The Globe gave the crown three above the fold brambles:
"Kavanaugh, Ford set to face the nation" by Jess Bidgood Globe Staff September 27, 2018
WASHINGTON — For the third time in two weeks, Brett Kavanaugh, President Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court, on Wednesday denied allegations of sexual misconduct from a new accuser, injecting fresh turmoil the day before he and his first accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, appear at a hearing that could determine whether he can muster support for confirmation.
I'm looking forward to what will be the big story next week.
The latest accuser, a woman named Julie Swetnick, alleged Kavanaugh and a friend of his were part of efforts to incapacitate girls at parties with drugs or grain alcohol, and said the two teens were present when she was the victim of a “gang rape.”
Swetnick’s explosive claim was laid out in a sworn declaration and provided to the Senate Judiciary Committee by the showy Democratic lawyer Michael Avenatti.
Then she better not be lying.
Related: Accuser Julie Swetnick Graduated High School in 1980
Why was she at high school parties with minors?
It must have ruined relationships for her.
At least she went on to have a productive career on Wall Street (she just cleared up her tax trouble, huh?).
It comes after Ford, a college professor in California, alleged Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her in high school and covered her mouth to prevent her from screaming as he pinned her to a bed and attempted to rip off her clothes.
At a combative press conference in New York late Wednesday afternoon, President Trump charged into the roiling debate.
He was and it was painful to watch.
As the latest claims spread around the Capitol, Republicans grappled with the fallout and the intense scrutiny on their handling of the accusations against a nominee who seemed a lock for the court just a few weeks ago.
What Democratic spin applied by the Globe. No scrutiny regarding the Democrats underhanded handling of this whole thing.
Republicans had hoped to push Kavanaugh’s confirmation vote through the committee on Friday and bring him for a vote before the full Senate by next week, but that timetable could get thrown off if Republican senators including Jeff Flake of Arizona and Susan Collins of Maine decide they want further investigation and testimony before voting. Both of those senators, along with Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski, remain undecided on Kavanaugh. Of the three, only Flake is on the Judiciary Committee.
CNN reported late Wednesday that Collins privately stated she wanted the Judiciary Committee to subpoena Mark Judge, Kavanaugh’s high school friend implicated by Swetnick.
In addition to raising questions about Swetnick’s allegations, Republicans zeroed in on Avenatti and portrayed him as a player in a Democratic smear campaign. Avenatti is best known as the lawyer representing Stormy Daniels, the pornographic actress who said she was paid off after having an affair with Trump.
Leading Democrats demanded that Kavanaugh immediately withdraw his name from consideration for the nation’s high court, but others remained undecided.
Murkowski huddled quietly with Senator Dianne Feinstein, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, before declining to answer questions about the new allegations. And Senator Orrin Hatch, a Republican on the committee, at one point told reporters closing in with questions to shut up.
On Wednesday evening, the committee released a transcript revealing that investigators had asked Kavanaugh about another allegation — this one an anonymous accusation sent to Republican Senator Cory Gardner of Colorado. The allegation said that Kavanaugh had physically assaulted a woman in 1998 in Washington, a time much more recent than the other allegations. Kavanaugh again denied the claim.
Three weeks ago, Republicans viewed the confirmation of Kavanaugh as a sure bet that would give them a victory lasting a generation: a fifth conservative justice on the nine-member court, but by Wednesday, the process was riddled with surreal twists and political peril.
Republicans were so worried about the optics of Thursday’s hearing, they hired a female prosecutor to do the questioning for them, and members on both sides were parsing Kavanaugh’s and Ford’s prepared testimony, as well as Kavanaugh’s handwritten high school calendars. And now, there were more serious allegations in the offing.
According to Swetnick’s sworn declaration, which was released on Twitter on Wednesday morning by Avenatti, she attended Gaithersburg High School, in Maryland, and met Kavanaugh and his friend, Mark Judge, at a house party in Washington, D.C., in the early 1980s, and went to at least 10 more parties attended by the two teenagers.
Swetnick said she saw the two drink excessively and fondle women without their consent. Swetnick also said she was aware of Kavanaugh and Judge spiking punch with drugs or grain alcohol so they could take advantage of women, and that, sometimes, incapacitated women were “gang raped.” She said that she herself was raped, “where Brett Kavanaugh and Mark Judge were present.”
Avenatti, who called for the FBI to investigate his client’s claims, has not provided evidence from corroborating witnesses to the public. Barbara Van Gelder, a lawyer for Judge, wrote in an e-mail that her client “vehemently” denied the allegations.
For the Globe to have gone into the gutter with this.....
Chuck Grassley, the Iowa Republican who chairs the Judiciary Committee and who has rebuffed demands for an FBI probe, said lawyers from the committee were reviewing Swetnick’s claims.
“Our lawyers are on it right now and I have nothing more to say until I get a report from them,” Grassley said, although he compared the claims to others that he suggested were dubious.
On Thursday, according to her prepared testimony, Ford was planning to describe a harrowing attack. There were gaps in her memory, like the location of the social gathering where the alleged encounter took place or how she got there, but she remembers going upstairs and being pushed into a room.
Ford’s lawyers also released a report on a polygraph exam she took in regard to the claims, which indicated no deception. Her legal team also produced four affidavits that say Ford had described the assault to others long before he was a nominee.
I saw the reports and an interview with the alleged expert. He asked two questions about whether her written statement was true and told us she passed. He was paid by the Katz office law firm, and has the Globe read the affidavits?
In his own prepared testimony, also released Wednesday, Kavanaugh categorically denied sexually assaulting Ford or anyone else and said doing so would be contradictory to his faith, but he was prepared to admit to behavior in high school that he said would make him cringe now — a departure from the more virtuous portrait of himself he painted during a Fox News interview this week.
Well, any sense of Globe objectivity just went out the window.
This is nothing but a one-sided hatchet job.
Almost lost in the crush of the day’s news was the Senate Judiciary’s release of Kavanaugh’s high school calendars, which recorded mundane chores such as mowing the lawn, the punishment of being grounded, and reminders to gather supplies, like chips and doughnuts, for camp.
I suppose they prove about as much as the lie detector test, and that is nothing.
Ford or the social gathering she described do not obviously appear on the calendar, but there are notes about other parties and plans to go to “Judge’s” house, which could prompt further questions from Democrats about those years.....
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Related:
"Kavanausea: We Are Living Nineteen Eighty-Four...
by Tyler Durden
George Orwell’s 1949 dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four is no longer fiction. We are living it right now.
Google techies planned to massage Internet searches to emphasize correct thinking. A member of the so-called deep state, in an anonymous op-ed, brags that its “resistance” is undermining an elected president. The FBI, CIA, DOJ, and NSC were all weaponized in 2016 to ensure that the proper president would be elected — the choice adjudicated by properly progressive ideology. Wearing a wire is now redefined as simply flipping on an iPhone and recording your boss, boy- or girlfriend, or co-workers.
But never has the reality that we are living in a surreal age been clearer than during the strange cycles of Christine Blasey Ford’s accusations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
In Orwell’s world of 1984 Oceania, there is no longer a sense of due process, free inquiry, rules of evidence and cross examination, much less a presumption of innocence until proven guilty. Instead, regimented ideology — the supremacy of state power to control all aspects of one’s life to enforce a fossilized idea of mandated quality — warps everything from the use of language to private life.
Oceania’s Rules
Senator Diane Feinstein and the other Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee had long sought to destroy the Brett Kavanaugh nomination. Much of their paradoxical furor over his nomination arises from the boomeranging of their own past political blunders, such as when Democrats ended the filibuster on judicial nominations, in 2013. They also canonized the so-called 1992 Biden Rule, which holds that the Senate should not consider confirming the Supreme Court nomination of a lame-duck president (e.g., George H. W. Bush) in an election year.
Rejecting Kavanaugh proved a hard task given that he had a long record of judicial opinions and writings — and there was nothing much in them that would indicate anything but a sharp mind, much less any ideological, racial, or sexual intolerance. His personal life was impeccable, his family admirable.
Kavanaugh was no combative Robert Bork, but congenial, and he patiently answered all the questions asked of him, despite constant demonstrations and pre-planned street-theater interruptions from the Senate gallery and often obnoxious grandstanding by “I am Spartacus” Democratic senators.
So Kavanaugh was going to be confirmed unless a bombshell revelation derailed the vote. And so we got a bombshell.
Weeks earlier, Senator Diane Feinstein had received a written allegation against Kavanaugh of sexual battery by an accuser who wished to remain anonymous. Feinstein sat on it for nearly two months, probably because she thought the charges were either spurious or unprovable. Until a few days ago, she mysteriously refused to release the full text of the redacted complaint, and she has said she does not know whether the very accusations that she purveyed are believable. Was she reluctant to memorialize the accusations by formally submitting them to the Senate Judiciary Committee, because doing so makes Ford subject to possible criminal liability if the charges prove demonstrably untrue?
The gambit was clearly to use the charges as a last-chance effort to stop the nomination — but only if Kavanaugh survived the cross examinations during the confirmation hearing. Then, in extremis, Feinstein finally referenced the charge, hoping to keep it anonymous, but, at the same time, to hint of its serious nature and thereby to force a delay in the confirmation. Think something McCarthesque, like “I have here in my hand the name . . .”
Delay would mean that the confirmation vote could be put off until after the midterm election, and a few jeopardized Democratic senators in Trump states would not have to go on record voting no on Kavanaugh. Or the insidious innuendos, rumor, and gossip about Kavanaugh would help to bleed him to death by a thousand leaks and, by association, tank Republican chances at retaining the House. (Republicans may or may not lose the House over the confirmation circus, but they most surely will lose their base and, with it, the Congress if they do not confirm Kavanaugh.)
Feinstein’s anonymous trick did not work. So pressure mounted to reveal or leak Ford’s identity and thereby force an Anita-Hill–like inquest that might at least show old white men Republican senators as insensitive to a vulnerable and victimized woman.
The problem, of course, was that, under traditional notions of jurisprudence, Ford’s allegations simply were not provable. But America soon discovered that civic and government norms no longer follow the Western legal tradition. In Orwellian terms, Kavanaugh was now at the mercy of the state.
He was tagged with sexual battery at first by an anonymous accuser, and then upon revelation of her identity, by a left-wing, political activist psychology professor and her more left-wing, more politically active lawyer.
Newspeak and Doublethink
Statue of limitations? It does not exist. An incident 36 years ago apparently is as fresh today as it was when Kavanaugh was 17 and Ford 15.
Presumption of Innocence? Not at all. Kavanaugh is accused and thereby guilty. The accuser faces no doubt. In Orwellian America, the accused must first present his defense, even though he does not quite know what he is being charged with. Then the accuser and her legal team pour over his testimony to prepare her accusation.
Evidence? That too is a fossilized concept. Ford could name neither the location of the alleged assault nor the date or time. She had no idea how she arrived or left the scene of the alleged crime. There is no physical evidence of an attack. And such lacunae in her memory mattered no longer at all.
Details? Again, such notions are counterrevolutionary. Ford said to her therapist 6 years ago (30 years after the alleged incident) that there were four would-be attackers, at least as recorded in the therapist’s notes.
But now she has claimed that there were only two assaulters: Kavanaugh and a friend. In truth, all four people — now including a female — named in her accusations as either assaulters or witnesses have insisted that they have no knowledge of the event, much less of wrongdoing wherever and whenever Ford claims the act took place. That they deny knowledge is at times used as proof by Ford’s lawyers that the event 36 years was traumatic.
An incident at 15 is so seared into her lifelong memory that at 52 Ford has no memory of any of the events or details surrounding that unnamed day, except that she is positive that 17-year-old Brett Kavanaugh, along with four? three? two? others, was harassing her. She has no idea where or when she was assaulted but still assures that Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge were drunk, but that she and the others (?) merely had only the proverbial teenage “one beer.” Most people are more likely to know where they were at a party than the exact number of alcoholic beverages they consumed — but not so much about either after 36 years.
Testimony? No longer relevant. It doesn’t matter that Kavanaugh and the other alleged suspect both deny the allegations and have no memory of being in the same locale with Ford 36 years ago. In sum, all the supposed partiers, both male and female, now swear, under penalty of felony, that they have no memory of any of the incidents that Ford claims occurred so long ago. That Ford cannot produce a single witness to confirm her narrative or refute theirs is likewise of no concern. So far, she has singularly not submitted a formal affidavit or given a deposition that would be subject to legal exposure if untrue.
Again, the ideological trumps the empirical. “All women must be believed” is the testament, and individuals bow to the collective. Except, as in Orwell’s Animal Farm, there are ideological exceptions — such as Bill Clinton, Keith Ellison, Sherrod Brown, and Joe Biden. The slogan of Ford’s psychodrama is “All women must be believed, but some women are more believable than others.” That an assertion becomes fact due to the prevailing ideology and gender of the accuser marks the destruction of our entire system of justice.
Rights of the accused? They too do not exist. In the American version of 1984, the accuser, a.k.a. the more ideologically correct party, dictates to authorities the circumstances under which she will be investigated and cross-examined: She will demand all sorts of special considerations of privacy and exemptions; Kavanaugh will be forced to return and face cameras and the public to prove that he was not then, and has never been since, a sexual assaulter.
In our 1984 world, the accused is considered guilty if merely charged, and the accuser is a victim who can ruin a life but must not under any circumstance be made uncomfortable in proving her charges.
Doublespeak abounds. “Victim” solely refers to the accuser, not the accused, who one day was Brett Kavanaugh, a brilliant jurist and model citizen, and the next morning woke up transformed into some sort of Kafkaesque cockroach. The media and political operatives went in a nanosecond from charging that she was groped and “assaulted” to the claim that she was “raped.”
In our 1984, the phrase “must be believed” is doublespeak for “must never face cross-examination.”
Ford should be believed or not believed on the basis of evidence, not her position, gender, or politics. I certainly did not believe Joe Biden, simply because he was a U.S. senator, when, as Neal Kinnock’s doppelganger, he claimed that he came from a long line of coal miners — any more than I believed that Senator Corey Booker really had a gang-banger Socratic confidant named “T-Bone,” or that would-be senator Richard Blumenthal was an anguished Vietnam combat vet or that Senator Elizabeth Warren was a Native American. (Do we need a 25th Amendment for unhinged senators?) Wanting to believe something from someone who is ideologically correct does not translate into confirmation of truth.
Ford supposedly in her originally anonymous accusation had insisted that she had sought “medical treatment” for her assault. The natural assumption is that such a term would mean that, soon after the attack, the victim sought a doctor’s or emergency room’s help to address either her physical or mental injuries — records might therefore be a powerful refutation of Kavanaugh’s denials.
But “medical treatment” now means that 30 years after the alleged assault, Ford sought counseling for some sort of “relationship” or “companion” therapy, or what might legitimately be termed “marriage counseling.” And in the course of her discussions with her therapist about her marriage, she first spoke of her alleged assault three decades earlier. She did not then name Kavanaugh to her therapist, whose notes are at odds with Ford’s current version.
Memory Holes
Then we come to Orwell’s idea of “memory holes,” or mechanisms to wipe clean inconvenient facts that disrupt official ideological narratives.
Shortly after Ford was named, suddenly her prior well-publicized and self-referential social-media revelations vanished, as if she’d never held her minor-league but confident pro-Sanders, anti-Trump opinions. And much of her media and social-media accounts were erased as well.
Similarly, one moment the New York Times — just coming off an embarrassing lie in reporting that U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley had ordered new $50,000 office drapes on the government dime — reported that Kavanaugh’s alleged accomplice, Mark Judge, had confirmed Ford’s allegation. Indeed, in a sensational scoop, according to the Times, Judge told the Judiciary Committee that he does remember the episode and has nothing more to say. In fact, Judge told the committee the very opposite: that he does not remember the episode. Forty minutes later, the Times embarrassing narrative vanished down the memory hole.
The online versions of some of the yearbooks of Ford’s high school from the early 1980s vanished as well. At times, they had seemed to take a perverse pride in the reputation of the all-girls school for underage drinking, carousing, and, on rarer occasions, “passing out” at parties. Such activities were supposed to be the monopoly and condemnatory landscape of the “frat boy” and spoiled-white-kid Kavanaugh — and certainly not the environment in which the noble Ford navigated. Seventeen-year-old Kavanaugh was to play the role of a falling-down drunk; Ford, with impressive powers of memory of an event 36 years past, assures us that as a circumspect 15-year-old, she had only “one beer.”
A former teenage friend of Ford’s sent out a flurry of social-media postings, allegedly confirming that Ford’s ordeal was well known to her friends in 1982 and so her assault narrative must therefore be confirmed. Then, when challenged on some of her incoherent details (schools are not in session during summertime, and Ford is on record as not telling anyone of the incident for 30 years), she mysteriously claimed that she no longer could stand by her earlier assertions, which likewise soon vanished from her social-media account. Apparently, she had assumed that in 2018 Oceania ideologically correct citizens merely needed to lodge an accusation and it would be believed, without any obligation on her part to substantiate her charges.
When a second accuser, Deborah Ramirez, followed Ford seven days later to allege another sexual incident with the teenage Kavanaugh, at Yale 35 years ago, it was no surprise that she followed the now normal Orwellian boilerplate: None of those whom she named as witnesses could either confirm her charges or even remember the alleged event. She had altered her narrative after consultations with lawyers and handlers. She too confesses to underage drinking during the alleged event. She too is currently a social and progressive political activist. The only difference from Ford’s narrative is that Ramirez’s accusation was deemed not credible enough to be reported even by the New York Times, which recently retracted false stories about witness Mark Judge in the Ford case, and which falsely reported that U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley had charged the government for $50,000 office drapes.
As in 1984, “truths” in these sorts of allegations do not exist unless they align with the larger “Truth” of the progressive project. In our case, the overarching Truth mandates that, in a supposedly misogynist society, women must always be believed in all their accusations and should be exempt from all counter-examinations.
Little “truths” — such as the right of the accused, the need to produce evidence, insistence on cross-examination, and due process — are counterrevolutionary constructs and the refuge of reactionary hold-outs who are enemies of the people. Or in the words of Hawaii senator Mazie Hirono:
Guess who’s perpetuating all of these kinds of actions? It’s the men in this country. And I just want to say to the men in this country, “Just shut up and step up. Do the right thing, for a change.”The View’s Joy Behar was more honest about the larger Truth: “These white men, old by the way, are not protecting women,” Behar exclaimed. “They’re protecting a man who is probably guilty.” We thank Behar for the concession “probably.”
According to some polls, about half the country believes that Brett Kavanaugh is now guiltyof a crime committed 36 years ago at the age of 17. And that reality reminds us that we are no longer in America. We are already living well into the socialist totalitarian Hell that Orwell warned us about long ago.
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Here is the Globe's analysis:
"What’s missing from the agenda on today’s hearing: the truth" by Annie Linskey and Michael Levenson Globe Staff September 27, 2018
WASHINGTON — No matter what happens at Thursday’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on President Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court, this much is clear: The damage to Brett Kavanaugh’s reputation has already been done.
If he is confirmed, he will carry a lasting stain onto the high court from the specific, lurid allegations of sexual misconduct made against him. Without any serious investigation into the truth of what happened 36 years ago, he would join Clarence Thomas as a justice with a cloud hanging over his tenure on the high court.
Except that cloud cleared Thomas a long time ago. He is now a respected jurist that has taken up the Scalia mantle, and Kavanaugh is going to be the new kid on the block. They will have him fetching water and all sorts of things as a rite of passage until he gets his feet wet.
The Republicans’ refusal to permit an FBI investigation into the allegations and the format of the Judiciary Committee hearing virtually guarantee senators and the American public will be left with a she-said-he-said standoff without evidence.
Maybe if Feinstein had forwarded some of this stuff to the FBI eight weeks ago and this latest batch had been presented sooner it wouldn't have come to this.
Democrats also face some possible political pitfalls. Of the 10 members of the committee, at least two are very actively considering a presidential run. That could incentivize members to focus more on speeches and less on questions and answers.
I would be more worried about them failing in the House after this debacle. Forget 2020.
Even Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, who controls the upper chamber and the process it uses, cast doubt on how useful the hearing will be.
“Does it sound like Democratic senators want to get to the truth? Or does it sound like a choreographed smear campaign?” asked McConnell, who slammed the Senate Democrats for withholding key information about Ford’s accusation for weeks.
If it looks like it, smells like it, and acts like it....
Democrats pushed blame back on the GOP. “Senator Grassley’s office has run the most partisan and least transparent Supreme Court process in history,” said Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer. “No one should trust the result of this partisan exercise.”
The lingering doubts mean that if and when Kavanaugh arrives at the court, his stature will be diminished, according to court watchers. It means the court — and its decisions — will be increasingly viewed through a partisan lens. And, most of all, it means the controversy doesn’t necessarily end after a Senate vote is held.
“This fight is going to give the court a black eye, regardless of the outcome,” said Joseph Daniel Ura, a political scientist at Texas A&M University.
The court’s legitimacy, he said, depends on the public’s confidence that the normal process for a nomination has been followed and the rules have not been rigged to produce a particular outcome, but if Kavanaugh is confirmed, the left will see him as the product of an illegitimate process in which credible accusations of sexual misconduct were not thoroughly investigated, Ura said, and if Kavanaugh is rejected or withdraws, the right will view him as the victim of an unfair, last-minute attack. He would return to one of the nation’s most important appeals courts, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
Would he return to his previous job after this, and why did they stay silent when he was only on the second most powerful court in the land?
Ura added that while Supreme Court nominations have been partisan and political for a long time, the political elite have always maintained a “veneer of concern” by focusing on the substance of the court’s business, but Ura said he’s been struck by the extent to which the Kavanaugh nomination is a “continuation of a long trend of that veneer falling off and the politics of Supreme Court nomination being expressed in purely political terms.”
The fight might not end if Kavanaugh is seated: The allegations are so serious that he could face impeachment, said Kent Greenfield, a law professor at Boston College who clerked for Supreme Court Justice David Souter.
“The allegations are alive. And they don’t go away because he is subject to impeachment,” Greenfield said. “The mere fact that he’s on the bench does not protect him. . . . It could be years down the road. Or someone else comes forward after he’s on the bench.”
Better try impeaching Trump first. You'll get more votes.
Is it a two-thirds threshold for judges as well?
Another possibility: regular protests in the Supreme Court chamber during sessions.
“The court is open to the public,” Greenfield said. “There’s nothing stopping people from coming in and loudly protesting every single day. . . . It’s the kind of situation where there could be massive disruption to the work of the court.”
I expect the controlled opposition protests to never end so that's no big deal.
What is concerning is a possible mass shooting inside the U.S. Supreme Court itself.
Matthew Hall, a political scientist at the University of Notre Dame, said the Supreme Court has, historically, enjoyed greater public support than most other governmental institutions, but that level of support, he said, has been dwindling for decades, with Robert Bork’s failed nomination in 1987 seen as a key turning point, along with the 1991 Clarence Thomas hearings, the Bush V. Gore decision in 2000, and the blocked nomination of Merrick Garland in 2016.
On that last one, at least the Republicans had the decency to say we just aren't hearing him. Said it right to your face. Didn't besmirch the man or drag his character into the muck.
Research has suggested that the court has bounced back after each of those tumultuous chapters and that many Americans now understand the court to be both ideological and, simultaneously, independent and trustworthy, he said, but Hall said the court might not recover in the same way because the political climate has changed since Anita Hill testified in 1991 on Clarence Thomas’s nomination.
The court will recover just fine. It has endured conservative and liberal swings as long as it has existed.
Those hearings occurred in a very different cultural moment — before the #MeToo movement, before Harvey Weinstein, and before Bill Cosby, who was sentenced to prison this week.
Look at who they selectively mention and are watching.
Maybe if the same people behind the movement hadn't defended Bill Clinton and disparaged his accusers, we would be in a different place 20 years later.
“There’s nothing like this in history to compare it to, so even scholars of public opinion and the court would be speculating as wildly as anyone” if they were to forecast the long-term damage that a Kavanaugh nomination could have on the court, Hall said.
The allegations threaten to affect Kavanaugh’s professional life in other ways. A group of Harvard Law School students has been pressing the school’s administration to launch an investigation into the Kavanaugh allegations.
He is listed on the law school’s website as a lecturer and is set to teach a course on the Supreme Court in the school’s January term.
He was known as Professor Kavanaugh, and there were no reports on any sexual untowardness of any kind! His colleagues applauded his nomination and the students loved him!
Now all of that has been ruined by smears!
“If he’s confirmed with what seems to be a fake investigation, he won’t be teaching here without us pushing back as hard as we can,” said Jake Meiseles, one of the three Harvard Law School students who penned an op-ed in The Harvard Law Record, a student publication, calling on the administration to investigate the allegations.
Michelle Deakin, a Harvard Law spokeswoman, declined to comment, citing a policy not to respond to questions on personnel matters.....
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Time to coach up the accuser:
"How experts would prepare Christine Blasey Ford for Kavanaugh testimony" by Beth Teitell Globe Staff September 26, 2018
Christine Blasey Ford, an ordinary person with no national TV or Washington experience, a woman who wanted to remain anonymous but instead now has one of the most recognized and polarizing names in the country, is going to walk into a Senate hearing room Thursday and seat herself at a table with a microphone positioned to pick up every word.
She will face TV cameras, telephoto lenses, and the entire Senate Judiciary Committee and confront pointed questions about a drunken party she claims had an enormous and terrible effect on her life, about a night when she alleges Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her.
How does a regular person even begin to prepare for that?
She an ordinary and regular person says elite pre$$ of Bo$ton!
So what are the rest of us, irregular and unordinary?
Ford’s a research psychologist in Northern California, and so far, no reports of her practice panels have leaked out, but experts in the “murder board” industry — as the practice sessions are called because the questions are so tough — described what she’ll face and how to handle it.
Don't tell me she is going to accuse Kavanaugh of that on TV!
Btw, if she is a shrink who is making good money and getting pharmaceutical gigs on the side, she seems to have come through the enormous and terrible effect of the allegation.
I know, I know, life goes on.
A Washington lawyer who regularly prepares clients for congressional testimony likened hearings to a play, where the principal roles are assigned to the senators, and the witnesses play a part, either being lectured or applauded.
OMG!
That means the "theater may be even more manufactured than normal."
“This is an interesting hearing because there are two plays going on simultaneously,” the lawyer said.
Yes, it is all a PERFORMANCE!
Andrew Gilman, chief executive of CommCore Consulting Group in Washington, D.C., says he would advise Ford to remember the “three C’s.” Be clear, confident, and credible.
The biggest mistakes, especially when there’s media coverage, he said, are smirking and repeating a negative characterization contained in a question.
Like the way Trump was at his pre$$ conference yesterday.
Despite any temptation to pop a Xanax, don’t, Gilman said. “Anything that dulls your senses is not appropriate,” he said. He recommends clients exercise and stretch ahead of time — and once they’re in public, smile.
WTF?
Jerry Weissman, a corporate presentations coach and founder of Suasive, in San Bruno, Calif., likens congressional testimony to martial arts. “You deflect, you don’t fight,” he said.
In martial arts, he said, a skilled practitioner can compete with a superior opponent by using dexterity rather than might. “Bruce Lee, a diminutive kickboxer, became an international star by virtue of his uncanny ability to prevail over multiple and mightier armed opponents using only his flying feet and hands.”
Thursday’s hearing is in front of the 21 members of the Judiciary Committee, but Ford’s audience is much larger, said Kenneth Berman, a partner at Nutter McClennen & Fish LLP in Boston and author of “Reinventing Witness Preparation: Unlocking the Secrets to Testimonial Success.”
“It’s also the constituents to whom those senators are accountable, so she’s speaking in the court of public opinion. If she comes across as if she is hiding the truth, or doesn’t maintain eye contact, or claims not to understand a question that everyone else in the room understands, that could interfere with her likability,” he said, “and anything that interferes with likability could interfere with credibility.”
Yeah, it's all about the imagery and illusion of being "likable."
Didn't the Globe start out by wanting the truth?
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I suppose “there’s no easy answer.”
There is a special section upon the turn-in that encompasses pages A4, A5, A6, and A7:
What to watch for in the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing
Female prosecutor to question Kavanaugh and accuser is called fair
It's Juanita Broaddrick?
I am Chessy Prout’s mother. I know what happens when a 15-year-old sexual assault victim speaks out
She did report the problem to the nurse and I was going to reboot all the previous stories, but it is just not worth it now. She will have to take it up with DeVos.
Maybe if there were more female leadership at public colleges.
Joe Biden’s Anita Hill problem
Yeah, bye, Joe.
What about his creepy compulsion to put his hands on women (just ask Ash Carter's wife, and remember W. Bush slamming the old hands down on Merkel's shoulders?)?
He shouldn't be anywhere near the nomination come 2020.
Republicans must hit the pause button on Kavanaugh
If that is the advice then they need to hit the fast forward.
Believe it or not, the ma$$ media is rewinding:
"A tired ‘Murphy Brown’ returns to take on Trump" by Matthew Gilbert Globe Staff September 26, 2018
Regarding Donald Trump humor, there’s not much fresh material in the writing of CBS’s “Murphy Brown” revival, Thursday at 9:30 p.m. So many of the jokes — about buying Ivanka’s shoes for a dollar per pair, or about the orange Trump being Facebook friends with Putin, or about the right-wing network where “all the women are dead behind the eyes,” as Murphy puts it — have already made the rounds on social media, probably months or even years ago.
Yes, we get to see the famous Murphy Brown, now hosting a morning cable show, deliver the punch lines, with the kind of moral rage and dry humor we’d expect from her. We get to see her sneak into a White House press briefing and go off on Sarah Huckabee Sanders — or clips of Sanders — about transparency and government. “If we can’t get to the truth,” she yells, the sitcom world’s original journalist with integrity, “why are we even here?” There’s some satisfaction in those moments for fans, since Murphy, still played by Candice Bergen with spine to spare, was a “nasty woman” long before the phrase went viral.
That's about the only place you will find it!
But still, the political jokes are relentless and relentlessly tired, leading to a sense of smug overkill. The revival opens with a montage of the 2016 presidential election set to “Sympathy for the Devil” by the Rolling Stones. Get it? GET IT? Obviously, Trump is not going to call to congratulate Candice Bergen — as he did Roseanne Barr — if the show brings in big ratings. Those viewers who support Trump and his cultural prerogatives are not going near this one, but even those on board for some bashing, and for some concern about Trump’s idea of the media as the “enemy of the people,” are likely going to get a little bored.
See:
Globe Declares War on Trump
Reading With the Enemy
The Enemy of Our Enemy
Best Friends Forever
Also see:
New York Times Gets Letter From the Deep State
Bo$ton Globe Invokes 25th Amendment
What kind of a friend would do that?
The rest of the new “Murphy Brown” doesn’t help matters, alas. In order to make her new show, called “Murphy in the Morning,” Murphy gets the old gang back together, and they are exhausting. Miles (Grant Shaud) is over the top with neurosis, and Corky (Faith Ford) is over the top with menopause. Her hot flash on the air during a segment about global warming is sitcom kookiness at its worst. Little asides about Dan Quayle and Aretha Franklin, referring back to the “Murphy” canon, help. And Tyne Daly, who makes a “Cagney & Lacey” joke, is a plus as Phil’s sister, who has taken over his bar, but the only part of the new “Murphy Brown” that’s truly promising is the relationship between Murphy and her now-adult son, Avery, well-played by Jake McDorman. They bicker beautifully, as Avery decides to host a show as a token liberal on the “Wolf Network,” and you feel a familiarity between them that explains all we need to know about the past 20 years.
Why not just run runs then?
Their moments together have all the unforced chemistry and good humor that’s in short supply elsewhere on the show.
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I wonder if Padma Lakshmi knows Asia Argento (or if she knew Anthony Bourdain. Then maybe we could get to the bottom of it).
Tom Brady's wife says she battled panic attacks and suicidal thoughts after being assaulted in Brazil.
Meanwhile, back at Yale.....
AFTERNOON UPDATE:
White House Officials: Kavanaugh Needs To "Knock It Out Of The Park"
Is that why Democrats are smiling?
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"Mass. will require new assistance to 230 struggling schools" by James Vaznis Globe Staff September 27, 2018
School systems across the state will be required to provide targeted assistance to more than 230 schools where performance fell short on the latest round of MCAS scores or other measures, under a new state accountability system to be unveiled Thursday.
The schools represent 14 percent of all those statewide. They include 41 in Boston — making up almost half of the 102 city schools that received ratings under the new system — and will likely add to the challenges facing interim Superintendent Laura Perille, who has been grappling with chronically late school buses and the fate of the system’s aging school buildings.
“A gap still clearly exists, and this must be a top priority for Boston,” Perille said in an interview.
The new system of judging school performance comes just one year after state officials rolled out a revamped version of the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System exams in grades 3-8 that moved most testing online and introduced questions considered more challenging than those on the previous exams.
With less than half of students statewide meeting or exceeding expectations last year on most of the new exams, state education officials hoped scores would climb this year as schools familiarized themselves with the new tests and adjusted their classroom lessons. While schools for the most part showed some gains on the English/language arts tests, math scores were largely stagnant or declined.....
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I wonder how they will make the grade.
Related:
"A middle and high school principal in Cohasset has been placed on paid leave as the district taps an independent investigator to probe the handling of allegations of sexual misconduct by a teacher, according to a statement from the superintendent of schools. Louise L. Demas, Cohasset superintendent of schools, said in a statement that Carolyn Connolly, Cohasset Middle and High School principal, was placed on leave Wednesday following “our district’s recent receipt of information concerning this matter.” Last month, Jeffrey Knight, 57, of Pembroke was charged with indecently assaulting a female student, according to police. Specifically, he faces two counts of indecent assault and battery on a child under 14 and two counts of indecent assault and battery on a person 14 or over, police said. All of the counts involve the same student, according to authorities....."
They are like wolves in the fold, aren't they?
"Crosby resigning as Mass. Gaming Commission chairman" by Mark Arsenault Globe Staff September 26, 2018
Stephen P. Crosby, who has led the Massachusetts Gaming Commission from its infancy to a 100-member agency overseeing the state’s growing casino industry, announced Wednesday he is leaving the board immediately, saying false claims of bias against him threaten the commission’s work.
His resignation comes as the board prepares to receive a report from its investigators into sexual misconduct allegations against Steve Wynn, the former chief executive of Wynn Resorts, the Las Vegas gambling giant that won the right to the sole resort casino license in Greater Boston.
In a resignation letter sent to the commission’s staff, Crosby said he had been accused twice since mid-September of “prejudging the outcome” of that investigation.....
Lot of that going around these days.
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It's all an effort to derail Wynn.
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Ohio dioceses to identify abusive priests
Pope Francis asks Chinese Catholics to trust his deal with government
Notice there are no abuse cases coming out of China?
This after Francis spent the last week waxing about anti-semitism.
"EPA puts head of office to protect children’s health on leave" by Coral Davenport and Roni Caryn Rabin New York Times September 27, 2018
WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday placed the head of its Office of Children’s Health Protection on administrative leave, in an unusual move that several observers said appeared to reflect an effort to minimize the role of the office.
Dr. Ruth Etzel, a pediatrician and epidemiologist who has been a leader in children’s environmental health for 30 years, joined the EPA in 2015, after having served as a senior officer for environmental health research at the World Health Organization. She was placed on administrative leave late Tuesday and asked to hand over her badge, keys, and cellphone, according to an EPA official familiar with the decision who was not authorized to discuss the move and asked not to be identified.
An EPA spokesman, John Konkus, declined to give a reason for the leave.
The Office of Children’s Health Protection, created by President Bill Clinton in 1997, is tasked with seeing that agency regulations and programs take into account the particular vulnerabilities of children, babies, and fetuses. Children are more vulnerable than adults to pollution because their bodies are still developing and because they eat, drink, and breathe more in proportion to their size. In addition, some of their behaviors, such as crawling or putting things in their mouths, potentially expose them to chemicals or toxins.
Looks like bad chemistry to me.
Several people within the EPA or who work closely with the agency said Etzel’s dismissal is one of several recent developments that have slowed the work of the children’s health office. One person cited a proposal outlining a strategy for reducing childhood lead exposure, which had been in development for more than a year with the involvement of 17 federal agencies, and which has been stalled since early July.
The Office of Children’s Health Protection is technically housed in the office of the EPA administrator, Andrew Wheeler, who has served as acting administrator since July.
Under Wheeler and his predecessor, Scott Pruitt, who left this year amid investigations into his oversight of the agency, the EPA has aggressively pursued an agenda of rolling back environmental restrictions on numerous pollutants, arguing that they are overly strict or burden industry.
All fake news.
“This seems like a sneaky way for the EPA to get rid of this program and not be upfront about it,” said Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, director of the pediatric residency program at Hurley Medical Center, a teaching hospital affiliated with Michigan State University, whose analysis of blood tests in Flint, Mich. — a community that became caught up in a lead crisis affecting its drinking water — played a key role in showing that residents were being poisoned by the lead. Hanna-Attisha called Etzel “an international leader in children’s health.”
I hate to tell you this, but the water is still bad.
The decision to put the department head on administrative leave “is highly unusual,” said Joseph Goffman, a former senior counsel for the EPA during the Obama administration.
The office Etzel oversees is small, with a budget of about $2 million and 15 full-time employees in Washington and 10 regional children’s health coordinators, some of whom have other responsibilities in addition to children’s health.
Konkus said the Trump administration had no intention to diminish or eliminate an office designed to protect children’s health.
“Children’s health is and has always been a top priority for the Trump administration . . . ” he said in an e-mail.
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Related: GOP seeks changes to species law after grizzly hunts halted
Before you bust a lung in outrage, the ‘‘grizzly bear has been fully recovered for 10 years. Even the Obama administration said so.’’
My Hurricane Florence photograph is number 9 in the slide show.
Related:
"The construction of a temporary fence meant to prevent suicides at a Vermont bridge has been delayed due to concerns that construction could hurt fall foliage tourism...."
I enlarged that because it met with exasperation when I saw it.
Yeah, who cares about the suffering soul pitching him (or her) self over a bridge, just as long as the tourists can take their pictures!
The priorities there leave me $peechle$$.
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"Space heaters are unsafe for many homes hit by gas outages in Merrimack Valley" by Milton J. Valencia and Cristela Guerra Globe Staff September 27, 2018
LAWRENCE — Inspectors going door-to-door in Lawrence, Andover, and North Andover have delivered just a handful of the thousands of space heaters being made available to residents who are facing the onset of cold weather without heat. Fearing a fire hazard, officials said many of the homes inspected so far first need a costly, and potentially time-consuming, replacement of their electrical service.
Wow, this thing is mushrooming out like a gas explosion in all directions!
Who can afford to do that?
“If they don’t feel it’s safe, we don’t give them a space heater,” Lawrence Fire Chief Brian Moriarty said of the inspections. “We don’t want to make things worse.”
Two-thirds of the homes without gas service are in Lawrence, where the housing stock is older and many multifamily properties have not seen improvements in years.....
At least the tower at Government Center Garage starts next summer. The parking center is right next to the data science building.
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Look on the bright side: residents have already been given electric hot plates to cook on.
Maybe they can use the bowling alley as a temporary shelter while the authorities conduct a sweeping review.
Some fireworks over at the arthouse:
"BCA purchases Calderwood Pavilion from the city for $1" by Don Aucoin Globe Staff September 27, 2018
For the grand total of $1, less than a cup of coffee pretty much anywhere in the neighborhood where it is located, the Boston Center for the Arts has purchased the Calderwood Pavilion from the Boston Planning & Development Agency.
The BCA had been leasing the high-profile venue from the city under a long-term agreement that contained a provision allowing for the ultra-inexpensive purchase, according to BCA president and CEO Gregory Ruffer and BPDA spokesperson Bonnie McGilpin. Home to several theaters and rehearsal spaces, the Calderwood Pavilion is an active part of the sprawling BCA complex on Tremont Street in the South End. It opened in 2004 as part of a complex deal that also involved developer Ronald M. Druker and the Huntington Theatre Company, which has been the primary manager of the facility.
The BCA made the purchase because the organization saw “an opportunity for us as a nonprofit to take control of our own destiny,’’ Ruffer said Wednesday by phone.
“It does put us on a firmer footing,’’ he added. “There is a space issue for theater companies and for artists, and I personally want to make sure that assets like the Calderwood Pavilion stay in the hands of nonprofits whose missions drive the people who get to use the space.’’
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Related:
$2.5m Mellon Foundation grant launches Boston classical music initiative
Need to fix a few instruments first.
Jay Gonzalez calls for firing heads of State Police, public safety office
Man who allegedly shot at police says he thought they were assailants targeting family
Plus he was stoned:
"Mayor says pot rally left an ‘appalling’ mess on Boston Common" by Dan Adams Globe Staff September 26, 2018
Mayor Martin J. Walsh and some members of the Boston City Council are unhappy with leaders of the marijuana-themed “Freedom Rally” held on Boston Common earlier this month, with Walsh saying the three-day event left an “appalling” mess.
The annual rally, formerly known as Hempfest and organized since 1989 by the Massachusetts Cannabis Reform Coalition, an advocacy group, took place Sept. 14-16.
Featuring a wide array of vendors and educational displays about marijuana, it drew thousands of activists and marijuana enthusiasts; however, complained that the most recent Freedom Rally left behind piles of trash and hypodermic needles and that participants damaged the grass with vehicles, smoked marijuana in public, and even camped out in the park.
At Wednesday’s City Council meeting, members Josh Zakim and Ed Flynn — whose districts include the park and nearby areas — called for a hearing, and suggested the event may need to be relocated next year.
“This is truly not about being for or against the use of marijuana, recreational or medicinal,” Zakim said at the council’s regular public meeting, noting that he has supported liberalizing cannabis laws. “This is about proper use of Boston Common.”
Zakim said the city should respect the First Amendment rights of Freedom Rally participants, but insisted something needs to change. He noted that smoking cannabis is banned in public spaces, punishable by a fine.....
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Also see:
5 Glaring Reasons Why the Rite Aid Mass Shooting Disappeared from Headlines So Quickly
I hate to say I told you so, but I told you so.
Btw, what is going on in Afghanistan?
