Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped?

[barmar]

What bothered me most about the Kavanaugh phase of the hearing was how many times he pointed out that the "witnesses" refuted Ford's accusation. They said they didn't remember the incident. And as an experienced jurist, Kavanaugh should know that absence of evidence does not equal evidence of absence. Just because they don't remember it, it doesn't mean it didn't happen. Ford remembers it because it happened to her and it was traumatic. Bystanders are less likely to remember something like this decades later.

[barmar]

We're looking into this.

Well, we don't know for sure what happened.

 

There are logs showing that Chas deleted something. Chas says he only deleted his own post, and he doesn't have permission to delete other users' posts. We suspect a forum bug that deleted other messages around his.

 

Chas is a Yellow, and that group had the permission to do hard-deletes (deleting a message permanently, rather than just marking it invisible to regular users). I've changed the group permissions so they can now only do soft deletes, like regular members.

[Al_U_Card]

Well, we don't know for sure what happened.

 

There are logs showing that Chas deleted something. Chas says he only deleted his own post, and he doesn't have permission to delete other users' posts. We suspect a forum bug that deleted other messages around his.

 

Chas is a Yellow, and that group had the permission to do hard-deletes (deleting a message permanently, rather than just marking it invisible to regular users). I've changed the group permissions so they can now only do soft deletes, like regular members.

Prolly a Russian hack... when they are not busy subverting elections they have to keep busy.

[kenberg]

Well, we don't know for sure what happened.

 

There are logs showing that Chas deleted something. Chas says he only deleted his own post, and he doesn't have permission to delete other users' posts. We suspect a forum bug that deleted other messages around his.

 

Chas is a Yellow, and that group had the permission to do hard-deletes (deleting a message permanently, rather than just marking it invisible to regular users). I've changed the group permissions so they can now only do soft deletes, like regular members.

 

Wll the world continue to spin on its axis despite my deleted post? I have often wondered about this.

 

All is forgiven.

 

 

 

[Al_U_Card]

Wll the world continue to spin on its axis despite my deleted post? I have often wondered about this.

 

All is forgiven.

I would expect that a yellow would regret the statement regarding the author of the post quoted and that was definitely not you, Ken.

[kenberg]

I would expect that a yellow would regret the statement regarding the author of the post quoted and that was definitely not you, Ken.

Oh, I know. I was simply musing that the world is not waiting for instructions from me on what to do next.

 

But of course maybe they are. So:

 

I have not yet heard anyone suggest a check that seems obvious to me: Kavanaugh mentioned that the July 1 gathering for skis would be at the house of a certain friend. Ford mentioned that the assault occurred ar a house near Connecticut and East-West Highway (It's been a long time since EW Hwy had any resemblance to a highway but never mind that detail). Has anyone looked up where this Kavanaugh friend lived in 1982 (the house of his parents I gather) to see if it is near Connecticut and EW Highway? i am not claiming this leads to a QED either way, but it does seem like something to look at.

 

If the FBI needs any other advice on how to do their job they should contact me before tomorrow morning else they will have to wait until I get back from Oregon. I will be investigating the new granddaughter.

[Al_U_Card]

Oh, I know. I was simply musing that the world is not waiting for instructions from me on what to do next.

 

But of course maybe they are. So:

 

I have not yet heard anyone suggest a check that seems obvious to me: Kavanaugh mentioned that the July 1 gathering for skis would be at the house of a certain friend. Ford mentioned that the assault occurred ar a house near Connecticut and East-West Highway (It's been a long time since EW Hwy had any resemblance to a highway but never mind that detail). Has anyone looked up where this Kavanaugh friend lived in 1982 (the house of his parents I gather) to see if it is near Connecticut and EW Highway? i am not claiming this leads to a QED either way, but it does seem like something to look at.

 

If the FBI needs any other advice on how to do their job they should contact me before tomorrow morning else they will have to wait until I get back from Oregon. I will be investigating the new granddaughter.

Your reality depends 100% on your perspective. Do you really want to disqualify people based on their teens? How about someone that learned from their experiences and changed (improved) their comportment? Totalitarianism means one ideology, excluding all others so somewhat opposite to the constitution, no? Presumption of innocence aside, even specific long after-the-fact accusations smack of an agenda that exceeds common sense. Which approach holds more promise for diversity and improvement? The search for perfection depends on criteria and those criteria are not only subjective, they are variable and malleable.

[johnu]

Your reality depends 100% on your perspective. Do you really want to disqualify people based on their teens? How about someone that learned from their experiences and changed (improved) their comportment?

 

I would expect prospective Supreme Court nominees to not perjure themselves before the Senate and the American public. I know, that's a ridiculously low barrier, but maybe Bart O was drunk because he seems to have stumbled over that barrier and landed on his face.

 

Obviously being an attempted rapist as a teen isn't a disqualifying offense for probably 48 out of 51 of the Senate Republicans. If it was a problem for them, they would have had no problem with requesting an FBI investigation before the latest hearings. As far as learning from their experience, nothing in the hearings suggest that Bart has learned anything from his high school days except to curtail or hide his drinking.

 

If the Senate Republicans had called for an investigation when the news had first broken, the FBI investigation would have been already completed before Thursday's hearings.

[hrothgar]

Your reality depends 100% on your perspective. Do you really want to disqualify people based on their teens? How about someone that learned from their experiences and changed (improved) their comportment? Totalitarianism means one ideology, excluding all others so somewhat opposite to the constitution, no? Presumption of innocence aside, even specific long after-the-fact accusations smack of an agenda that exceeds common sense. Which approach holds more promise for diversity and improvement? The search for perfection depends on criteria and those criteria are not only subjective, they are variable and malleable.

 

 

If Kavanaugh acknowledged committing serious felonies during high school and his college years and asked for forgiveness then there would be a reasonable foundation to discuss whether he might have made amends. However, Kavanaugh decided to respond with anger, entitlement, and a series of half truths.

 

The only thing that he has learned from this is deny, deny, deny.

 

Moreover, during his attempted defense, Kavanugh exhibited enough clear prejudice and temperamental instability to render him unfit for the court regardless of whether the rape allegations are true.

[hrothgar]

Personally, I hope that the FBI investigation includes (What appears to be) a number of acts of perjury during Kavanaugh's testimony.

 

I have a lot of friends how came of age in various suburbs of DC at the same time as Kavanugh

 

"The Devil's Triangle" is not a quarters variant...

"Boofing" is not an expression for flatulence...

 

And there is no way that a weak stomache is responsible for winning a ralphing contest

 

Food poisoning, sure

Eating to distress, maybe

 

However, with one notable exception, all the nights that I have been involved in epic amount of barfing have involved way too much beer and tequila.

[kenberg]

If Kavanaugh acknowledged committing serious felonies during high school and his college years and asked for forgiveness then there would be a reasonable foundation to discuss whether he might have made amends. However, Kavanaugh decided to respond with anger, entitlement, and a series of half truths.

 

The only thing that he has learned from this is deny, deny, deny.

 

Moreover, during his attempted defense, Kavanugh exhibited enough clear prejudice and temperamental instability to render him unfit for the court regardless of whether the rape allegations are true.

 

Brief, I have a plane tp catch.

I don't always agree with you Richard but here I very much do, including the last sentence. I was watchiong this thinking "This is the guy we are going to put on the Supreme Court?".

 

I very much wish this were not ending this way. Ido not wish for a full examination of my life, although bt far my bigest regrets are my two fooled marriages, perfectly legal but seriously not good..Few people would come out with impugnt y from a detailed examination of their entire lives. But at 17 I did know enough to not throw a girl down on a bed and try to pull her clothes off while she was trying to yell for help and while my buddy was watching and laughing.. Some mistakes are ,pre in the past than others. Clearly this is not just something in the past for Dr. Ford. O have no difficulty understanding that.

 

[hrothgar]

Brief, I have a plane tp catch.

 

Enjoy the trip!

[Al_U_Card]

I got the impression that Cavanaugh was exasperated, perhaps if he had been promised a free ride to the nomination and based on his bona fides and his "loyalty", the entitlement attitude was showing.Just a vibe but just where is the Scotus headed in the next decade or so depending on expected exits and entries? More left or just to the centre?

[y66]

Guest post From Roger Cohen at NYT:

 

What America saw before the Senate Judiciary Committee was an injudicious man, an angry brat veering from fury to sniveling sobs, a judge so bereft of composure and proportion that it was difficult not to squirm. Brett Kavanaugh actually got teary over keeping a calendar because that’s what his dad did. His performance was right out of Norman Rockwell with a touch of “Mad Men.”

 

This is what you get from the unexamined life, a product of white male privilege so unadulterated that, until a couple of weeks ago, Kavanaugh never had to ask himself what might have lurked, and may still linger, behind the football, the basketball, the lifting weights, the workouts with a great high-school quarterback, the pro-golf tournaments with Dad, the rah-rah Renate-ribbing yearbook, the Yale fraternity, and the professed sexual abstinence until “many years” after high school.

 

“Sometimes I had too many beers,” Kavanaugh said. “In some crowds, I was probably a little outwardly shy about my inexperience; tried to hide that,” Kavanaugh also said. Christine Blasey Ford, his steady accuser, made a persuasive case that, in the summer of 1982, she paid the price for the teenage aggression and insecurity linking those two avowals.

 

Kavanaugh swears under oath that he never “sexually assaulted anyone.” To entertain even the possibility of it would be to dismantle the entire edifice of his holier-than-thou life. He’s the all-American jock, the model only child. For God’s sake, he contingently, and a little presumptuously, hired four female law clerks to work with him at the Supreme Court, the first (prospective) justice to have “a group of all-women law clerks.”

 

The words that resonate for me are the very words Kavanaugh used about his mother, Martha, the Maryland prosecutor and trial judge, whose trademark line was: “Use your common sense. What rings true? What rings false?”

 

For my common sense, Mr. Kavanaugh “doth protest too much, methinks.” Christine Blasey Ford rang true. I’ll take her “100 percent” over his. She felt no need to yell. Nor did she hide behind a shield of repetition. She did not succumb to pathos (“I may never be able to coach again”). She spoke with a deliberation, balance and humanity missing in the judge.

 

This was a job interview, not a criminal trial. The accusation against Kavanaugh — involving an incident 36 years ago in an undetermined location, uncorroborated by those present — would not currently stand up in a court of law. As a juror, with the available evidence, I could not say “beyond a reasonable doubt” that he committed this assault. (This, of course, is precisely the evidence that the F.B.I. investigation that Kavanaugh evaded backing, and that Senator Jeff Flake has now decisively endorsed, might produce.)

 

But Kavanaugh’s bleating about due process and presumption of innocence — his rage at a supposed “national disgrace” — misses the point. He failed the job interview. Who would want this spoiled man pieced together on a foundation of repressed anger and circumscribed privilege — this man who quite plausibly was the teenage drunk near-suffocating Christine Blasey Ford as he ground his body against hers, this man who may now have perjured himself — occupying a place for life on the highest court in the land?

 

I began this column by describing what America saw on Thursday. But it’s not what all of America saw. Millions of Americans, including President Trump and Senator Lindsey Graham, saw something else: a despicable Democratic Party conspiracy against an innocent and upstanding middle-aged judge, the latest victim, along with his family, of gender politics, the #MeToo revolution, and an ascendant culture dictating that whatever women say must be true and whatever men say must be false.

 

The hearings were a Rorschach test for America’s tribes. They saw what they wanted to see. For Kavanaugh’s supporters, his rage was as good a primal scream for threatened white male privilege as may be imagined. No wonder Trump loved it.

 

A tribal confrontation is not conducive to the establishment of truth. That’s why the F.B.I. investigation is important. Despite Trump’s best efforts to trivialize the everyday lie, facts matter.

 

Addressing the Democrats on the committee, Graham fumed: “You want this seat? I hope you never get it.” But of course, as Democrats will never forget, Republicans stole a seat. Remember Merrick Garland? There is something so hypocritical in Republican outrage that it would be comical if the issue were not so grave.

 

It’s hard to argue that America’s tribal democracy is not dysfunctional these days, but still the United States is a democracy. Flake’s 11th-hour decision to demand a week’s delay before a full Senate vote to allow the F.B.I. investigation — a decision driven by conscience over Republican Party allegiance — is a small act of honor in a tawdry time. It can take a while for democracies to zigzag toward the truth.

 

Kavanaugh has revealed himself to be a man without measure, capable of frenzy, full of conspiratorial venom against Democrats. Justice would not be served by his presence on the Supreme Court.

Kavanaugh's performance Thursday was as phony as anything I've ever seen. The thought of a guy like that on the Supreme Court makes me puke.

[barmar]

I got the impression that Cavanaugh was exasperated, perhaps if he had been promised a free ride to the nomination and based on his bona fides and his "loyalty", the entitlement attitude was showing.Just a vibe but just where is the Scotus headed in the next decade or so depending on expected exits and entries? More left or just to the centre?

I'm sure he was exasperated, he had a right to be. But this was definitely more than that.

 

But don't you think someone who claims to be qualified to be a Supreme Court Justice should have been able to temper himself in this situation? It's not like this was a surprise, he'd known for a week that this hearing was going to happen, and very little that took place was really surprising. He's an experienced lawyer and judge, he knows what goes on in testimony. Losing your cool while being questioned is the last thing you should do.

 

People have asked if someone should be scarred for life because of a youthful indiscretion. Maybe if that were the only black mark we could let it go (Clarence Thomas is precedent). But there are so many other issues. First, there are other accusations. Second, he's lied in the Senate. Third, he has a well known political agenda (although since it aligns with the GOP majority, they're willing to let that go). Fourth, his temperament during this last episode seems to show his true colors.

 

This is a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court. Standards should be as high as possible.

[Winstonm]

Just returned last night from a trip to Tuscany to find little has changed in the world of Dennison: Paul Manafort has flipped and nominee Kavanaugh has been accused of being a rapist. It's good to see stable leadership at the top.

[hrothgar]

Very disappointed to see how pro-forma the FBI investigation will be.

 

Given the restrictions on their investigation, its hard to imagine how they can turn up anything.

In particular, the fact that they can not talk to Swetnick is a travesty.

[ggwhiz]

Very disappointed to see how pro-forma the FBI investigation will be.

 

Given the restrictions on their investigation, its hard to imagine how they can turn up anything.

In particular, the fact that they can not talk to Swetnick is a travesty.

 

I believe I also saw that Swetnick has a history of filing lawsuits that puts her low on the credibility scale.

 

I am more optimistic. Surely they can find a number of people that saw him falling down drunk, especially at Yale and maybe even the guy that yelled out "Hey, Kavanaugh just stuck his penis in Debbies face".

 

His calendar and Mark Judges employment records may well pinpoint July 1st as a credible date for the attempted rape and they can find and interview any number of his frat bro's from Yale including about Swetnicks claims.

 

Let the FBI unleash a ton of resources on the other 2 allegations. I understand they are really good at this.

[Al_U_Card]

I believe I also saw that Swetnick has a history of filing lawsuits that puts her low on the credibility scale.

 

I am more optimistic. Surely they can find a number of people that saw him falling down drunk, especially at Yale and maybe even the guy that yelled out "Hey, Kavanaugh just stuck his penis in Debbies face".

 

His calendar and Mark Judges employment records may well pinpoint July 1st as a credible date for the attempted rape and they can find and interview any number of his frat bro's from Yale including about Swetnicks claims.

 

Let the FBI unleash a ton of resources on the other 2 allegations. I understand they are really good at this.

Hmmnn FBI, Federal Bureau of Instigation? Inveiglement? Incompetence? ;) With all its deep-state anti-Trumper magicians, surely they can conjure the ghost of J Edgar and come up with something .... anything?

[hrothgar]

I believe I also saw that Swetnick has a history of filing lawsuits that puts her low on the credibility scale.

 

 

Swetnick holds multiple security clearances.

Her work depends on her keeping them.

And she made a sworn deposition.

 

My take on things: She has an awful lot to lose.

I'd rate her as pretty damn reliable.

 

Luckily, there is an easy way that we can find out who is telling the truth...

[ggwhiz]

With all its deep-state anti-Trumper magicians,

 

A Jim Jones disciple

[Winstonm]

This is an interesting take on conservatism from conservative Eliot Cohen:

 

Perhaps the collapse of modern conservatism came out most clearly in Kavanaugh’s own testimony—its self-pity, its hysteria, its conjuring up of conspiracies, its vindictiveness. He and his family had no doubt suffered agonies. But if we expect steely resolve from a police officer confronting a knife-wielding assailant, or disciplined courage from a firefighter rushing into a burning house, we should expect stoic self-control and calm from a conservative judge, even if his heart is being eaten out. No one watching those proceedings could imagine that a Democrat standing before this judge’s bench in the future would get a fair hearing. This was not the conservative temperament on display. It was, rather, personalized grievance politics.

 

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/09/republican-party-conservative/571747/

 

And isn't it a delicious irony that Republicans are crying about Swetnick's history of lawsuit involvements while Dennison's penchant for using lawsuits to his advantage is considered business-savvy?

[hrothgar]

A Jim Jones disciple

 

It took me a long time to figure out Al's particular strain of stupid, however, I am pretty sure that he is a LaRouchie.

[cherdano]

Swetnick holds multiple security clearances.

Her work depends on her keeping them.

And she made a sworn deposition.

 

My take on things: She has an awful lot to lose.

I'd rate her as pretty damn reliable.

Not sure about that. Her affidavit is vague enough that it would be hard to disprove.

What really makes it (at least partially) credible is the corroboration from Judge's ex-girl friend.

[y66]

From Nathan J. Robinson's 9/29 opinion piece about Brett Kavanaugh:

 

What does it say about this country that this is the state of our discourse? That Kavanaugh even stands any chance of being made one of the most powerful figures in the American government, with control over life and liberty? That a man like this is even a judge? He went before the United States Senate and showed total contempt for his vow to tell the truth. He attempted to portray a highly esteemed doctor as a crazy person, by consistently misrepresenting the evidence. He treated the public like we were idiots, like we wouldn’t notice as he pretended he was ralphing during Beach Week from too many jalapeños, as he feigned ignorance about sex slang, as he misread his own meticulously-kept 1982 summer calendar, as he replied to questions about his drinking habits by talking about church, as he suggested there are no alcoholics at Yale, as he denied knowing who “Bart O’Kavanaugh” could possibly be based on, as he declared things refuted that weren’t actually refuted, as he claimed witnesses said things they didn’t say, as he failed to explain why nearly a dozen Yale classmates said he drank heavily, as he invented an imaginary drinking game to avoid admitting he had the mind of a sports jock in high school, as he said Ford had only accused him last week, as he responded to his roommate’s eyewitness statement with an incoherent story about furniture, as he pretended Bethesda wasn’t five miles wide, as he insisted Renate should be flattered by the ditty about how easy she was, as he declared that distinguished federal judges don’t commit sexual misconduct even though he had clerked for exactly such a judge.

 

And what does it say about us, and our political system, that he might well get away with it?