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Activist Judges!

“Never Again, Baby” (Open Thread)

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Those familiar with abuser behavior will recognize where we are in the cycle with Brett Kavanaugh, who wrote an op-ed in the WSJ reassuring us that there will never be a repeat of last week’s unpleasantness:

I was very emotional last Thursday, more so than I have ever been. I might have been too emotional at times. I know that my tone was sharp, and I said a few things I should not have said.

Josh Marshall wonders if the op-ed is a sign that the GOP doesn’t have all the votes lined up after all. I’ve made my calls, written emails etc., and will continue to do so, but I’ve resigned myself to seeing two confirmed misogynists staring back at me when I see photos of the United States Supreme Court.

The op-ed is just the candy-and-flowers stage of the abuse cycle, and here’s the “never again, baby” paragraph:

Going forward, you can count on me to be the same kind of judge and person I have been for my entire 28-year legal career: hardworking, even-keeled, open-minded, independent and dedicated to the Constitution and the public good.

If we just give him what he wants — what he’s entitled to — he’ll stop hitting us. He promised.

Open thread.

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Your Daily Reminder That Nothing Is Going to Stop Kavanaugh From Being Confirmed

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They don’t care.

All they care about is achieving their political goals. If it comes down to a 50-50 vote Pence will March in and tip the vote to Kavanaugh’s favor and won’t even flinch. And they’ll spend the next twenty years claiming Democrats were the ones at fault and that of course he is a nonpartisan judge and oh it’s just a coincidence he overturned Roe even though Collins was convinced he respected precedent.

They are ruthless, shameless, and don’t give a fuck, and that’s why they always win. Christ, they’ll have 2-3 more judges on the court before the asshole berniebro’s on your timeline shut up about Hillary’s fucking emails.

I wish I had something positive to say, but you know I am right.

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Repub Venality Open Thread: Lindsay Graham Is Giving His Voters What They Want

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It may be a tell, but it ain’t no mystery. Graham’s seat comes up again in 2020, in South “Too small for a republic, too big for an insane asylum” Carolina. You don’t need to postulate Russian kompromat or other mysterious Oval-Office-Occupancy blackmail threats to explain his behavior; Senator Graham knows what his voters want, and he’s prepared to give it to them. THA SAKERD SUTHRUN TRADITIONS may be changing… but the people who donate to Graham’s campaign and who pull the lever by his name in the voting booth are, defiantly, *not*.
 
So he’s going all out on Kavanaugh. Last night, per Rolling Stone:

As America continues to vet the sexual assault allegations against Brett Kavanaugh, we are handed competing narratives. One thing, however, is clear: Lindsey Graham has jumped the shark. On Monday night, the senator from South Carolina sat down with Sean Hannity to discuss his feverish obsession with forcing Kavanaugh onto the Supreme Court, sexual allegations be damned. So laser-focused is Graham that he thinks President Trump should re-nominate Kavanaugh for the position should the Senate vote against him after the FBI concludes its investigation at the end of this week.

“I would appeal the verdict of the Senate to the ballot box,” Graham said. “This good man should not be destroyed. If you legitimize this process by one vote short, woe be unto the next person. I’d hate to be the next person nominated. I would feel horrible that we destroyed Kavanaugh. I’d renominate him and I’d take this case to the American people. I’d ask voters in Indiana and Missouri and North Dakota and other places where Trump won, saying who he would nominate if he got to be president, and see if the voters would want to appeal the verdict of their senator.”…

That wasn’t all. Graham also veered into “enemy of the people” territory by pointing a finger at NBC, whom he accused of working with the Democrats to derail Kavanaugh’s nomination. “They’ve been a co-conspirator in the destruction of Kavanaugh from my point of view,” he said, going on to suggest they wouldn’t report on sexual assault allegations if they were made against a Democrat…

Emma Dumain, at McClatchey, “Graham’s defense of Kavanaugh has conservatives applauding. How long will that last?”

…[D]uring a speech that could become his campaign ad two years from now, the South Carolina Republican on Thursday delivered a scathing takedown of Democrats and full-throated defense of Brett Kavanaugh, the nominee to be a Supreme Court Justice accused of sexual assault.

By Friday morning, Graham had cemented himself as the most public face of the Republican Senate’s support for the embattled federal judge — a role that has endeared him so greatly to the conservatives he needs to fend off primary challengers.

But Graham knows how such love is fleeting: Conservatives could turn on him at any moment…
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Kavanaught Open Thread: Red Red Wine, Rich White Whine

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The Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute June 11, 1988 at Wembley Stadium

 


From the Bloomberg article:

… Kavanaugh first cursed at the man. After the man responded in kind, Kavanaugh threw a beer in his face, said Charles Ludington, a former Yale basketball player who’s now a history professor at North Carolina State University. The act precipitated a brawl that drew in their other friend — Yale basketball star and future NBA player Chris Dudley — and eventually prompted a call to police.

Kavanaugh was frequently “belligerent and aggressive” after drinking and had lied to senators about his experience with alcohol, Ludington said in a statement released to the news media Sunday. The barroom fisticuffs were the most searing example of Kavanaugh’s behavior he remembers, Ludington said in an interview with Bloomberg News, where he expanded on his statement for the first time…

The White House had no immediate comment when asked about Ludington’s account, instead referring a reporter to statements issued earlier by Dudley and another classmate attesting to Kavanaugh’s character…

President Donald Trump said Kavanaugh’s testimony last week showed that his second Supreme Court nominee had “a little bit of difficulty” with alcohol when he was younger.

“I was surprised at how vocal he was about the fact that he likes beer and he’s had a little bit of difficulty, I mean, he talked about things that happened when he drank,” Trump during a Rose Garden press conference Monday….

Further detail at the link.

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Brett And Bart’s Excellent Bartime Adventures

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Things are not looking good for Supreme Court Justice Stan Gable:

As an undergraduate student at Yale, Brett M. Kavanaugh was involved in an altercation at a local bar during which he was accused of throwing ice on another patron, according to a police report.

The incident, which occurred in September 1985 during Mr. Kavanaugh’s junior year, resulted in Mr. Kavanaugh and four other men being questioned by the New Haven Police Department. Mr. Kavanaugh was not arrested, but the police report stated that a 21-year-old man accused Mr. Kavanaugh of throwing ice on him “for some unknown reason.”

A witness to the fight said that Chris Dudley, a Yale basketball player who was friends with Mr. Kavanaugh, then hit the man in the ear with a glass, according to the police report, which was obtained by The New York Times.

The report said that the victim, Dom Cozzolino, “was bleeding from the right ear” and was later treated at a local hospital. A detective was notified of the incident at 1:20 a.m.

Yeah it’s super hard to believe a beer swilling football player who gets into bar fights might have attempted to rape someone.

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Garbage President, Garbage Congress, Garbage Court, Garbage Country

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Here’s Trump saying he has “compromising” information on an “aggressive” Democratic senator in response to a question about Kavanaugh’s travails:

It’s hard to overstate just how sleazy and gross this is. I mean, I’ve been following politics closely for a couple of decades now, so I’ve seen some tawdry-ass shit. But Trump takes it to new depths.

So, this is how Supreme Court picks happen now — a belligerent, hyper-partisan president picks a kindred spirit for the court, and if that person doesn’t sail through the nomination process, both the president and the nominee issue threats of vengeance like wanna-be mob bosses.

Talk about the degradation of institutions! It’s honestly hard to see how we return to any sense of “normal” after this shit-show. The SCOTUS never was the apolitical temple of legal scholarship we were sold in grade school. Bush vs. Gore exploded that myth thoroughly for me, to the extent I ever believed it, and Citizens United atomized the debris.

But now they’re on the cusp of seating a sneering partisan hack, who was bellowing “what comes around goes around” last week while telling blatant lies. And his oafish benefactor is muttering threats to the body charged with providing advice and consent. I guess that qualifies as a new low. It feels like time is running out to turn this thing around.

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Excellent Read: “Kavanaugh & the Blackout Theory”

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First, some comforting news — everyone can read Paul Bronks’ twitter feed again!


 
I guess Saturday night is either the worst or the best time to post these links. The Washington Post has an article (from an ex-Yale prof!) warning “Many teens drink. Rich ones like Kavanaugh are more likely to abuse alcohol. Affluence is a risk factor for dangerous behavior”.

In the NYTimes, Sarah Hepola:

… One of the trickiest things about blackouts is that you don’t necessarily know you’re having one. I wrote a memoir, so centered around the slips of memory caused by heavy drinking that it is actually called “Blackout,” and in the years since its 2015 release, I’ve heard from thousands of people who experienced them. No small number of those notes contain some version of this: “For years, I was having blackouts without knowing what they were.” Blackouts are like a philosophical riddle inside a legal conundrum: If you can’t remember a thing, how do you know it happened?…

There are two kinds of blackouts. The more common is fragmentary, where slivers of the night are missing. The more extreme version is “en bloc,” where several hours can be wiped from the memory drive. Fragmentary blackouts start at a blood alcohol concentration of about 0.2, though they’ve been found at lower levels; everyone’s brain is different. En bloc blackouts happen closer to 0.3, and it’s worth noting that at 0.35, it is estimated that about half of drinkers will die, so blackout drinkers are getting up there.

A common bonding experience in drinking circles is “piecing the night together”— friends sitting around the next day, laughing as they scroll through text messages and camera rolls, trying to fill in the gaps in one another’s memories. Some of the missing dots are easy to connect: Oh, that’s right, we went to the bar! Others might be confounding: Wait, we went to a BAR?

“Piecing things together” is a phrase that jumped out at me when I read Judge Kavanaugh’s 2014 speech to the Yale Law School Federalist Society, in which he describes drunken heroics as a routine part of campus life; Senator Richard Blumenthal also leapt on this at the hearing, although Judge Kavanaugh deflected the inquiry, as he did every question about any possible dark side to his consumption…
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Late Night Open Thread: Date Night!

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Have a nice dinner out…

 
… and maybe take in a movie!

 
Pick your subjects carefully, though…

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For the Record: Brett Kavanaugh Is *NOT* A Good Man

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I have my doubts about his skill as a lawyer, and Murphy the Trickster God knows how much harm he’s already done on the bench, if Thursday’s performance was a fair sample. But there’s no doubt whatsofeckingever that he’s a loyal little Repub partisan, and that might be enough at this moment in time.

People of varying political views are talking about an “1850s moment“. That’s when the Republican Party was founded, explicitly to fight the grossest civil injustice of the day; perhaps there is some narrative arc demanding that today’s debased GOP die fighting to defend the worst current crimes against the Constitution.


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Bart O’Kavanaugh is Exactly Who I Said He Was

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I told you who he was the other day. I know guys like him. I’ve dealt with guys like him. I wrote with guys like him when I wrote at Red State. He’s all that and an angry, bad drunk. He shouldn’t be on any court.

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Open Thread: This Is Absolutely One of the Worst Timelines

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“Better truth-seeking”, sigh…


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Repub Horrorshow Open Thread: A Clown Car Full of Pennywises

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The entire Republican party has devolved into an authoritarian cult where aging white men vow to destroy the world to protect the purity of their essence. And now everybody within earshot of the national news knows it!

Mr. Charles P. Pierce, “I am living in the middle of a pornographic Allen Drury novel—Advise And Lack Of Consent“:

…Anybody who tells you that they know what happens next is lying. So far, El Caudillo Del Mar-A-Lago is making brave noises. Senator Dianne Feinstein wants all hearings into the nomination postponed until an FBI investigation into this mess is concluded but, at the moment, there’s no stomach for what an FBI investigation might reveal. Senator Mitch McConnell, who warned the White House that Kavanaugh would be a tough sell, knew about the Ramirez allegations a week ago, so it is fair to assume that, whatever else may be out there, he already knows it, and yet he told the Values Voters Summit last week that he was going to “plow on through” with the nomination, which is a very unfortunate metaphor in this context. In addition, McConnell’s response to the news that the latest allegations were going to come up was to try and put the nomination into hyperdrive. However, McConnell is also pragmatist enough to know when to cut bait. If the Republicans decide to pull this nomination, it has to happen early in the week. Waiting until Wednesday—or, worse, until Thursday, when Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford are scheduled to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee—is completely untenable…

Fox News reporter:


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Open Thread: Really Big & Infinitely Stupid!

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… In public, Trump continues to voice support for his embattled Supreme Court nominee, telling reporters at the United Nations earlier this morning that he stands with Kavanaugh “all the way.” But in private, Trump is growing increasingly frustrated by being mired in a deteriorating political situation beyond his control. On Monday morning, a Republican briefed on Trump’s thinking said the president has been considering pulling Kavanaugh’s nomination.

According to the source, Trump allies are imploring him to cut Kavanaugh loose for the sake of saving Republicans’ electoral chances in the midterms. The argument these advisers are making is that if Kavanaugh’s nomination fails, demoralized Republicans will stay home in November, and Democrats will take the House and the Senate and initiate impeachment proceedings. The end result: Trump will be removed from office. “The stakes are that high,” the source said. Another Republican adviser told me: “Trump is very worried now, and is finally waking up that it’s the end of his presidency if he loses the Senate.” Trump’s outside allies are advising him to nominate Amy Coney Barrett and fast-track her confirmation before the midterms. “Some in the White House think you can only appoint a woman now,” a former administration official told me. An outside adviser added: “Democrats won’t be able to pivot fast enough to attack her, since she’s a woman.”…

As Kavanaugh’s poll numbers plummet, Trump is telling people in private that he was never a fan of Kavanaugh’s selection, sources said. According to two people who’ve spoken with Trump recently, Trump complained that establishment Republicans foisted Kavanaugh on him, because they reasoned Kavanaugh would unite the party in November. According to one former West Wing official, Trump’s first choice was Judge Thomas Hardiman, who served on the federal bench alongside Trump’s sister Maryanne Trump Barry.

Trump is keeping his distance from the nominee. A White House official said he hasn’t spoken with Kavanaugh in recent days. “This is Brett Kavanaugh’s fight,” the White House official said.

He likes SCOTUS nominees who don’t get captured, okay?


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Christine Blasey Ford Will Testify

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She called their bluff. Via The Post:

The Senate Judiciary Committee and lawyers for Ford have been in negotiations for days about whether she would appear before the panel. Ford has accused Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her in the 1980s when both were teenagers.

Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), who chairs the Judiciary Committee, had given Ford until 2:30 p.m. to respond to a revised offer to testify at a Wednesday hearing. Her lawyers asked the committee for a call later Saturday to work out other specifics.

This is a developing story. It will be updated.

From what I’ve read, I get the impression Dr. Blasey and her attorney are sharp. For one thing, they’re insisting that the senators question Dr. Blasey directly rather than bring in counsel to question her. In other words, sanctimonious old farts like Grassley and Hatch will be grilling the professor rather than imported female Republican operatives to soften the optics.

The Post also has an interesting piece on Christine Blasey Ford’s escape from the DC suburbs to California. An excerpt:

When Donald Trump won his upset presidential victory in 2016, Christine Blasey Ford’s thoughts quickly turned to a name most Americans had never heard of but one that had unsettled her for years: Brett M. Kavanaugh.

Kavanaugh — a judge on the prestigious U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia — was among those mentioned as a possible replacement for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in 2016. When Trump nominated Neil M. Gorsuch, Ford was relieved but still uneasy.

Then Justice Anthony M. Kennedy announced his retirement and Ford, 51, began fretting again.

“Her mind-set was, ‘I’ve got this terrible secret. . . .What am I going to do with this secret?’ ” her husband, Russell Ford, 56, recalled…

“She was like, ‘I can’t deal with this. If he becomes the nominee, then I’m moving to another country. I cannot live in this country if he’s in the Supreme Court,’ ” her husband said. “She wanted out.”

She came forward instead, which took a ton of courage. I have no idea if her testimony will derail the nomination. I suspect not since the Republicans who control congress are spineless, evil or both. But I’m grateful to Christine Blasey Ford anyway. She’s a patriot.

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Late Night Horrorshow Open Thread: Trump’s Real Base Is Furious & Thrashing

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Forget the carefully crafted folktales about humble salt-of-the-earth workers — the True Trump Believers are American Poujadists, middle-class small business owners and their spokespersons, the ‘populists’ whose only political interest is in keeping their taxes low and all people-not-them ‘in their place’. People like Ross Doubthat, for example. Or Erick Erickson, Voice of the GOP Gated Community, who’s been losing his meagre moiety of marbles on twitter all week…


 
‘Serious’ GOP professional looks for a pony in that shitpile…


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