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.

Kavanaugh wants us to know that last Thursday he “was there as a son, husband and dad.” Really? He wasn’t nominated to the Supreme Court “as a son, husband and dad.” We don’t give a fuck about his family life (except possibly as more or less reason to think he’s simply an asshole), that’s not what he’s there for.

He makes this weird claim in the Wall Street Journal (well hey at least it’s not Breitbart).

He starts by telling us how proud he was to be at the White House with his wife and daughters to accept the nomination.

My mom, Martha—one of the first women to serve as a Maryland prosecutor and trial judge, and my inspiration to become a lawyer—sat in the audience with my dad, Ed.

Can we not stop with this folksy crap already? What’s wrong with calling them his mother and father? And skipping the first names? We’re not at a church picnic. It’s a wonder he didn’t refer to his little woman and kiddies.

Then he says a lot about how not partisan he is.

After all those meetings and after my initial hearing concluded, I was subjected to wrongful and sometimes vicious allegations. My time in high school and college, more than 30 years ago, has been ridiculously distorted. My wife and daughters have faced vile and violent threats.

Against that backdrop, I testified before the Judiciary Committee last Thursday to defend my family, my good name and my lifetime of public service. My hearing testimony was forceful and passionate. That is because I forcefully and passionately denied the allegation against me. At times, my testimony—both in my opening statement and in response to questions—reflected my overwhelming frustration at being wrongly accused, without corroboration, of horrible conduct completely contrary to my record and character. My statement and answers also reflected my deep distress at the unfairness of how this allegation has been handled.

Well now wait a second. What does he mean by “my record”” What constitutes a record? It depends on who is compiling the record, doesn’t it. A substantial number of people have come forward to tell us about Kavanaugh’s record as a belligerent drunk and bully.

I was very emotional last Thursday, more so than I have ever been. I might have been too emotional at times. I know that my tone was sharp, and I said a few things I should not have said. I hope everyone can understand that I was there as a son, husband and dad. I testified with five people foremost in my mind: my mom, my dad, my wife, and most of all my daughters.

Well I for one cannot understand it, because this isn’t about his family, it’s about what he’s going to do to us.

I wonder if Kavanaugh would be disconcerted at all if his older daughter got into Radcliffe and then weeks before she was to start classes discovered she was pregnant…and she didn’t want to stay pregnant. I wonder if he would try to insist that she should delay Radcliffe for a year so that she could have the baby and give it up for adoption.

He says if he’s confirmed he’ll keep an open mind. I don’t believe him.

Why did I ever think it would matter?

Michelle Goldberg at the Times:

The restarted F.B.I. background check that seemed, a week ago, like a merciful concession to decency has instead been a cover-up. Agents didn’t even question Blasey or Kavanaugh. It’s not clear if they interviewed any of the more than 20 corroborating witnesses named by Deborah Ramirez, who claimed a drunken, aggressive Kavanaugh thrust his genitals into her face when they were students at Yale. The New Yorker reported that witnesses who tried to contact the F.B.I.were ignored; some ended up submitting unsolicited statements to the bureau.

Which were filed in the bottom drawer of a rusty filing cabinet in a sub-basement filled with piranhas.

Ultimately, according to the White House, the F.B.I. interviewed a total of nine people in its new review. Based on what they said, Republican leaders have declared that Blasey’s story remains uncorroborated.

In other words the Republicans told the FBI not to do anything that would actually turn up evidence, and Republican leaders have declared that Blasey’s story remains uncorroborated. It remains uncorroborated because they didn’t try to corroborate it.

Conservatives will say that they’re protecting an innocent man unfairly accused, not standing up for white male impunity as a principle. They either don’t believe Blasey, or they think that, in the absence of further proof, Kavanaugh should be given the benefit of the doubt, which in this case means a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court. They think they’re the ones who are being fair and judicious. “One side is standing on evidence,” tweeted Commentary’s Noah Rothman. “The other on intuition and sentiment.”

Evidence! What evidence? There is no “evidence” that Kavanaugh did not assault Ford, there’s only his denial that he did. There’s also no evidence (that I know of) that he did, but that doesn’t equal “it’s just intuition and sentiment.” And there’s plenty of evidence that Kavanaugh is an angry hater of all things lefty, which is not a good quality in a supreme.

No Democrat or feminist cares that Kavanaugh drank a lot in high school; personally, I couldn’t have endured high school sober. We care that he described his younger self as a chaste innocent who was, as he said in his Fox News interview, “focused on academics and athletics, going to church every Sunday at Little Flower, working on my service projects, and friendship.” In fact, by multiple accounts, Kavanaugh was a mean, rowdy drunk and a sexist bully.

Which is not what we expect in a Supreme Court justice.

Of course; the fix is in. The FBI has handed over its “report” and the Republicans are saying it’s all good and that’s the end of that.

A leading Republican said Thursday that a new FBI report on Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh found “no hint of misconduct,” while Democrats called it incomplete and suggested that the White House limited the probe to protect President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee.

The headlines are full of stories on people who had relevant information who could not get the FBI to talk to them.

“There’s nothing in it that we didn’t already know,” Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) said in a statement after being briefed on the FBI report by his staff. “It’s time to vote.”

There’s nothing in it that they didn’t already know because they blocked all new information.

This is so fucking sleazy.

But even before the report was formally sent to the Senate, lawyers for Ford criticized what they viewed as an incomplete FBI probe.

“An FBI supplemental background investigation that did not include an interview of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford — nor the witnesses who corroborate her testimony — cannot be called an investigation,” her legal team said in a statement. “We are profoundly disappointed that after the tremendous sacrifice she made in coming forward, those directing the FBI investigation were not interested in seeking the truth.”

Hey, they let her talk, they just didn’t listen. You can’t have everything.

On Thursday, a lawyer for Deborah Ramirez, who has accused Kavanaugh of exposing himself while in college, sent a letter to FBI Director Christopher A. Wray making the same claim.

The letter noted that Ramirez had been interviewed by the FBI for two hours Sunday in Colorado and later provided a list of 20 people who might corroborate her account of Kavanaugh’s behavior.

“Fewer than four days, later, however, the FBI apparently has concluded its investigation — without permitting its agents to investigate,” wrote Ramirez lawyer William Pittard. “We are deeply disappointed by this failure.”

So are we.

Oof, this is powerful: an open letter by 650 (and rising) law professors saying Kavanaugh does not have the temperament. It’s going to the Senate tomorrow.

Judicial temperament is one of the most important qualities of a judge. As the Congressional Research Service explains, a judge requires “a personality that is even-handed, unbiased, impartial, courteous yet firm, and dedicated to a process, not a result.” The concern for judicial temperament dates back to our founding; in Federalist 78, titled “Judges as Guardians of the Constitution,” Alexander Hamilton expressed the need for “the integrity and moderation of the judiciary.”

We are law professors who teach, research and write about the judicial institutions of this country. Many of us appear in state and federal court, and our work means that we will continue to do so, including before the United States Supreme Court. We regret that we feel compelled to write to you, our Senators, to provide our views that at the Senate hearings on Sept. 27, Judge Brett Kavanaugh displayed a lack of judicial temperament that would be disqualifying for any court, and certainly for elevation to the highest court of this land.

The question at issue was of course painful for anyone. But Judge Kavanaugh exhibited a lack of commitment to judicious inquiry. Instead of being open to the necessary search for accuracy, Judge Kavanaugh was repeatedly aggressive with questioners. Even in his prepared remarks, Judge Kavanaugh described the hearing as partisan, referring to it as “a calculated and orchestrated political hit,” rather than acknowledging the need for the Senate, faced with new information, to try to understand what had transpired. Instead of trying to sort out with reason and care the allegations that were raised, Judge Kavanaugh responded in an intemperate, inflammatory and partial manner, as he interrupted and, at times, was discourteous to senators.

Benjamin Wittes expressed a lot of sympathy for his anger (though not approval), so much sympathy that I thought it was too much. That paragraph clarifies (for me) why. Kavanaugh exhibited a lack of commitment to judicious inquiry. Sure, it’s easy to get why he was riled, but what’s not easy to get is why he apparently made no effort to control that and act like an adult judge-type person. It’s not easy to get why he thought a display of rage would be acceptable, and a good idea, and justified. It’s not easy to get why he had no discipline. All of that (and more) seems like the opposite of right-for-the-Supreme-Court.

As you know, under two statutes governing bias and recusal, judges must step aside if they are at risk of being perceived as or of being unfair. As Congress has previously put it, a judge or justice “shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” These statutes are part of a myriad of legal commitments to the impartiality of the judiciary, which is the cornerstone of the courts.

We have differing views about the other qualifications of Judge Kavanaugh. But we are united, as professors of law and scholars of judicial institutions, in believing that he did not display the impartiality and judicial temperament requisite to sit on the highest court of our land.

Laurence Tribe writes in the Globe that Kavanaugh, if confirmed, will vote to kill Roe v Wade, and was tricksy about it in the hearings.

Several senators have said they would not vote to confirm Judge Brett Kavanaugh as a Supreme Court justice if they believed he would vote to undo the basic protections for women upheld in Roe v. Wade and other cases. So if his testimony and his meetings with those senators had exposed that as his almost-certain path, they would vote no.

But the only reason his public testimony and private meetings didn’t reveal such a clear inclination is that Judge Kavanaugh dissembled about his views, calling the Supreme Court’s abortion rulings “precedent on precedent,” as though that rendered them safe from his slippery keyboard. The truth is it does nothing of the kind.

It’s all of a piece, you know. Kavanaugh thinks women are lesser beings, subject to the rule of men. They should obey when men try to rape them, and they should be forced to bear children they don’t want to bear if men say they have to.

No one who has seriously studied Judge Kavanaugh’s Court of Appeals opinions — or knows anything about the publicly stated criteria used by the groups to which President Trump outsourced his selection of Supreme Court nominees — could fail to recognize that Judge Kavanaugh would, at the first opportunity, gut Roe v. Wade. His 2007 opinion in Doe Tarlow v. District of Columbia upholding compulsory elective surgeries — including abortions — performed on women marked at birth as intellectually challenged, and his 2018 opinion in Garza v. Hargan that sought to block a mature young woman’s access to a lawful abortion, leave no doubt that he would do all in his power to vindicate the expectations of those who handpicked him to satisfy Trump’s evangelical base. Indeed, just last year, in a speech to the American Enterprise Institute, Kavanaugh called Roe an example of “freewheeling judicial creation of unenumerated rights.”

Easy for him – it’s not a right he has ever needed or ever will need, so it’s just a wild and crazy judicial creation.

Benjamin Wittes wrestles with the Kavanaugh issue.

I have a long relationship with Kavanaugh, and I have always liked him. I have admired his career on the D.C. Circuit. I have spoken warmly of him. I have published him. I have vouched publicly for his character—more than once—and taken a fair bit of heat for doing so.

He advised Kavanaugh (also at The Atlantic) to withdraw unless he could dispute Ford’s account without leaving a scorched earth behind.

Kavanaugh, needless to say, did not take my advice. He stayed in, and he delivered on Thursday, by way of defense, a howl of rage. He went on the attack not against Ford—for that we can be grateful—but against Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee and beyond. His opening statement was an unprecedentedly partisan outburst of emotion from a would-be justice. I do not begrudge him the emotion, even the anger. He has been through a kind of hell that would leave any person gasping for air. But I cannot condone the partisanship—which was raw, undisguised, naked, and conspiratorial—from someone who asks for public faith as a dispassionate and impartial judicial actor. His performance was wholly inconsistent with the conduct we should expect from a member of the judiciary.

Consider the judicial function as described by Kavanaugh himself at his first hearing. That Brett Kavanaugh described a “good judge [as] an umpire—a neutral and impartial arbiter who favors no litigant or policy.” That Brett Kavanaugh reminded us that “the Supreme Court must never be viewed as a partisan institution. The justices on the Supreme Court do not sit on opposite sides of an aisle. They do not caucus in separate rooms.”

That Kavanaugh did not show up last Thursday.

After rightly criticizing “the behavior of several of the Democratic members of this committee at [his] hearing a few weeks ago [as] an embarrassment,” this Brett Kavanaugh veered off into full-throated conspiracy in a fashion that made entirely clear that he knew which room he caucused in:

When I did at least okay enough at the hearings that it looked like I might actually get confirmed, a new tactic was needed.

Some of you were lying in wait and had it ready. This first allegation was held in secret for weeks by a Democratic member of this committee, and by staff. It would be needed only if you couldn’t take me out on the merits.

When it was needed, this allegation was unleashed and publicly deployed over Dr. Ford’s wishes. And then—and then as no doubt was expected, if not planned—came a long series of false last-minute smears designed to scare me and drive me out of the process before any hearing occurred.

He went on: “This whole two-week effort has been a calculated and orchestrated political hit, fueled with apparent pent-up anger about President Trump and the 2016 election, fear that has been unfairly stoked about my judicial record, revenge on behalf of the Clintons, and millions of dollars in money from outside left-wing opposition groups.”

I still wonder why he did that, and all the more so after reading the bit from the first hearing. Did he simply lose his temper? Lose it so thoroughly that it remained lost while he wrote that statement? And while he delivered it? (There again – if so, that itself hints at a temperament not ideal for the Supreme Court.)

The Brett Kavanaugh who showed up to Thursday’s hearing is a man I have never met, whom I have never even caught a glimpse of in 20 years of knowing the person who showed up to the first hearing. I dealt with Kavanaugh during the Starr investigation, which I covered for theWashington Post editorial page and about which I wrote a book. I dealt with him when he was in the White House counsel’s office and working on judicial nominations and post–September 11 legal matters. Since his confirmation to the D.C. Circuit, he has been a significant voice on a raft of issues I work on. In all of our interactions, he has been a consummate professional. The allegations against him shocked me very deeply, but not quite so deeply as did his presentation. It was not just an angry and aggressive version of the person I have known. It seemed like a different person altogether.

I think that’s the part that interests me the most. I’ve been trying to imagine a Kavanaugh who was admired by people like Wittes and I couldn’t do it – because the one who shouted and blubbed at that hearing is the only one I’ve seen.