What I'm wondering is why more women haven't come forward in the wake of his confirmation.
Kind of a tell right there regarding the veracity of the alleged charges.
This is why they were out to get him:
"The conservative legal movement has long cultivated law students and young lawyers, partly to ensure a deep bench of potential judicial nominees. The Heritage Foundation, along with the Federalist Society, helped compile the lists of potential Supreme Court nominees from which President Trump chose his two appointees, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, but legal experts said the effort by Heritage to train and influence law clerks raised serious ethical questions and could undermine the duties the clerks have to the justice system and to the judges they will serve. “Law clerks are not supposed to be part of a cohort of secretly financed and trained partisans of an organization that describes itself on its own Web page as ‘the bastion of the American conservative movement,’” said Pamela S. Karlan, a law professor at Stanford. “The idea that clerks will be trained to elevate the Heritage Foundation’s views, or the views of judges hand-picked by the foundation, perverts the very idea of a clerkship.” In a brief interview Tuesday, Breanna Deutsch, a spokeswoman for Heritage, declined to answer detailed questions about the event. “It’s a private program, and that’s the way we’d like to keep it,” she said. “Word did leak out a little bit about it, which is fine, but it’s going to remain a private program.” A few hours later, Heritage deleted the references to donors, secrecy, and loyalty from the application materials it had posted on its website. Deutsch did not respond to a request for an explanation and to other questions about the program. In an e-mail, she confirmed that the program, scheduled for early February, would proceed....."
Related:
The Crucifixion of Brett Kavanaugh
When they were done they took action:
"Senators have voted on Kavanaugh. Now it’s your turn" October 07, 2018
Officially, there’s nothing left to vote on: the Senate confirmed Brett Kavanaugh for a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court on Saturday, despite highly credible sexual assault allegations leveled against him. The fight looks finished.
In reality, though, the ugliness of the last two weeks will be litigated again in the midterm elections Nov. 6. Democrats and Republicans are spinning very different narratives about what just happened in Washington, and voters will, in a sense, be asked to pick which reflect the values of Americans.
In other words, just in case the midterm election wasn’t important enough already, it’s now a referendum on Kavanaugh, his accusers, and the broader #metoo movement.
Vote accordingly.
Republicans not only confirmed Kavanaugh, but seem to believe Americans will have their back. The party has convinced itself that it’s tapping into a national unease with the #metoo movement, a fear that it has become, as they say, a witch hunt. It cannot have been an accident that the party trotted out Susan Collins, the political heir of Margaret Chase Smith, to defend Kavanaugh in her climactic speech Friday afternoon, as if to liken the allegations to McCarthyism. Republican political consultants now say they expect the Kavanaugh fight to help them in November, because it galvanized voters who feel he — and, by extension, other men — have been treated unfairly.
That’s their view. Senate Democrats ask voters to embrace a truer narrative.
The Democratic message is that survivors of sexual assault must be taken seriously and shown more respect than Christine Blasey Ford received. (Yes, Democrats have come around since Bill Clinton.) Ford made the brave decision to step forward, out of civic duty, and was met by mockery from President Trump. Meanwhile, Republicans gave more credibility to Kavanaugh, a man who has repeatedly misled Congress. The country can do better, must do better, for the sake of all survivors.
Beyond voting, citizens can get involved in competitive campaigns in swing states, whether that means opening their wallets or volunteering. In many ways, the Kavanaugh battle is just kicking into high gear. The midterms will determine whether the GOP will pay a price for the Supreme Court fiasco – or get a reward.
--more--"
Looks like the Globe has found religion.
"The left eyes more radical ways to fight Brett Kavanaugh" by Charlie Savage New York Times October 08, 2018
WASHINGTON — Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation was the fiercest battle in a partisan war over the judiciary that has been steadily intensifying since the Senate rejected Judge Robert H. Bork in 1987.
An even greater conflagration may be coming.
“This confirmation vote will not necessarily be the last word on Brett Kavanaugh serving a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court,” said Brian Fallon, executive director of the liberal group Demand Justice and the top spokesman for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Facing a Supreme Court controlled by five solidly conservative justices, liberals have already started to attack the legitimacy of the majority bloc and discussed ways to eventually undo its power without waiting for one of its members to retire or die.
Some have gone as far as proposing — if Democrats were to retake control of Congress and the White House in 2020 or after — expanding the number of justices on the court to pack it with liberals or trying to impeach, remove, and replace Kavanaugh.
Either step would be an extraordinary violation of constitutional and political norms. No justice has been removed through impeachment, and a previous attempt at court packing, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt after a conservative-dominated Supreme Court rejected important parts of his New Deal initiatives during the Great Depression, is broadly seen as having been misguided.
Either step would also face steep odds. Some Republicans would have to go along for them to work: A court-expansion bill would need the support of 60 senators to overcome a filibuster, and while a simple majority of the House could vote to impeach, removal would require two-thirds of the Senate.
Still, even the political pressure of the threat might make some of the conservative justices more cautious. While Congress rejected Roosevelt’s court-reform bill, the court changed course while lawmakers were considering it and started upholding New Deal laws — a move called “the switch in time that saved nine.”
Today, the majority five on the Supreme Court are all movement conservatives — Republican lawyers who came of age after an ideological backlash a generation ago to decades of liberal court rulings. As judges, they tend to rule more consistently for conservative outcomes than older Republican appointees, including retired Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, and just as in the early decades of the 20th century, when a conservative-dominated Supreme Court repeatedly struck down progressive economic policies including child labor and minimum-wage laws leading up to the New Deal fight, Democrats fear that the new majority will systematically crush their achievements — not just hollowing out past gains such as abortion rights, but also striking down programs they hope to enact if they regain power, such as expanding Medicare or efforts to curb climate change.
For the next few weeks, many Democratic strategists want to change the subject from the Supreme Court, hoping that Republican voters’ passions aroused by the Kavanaugh fight will fade before the midterm elections. Noting that the election is approaching, Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that talk of impeaching Kavanaugh was “premature.”
OMG!
The Globe and pre$$ have been acting as if this was going to be the catalyst to the blue wave, and now they don't even want to talk about it.
Yeah, did the way they handle the confirmation ever backfire!
“Talking about it at this point isn’t necessarily healing us and moving us forward,” he said, but Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said on “Fox News Sunday” that he intended to help House Republicans in swing districts campaign on the issue over the next month, saying their Democratic opponents should be asked whether they supported impeaching Kavanaugh and “Do you want an outcome so badly that you would basically turn the law upside down?”
Oh, he is just loving it!
Still, many liberals are quietly looking forward to reviving the fight if they win a House majority and subpoena power, rather than resigning themselves to waiting for a conservative justice to leave the court. The oldest of the five, Justice Clarence Thomas, is just 70.
Many are vowing, for example, to try to uncover more files from Kavanaugh’s time as an official in George W. Bush’s White House in hopes of finding evidence to support their accusations that he lied under oath about his actions.
“We’re going to get those documents that are shielded from view, and they will provide further proof that he lied,” Fallon said, “and these sexual assault allegations have created a wave of outrage and challenge to the court’s legitimacy that may even eclipse the impact of the lying.”
Says the Clinton guy!
Because of the Presidential Records Act, any Bush administration files that Republicans refused to seek during the confirmation hearings may remain hard for Congress to subpoena until 2021, but an eventual finding could provide a basis to try to impeach Kavanaugh.
“If a careful examination of the entire scope of his legal history — thus far withheld from the Senate — demonstrates that Mr. Kavanaugh lied under oath, the constitutionally prescribed remedy would be impeachment proceedings,” more than three dozen of the most progressive House Democrats wrote to President Trump urging his withdrawal ahead of the confirmation vote.
The idea of court packing emerged even before Trump nominated Kavanaugh. As soon as Kennedy announced his retirement in June, some liberals began calling for Democrats to prepare to expand the court by two justices when they regain power, permitting a future Democratic president and Democratic-controlled Senate to try to transform the court’s controlling faction from its five Republican appointees to six Democratic ones.
Hard to see how that happens, and just the thought should make you vote Republican.
Still, opening that door could lead Republicans to simply expand the court again when the pendulum swung back, continuing the downward spiral.
Swiftly after Kavanaugh’s confirmation Saturday, Democrats promised they would be watching closely.
“The legitimacy of the Supreme Court can justifiably be questioned,” former attorney general Eric Holder wrote on Twitter. “The court must now prove — through its work — that it is worthy of the nation’s trust.”
So says the guy who jailed and spied on reporters.
Wasn't that a violation of the First Amendment?
That was where my printed paper found the rest of the story illegitimate.
Carrie Severino, chief counsel and policy director of the conservative Judicial Crisis Network, deemed it wishful thinking that Democrats would uncover irrefutable evidence of perjury by Kavanaugh. She said it was “inconceivable” that the Senate would convict and remove him and warned that even such an effort would damage the rule of law by delegitimizing the court as an institution that stands apart from partisan politics.
“They are speaking out of anger and frustration, and I hope it is not a way most Democrats would like to go. To say, ‘We’re so angry about losing one fight that we basically destroy the entire institution in a fit of pique,’ that is not going to be helpful to anyone,” she said. “I don’t think they would like that to be the standard applied across the board; I opposed Justice Kagan’s confirmation, but I’m not trying to impeach her.”
Indeed, Roosevelt’s court-packing proposal failed to gain support even from his fellow Democrats. Roosevelt should have been more patient, letting the court evolve through elections and natural turnover, William H. Rehnquist, then the chief justice, said in a 1996 speech looking back at that era.
“Although Roosevelt lost that battle, he eventually won the war by serving three full terms as president and appointing eight of the nine members of the court,” Rehnquist said. “This simply shows that there is a wrong way and a right way to go about putting a popular imprint on the judiciary.”
Besides, they have stocked the lower courts.
Still, liberals today are increasingly questioning the legitimacy of the process by which several conservative justices won seats on the court, noted Russell Wheeler, a Brookings Institution visiting fellow who studies judicial confirmations. For example, many on the left are still seething at Senate Republicans’ refusal to give a hearing in 2016 to Judge Merrick Garland, President Barack Obama’s last nominee for a vacancy, and consider Justice Neil Gorsuch to be occupying a stolen seat.
The Republicans refused to consider Garland because Scalia was murdered to make room for him.
“The conservative majority will include four justices who were appointed by presidents who achieved office despite losing the popular vote, and added to that, the percentage of the voting population represented by Senate Republicans reflects a minority of the overall population,” Wheeler said. “And then you have the asterisk next to Justice Gorsuch’s name.”
Lee Epstein, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis who studies the judiciary, predicted that Chief Justice John Roberts, aware of the danger to the court’s legitimacy, will try to guide it into staying quiet for at least several years.
He's the new Kennedy, and one wonders what the NSA has on him after his switch on Obamacare.
“This could be a terrible moment for the court,” she said. “The Republicans aren’t going to be running government forever, and it could lead to the kind of clash that we had in 1936 with Roosevelt. That was a bad moment for the court and a bad moment for the country.”
In an essay on Vox, progressive political and policy writer Matthew Yglesias also took note of a line of “optimistic” thinking that Roberts, concerned about preserving the court’s popular legitimacy, could serve as a brake on the other four conservatives — as he did when he voted to uphold part of the Affordable Care Act in 2012, but if the five conservatives stick together and severely circumscribe a future Democratic majority’s ability to govern, he wrote, “Democrats will face some difficult questions about whether to try court-packing or other forms of exotic procedural extremism in order to secure the authority to govern.”
By doing such a thing, they ensure that they wouldn't have the authority; otherwise, they wouldn't need to do such a thing.
In that case, he said, the silver lining for liberals is that Kavanaugh was confirmed, as opposed to being withdrawn and replaced by an untarnished but ideologically similar nominee. The cloud over his presence, Yglesias predicted, will help the left’s “necessary delegitimization” of the court.
I say we delegitimize them!
--more--"
"Senators have voted on Kavanaugh. Now it’s your turn" October 07, 2018
Officially, there’s nothing left to vote on: the Senate confirmed Brett Kavanaugh for a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court on Saturday, despite highly credible sexual assault allegations leveled against him. The fight looks finished.
In reality, though, the ugliness of the last two weeks will be litigated again in the midterm elections Nov. 6. Democrats and Republicans are spinning very different narratives about what just happened in Washington, and voters will, in a sense, be asked to pick which reflect the values of Americans.
In other words, just in case the midterm election wasn’t important enough already, it’s now a referendum on Kavanaugh, his accusers, and the broader #metoo movement.
Vote accordingly.
Republicans not only confirmed Kavanaugh, but seem to believe Americans will have their back. The party has convinced itself that it’s tapping into a national unease with the #metoo movement, a fear that it has become, as they say, a witch hunt. It cannot have been an accident that the party trotted out Susan Collins, the political heir of Margaret Chase Smith, to defend Kavanaugh in her climactic speech Friday afternoon, as if to liken the allegations to McCarthyism. Republican political consultants now say they expect the Kavanaugh fight to help them in November, because it galvanized voters who feel he — and, by extension, other men — have been treated unfairly.
That’s their view. Senate Democrats ask voters to embrace a truer narrative.
The Democratic message is that survivors of sexual assault must be taken seriously and shown more respect than Christine Blasey Ford received. (Yes, Democrats have come around since Bill Clinton.) Ford made the brave decision to step forward, out of civic duty, and was met by mockery from President Trump. Meanwhile, Republicans gave more credibility to Kavanaugh, a man who has repeatedly misled Congress. The country can do better, must do better, for the sake of all survivors.
Beyond voting, citizens can get involved in competitive campaigns in swing states, whether that means opening their wallets or volunteering. In many ways, the Kavanaugh battle is just kicking into high gear. The midterms will determine whether the GOP will pay a price for the Supreme Court fiasco – or get a reward.
--more--"
Looks like the Globe has found religion.
"The left eyes more radical ways to fight Brett Kavanaugh" by Charlie Savage New York Times October 08, 2018
WASHINGTON — Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation was the fiercest battle in a partisan war over the judiciary that has been steadily intensifying since the Senate rejected Judge Robert H. Bork in 1987.
An even greater conflagration may be coming.
“This confirmation vote will not necessarily be the last word on Brett Kavanaugh serving a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court,” said Brian Fallon, executive director of the liberal group Demand Justice and the top spokesman for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Facing a Supreme Court controlled by five solidly conservative justices, liberals have already started to attack the legitimacy of the majority bloc and discussed ways to eventually undo its power without waiting for one of its members to retire or die.
Some have gone as far as proposing — if Democrats were to retake control of Congress and the White House in 2020 or after — expanding the number of justices on the court to pack it with liberals or trying to impeach, remove, and replace Kavanaugh.
Either step would be an extraordinary violation of constitutional and political norms. No justice has been removed through impeachment, and a previous attempt at court packing, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt after a conservative-dominated Supreme Court rejected important parts of his New Deal initiatives during the Great Depression, is broadly seen as having been misguided.
Either step would also face steep odds. Some Republicans would have to go along for them to work: A court-expansion bill would need the support of 60 senators to overcome a filibuster, and while a simple majority of the House could vote to impeach, removal would require two-thirds of the Senate.
Still, even the political pressure of the threat might make some of the conservative justices more cautious. While Congress rejected Roosevelt’s court-reform bill, the court changed course while lawmakers were considering it and started upholding New Deal laws — a move called “the switch in time that saved nine.”
Today, the majority five on the Supreme Court are all movement conservatives — Republican lawyers who came of age after an ideological backlash a generation ago to decades of liberal court rulings. As judges, they tend to rule more consistently for conservative outcomes than older Republican appointees, including retired Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, and just as in the early decades of the 20th century, when a conservative-dominated Supreme Court repeatedly struck down progressive economic policies including child labor and minimum-wage laws leading up to the New Deal fight, Democrats fear that the new majority will systematically crush their achievements — not just hollowing out past gains such as abortion rights, but also striking down programs they hope to enact if they regain power, such as expanding Medicare or efforts to curb climate change.
For the next few weeks, many Democratic strategists want to change the subject from the Supreme Court, hoping that Republican voters’ passions aroused by the Kavanaugh fight will fade before the midterm elections. Noting that the election is approaching, Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that talk of impeaching Kavanaugh was “premature.”
OMG!
The Globe and pre$$ have been acting as if this was going to be the catalyst to the blue wave, and now they don't even want to talk about it.
Yeah, did the way they handle the confirmation ever backfire!
“Talking about it at this point isn’t necessarily healing us and moving us forward,” he said, but Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said on “Fox News Sunday” that he intended to help House Republicans in swing districts campaign on the issue over the next month, saying their Democratic opponents should be asked whether they supported impeaching Kavanaugh and “Do you want an outcome so badly that you would basically turn the law upside down?”
Oh, he is just loving it!
Still, many liberals are quietly looking forward to reviving the fight if they win a House majority and subpoena power, rather than resigning themselves to waiting for a conservative justice to leave the court. The oldest of the five, Justice Clarence Thomas, is just 70.
Many are vowing, for example, to try to uncover more files from Kavanaugh’s time as an official in George W. Bush’s White House in hopes of finding evidence to support their accusations that he lied under oath about his actions.
“We’re going to get those documents that are shielded from view, and they will provide further proof that he lied,” Fallon said, “and these sexual assault allegations have created a wave of outrage and challenge to the court’s legitimacy that may even eclipse the impact of the lying.”
Says the Clinton guy!
Because of the Presidential Records Act, any Bush administration files that Republicans refused to seek during the confirmation hearings may remain hard for Congress to subpoena until 2021, but an eventual finding could provide a basis to try to impeach Kavanaugh.
“If a careful examination of the entire scope of his legal history — thus far withheld from the Senate — demonstrates that Mr. Kavanaugh lied under oath, the constitutionally prescribed remedy would be impeachment proceedings,” more than three dozen of the most progressive House Democrats wrote to President Trump urging his withdrawal ahead of the confirmation vote.
The idea of court packing emerged even before Trump nominated Kavanaugh. As soon as Kennedy announced his retirement in June, some liberals began calling for Democrats to prepare to expand the court by two justices when they regain power, permitting a future Democratic president and Democratic-controlled Senate to try to transform the court’s controlling faction from its five Republican appointees to six Democratic ones.
Hard to see how that happens, and just the thought should make you vote Republican.
Still, opening that door could lead Republicans to simply expand the court again when the pendulum swung back, continuing the downward spiral.
Swiftly after Kavanaugh’s confirmation Saturday, Democrats promised they would be watching closely.
“The legitimacy of the Supreme Court can justifiably be questioned,” former attorney general Eric Holder wrote on Twitter. “The court must now prove — through its work — that it is worthy of the nation’s trust.”
So says the guy who jailed and spied on reporters.
Wasn't that a violation of the First Amendment?
That was where my printed paper found the rest of the story illegitimate.
Carrie Severino, chief counsel and policy director of the conservative Judicial Crisis Network, deemed it wishful thinking that Democrats would uncover irrefutable evidence of perjury by Kavanaugh. She said it was “inconceivable” that the Senate would convict and remove him and warned that even such an effort would damage the rule of law by delegitimizing the court as an institution that stands apart from partisan politics.
“They are speaking out of anger and frustration, and I hope it is not a way most Democrats would like to go. To say, ‘We’re so angry about losing one fight that we basically destroy the entire institution in a fit of pique,’ that is not going to be helpful to anyone,” she said. “I don’t think they would like that to be the standard applied across the board; I opposed Justice Kagan’s confirmation, but I’m not trying to impeach her.”
Indeed, Roosevelt’s court-packing proposal failed to gain support even from his fellow Democrats. Roosevelt should have been more patient, letting the court evolve through elections and natural turnover, William H. Rehnquist, then the chief justice, said in a 1996 speech looking back at that era.
“Although Roosevelt lost that battle, he eventually won the war by serving three full terms as president and appointing eight of the nine members of the court,” Rehnquist said. “This simply shows that there is a wrong way and a right way to go about putting a popular imprint on the judiciary.”
Besides, they have stocked the lower courts.
Still, liberals today are increasingly questioning the legitimacy of the process by which several conservative justices won seats on the court, noted Russell Wheeler, a Brookings Institution visiting fellow who studies judicial confirmations. For example, many on the left are still seething at Senate Republicans’ refusal to give a hearing in 2016 to Judge Merrick Garland, President Barack Obama’s last nominee for a vacancy, and consider Justice Neil Gorsuch to be occupying a stolen seat.
The Republicans refused to consider Garland because Scalia was murdered to make room for him.
“The conservative majority will include four justices who were appointed by presidents who achieved office despite losing the popular vote, and added to that, the percentage of the voting population represented by Senate Republicans reflects a minority of the overall population,” Wheeler said. “And then you have the asterisk next to Justice Gorsuch’s name.”
Lee Epstein, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis who studies the judiciary, predicted that Chief Justice John Roberts, aware of the danger to the court’s legitimacy, will try to guide it into staying quiet for at least several years.
He's the new Kennedy, and one wonders what the NSA has on him after his switch on Obamacare.
“This could be a terrible moment for the court,” she said. “The Republicans aren’t going to be running government forever, and it could lead to the kind of clash that we had in 1936 with Roosevelt. That was a bad moment for the court and a bad moment for the country.”
In an essay on Vox, progressive political and policy writer Matthew Yglesias also took note of a line of “optimistic” thinking that Roberts, concerned about preserving the court’s popular legitimacy, could serve as a brake on the other four conservatives — as he did when he voted to uphold part of the Affordable Care Act in 2012, but if the five conservatives stick together and severely circumscribe a future Democratic majority’s ability to govern, he wrote, “Democrats will face some difficult questions about whether to try court-packing or other forms of exotic procedural extremism in order to secure the authority to govern.”
By doing such a thing, they ensure that they wouldn't have the authority; otherwise, they wouldn't need to do such a thing.
In that case, he said, the silver lining for liberals is that Kavanaugh was confirmed, as opposed to being withdrawn and replaced by an untarnished but ideologically similar nominee. The cloud over his presence, Yglesias predicted, will help the left’s “necessary delegitimization” of the court.
I say we delegitimize them!
--more--"
"Susan Rice will decide soon whether to challenge Maine senator who backed Kavanaugh" Associated Press October 08, 2018
WASHINGTON — Susan Rice, who was President Barack Obama’s national security adviser, said Sunday that she’ll decide after next month’s midterm elections whether to run for the Senate from Maine in 2020 and try to unseat Republican Senator Susan Collins.
Collins cast a deciding vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, deeply disappointing those opposed to his nomination.
Speaking in New York during The New Yorker Festival, Rice said Collins ‘‘put party and politics over her own stated principles’’ of supporting equal rights and legal abortion. ‘‘I think in a way that I really regret saying, she has betrayed women across this country,’’ Rice said.
Then there must be a special place in hell for her, right?
Kavanaugh’s confirmation was stalled by accusations of sexual misconduct when he was in high school and college, but Collins and others said they were won over by his forceful denials and a supplemental FBI report they say produced no evidence corroborating the claims.
Rice, a Democrat, had hinted her interest in a Senate run in a one-word tweet on Friday, responding ‘‘me’’ to an open question about who wanted to run against Collins. She then seemed to walk it back, saying she was ‘‘not making any announcements.’’
That was after Collins mentioned something about Rice being one of the unmaskers that leaked the identities of future Trump Cabinet member investigations during the transition.
Collins questioned Rice’s connection to Maine, saying Sunday on CNN’s ‘‘State of the Union’’ that although Rice’s family has a home in Maine, ‘‘she doesn’t live in the state of Maine. Everybody knows that.’’
Rice, however, said her ‘‘ties to Maine are long and deep.’’ During Sunday’s appearance, she described her grandparents’ arrival in the state from Jamaica in 1912, yearly summer visits that began in childhood, and the home she now owns. ‘‘The last 20 or so years I’ve been a homeowner in the state of Maine, so it’s not completely crazy,’’ she said.
Collins returned to Maine late Saturday after Kavanaugh was sworn into office. She said Sunday that despite the presence of protesters outside her home in Bangor, the response from Mainers has been ‘‘overwhelmingly positive.’’
People angry over her vote have vowed to make her pay a political price. A crowdsourcing group says it has secured pledges of more than $3 million for her opponent in 2020.
Rice, who also served as US ambassador to the United Nations under Obama, said she appreciated the enthusiasm about her potential run, but said people who are angry about Kavanaugh should focus on the midterm elections.....
--more--"
Yes, it is all the talk in Maine because Collins was never a maverick; in fact, she had an identity crisis that resulted in a failure of character.
Things got so bad the poor woman didn't even know which bathroom to use (did you see who is behind that agenda?) so she had to had to fly to NYC to take a pooh.
Related:
"When Senator Susan Collins asked to speak at 3:00 on Friday afternoon, I thought it would be another Jeff Flake moment. But it was better than that. It was obvious that the Maine Republican took the time to research Brett Kavanaugh’s record and explained her reasons for voting for him, including no corroborative witnesses and the need for due process of law. She then detailed Kavanaugh’s opinions on a number of varied cases, showing why he may not be so threatening to liberals. What do I hear in response from Globe editorials, op-ed writers, and other commentators? Nothing but rhetoric, no refutation of the court opinions cited, but just emotional outbursts. I thought the Republican senators were very considerate of Christine Blasey Ford and treated her fairly; not so in the case of the Democrats and Kavanaugh. I was a Democrat for a greater part of my 92 years, but now I am undeclared. I didn’t leave the party — it left me. The circus I witnessed on TV and in the Globe’s Opinion section and the liberal mob hysteria convinced me that I made the right choice."
"I laughed out loud while reading the Globe’s editorial “Susan Collins goes all in for Kavanaugh — and for Trump,” where, at the end, it talks about “polarization and partisanship” and says that “the time to make a stand and stop its spread is now.” Really, this from the same paper that gave us an apocalyptic vision of America if Trump won, with its fake front page before the election? Physician, heal thyself! I will admit to one thing the president was wrong about. Before the election, he had said, “There will be so much winning, you will be sick of winning.” No Mr. President, it still feels great."
"Although I’m a 30-year subscriber, I have become totally disgusted with the Globe’s unrelentingly vitriolic coverage of the president over the last two years. The sad fact is that the entirety of the A section of the paper has become unreadable. Now we can add coverage of the Brett Kavanaugh appointment process to the Globe’s ever-increasing lack of journalistic integrity, but one member of your staff stands out above all others for the honor of his profession....."
Except he really doesn’t understand and has a memory problem when it comes to the protect the presumption of innocence above all else:
"The stories of the thousands of innocent men and women who have served time in prison for crimes they did not commit are tragic, and they suggest a need for broad reforms, but they have absolutely nothing to do with Brett Kavanaugh.....
It was the Republicans who made due process impossible here Kavanaugh and the GOP were allowed to manipulate this story to obfuscate the facts....."
Also see:
"She is often a political minority of one and occasionally has to defend a president her father had little use for, and stayed out of the first ‘‘hot topic’’ discussion on the talk show, about the Senate confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh over the weekend. She did endorse women speaking up politically when Taylor Swift’s recent social media post supporting a Democratic Senate candidate from Tennessee was brought up....."
After years of pressure to get political, Taylor Swift got in line and confirmed she is a Democrat, and that is when I turned it over to Fox.
"Trump uses Brett Kavanaugh’s swearing-in to trash accusers" by Mark Sherman and Jill Colvin Associated Press October 08, 2018
WASHINGTON — Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh was sworn in —again, for the cameras, this time — Monday night at a White House ceremony, but not before President Trump slammed Kavanaugh’s opponents for a ‘‘campaign of personal destruction.’’
In a ceremony that could have been a unifying moment for the nation, Trump instead delivered remarks that even he acknowledged began ‘‘differently than perhaps any other event of such magnitude.’’
Yeah, right.
‘‘On behalf of our nation, I want to apologize to Brett and the entire Kavanaugh family for the terrible pain and suffering you have been forced to endure,’’ Trump said, addressing the bitter partisan fight over Kavanaugh’s nomination that became a firestorm after the emergence of sexual misconduct allegations, which Kavanaugh emphatically denied.
With all the sitting justices in attendance, along with Kavanaugh’s family and top admiration officials, Trump said Kavanaugh had been the victim of a ‘‘campaign of political and personal destruction based on lies and deception,’’ but, he told the new justice, ‘‘You, sir, under historic scrutiny, were proven innocent.’’ Critics have argued the investigation was not thorough enough to merit that conclusion.
Kavanaugh officially became a member of the high court Saturday and has already been at work preparing for his first day on the bench Tuesday.
In his own remarks, Kavanaugh, who has faced criticism that he appeared too politicized in his Senate testimony, tried to assure the American public that he would approach the job fairly. He said the high court ‘‘is not a partisan or political institution’’ and assured he took the job with ‘‘no bitterness.’’
‘‘The Senate confirmation process was contentious and emotional. That process is over. My focus now is to be the best justice I can be,’’ he said.
It was the end of a deeply contentious nomination process that sparked mass protests, an FBI investigation and a national reckoning over power, gender, sexual assault and the line between violence and adolescent transgression. And it comes less than a month before pivotal midterm elections that will determine which party controls Congress.
Ceremonial swearing-ins are unusual for new justices. Only Samuel Alito and Stephen Breyer participated in White House events after they had been sworn in and begun work as justices, according to the court’s records on the current crop of justices.
Kavanaugh and his law clerks already have been at the Supreme Court preparing for his first day on the bench Tuesday, when the justices will hear arguments in two cases about longer prison terms for repeat offenders. The new justice’s four clerks all are women, the first time that has happened.
Not enough to appease the left.
The clerks are Kim Jackson, who previously worked for Kavanaugh on the federal appeals court in Washington, Shannon Grammel, Megan Lacy, and Sara Nommensen. The latter three all worked for other Republican-nominated judges. Lacy had been working at the White House in support of Kavanaugh’s nomination.
In his Senate testimony last month, in which he denied allegations that he sexually assaulted a woman in high school and accused Democrats of orchestrating a partisan campaign against him, Kavanaugh promised: ‘‘I’ll be the first justice in the history of the Supreme Court to have a group of all-women law clerks. That is who I am.’’
Trump’s ceremony speech hammered a theme he has been hitting on all week: hoping to energize Republicans by attacking Democrats for opposing Kavanaugh.
Kavanaugh was ‘‘caught up in a hoax that was set up by the Democrats,’’ Trump said as he left the White House earlier in the day for a trip to Florida.
‘‘It was all made up, it was fabricated and it’s a disgrace,’’ he said.
Later, in Orlando, he called Kavanaugh ‘‘a flawless person’’ and said ‘‘evil’’ people had tried to derail him with ‘‘False charges’’ and ‘‘False accusations. Horrible statements that were totally untrue that he knew nothing about.’’
‘‘It was a disgraceful situation brought about by people that are evil. And he toughed it out,’’ Trump said at the International Association of Chiefs of Police meeting.
Starting to look that way, yeah.
The climactic 50-48 roll call vote Saturday on Kavanaugh was the closest vote to confirm a justice since 1881. It capped a fight that seized the national conversation after claims emerged that Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted women three decades ago. Kavanaugh emphatically denied the allegations.
The accusations transformed the clash from a routine struggle over judicial ideology into an angry jumble of questions about victims’ rights and personal attacks on nominees.
Ultimately, every Democrat voted against Kavanaugh except for Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia.
He should switch parties.
Kavanaugh was sworn in Saturday evening in a private ceremony as protesters chanted outside the court building.
Trump has now put his stamp on the court with his second justice in as many years. Yet Kavanaugh is joining under a cloud.
Accusations from several women remain under scrutiny, and House Democrats have pledged further investigation if they win the majority in November. Outside groups are culling an unusually long paper trail from his previous government and political work, with the National Archives and Records Administration expected to release a cache of millions of documents this month.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who was welcomed at the White House with a standing ovation, on Sunday praised his party’s senators, whom he said re-established the ‘‘presumption of innocence’’ in confirmation hearings. ‘‘We stood up to the mob,’’ he said.
McConnell signaled he’s willing to take up another high court nomination in the 2020 presidential election season should another vacancy arise.
He tried to distinguish between President Donald Trump’s nomination of Kavanaugh this year and his own decision not to have the GOP-run Senate consider President Barack Obama’s high court nominee, Merrick Garland, in 2016. McConnell called the current partisan divide a ‘‘low point,’’ but he blamed Democrats.
Two years ago, McConnell blocked a vote on Garland, citing what he said was a tradition of not filling vacancies in a presidential election year, but when asked again Sunday about it, he said different rules might apply if the same party controls the Senate and White House.
Republicans hold a 51-49 majority in the Senate, with several seats up for grabs in November.
They should increase their majority in the Senate if it is a fair election.
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"Trump calls allegations against Kavanaugh ‘a hoax’" by Peter Baker New York Times October 09, 2018
My print piece was the AP article above.
ORLANDO — President Donald Trump went further on Monday than he has before in dismissing sexual misconduct allegations against Justice Brett Kavanaugh as the creation of political opponents, calling them “a hoax” and “fabricated.”
With Kavanaugh now confirmed and sworn in, Trump moved beyond simply questioning the credibility of his accusers to asserting that their stories were made up entirely. Last week he mocked the main accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, for gaps in her memory but did not explicitly suggest that her account was invented.
Trump made his comments in response to questions about House Democrats who have talked about impeaching Kavanaugh after the midterm elections in four weeks.
“So I’ve been hearing that now they’re thinking about impeaching a brilliant jurist, a man that did nothing wrong, a man that was caught up in a hoax that was set up by the Democrats, using the Democrats’ lawyers, and now they want to impeach him,” Trump told reporters.
Yeah, they were all Clinton operatives.
Speaking at the White House shortly before flying to Orlando to address the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the president said that would be “an insult to the American people” and that voters had come to the conclusion that this was a fraud. Referring to one woman who said she attended high school parties where women were sexually assaulted, Trump said, “It was all made up, it was fabricated, and it’s a disgrace.”
After the speech, Trump returned to Washington intending to host a televised ceremony at the White House at 7 p.m. marking Kavanaugh’s ascension to the court. Kavanaugh was already sworn in twice over the weekend after his Senate confirmation on a 50-48 vote.
Presidents often host another such symbolic swearing-in for the purposes of showing off their Supreme Court appointees, but in doing so in a prime evening hour, Trump appears intent on highlighting his success in confirming Kavanaugh in an even more prominent way to rally conservative voters in next month’s midterm elections.
While Democrats have asserted that Kavanaugh’s confirmation will benefit them in the Nov. 6 elections because of outrage among women and other voters, Trump showed on Monday that he plans to go on offense, taking the issue to the electorate to tap into anger on the other side at what he portrays as a political smear.
Then why did they want him to go away and not talk about him anymore?
When he boasted about Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the police chiefs in Orlando, they applauded enthusiastically. The president extolled Kavanaugh’s education and career and said he had told his nominee that “this is going to be a piece of cake getting you confirmed,” then smiled at the misguided prediction.
“It was very unfair what happened to him,” Trump went on. “False charges, false accusations. Horrible statements that were totally untrue.” He added: “It was a disgraceful situation brought about by people who are evil. And he toughed it out. We all toughed it out together.”
Blasey, 51, a psychology professor in California, testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee that during a small high school party in the early 1980s, a drunken Kavanaugh pinned her to a bed, groped her, tried to take off her clothes, and covered her mouth when she screamed. Deborah Ramirez, 53, a Yale University classmate of Kavanaugh’s, told the FBI that he exposed his genitals to her during a dormitory party.
They left out Swetnick.
Kavanaugh, 53, denied those allegations, and no witnesses came forward to say they witnessed the acts or that they talked with Blasey or Ramirez about the episodes at the time. Blasey passed a polygraph test administered by a former FBI agent hired by her lawyers and many Republicans at first said that she seemed “very credible,” as Trump himself put it, but the president has increasingly pivoted away from just attacking Democrats for exploiting the accusers to attacking the accusers themselves. Trump has himself been accused of sexual misconduct by more than a dozen women, and he said during the confirmation battle that his experience made him more empathetic to Kavanaugh.
While his appearance before the annual gathering of police chiefs was not formally a campaign event, Trump used the event to depict himself as a friend of law enforcement and said he was working to combat crime.
“We are turning that tide around very rapidly,” he said. “We are taking back our streets.”
As he has before, he said he would send federal authorities to help Chicago fight crime and urged the city to adopt more aggressive tactics, like the so-called stop-and-frisk policy used in New York. “Stop and frisk works,” Trump said. “The crime spree is a terrible blight on that city, and we’ll do everything possible to get it done.”
Related: Mom whose son was killed speaks at Chicago police-reform hearing
New York began cutting back on its street stops in 2011 even before a judge ruled in 2013 that the city’s wholesale use of search practices violated the Constitution. Such stops have plummeted, but violent crime continued to fall even without them. Seven major felonies measured by the city police are down 9.7 percent since 2011, even as the stop-and-frisk practices were drastically reduced.
Trump has a fraught relationship with other elements of the American law enforcement establishment, repeatedly assailing the leadership of the FBI and the Justice Department in connection with the investigation into his campaign ties to Russia.
As his former lawyer and former campaign chairman were prosecuted, Trump complained that the authorities should not be allowed to pressure criminal defendants into “flipping” on others with the threat of long prison sentences. He has also said that prosecutors should not have indicted two Republican congressmen because it could cost his party seats in the House.
The president made no mention of those criticisms in his talk with the police chiefs on Monday, but instead criticized politicians who do not support law enforcement, saying they “make life easier for criminals and more dangerous for law-abiding citizens.”
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Also see: Hillary Clinton says Trump turned Kavanaugh ceremony into a ‘political rally’
Some people just don't know when to go away, do they?
"Heidi Heitkamp says Brett Kavanaugh’s body language pushed her to vote against him" by Kristine Phillips Washington Post October 09, 2018
Senator Heidi Heitkamp, Democrat of North Dakota, was ready to vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh. Her office had started drafting a statement saying she would support President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, she told CNN, and then she watched Kavanaugh unleash partisan attacks during his defiant testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Heitkamp said she listened to Kavanaugh’s exchange with Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota, who asked the judge if he had ever been blackout drunk. Kavanaugh threw the question back, saying, ‘‘I don’t know. Have you?’’ to the senator, who had just spoken about her father’s problems with alcoholism.
Heitkamp watched the hearing again, she told CNN’s Dana Bash. This time, with the volume turned off.
‘‘We communicate not only with words, but with our body language and demeanor,’’ she said. ‘‘I saw somebody who was very angry, who was very nervous . . . I saw rage.’’
How would you react to such false charges?
Kavanaugh’s performance changed everything, Heitkamp said.
On Saturday, she voted against Kavanaugh, the most consequential vote she had cast to date in her Senate career. The judge’s ‘‘temperament, honesty, and impartiality’’ had been called into question, said Heitkamp, who had voted last year to confirm Neil Gorsuch, Trump’s first Supreme Court nominee, and now, the first-term Senate Democrat, who won the solidly red North Dakota by a 1-percentage point margin in 2012, is fighting for her political future. Some polls show her trailing by double digits against Representative Kevin Cramer, a Republican congressman who questioned whether the sexual assault accusation against Kavanaugh was disqualifying, even if it were true.
Cramer, whom the president supports, has sought to paint Heitkamp as someone who chose party over the people she represents. Recent polling in North Dakota, which Trump won by 36 percentage points in 2016, showed substantial support for Kavanaugh, the Washington Post’s Kyle Swenson reported.
‘‘I knew this was going to be a difficult vote,’’ she told The Post. ‘‘I just hope I have the chance to explain why.’’
Heitkamp is among the most vulnerable senators in the midterm elections — a reality underscored by a tweet from the candidate herself:
Speaking at an event in Wyndmere, N.D., a few miles from her hometown, Heitkamp told supporters the past week had been tough for her.
‘‘The political rhetoric is you can’t vote that way if you expect to come back,’’ she said. ‘‘And I tell people — Ray and Doreen Heitkamp didn’t raise me to vote a certain way so that I could win. They raised me to vote the right way.’’
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Related:
"A ‘No’ vote on Kavanaugh yields a windfall for Heitkamp’s campaign coffers "Senator Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota is struggling in her fight for reelection against a Republican challenger, Representative Kevin Cramer, who has opened a clear lead in recent polls. Republicans see the race as a key opportunity to widen their majority in the Senate. The fund-raising bonanza could hinder their effort — if Heitkamp could spend it by Nov. 6 in a low-cost media market such as North Dakota. Nearly all of Heitkamp’s donations came through ActBlue, a platform that has helped Democratic candidates raise more than half a billion dollars this cycle....."
If only it was one dollar, one vote, 'eh?
"Billionaire investor Warren Buffett, a Democrat, said on CNBC in 2015 he thought Warren would “do better if she was less angry and demonized less,” remarks that were called sexist by many. But an unnamed Warren adviser told the New Yorker there was “a grain of truth” to the criticism. Warren can be harsh with members of her own party. Earlier this year, she blasted moderate Democratic colleagues for supporting legislation to roll back some post-financial crisis rules for all but the very largest banks. Warren called it “a dangerous proposal” and accused Democratic proponents of helping Republicans set the country up for another financial crisis. Senator Heidi Heitkamp, Democrat of North Dakota, was among those Warren denounced. She told the Atlantic that Warren had “misled” the public, overstating the risks posed by the changes. “Some of the things that she has said are incorrect,” Heitkamp said....."
Also see:
"Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska is pushing back against President Trump, saying she knows her state’s political terrain ‘‘better than he does.’’ Trump said voters ‘‘will never forgive’’ Murkowski for opposing Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court, and he said the senator will ‘‘never recover’’ politically. Murkowski, who isn’t up for reelection until 2022, told reporters that her ‘‘barometer is not necessarily what the president says but what the people of Alaska say.’’ She acknowledged that some voters are disappointed in her decision, but said that’s unavoidable because Alaskans were split on whether Kavanaugh should be confirmed. Murkowski got a vote of confidence Wednesday from Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who told the Associated Press that ‘‘nobody’s going to beat her’’ in Alaska."
Time to take a seat:
"Brett Kavanaugh takes the bench on Supreme Court" by Adam Liptak, Noah Weiland and Emily Baumgaertner New York Times October 09, 2018
WASHINGTON — Three days after the fierce battle over his nomination ended in his elevation to the Supreme Court, Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined his new colleagues on the bench for the first time Tuesday morning, taking a seat on the far right side of the bench, in the spot reserved for the most junior justice.
The rancor that had consumed the Capitol, just across the street, before his confirmation vote last week had dulled to a polite hush as spectators gathered in the courtroom midmorning.
The arguments concluded without any protests, a contrast with the outbursts that disrupted Kavanaugh’s testimony about sexual assault allegations against him and the Senate vote on his elevation to the Supreme Court.
Shortly before the arguments began, Kavanaugh’s wife, Ashley Kavanaugh, entered and sat on the south side of the room, closest to his new seat.
Their daughters sat at her side, gazing at the elaborate marble frieze near the ceiling. Minutes later, Justice Anthony Kennedy, whose seat on the court was filled by Kavanaugh and for whom Kavanaugh once served as a law clerk, entered and sat just feet from the new justice’s seat.
A court officer then gave unusually stern and detailed instructions to the audience. “It is critical that you remain seated and silent,” he said.
Chief Justice John Roberts started the day by welcoming his new colleague.
“Justice Kavanaugh,” the chief justice said, “we wish you a long and happy career in our common calling.”
Better vote Republican then.
Justice Elena Kagan, who sits next to Kavanaugh on the bench, whispered and laughed with him in the moments before the argument began.
She flirted with a sexual harasser and rapist?
Justice Neil Gorsuch, President Trump’s first appointee to the Supreme Court, took his new seat at the opposite end of the bench, next to Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
Kavanaugh, confirmed to the Supreme Court amid fiery accusations of sexual misconduct against women, arrived Tuesday for his first day on the bench with an unprecedented all-female class of law clerks.
As a result, more than half of the Supreme Court’s law clerks this year will — for the first time in American history — be women.
Still not good enough.
The law under consideration in Tuesday’s arguments, the Armed Career Criminal Act, is a kind of three-strikes statute. It requires stiffer sentences for people convicted of possessing firearms in federal court if they have earlier been found guilty of three violent felonies or serious drug charges.
Figuring out what qualifies as one of those earlier offenses is not always easy.....
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Related:
"Chief Justice John Roberts on Wednesday referred more than a dozen judicial misconduct complaints filed recently against Brett Kavanaugh to a federal appeals court in Colorado. It is unclear what will come of the review by the 10th Circuit. The judiciary’s rules on misconduct do not apply to Supreme Court justices. The 10th Circuit will likely decide to dismiss the complaints as moot now that Kavanaugh has joined the high court. ‘‘There is nothing that a judicial council could do at this point,’’ said Arthur Hellman, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh and expert on the operation of federal courts. The 10th Circuit will likely close the case ‘‘because it is no longer within their jurisdiction,’’ now that Kavanaugh has been elevated to the Supreme Court, he added....."
Do you think he told the entire truth about his time at Yale?
We know Harvard would turn a blind eye toward it, and I know the woman regrets the inaction over the allegation at Phillips Exeter.
If he could only explain the ‘close your legs’ comment and the cyberstalking.
Order in the Court:
Court strikes down Native American adoption law
Polish leader appoints top court judges, against ruling
UK court rules bakery didn’t discriminate in ‘gay cake’ case
Washington state’s Supreme Court strikes down death penalty
They want to be like Malaysia.
Arkansas court upholds voter ID law
Federal judge orders new hearing for Paul Manafort
Related:
"Trump says he has no plans to fire Rosenstein" by Katie Benner New York Times October 08, 2018
WASHINGTON — President Trump said Monday that he had no plans to fire Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, in the wake of remarks Rosenstein had made about the president’s fitness for office and an offer to secretly tape conversations with him.
Makes you wonder what Rosenstein has on the guy.
“No, I don’t,” the president told reporters at the White House as he boarded Marine One before a short trip to Orlando for a speech to a law enforcement group.
Should Rosenstein quit or be fired from the Justice Department, his departure could fuel public rancor going into November’s midterm elections, which have been consumed by anger and jubilation over Kavanaugh’s confirmation.....
Oh, yeah, it would have been turned into a campaign issue.
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"Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein’s interview with Trump’s congressional allies postponed indefinitely" by Washington Post October 10, 2018
So what does he have on them?
WASHINGTON — The House Judiciary and Oversight and Government reform committees were expected to speak with Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein behind closed doors Thursday as part of their probe into federal law enforcement’s conduct during the investigations of President Trump’s campaign and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s use of a private e-mail server, but a dispute over the interview’s terms prevented the committees and the Justice Department from reaching a deal to hold the meeting, according to people familiar with the discussions.
Who dictates to Congre$$ the terms of testimony (other than Blasey Ford)?
The delay means Rosenstein may not appear on Capitol Hill for an interview until after next month’s election, potentially exposing him to a subpoena. The House Judiciary Committee has frequently used subpoenas in this probe to compel witness testimony and the production of Justice Department documents.
Why should they need a subpoena for the nation's top law enforcement official?
Rosenstein, who oversees the special counsel investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, has been a target of Trump’s Republican allies on the joint panel. They’ve accused the Justice Department of intentionally slow-walking efforts to produce documents for the panel’s investigation. That dispute exploded in a public faceoff over the summer, during which Republican lawmakers berated Rosenstein and urged him to wind down the special counsel probe, which is led by Robert Mueller.
Lawmakers’ interest in bringing Rosenstein back to Capitol Hill followed publication of a New York Times report indicating the deputy attorney general had suggested secretly recording Trump and invoking a constitutional amendment to remove the president from office. Rosenstein has disputed the report, though he offered to submit his resignation in its wake.
He wasn't the first one to bring it up.
On Monday, Trump said he had no plans to remove Rosenstein.
The House Judiciary Committee has already subpoenaed memos drafted by former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe that say Rosenstein suggested recording the president.....
That was McCabe trying to get the heat off his back, and is it possible that Rosenstein is Trump's guy now?
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Also see: Final Breath
