.
* Those of you not on twitter, the President's new line of attack is basically that since all sexual assaults are reported to the police, and there's no police report, there must not have been a sexual assault. Can this possibly convince anyone, even the most committed Trumper?
152: Oh, I gotcha now.
What's the probability Collins is going to run for re-election in 2020? She's young enough that that wouldn't rule it out, but I think the median Mainer has moved to the left from the positions she's been supporting.
Anyway, other than "fucked in the head", that is the only explanation I can think of for those tweets.
155.2 I wonder how good she is at bringing federal money to Maine. ISTM that a minority of people actually vote based on positions taken, while likability and partisan id are way more important. In a close race the position-people matter, obviously, but whether there ends up being a close race may well depend on the likability of the other nominee.
I also think, and this is also ex recto, the by far the biggest block of position voters are single issue pro-life, followed by single issue pro gun. There are single issue Medicare for All voters -- and I know some of them -- but that's just a blip right now. We're expecting a close enough race for Senate here that the blip could matter, though.
I don't think the median Mainer has moved to the left. This is still a 94% white state with an old population, and now all the old people of the liberal generation that remembers the Great Depression have died off. It's mostly a population without hardcore Christians, but Trump's takeover of the Republican Party has if anything made non-religious white people who were alienated by the dominance of the Southern Baptist Falwell mob feel more welcome in the Republican Party.
So, who can kill the nomination? McGahn, Collins, McConnell, Trump, and Kavanaugh. The first four are all better off going down with the ship than pulling the plug. Only Kavanaugh has a graceful way out, but he doesn't know what grace is.
Vermont's also 94% non-Latino white and has a fairly similar population pyramid to Maine (Vermont, Maine), so demographics aren't destiny. Northern New-England is weird. My non-informed impression is that there's been growing discontent against LePage, and that they've been open to less awful electoral methods gives me hope.
But, yeah, both bringing in federal money and the de-Christianization of Republican awfulness makes her position stronger.
Well, I'll go way out on a limb and make a limited defense of Ross Douthat. It seems incredibly implausible to me that Ed Whelan came up with this theory by googling or paging through the yearbook. Someone that went to Georgetown Prep at the time suggested it to him. There a few possibilities -- it could be a someone we don't know that knows nothing about the incident, but remembered there was a guy that looked kind of like Kavanaugh. Or it could be Mike Judge. Or it could be Brett Kavanaugh. Or (this was the first possibility that came to my mind) it could have been the accused -- what if he, way off the record, or indirectly, admitted to it. He didn't want to come forward and admit to it, but also didn't want his buddy Brett to take the fall. I found this theory troubling, but Ford's statement has assured me that it isn't true
Vermont had more hippies move there in the 1960. Maine had a bunch, but not enough.
I suppose it's possible that the Smear Artists promised New Accused that his name would never be mentioned, but what kind of dope would think that the mistaken identity theory would or could work without him being named?
Occam's Razor points to the same type of person who knew what kerning is doing some amateur sleuthing, uncaring and unaware that New Accused is actually a human being who, presumably, never tried to rape anyone.
It's pretty clear that many of the people involved don't believe any man hasn't at least attempted to grope a woman at some point in his life.
164: New Accused is also a signee of the letter from Georgetown Prep classmates supporting Kavanaugh. And he's a middle school teacher, so he has the most to lose over an accusation of adolescent sexual assault. Some friends, eh?
157: I have the very vague impression that Olympia Snowe was the one who brought money to Maine, not Collins. I believe she was on the armed services committee. She definitely intervened to help make sure that Bath Iron Works got a good contract with the Navy.
Angus King is on the Armed Services Committee now.
It's a different Mike Judge from the Office Space guy, right?
It's pretty obvious Kav was involved in approving if not promoting this gambit. That's his entire history- he was one of the main people investigating Foster as a murder, the sine qua non of batshit 90s right-wing conspiracy theories. He was involved in ratfucking Congressional Dems with stolen strategy documents. It wouldn't surprise me if he does get appointed that he starts running oppo leak campaigns against other justices who he needs to vote with him.
What's the sine qua non of batshit 2010s right-wing conspiracy theories? Pizzagate? Crisis actors? Benghazi?
Crisis actors, because it requires being horrible to people while those people are in great pain.
This Mike Judge is named "Mark Judge."
It seems incredibly implausible to me thata lifelong movement Republican did something extraordinarily ill-prepared and ill-considered?
174: No, it's not that it's ill-prepared and ill-considered. It's that it would have required a lot of work and research to come up with this from nowhere. If the idea came from Brett or Mark or some other dude from Georgetown Prep it's still extraordinarily ill-considered.
If we can confuse Mark Judge with Mike Judge then who is to say that Christine Ford counldn't confuse Brett Kavanaugh with......?
Sorry, this may be a little too stupid even for me.
173: Even his parents were confused.
173: Even his parents were confused.
I still find it hard to believe that Kavanaugh could go down, but the utter shitshow of a defense the Rs have been putting on gives me just a tiny glimmer of hope. They're acting very much like they know that he did exactly what she says he did and that they're completely screwed if she shows up for a hearing, and it looks like we still have several more days of this before any hearing or vote.
Also, Charley, I may have missed it in any earlier thread, but any experiences or impressions of Kavanaugh from your time in that world?
It appears that Whelan knew who the "female classmate" was and put her name on his Junior Investigator Kit map even though it sounds like no one ever reported her name. I'm not certain about that last part, but if it's true it suggests 1) the party did happen and was recalled by either Judge or Kav, and 2) they passed that info to Whelan. I wouldn't let these guys within a mile of a Home Depot because they're so prone to stepping on rakes.
I'm not sure I've ever seen a rake on the ground like that at Home Depot.
It only happens if you're a buffoon.
Whenever I shop there I make sure to put a few in the aisles.
181 Never met him, He was on the panel for one of my regulatory cases, but a colleague argued it. I don't recall anything about him. He was on the panel for one of my GTMO appeals, but they cancelled oral argument, and ruled against us on the papers.
I was looking for something else, and ran into a 2010 email in which I noted that Judge Brown still seemed to be angling for promotion in a Palin Administration, but Kavanaugh was giving her a run for her money.
They should nominate my former neighbors G Garre or B Berenson.
Here's a quote from a different, moths earlier, 2010 email:
But Williams is so obviously correct, that I'm putting K down with Brown. I'm sure he'd be very disappointed.
And, obviously, K won out. Can you imagine the President nominating Brown for the SC?
Janice Rogers Brown? Yes, if they want to own the libs by their own logic and SCRAMBLE THE BRAINS of all the SJWS
Did somebody here go to Georgetown Prep. I'm sort of wondering what the alumni newsletter is going to say.
Now I see that I lived 2 blocks away from where he lived when he was at GP. Walked the dog past that house many a time, didn't even know to spit on the sidewalk.
So, apparently Ronan Farrow and Stormy Daniel's attorney both will have something to add to the Kavanaugh evidence.
Yep -- looks like he's going down. Farrow's complainant has a corroborating witness.
And the corroborating witness is a man who pulls out his penis and waves it at unwilling women, so the Senate Republicans will have to wonder why they haven't hired him yet.
195 Yeah, but the exact mechanism of getting from here to there isn't clear. Some Republican has to be the fall guy -- it ought to be Flake and Corker, but they don't seem inclined. The Pres can't admit that allegations w/o physical evidence are even remotely probative. McConnell is probably enjoying watching Trump and McGahn twist in the wind, but he can't afford to be the one.
There may be campaign consultants saying that an open SC seat is just what they need to goose turnout in a couple/three senate races. Worked in 2016 . . .
Flake is on the committee, they wouldn't need a second person. It's remarkable how uniformly despicable the entire party is. You'd think one of them would be an ok person just by historical accident.
197.2: Even if they lose both houses in the next election, can't they still force through whoever they want in the lame duck session?
A second senator underlines the futility, and gives Trump both an excuse and someone to blame.
Probably, but who knows. If the loss is bad enough Murkowski might switch parties. A lot of those senators are real old and could die at literally any moment.
199 I think they can and will.
The line that knowledge of the Ramirez allegation spurred Republicans to redouble their efforts to get a quick vote is going to hurt them with the pundit class. A little.
201 I don't think she would, but that would come in January, in any event.
Now we know why Grassley was in such a hurry. He knew this was coming out.
And Avenatti is sorta kinda alleging gang rape now.
He's not giving his source of information, but he's tweeted out an email he sent to the Committee saying that Kavanaugh needs to be asked about participation in gang rape(s?).
Farrow's piece mentions a gang rape, but involving the friend (Judge) and it's hearsay or something. Anyway, it's Judge's ex saying what he said to her, to an eye witness. I don't know the actual definition of hearsay.
"to an eyewitness" should be "not an eyewitness"
Co-conspirator
If Av has something -- and surely he must -- they need to be drawing lots to see who has to be the one to pull the plug.
I read Avenatti's letter as alleging that Judge was a gang rapist, but not saying that he has direct reason to know that Kavanaugh himself was. Is there any chance Mark Judge is going to get arrested?
Sorry. He mom wasn't in any movies I saw.
It wasn't until I saw the article is by-lined by Mayer as well as Farrow that I thought "whoa". Because I'm a liberal.
He's saying Kavanaugh "participated" in the targeting of women with alcohol/drugs for gang rape. God knows what his evidence is, and it may be flimsy or nonexistent, but the allegations are pointed at Kavanaugh.
I guess I shouldn't be surprised how few people in that twitter thread have heard of Mayer's Iraq and torture reporting. I wasn't aware of her earlier reporting dating back to Reagan until I looked up her books in the library.
211: Dammit, I know better than that. It really is the power of celebrity. Jane Mayer.
She's a Yalie, so I suppose that helps even though she wasn't there at the same time.
Murkowski is very unlikely to switch parties, but she may well vote Kavanaugh down. The governor came out against him a couple days ago, and Alaska Native groups have been mobilizing against him for a while now.
had the experience of explaining to a non-american partner this evening the brouhaha re: "no means yes, yes means anal," that was not fun. irredeemably rancid, the entire system for perpetuating the judiciary-bar elite, across the board.
There is absolutely no reason - even no excuse - now not to adopt Ajay's approach to the Supremes. Just see it as a purely partisan institution like the House of Lords and pack it until you can abolish it.
Shouldn't Kavanaugh just withdraw at this point? Seems like it'd be a win for Rs to get a fresh start and Trump can say whatever the hell he wants since he will anyway. Saves face for everyone, basically. Find some other nut job conservative, preferably a woman and call it a day.
222: i'm Wondering whether he might get prosecuted by Maryland where there's no statute of limitations for sexual assault.
I suspect that will happen eventually, but I think that a great many of the people involved are sufficiently emotionally invested in asserting white male dominance that it won't happen until some Republican senator forces it, probably in private.
Actually, I think 221 is a bad idea.
Because if we treat the Supreme Court as House of Lords how are we to dispose of the Senate?
Because the current system prevents a single election from letting a fascist or dictator take over and limits the damage done by horrible election results. If Trump could pack the court, I think we would be done. I also think that America is going to every so often elect somebody like Trump. We always have.
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