Another problem with Kavanaugh

[sathari]

Pursuant to rydra_wong's last post, for anyone who understandably finds it uncomfortable to talk about sexual assault with Republican senators' office staffers (or indeed Republicans and conservatives generally, or anyone in general), former Senator Russ Feingold, who served on the Judiciary Committee during Kavanaugh's confirmation to his present position, has laid out the, AHEM, discrepancies between Kavanaugh's testimony then and information that's come out in the current proceedings and the extent to which that's an issue..

(I suspect I'm not alone in wanting Mr. Feingold to make the rounds of the news shows with this.)

Comments

[rydra_wong]

Oh, good idea!

More links on non-sexual-assault-related problems with Kavanaugh, for anyone who'd like more/different ammunition:

Salon: I Wrote Some of the Stolen Memos That Brett Kavanaugh Lied to the Senate About

NBC: David Brock I knew Brett Kavanaugh during his years as a Republican operative. Don't let him sit on the Supreme Court.

Crooked Media: Brett Kavanaugh’s Disqualifying Bad Faith

NYT op-ed: Confirmed: Brett Kavanaugh Can’t Be Trusted

Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law: Review Of Disability-Related Cases Involving Judge Brett Kavanaugh

Autistic Self-Advocacy Network: ASAN Letter to Senate Judiciary Committee on Doe ex. rel. Tarlow v. District of Columbia -- this is absolutely killer

[sathari]

Oooh, thanks for these! I think getting Kavanaugh for the inconsistencies in his testimonies under oath is a little bit like how Al Capone went down for tax evasion--- there are larger problems but here are the ones that have obvious documentation and are serious enough in their own right.

[rydra_wong]

Also:

Mother Jones: The Many Mysteries of Brett Kavanaugh’s Finances

[sathari]

Oh. Em. Eff. Gee. Let's see, we've got, ah, testimonial inconsistencies, financial peculiarities... why did it even have to get to the point where Sen. Feinstein had to bring up Dr. Blasey's allegation? Seriously, GOP and Federalist Society, vet your people a little.

[rydra_wong]

On the subject of vetting (re: sexual assault and harassment), I thought this was pithy:

https://twitter.com/AdamBlickstein/status/1043509558163976192

[sathari]

So. On. Point. I mean. If you wrote this as satire it'd get thrown out for being over the top. "What, the guy hired to help confirm a SCOTUS nominee accused of sexual assault is himself forced out for sexual harassment? Don't you think that's a little much?" YES, YES, GOP, WE DO.

[rydra_wong]

If you wrote this as satire it'd get thrown out for being over the top.

YUP. See also:

https://twitter.com/rtraister/status/1043133321323196416

"Good morning & welcome to another episode of I Genuinely Cannot Believe What Is Fucking Happening No One Would Ever Write An Actual Episode Of This Because It Is Too Implausibly On The Nose.

On today's show: the president weighs in and I might already be drinking."

[sathari]

Good grief, yes. Rebecca Traister is a national treasure.

[kore]

Oh, Traister's great!

[gingicat]

That’s my question too - there’s awful stuff he’s doing NOW.

[sathari]

Yes, exactly! So many more reasons NOT to confirm him than otherwise and yet they're railroading this thing along.

[kore]

Did Trump's WH ever ever run full background checks on anyone? I mean, it was partly super incompetence, but I also remember a bunch of times "this person has to be confirmed/sworn in but oh their background check isn't ready yet, do it anyway." What crooks.

[sathari]

Exactly! "Extreme vetting" is only for foreign brown people who might want to, ~oh noes~, come here and work hard and live peacefully, not, you know, for people who are actually supposed to be running the country and accessing state secrets. (Or for that matter, being appointed to the nation's highest court, because all of this with Kavanaugh's confirmation hearing just does not happen if the GOP had slowed its roll and addressed some of the more documentable if less serious issues with his nomination.)

[kore]

"Extreme vetting" is only for foreign brown people who might want to, ~oh noes~, come here and work hard and live peacefully

RIGHT
RIGHT

And also women! so untrustworthy and nasty. And if you are a foreign woman, forget about it, you are probably like that Mazie Hirono woman (OMFG, I love her, SO MUCH: https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/senator-mazie-hirono-is-the-moral-anchor-of-the-kavanaugh-hearings https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/25/us/politics/mazie-hirono-kavanaugh-senate.html)

[sathari]

I KNOW RIGHT. They are being more thorough in their background checks for random people who want to live here (and, lbr, often work in really demanding/unpleasant/grueling jobs for minimal pay and limited access if any to social services or any kind of worker protections) than they are FOR A JUSTICE OF THE SUPREME COURT WHAT IN THE NAME OF ALL THINGS REASONABLE IS THIS NONSENSE.

MAZIE HIRONO!!!! LIONESS OF THE SENATE, WE HEAR YOU ROAR! (Seriously, I remember right after McCain's death people were talking about how "the last lion of the Senate is gone" and now with Sen. Hirono, I am just like, "The lions are dead... LONG LIVE THE LIONESS!"

[kore]

MAZIE HIRONO!!!! LIONESS OF THE SENATE, WE HEAR YOU ROAR! (Seriously, I remember right after McCain's death people were talking about how "the last lion of the Senate is gone" and now with Sen. Hirono, I am just like, "The lions are dead... LONG LIVE THE LIONESS!"

YES YES THAT'S AMAZING I remember seeing her come back from cancer treatment and voting so that people could have healthcare, and crying because she was just so fantastic.

[rydra_wong]

Also, some things that don't involve attempted rape but are skin-crawlingly creepy nonetheless:

The Guardian: Amy Chua denies telling female students to be 'model-like' for Brett Kavanaugh
Slate: I Received Some of Kozinski’s Infamous Gag List Emails. I’m Baffled by Kavanaugh’s Responses to Questions About Them. (content note for horrible sexually-explicit "jokes")

[sathari]

Ugh, yeah. There are SO MANY REASONS this man does not need to sit on, arguably, any court. Let him follow Kozinski off the bench and into obscurity. And, of course, as I keep saying, with a little more vetting from the GOP up front, he would have been able to keep his nice cushy judgeship handing down conservative rulings out of the limelight forever. Come on, Federalist Society, don't you have a few people on your list who won't trip over their own tongues in their confirmation hearings AND don't have rape-y pasts? Or is that too much to ask?

[kore]

IIRC according to Rachel Maddow he was the one candidate on that list who thought that sitting Presidents should not be indicted or "distracted" by investigations. He wrote "In particular, Congress might consider a law exempting a President — while in office — from criminal prosecution and investigation, including from questioning by criminal prosecutors or defense counsel....The indictment and trial of a sitting President, moreover, would cripple the federal government, rendering it unable to function with credibility." (Our gov't seems pretty 'crippled' NOW, but ANYWAY)

BUT, same guy was also an associate counsel with special prosecutor Kenneth Starr and helped draft the report about why Clinton should be impeached! IS IT VODKA O'CLOCK YET

[sathari]

Yeah, I had gotten the impression that it was his views on the exemption of sitting Presidents from, um, legal accountability, that had gotten him shortlisted. And, yeah, the sheer gall of a Ken Starr associate counsel taking that position after the fact reeks of "we used this weapon on you and now we're going to disarm it before you can return the favor."

[kore]

the sheer gall of a Ken Starr associate counsel taking that position after the fact reeks of "we used this weapon on you and now we're going to disarm it before you can return the favor."

That is really the current Republican party all over. The whole thing with "we held open the Supreme Court seat for over a year and were prepared to do it for Hillary's entire term....NO, WE MUST VOTE ON THIS DUDE BY FRIDAY!" is just....idefk, it would be amazing in its craven horribleness if six equally horribly craven things hadn't happened before breakfast.

[sathari]

Yes, exactly! And it's not just with the Supreme Court seat, it's their attitude toward immigration as well--- Stephen Miller's uncle wrote an op-ed for Politico awhile back making the point that their family would not have been eligible to immigrate to the US under the guidelines his [insert pejorative of your choice here] nephew is pushing. (And for that matter their attitude toward reproductive freedom vs. their attitude toward social services for people once they're born, to say nothing of maternal health care... I canNOT with this.)

[kore]

Yeah, didn't Stephen Miller's RABBI publicly shame him about his horrible xenophobic racist views? Not that Miller probably cared, but omg, what a moment.

Yeah, they don't really care about "babies" or even children (especially brown ones)or mothers (especially brown ones), it's all about controlling the lives of half the population based on some prehistoric "religious" view of the Rights of Man, and if women ever start to try to declare our autonomy somehow it's this huge Threat. I mean, the news media is going on and on about "poor white men, they feel so threatened by their great losses!" and I'm like yeah but what are they losing? Whose backs was it built on? arrrrrrrrrgh.

[sathari]

eah, didn't Stephen Miller's RABBI publicly shame him about his horrible xenophobic racist views?

Yes, yes, THAT HAPPENED. ARRRRRgh.

the news media is going on and on about "poor white men, they feel so threatened by their great losses!" and I'm like yeah but what are they losing? Whose backs was it built on? arrrrrrrrrgh.

This. THIIIIIIIIIIS. They are losing the "right" to take up all the oxygen in every room they are in and make literally everyone else take them (and all too often their damn genitals) into account all the time everywhere and calculate around them like an obstacle course and think about them ALL THE DAMN TIME while they are annoyed and affronted if they are ever made to notice any of the rest of us at all ever. Oh, noes, they might actually have to care about the feelings of people not them to even a fraction of the extent that all of the rest of us have to think about them all the time! Here, I've got an entire symphonic orchestra in miniature playing the saddest of dirges just for them.

[rydra_wong]

And, yeah, the sheer gall of a Ken Starr associate counsel taking that position after the fact reeks of "we used this weapon on you and now we're going to disarm it before you can return the favor."

With bonus points for his views on US v. Nixon. So he's maintaining that Nixon and Trump should be exempt from investigation and accountability, Bill Clinton not. It's a double switch-back!

[kore]

ARGH IT'S LIKE HE GIVES HYPOCRISY A BAD NAME.

[sathari]

... yeah, that is... SPECIAL. Republicans get one set of rules for their conduct, everyone else gets another crueler one. Never mind the whole "created equal and endowed... with certain inalienable rights" business in one of the US's founding documents.

[rydra_wong]

IIRC according to Rachel Maddow he was the one candidate on that list who thought that sitting Presidents should not be indicted or "distracted" by investigations

OMG, what an AMAZING COINCIDENCE.

(I knew that was his view, not that he was the only one on the list to think that.)

The indictment and trial of a sitting President, moreover, would cripple the federal government, rendering it unable to function with credibility."

I saw an interesting argument that if the indictment and trial of a sitting President is deemed to make them incapable of discharging "the powers and duties of the office", then it would be an entirely legit use of the 25th Amendment to make the VP acting president for the duration of the trial.

In which case, indicting a president is not a problem (relative to having a criminal but unindicted president in office, anyway, especially if they're named as an unindicted co-conspirator).

[sathari]

That use of the 25th Amendment is a GREAT idea! I've actually thought that if Melania really wants to be a hero to her adoptive nation, she'd initiate divorce proceedings--- which by the same logic as "a sitting President can't be indicted because it would detract from his duties" would pretty much require that he take the 25th, as it were (since unlike with a criminal proceeding I don't think there's any legal justification for forcing someone to stay married to someone else just because the someone else is the President) (not that this bunch wouldn't revel in that abrogation of a woman's autonomy if they could pull it off).

[kore]

OMG, what an AMAZING COINCIDENCE.

I KNOW RIGHT, WHAT A COINCIDENCE A GEM HAS THAT VIEW (Trump actually repeatedly called him a "gem," I was nearly sick)

if the indictment and trial of a sitting President is deemed to make them incapable of discharging "the powers and duties of the office", then it would be an entirely legit use of the 25th Amendment to make the VP acting president for the duration of the trial.

Oh that's good! Would deal with both the "nobody should be above the law" and "but he still needs to run the country" aspects. Of course then we'd be stuck in Mike Pence's Handmaid's Tale LARP having burial services for our used tampons, but hey.

-- Although following your idea that Pence has to resign like Agnew did before the impeachment trigger can be pulled, maybe Pence will be brought down by associations with Manafort -- didn't Manafort PICK him? And Pence was not out of the loop for those convos about "we have dirt on Hillary," either.

[sathari]

maybe Pence will be brought down by associations with Manafort -- didn't Manafort PICK him?

Yes, yes, indeed, Pence is fruit of Manafort's poisoned tree--- it appears that Trump got held over in Indiana for specious reasons during which layover Manafort arranged for quality time between Pence and Trump. (Here's TPM on the subject: https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/do-we-remember-that-manafort-pick-pence) (Yes, I could do a text link, but I'm starting to get into the habit of posting actual visible URLs so that people can see the source easily and decide if they find it trustworthy, and why yes I do hate bit.ly links, whyever do you ask? ;) )

Also, "Handmaid's Tale LARP" is ON THE NOSE.

[rydra_wong]

didn't Manafort PICK him

Yessssss.

Although following your idea that Pence has to resign like Agnew did before the impeachment trigger can be pulled,

Well, they've displayed heroic commitment to the details in other respects! Maybe Pence is the lone person not on board with the Watergate speedrun attempt, but I have to say I'll be disappointed if he doesn't try to get into the spirit of the thing.

[kore]

"But I don't want to be Spiro Agnew!"

[rydra_wong]

"Well someone has to be Spiro Agnew!"