What is utterly crazy here
So this is the sitch: Republicans say the [drastically constricted] FBI investigation exonerates Kavanaugh; Democrats say it does no such thing; we can’t consider the evidence because the Republicans are keeping the whole farking thing Secret.
What is utterly crazy here is that we have no way of evaluating any of this either way, because we are not allowed to see the FBI’s findings, even in summary form. Republicans and Democrats are telling vastly different stories about what those findings show: Republicans are claiming there was no corroboration of any of the charges against Kavanaugh and that there’s nothing new in them. Democrats are claiming not just that the investigation was a sham but also that it doesn’t exonerate Kavanaugh at all.
But on that latter point, Democrats have been confined to only the vaguest of hints. For instance, Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.) put out a statement saying that “to say that this investigation exonerates Judge Kavanaugh,” or to say that “there is no hint of misconduct in these documents,” is “just not true.” Warren went further than this — which seems significant — but both their statements are maddeningly vague.
Because the Republicans are forcing them to be vague.
To justify keeping the FBI’s findings secret, Republicans have pointed to a 2009 memorandum of understanding between the Judiciary Committee and the White House counsel concerning FBI background checks into nominees, which says such investigations are to remain confidential.
But Robert Bauer, a White House counsel under President Barack Obama, told me today that there are ways around this — that is, if senators and the White House wanted to find them. For instance, senators could simply renegotiate this agreement with the White House counsel, Bauer said.
“The Memorandum of Understanding is just that — it is an understanding that can be amended to address exceptional circumstances,” Bauer told me. Bauer pointed out that this is only the latest in a long line of things that Republicans and the White House have done to limit the public’s ability to weigh the testimony from Ford and Kavanaugh, emailing me this:
First, the Senate structured the peculiar one-day hearing which featured a sharply limited witness list and an outside counsel relieved of her responsibilities in the middle of the proceeding. Then the White House and the Senate majority set exceptional limits on the scope and timing of the subsequent FBI review. Then came this last step of rejecting calls from Republican as well as Democratic committee [members] for a public accounting of the results.
“The refusal of the Senate majority to provide even a summary of the review,” Bauer concluded, is only the last in a series of steps that are “undermining the credibility of the Supreme Court confirmation process.”
Not to mention the arbitrary tyrannical stonewalling of Merrick Garland.
What a nightmare.
Kav is on trial in the Court of World Opinion. Here (link below) is the best case for the defence I have yet seen. One problem with it: the more women who come forward with similar Kav stories to that of Christine Blasey Ford, the weaker Kav’s position becomes, and if he takes his lifetime seat on the US Supreme Court, any judgement he makes on any matter with a female testimony or sexual behaviour component will stir up public and political controversy.
So for better or worse, Kav’s lofty position on the bench will become an island in a sea of garbage, litter and general shit.
Dr. David C. Stolinsky, a retired physician, is based in the US, has written the best defence of Kav I have yet seen, which at best is a curate’s egg IMHO.
“One can have complete sympathy for someone who underwent the trauma of experiencing attempted sexual assault, but the fishy timing and discrepancies of this reported incident make it hard not to ask what unprovable and undefendable allegations will the next character assassin toss out. Hard-drug use? Child abuse? How pervasive and surreal are such fact-challenged defamations going to get?”
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13084/brett-kavanaugh-nomination
And while I am at it, and in case it has been overlooked, I draw readers’ attention here to Suzanne Moore’s excellent piece in The Groan.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/05/trump-assault-abortion-kavanaugh-women-voices-bodies
Look, the Republicans would have had a woman on the Judiciary Committee, but according to Chuck Grassley, women don’t do worky either
That article in the Guardian quoted that Trumpism about how scary it is to be a young man right now. Really? For women, it has always been scary – young, old, or in between. Most of us don’t think about it much, because it becomes background noise to our lives, but the fear is there. It is in the way we carefully check our cars, our houses, or whatever else we may be about to enter. It is in the way we hold our tongue in meetings because seeming “too pushy” could cost us our jobs (and many of us are single mothers with kids to support. Even though I am no longer, I can still empathize with those who are). It is in the way we don’t report rapes because we know we will be put through hell…and that was even before the age of the internet, when the hell has multiplied exponentially to such an intense roar that it has driven many women off the internet. It is in the way we hide behind nyms. It is in the way we send in our work to publishers with a name that could be a man – J. K. Rowling, for instance. I do the same myself. It is in the way we defer to men, we speak quietly to men, we smile at men, we move a few inches away from a man standing too close. It is in the way we lash out when we are angry, because we are tired of being afraid all the time.
I think most young men in America do not feel scared. The ones I know don’t. They are supremely confident that they will not have to deal with a rape accusation, false or otherwise. Are they more reality based than the “scared” young men? Maybe. Maybe they’re just so convinced of their own wonderfulness. I don’t know.
But maybe it is time for young men to feel scared, to understand some of the fear the rest of us deal with all day every day.
Impeaching Trump is a waste of time, but Kavanaugh? Hell fucking yeah…
https://www.facebook.com/144310995587370/photos/a.271728576178944/2114840545201062/?type=3&theater