I'm sure you noticed...

...Kavanaugh does that periodic sniffing thing that Trump does.

Maybe they both have sinus problems.  Maybe they both snort cocaine.

Or maybe Kavanaugh simply wants to be just like Trump.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

On this day in American history...

Could be

So does his refusal to take responsibility and to get angry after having put on a performance of pious sincerity on Fox News that he sensed wasn't widely believed or accepted.  The nasty, punishing anger when you don't submit to his promises and platitudes.  Very much like an alcoholic who isn't really recovered.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Go, Jerry

As long as I can remember, California has been ahead of the curve. We'll miss it when the ocean swallows it.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

There's more!

Have I mentioned that Lindsey Graham is a pile?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

DiFi means to get to the bottom of this

As much as I don't care for Dianne Feinstein, I have to admit that she has been one of the most dogged of the Democrats in certain situations.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (Calif.), the top Democrat on the committee, wrote to McGahn and FBI Director Christopher A. Wray on Sunday asking for a copy of any “written directive” sent to investigators [looking into the Ford-Kavanaugh case].

[...]

The order to the FBI was signed by Trump but has not been made public. White House officials have sought to lay responsibility for the details on either the Senate or the FBI.

[...]

“They ought to be doing multiple investigations at the same time,” Sen. Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.), a Judiciary Committee member, said in an MSNBC interview Saturday. “There are multiple allegations currently in front of the committee, and I think it is not hard to figure out the universe of witnesses. It is not 500. It may not be 50. But it has to be more than five.”

[...]

An attorney for one potential witness, Elizabeth Rasor, said her client has not been contacted by the FBI despite repeated offers to cooperate. Roberta Kaplan said her client, who was in a relationship with Judge for about three years, has notified the Judiciary Committee several times about her offer of assistance.

Rasor last week publicly challenged Judge’s statement that he could not recall roughhousing taking place with women while at Georgetown Prep. In an interview with The New Yorker, Rasor said she felt morally obligated to reveal that Judge had told her “a very different story,” recounting an incident that involved multiple boys having sex with a drunk woman. Rasor said Judge had said the encounter was consensual and he did not name others involved in the incident. But Rasor was disturbed by the story and felt it undermined Judge’s claims about the sexual innocence of those at Georgetown Prep. Judge’s attorney told the New Yorker that her client “categorically denies” Rasor’s account.

  WaPo

It's early yet. But if the FBI does not, in fact, contact Raso, there will surely be an uproar.

Charles Ludington, a former varsity basketball player and friend of Kavanaugh’s at Yale, told The Washington Post on Sunday that he plans to deliver a statement to the FBI field office in Raleigh on Monday detailing violent drunken behavior by Kavanaugh in college.

I hope he has protection. I'm serious.  And he's going to get smeared in the press. How many lives is Kavanaugh willing to see "destroyed"?  Everyone else's I'm guessing.

Ludington, an associate professor at North Carolina State University, provided a copy of the statement to The Post.

In it, Ludington says in one instance, Kavanaugh initiated a fight that led to the arrest of a mutual friend: “When Brett got drunk, he was often belligerent and aggressive. On one of the last occasions I purposely socialized with Brett, I witnessed him respond to a semi-hostile remark, not by defusing the situation, but by throwing his beer in the man’s face and starting a fight that ended with one of our mutual friends in jail.”

Ludington says he was deeply troubled by Kavanaugh appearing to blatantly mischaracterize his drinking in Senate testimony.

“I do not believe that the heavy drinking or even loutish behavior of an 18 or even 21 year old should condemn a person for the rest of his life,” Ludington wrote. “However ... if he lied about his past actions on national television, and more especially while speaking under oath in front of the United States Senate, I believe those lies should have consequences.”

Exactly. The man could have said he did some pretty awful things in his youth under the influence that he regrets and has matured since then, apologized, and moved on. He, in fact, is the one who has destroyed his family by refusing to do that. But, like all Trump-types, he can't possibly admit he's ever done anything wrong. Yeah, maybe he had too many beers once or twice, but he NEVER harmed anyone. Entitled, lying POS.

I wonder why the mutual friend went to jail and not Kavanaugh?*  Any guesses?

An open letter “call to action” sent Saturday by two Georgetown Preparatory School graduates in support of Ford — and “ in solidarity with women everywhere who have endured sexual assault, violence, and harassment” — called on fellow alumni to reach out to the FBI if they have any information to share relevant to the Kavanaugh investigation.

“The Senate has called for an FBI investigation. If you know anything surrounding the allegations against Brett Kavanaugh, now is the time to come forward,” the letter states. “Whether it is knowledge of specific events in these allegations, or just background to those events, please do not remain silent, even if speaking out comes at some personal cost.”

The letter is signed by Fikri Yucel and Bill Barbot, both Class of 1986, who overlapped with Kavanaugh at the school when they were freshman and he was a senior. In an interview Sunday, Yucel said that more than 60 Georgetown Prep alumni from the early 1980s through 2012 have co-signed the letter and that it is being shared on Facebook and social media.

Pictures, anyone?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

*Doesn't look like anybody went to jail.  The NYT got the police report.

Weighing the testimony

If we are taking an uncorroborated claim seriously, though, what does that mean for standards of proof? Much later in life, Ford told her therapist and husband, but at the end of the day we only have her word. If we were to base his guilt on her word alone, then wouldn’t people be able to make any kind of false allegation they liked?

Not quite. The existence of a “he said, she said” does not mean it’s impossible to figure out the truth. It means we have to examine what he said, and what she said, as closely as possible. If both parties speak with passion and clarity, but one of them says many inconsistent, evasive, irrational, and false things, while the other does not, then we actually have a very good indicator of which party is telling the truth. If a man claims to be innocent, but does things—like carefully manipulate words to avoid giving clear answers, or lie about the evidence—that you probably wouldn’t do if you were innocent, then testimony alone can substantially change our confidence in who to believe.

In this case, when we examine the testimony of Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford honestly, impartially, and carefully, it is impossible to escape the following conclusions:

Brett Kavanaugh is lying.

[...]

I want to show you, clearly and definitively, how Brett Kavanaugh has lied to you and lied to the Senate. I cannot prove that he committed sexual assault when he was 17, and I hesitate to draw conclusions about what happened for a few minutes in a house in Maryland in the summer of 1982. But I can prove quite easily that Kavanaugh’s teary-eyed “good, innocent man indignant at being wrongfully accused” schtick was a facade. What may have looked like a strong defense was in fact a very, very weak and implausible one.

[...]

Ford has been clear: She is not talking about a big event. She is talking about a few friends and acquaintances hanging around drinking some beer in a living room

[...]

Kavanaugh says that he never attended any event like this. Like what, though? He never attended a small gathering in Bethesda where people were drinking beer? Kavanaugh submitted his own calendars from the summer of 1982 into evidence for the Senate. As he said himself, “the calendars show a few weekday gatherings at friends’ houses after a workout or just to meet up and have some beers.” He says that he never attended a gathering like this, but that’s obviously false, because the type of gathering he says he did attend is exactly the kind she describes.

[...]

Maybe you think he just meant “I never went to this kind of small gathering with the people Ford says.” Indeed, Kavanaugh says:

[N]one of those gatherings included the group of people that Dr. Ford has identified. And as my calendars show, I was very precise about listing who was there; very precise.

Well it’s hard to misinterpret that. He was very precise. Who, then, is the group of people that Dr. Ford has identified? From her testimony:

There were four boys I remember specifically being there: Brett Kavanaugh, Mark Judge, a boy named P.J., and one other boy whose name I cannot recall. I also remember my friend Leland attending.

  Current Affairs

Ford cited this gathering before Kavanaugh released his calendar, and I hope that calendar is the nail in his coffin. Who's he going to blame for that?

He's lying AND he's an idiot.

So presumably, if we looked at what Kavanaugh’s calendars show, we wouldn’t find an event with Mark Judge, P.J., some other boy, and Leland.

[...]

But wait: Let’s look at the entry for July 1st, one Kavanaugh did not cite in his list of “parties with people who are not the people Ford cited.” On July 1st, Kavanaugh planned to go “to Timmy’s for skis w/Judge, Tom, PJ, Bernie, Squi.” There’s Mark Judge! There’s P.J.! So he gathered for [brew]skis with 2 of the 3 people Ford says she remembers being there. Small gathering? Beer? Judge, Brett, and P.J.? Check, check, and check.

[...]

There’s another person who was at “Timmy’s”: a mysterious man named “Squi.” Squi was, in fact, a man named Chris Garrett, whom Ford says she went out with and who introduced her into Kavanaugh’s social circle. Garrett has attested to Kavanaugh’s good character, but because none of this has been properly investigated, we have no idea whether he admits to having gone out with Ford. If he did, that would cast doubt on Kavanaugh’s assertion that he had absolutely no idea who Ford was and she didn’t move “in his circle”: It would still be possible that they never met and Kavanaugh never heard her name, but there would be a clear connection.

Squi, as it turns out, is also the guy that Ed Whelen (and Orrin Hatch's office) tried to deflect suspicion onto for attacking Ford. He may well have changed his mind after that deplorable stunt.

One more person: Leland. Leland is Leland Ingham Keyser, Ford’s friend. Kavanaugh repeatedly cited her statement that she couldn’t remember this gathering.

[...]

KAVANAUGH: All four witnesses who are alleged to be at the event said it didn’t happen. Including Dr. Ford’s long-time friend, Ms. Keyser, who said that she didn’t know me and that she does not recall ever being at a party with me with or without Dr. Ford. KAVANAUGH: All the witnesses who were there say it didn’t happen. Ms. Keyser’s her longtime friend, said she never saw me at a party with or without Dr. Ford… Do you notice something? THIS IS A BALD-FACED LIE. Keyser never said it “didn’t happen.”  [...] Keyser says she believes it happened, Kavanaugh tells the United States Senate that she said it didn’t.

Another fact about Keyser: She may not remember him, but he seems to remember her. When asked, he became extremely cagey and imprecise: MITCHELL: OK. Do you know Leland Ingham or Leland Keyser? KAVANAUGH: I — I know of her. And it — it’s possible I, you know, saw — met her in high school at some point at some event. Yes, I know — I know of her and, again, I don’t want to rule out having crossed paths with her in high school.

And then they pulled Rachel Mitchell out and went into damage control and posturing.

If you of course remember her, but that would provide a direct social tie between you and the woman you allegedly assaulted (whom you say “did not travel in the same social circles” as you), then you give an answer like the one Kavanaugh gave: Don’t specify when you heard of her, fudge it with the present tense (of course you know of her now, the question is whether you knew her then), and stutter your way through.

[...]

Even Mark Judge, Kavanaugh’s close friend who allegedly participated in the assault, pulled a bit of a shady “don’t recall”: “I have no memory of this alleged incident. Brett Kavanaugh and I were friends in high school but I do not recall the party described in Dr. Ford’s letter. More to the point, I never saw Brett act in the manner Dr. Ford describes.” That last bit is a denial that Judge himself participated in or witnessed such an assault, but here’s P.J.:

“I am issuing this statement today to make it clear to all involved that I have no knowledge of the party in question; nor do I have any knowledge of the allegations of improper conduct she has leveled against Brett Kavanaugh.”

Kavanaugh says P.J. denied that the event happened. That’s not what the statement says. Kavanaugh is a federal judge, a real smart cookie. I hope he knows the difference between the absence of an awareness of an event and an awareness of the absence of an event.

Oh, he knows, alright. But I think we could argue about him being a smart cookie.

Kavanaugh, for all his righteous weeping and insistence on his honesty, is not presenting the evidence accurately. He’s trying to suggest that it’s more unfavorable to Ford than it actually is. Saying “Everyone she says was there denies it” is far more effective than the truth: “Nobody she says was there remembers it, though one of them believes it happened.” Kavanaugh concluded that “Dr. Ford’s allegation is not merely uncorroborated, it is refuted by the very people she says were there, including by a long-time friend of hers. Refuted.” It wasn’t refuted in the least.

Clearly, he is intentionally misleading. And sometimes outright lying.  (I'm still flabbergasted that everybody's acting like he didn't lie and obfuscate in the same way during his confirmation hearing.  He was already a proven liar before this even happened.)

Kavanaugh [...] tries to restrict the range of possible dates to weekends, and on weekends he largely has alibis. “Presumably” this event happened on a weekend he says, because they were hard-working kids and drinking wouldn’t happen on a weeknight. But he actually has precisely such an event on his calendar! The July 1st brewski-evening with P.J., Judge, et al. happened on a Thursday, according to his own record.

And this may be some of the best bullshit he tried to pass off:

When my friends and I spent time together at parties on weekends, it was usually the — with friends from nearby Catholic all-girls high schools, Stone Ridge, Holy Child, Visitation, Immaculata, Holy Cross. Dr. Ford did not attend one of those schools. She attended an independent private school named Holton-Arms and she was a year behind me… Dr. Ford has said that this event occurred at a house near Columbia Country Club, which is at the corner of Connecticut Avenue in the East-West Highway in Chevy Chase, Maryland. In her letter to Senator Feinstein, she said that there were four other people at the house but none of those people, nor I, lived near Columbia Country Club. As of the summer of 1982, Dr. Ford was 15 and could not drive yet and she did not live near Columbia Country Club. She says confidently that she had one beer at the party, but she does not say how she got to the house in question or how she got home or whose house it was.

Here Kavanaugh tries to undermine Ford with his superior specificity of location (he knows exactlyexactly which corner the street is), and by suggesting that Ford simply wouldn’t have encountered him because he was far away. Alright, here’s a map:

This is the Bethesda area in Maryland. From the top to the bottom is about five miles. The red marker is Kavanaugh’s school, Georgetown Prep. The purple is Ford’s school, Holton-Arms. The blue markers are two of the Catholic girls’ schools whose students Kavanaugh said he did encounter socially. And the green is the country club. I am not presenting this map to show anything elaborate or conspiratorial, I swear. I just want you to note that all of these places are within a very short distance of one another. Ford’s school is not remote, it’s in exactly in the area where Kavanaugh did meet students from other schools. And the country club is pretty close by.

Kavanaugh also doesn’t mention another salient fact, which is that his father and Ford’s father were members of the same golf club. Kavanaugh leaves details like this out, because he wants to create the impression that there was some considerable distance between the Bethesda prep-school community that Ford inhabited and the one he himself inhabited. But hang on, where did all these people live? Oh, turns out we have a map of that too:

Kavanaugh, who scoffs that he didn’t live near Ford’s country club, lived closer to it than she did!

I might as well stop here. The article goes on for much longer, including lies and deceptions about his character and behavior in high school and college. Check it out.

It's most thorough. And at times humorous.

And here's the conclusion:

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

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

Pretty sure it says this handbasket we're in is already at the gate.

There were two instances in his testimony that I wished the senator questioning him had followed up:

1.  When Blumenthal asked him if he knew what a Latin phrase meant, Kavanaugh paused and then pulled that old standby (with requisite smarmy swagger):  Why don't YOU tell us, YOU can do it so much BETTER.  Blumenthal should have said, "No, I'd like to hear what you believe it means."  Or maybe just, "You don't know, do you?"  Instead, he told him what it meant.

2.  When Whitehouse asked him what "Devil's Triangle" meant, Kavanaugh said it's a drinking game.  I immediatetly though, "Ask him how it's played."  And Whitehouse did!  Kavanaugh tried to dismiss the question with, "It's a drinking game."  And Whitehouse actually followed that by asking him how it's played.  Sadly, when Kavanaugh asked if Whitehouse ever heard of "Quarters" and Whitehouse said he didn't, Kavanaugh merely said, "It's like Quarters."  Whitehouse failed to push him to answer the question and describe how it was done.  Kavanaugh, already having gone out on that limb by saying it's played with three cups arranged in a triangle, would have had to explain why there had to be three cups so arranged.  He could have done it, but he would have looked even more the lying fool that he already showed himself to be.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

While we are distracted

In shelters from Kansas to New York, hundreds of migrant children have been roused in the middle of the night in recent weeks and loaded onto buses with backpacks and snacks for a cross-country journey to their new home: a barren tent city on a sprawling patch of desert in West Texas.

  NYT

West Texas, aka Hell.

These midnight voyages are playing out across the country, as the federal government struggles to find room for more than 13,000 detained migrant children — the largest population ever — whose numbers have increased more than fivefold since last year.

The average length of time that migrant children spend in custody has nearly doubled over the same period, from 34 days to 59, according to the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees their care.

[...]

The roughly 100 shelters that have, until now, been the main location for housing detained migrant children are licensed and monitored by state child welfare authorities, who impose requirements on safety and education as well as staff hiring and training. The tent city in Tornillo, on the other hand, is unregulated, except for guidelines created by the Department of Health and Human Services.

[...]

Until now, most undocumented children being held by federal immigration authorities had been housed in private foster homes or shelters, sleeping two or three to a room. They received formal schooling and regular visits with legal representatives assigned to their immigration cases.

But in the rows of sand-colored tents in Tornillo, Tex., children in groups of 20, separated by gender, sleep lined up in bunks. There is no school: The children are given workbooks that they have no obligation to complete. Access to legal services is limited.

[...]

The camp in Tornillo operates like a small, pop-up city, about 35 miles southeast of El Paso on the Mexico border, complete with portable toilets. Air-conditioned tents that vary in size are used for housing, recreation and medical care. Originally opened in June for 30 days with a capacity of 400, it expanded in September to be able to house 3,800, and is now expected to remain open at least through the end of the year.

[...]

Several shelter workers, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of being fired, described what they said has become standard practice for moving the children: In order to avoid escape attempts, the moves are carried out late at night because children will be less likely to try to run away. For the same reason, children are generally given little advance warning that they will be moved.

[...]

The move to Texas is meant to be temporary. Rather than send new arrivals there, the government is sending children who are likely to be released sooner, and will spend less time there—mainly older children, ages 13 to 17, who are considered close to being placed with sponsors. Still, because sponsorship placements are often protracted, immigrant advocates said there was a possibility that many of the children could be living in the tent city for months.

[...]

The longer that children remain in custody, the more likely they are to become anxious or depressed, which can lead to violent outbursts or escape attempts, according to shelter workers and reports that have emerged from the system in recent months.

Advocates said those concerns are heightened at a larger facility like Tornillo, where signs that a child is struggling are more likely to be overlooked, because of its size. They added that moving children to the tent city without providing enough time to prepare them emotionally or to say goodbye to friends could compound trauma that many are already struggling with.

Never underestimate how low the GOP is willing to go

Disgusting Fox

The Kit Winter quote

Comes from a publication called "The Cut".

In the fall of 1983, three weeks into his freshman year at Yale, Kit Winter [...] moved down to [Lawrance Hall] LD01, a three-man suite, where two rooms opened up onto a large living area. Winter took over the empty single. The double was already occupied. James Roche, who has publicly supported Deborah Ramirez in her account of being sexually threatened by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, lived there. And so did Kavanaugh himself.

[...]

[T]he living room down in LD01 remained entirely unfurnished except for an old keg — “and I think there was also a broken floor lamp much of the time,” Winter recalls. “And as you might expect in a sizable empty room, there were a lot of dust balls and Solo cups and trash on the floor. It was not an inviting space. It was pretty grim.”

[...]

Especially disgusting was the shared bathroom, which was always covered in vomit. Kavanaugh and his crowd, whom Winter characterizes as “loud, obnoxious frat boy-like drunks” were the hardest drinkers on campus even back then, when hard drinking did not hold the stigma it does today. In a statement earlier this week, Roche recalled Kavanaugh “frequently drinking excessively and becoming incoherently drunk,” and Winter corroborates that recollection. “There was a lot of vomit in the bathroom. No one ever cleaned it up. It was disgusting. It wasn’t incidental. It wasn’t, ‘Oh, this weekend someone puked in the bathroom.’ People were constantly puking in the bathroom. Constantly.” Lori Adams, a retired psychiatrist in Underhill, Vermont, was a friend of Winter’s at Yale. “I remember,” she says, “that you couldn’t use the bathroom because his roommates vomited all over the floor and didn’t clean it up.”

[...]

[T]hat whole tense and silent year [has] forced Winter to think a lot about the nature of memory, especially during a time of intense emotional development and heavy drinking. “I have thought a lot about Kavanaugh’s statement on Fox, that he never drank so much that he didn’t remember what he had done the next morning. And having witnessed the level of drunkenness of Brett and his crew in that dorm, and the vomitous aftermath in the bathroom, I find that very hard to believe.

  The Cut

[Editor’s note: Winter, Kubovy, and I went to high school together in New Haven, and Winter’s family and mine were friends.]

Another Kavanaugh roommate speaks

I can't confirm that, because Edward Hardy, like too many Twitter users, doesn't think sources or links are necessary.

And Tom Cotton is NOT - I repeat, NOT - using the Kavanaugh allegations for his own publicity

Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s office will be investigated to determine whether it leaked a confidential letter from one of Brett Kavanaugh’s accusers, Sen. Tom Cotton said Sunday.

Cotton, an Arkansas Republican, also said lawyers recommended to Christine Blasey Ford by Democrats will face a Washington, D.C., bar investigation for telling her that Senate Judiciary Committee staffers would not travel to California to interview her about her sexual-assault allegation.

“They have betrayed her,” Cotton said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “She has been victimized by Democrats ... on a search-and-destroy mission for Brett Kavanaugh.”

He also said Democrats would be at fault if women become less likely to report sexual assaults now because they did not keep Ford’s request confidential, as she had asked.

[...]

The FBI investigation into Ford's sexual assault allegation against Kavanaugh is unlikely to bring any new evidence to light, Cotton said, adding that the Judiciary Committee had already conducted interviews and/or received letters from people that Ford said attended the gathering at which the alleged assault occurred.

“We already know what everyone at the party has said,” he said, adding that the investigation will likely make a few senators more comfortable about voting to confirm Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court.

  Politico

Are any uncomfortable about that?

You remember Tom Cotton, don't you?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Just sow confusion and then run out the clock

The exact contours of the FBI’s investigation [into Brett Kavanaugh's past] weren’t clear and could potentially evolve, as Mr. Trump and senior administration officials pushed back against reports that the White House dictated who would be interviewed as part of a reopening of Judge Kavanaugh’s background investigation that lawmakers agreed to last week before the full Senate considers his nomination.

The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday that the parameters of the FBI probe, which are determined by the White House, would include interviews with the first two women who publicly accused Judge Kavanaugh of sexual assault but not a third, Julie Swetnick. She said last week in a sworn affidavit that the nominee attended parties decades ago where she was raped and tried to get women drunk at such gatherings. Ms. Swetnick didn’t say Mr. Kavanaugh raped her. The judge has repeatedly denied all allegations of sexual misconduct.

Late Saturday evening, Mr. Trump said on Twitter he had not limited the FBI investigation to only allow interviews with certain individuals.

“Actually, I want them to interview whoever they deem appropriate, at their discretion,” Mr. Trump said. But one person familiar with the FBI’s thinking said it was unlikely that the shape of the investigation would change without official communication from the White House that it wanted the bureau to interview other people beyond the list already provided.

The FBI has declined to comment on the Kavanaugh probe.

  WSJ

So WTF are you publishing claims from "one person familiar with the FBI's thinking?"

White House officials appearing on Sunday morning news shows rebutted reports that Mr. Trump’s team was seeking to limit the investigation but didn’t say that Ms. Swetnick would be interviewed.

“The president very much respects the independence of the FBI, and feels as he said last night that they should be looking at anything they feel is credible within this limited scope,” Kellyanne Conway, a senior adviser to Mr. Trump, told CNN Sunday morning.

And that's what we expect them to do.

Asked if White House counsel Don McGahn told the FBI who could and couldn’t be interviewed, Ms. Conway said she didn’t think Mr. McGahn would do that but added that she hadn’t discussed the matter with him. “But we’re not trying to interfere,” she said. “It’s the president saying, ‘Go ahead.’ ”

This confusion and no department seeming to know what another department is doing, and just generally appearing to be ignorant of facts, used to be seen as a mark of incompetence. I'm beginning to think that they found out it works for them, so now it's a feature, not a bug.

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders, who also spoke Sunday, said, “The White House is not micromanaging this process.”

“The Senate is dictating the terms,” she said in an interview on Fox. “They laid out the request, and we’ve opened it up.”White House press secretary Sarah Sanders, who also spoke Sunday, said, “The White House is not micromanaging this process.”

“The Senate is dictating the terms,” she said in an interview on Fox. “They laid out the request, and we’ve opened it up.”

Grassley's Asses? THAT Senate?

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, a member of the Judiciary Committee and a close ally of the White House, said on ABC Sunday that the FBI would interview Christine Blasey Ford and the witnesses she said were present at an early 1980s teenage house party at which she alleged Mr. Kavanaugh assaulted her, as well as Deborah Ramirez, who alleged Mr. Kavanaugh exposed himself to her during a drunken party when they were both freshmen at Yale University.

Asked if it would also include an interview with Ms. Swetnick, Mr. Graham indicated it currently did not. Mr. Graham did say that Mark Judge, a high-school classmate of Mr. Kavanaugh’s whom Dr. Ford says was in the room at the time of her alleged attack in the early 1980s, would be interviewed. Ms. Swetnick has said Mr. Judge was “present” when she was victimized in 1982. Mr. Judge’s lawyer has denied those allegations and said he doesn’t recall the events described by Dr. Ford, who testified about them before senators last Thursday.

And that's going to be Mark Judge's story, I'm sure. I don't recall. It worked for Reagan. And Jeff Sessions.

FBI background investigations are different from criminal investigations in that they are done at the request of a “client”—in this case the White House—and investigators are unable to deploy search warrants or grand jury subpoenas. Potential witnesses are allowed to decline requests to be interviewed.

[...]

Sen. Mazie Hirono, a Hawaii Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said on ABC that all three accusers should be able to speak with the FBI.

“They all came forward with credible reports,” Ms. Hirono said. “They all said they would be willing to talk to the FBI. The only person that didn’t want an FBI investigation, frankly, was Judge Kavanaugh.”

Oh, we will.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Daniel Dale tweets Trump's West Virginia rally

Entire thread here.  Excerpts here:

Trump: "America is respected again. I just left the United Nations. Believe me, they respect us now again. They all respect us."

Trump accuses Democrats of "meanness" and "nastiness." He says, "They don't care who they hurt. Who they have to run over. In order to get power and control."

"Nobody's ever had a presidency like this," Trump says.

Well, that's true.

Trump, talking about the "last few days" in the Senate, complains of Democrats who are "angry and mean and nasty and untruthful."

Trump is touting Kavanaugh at length. He says the American people saw his "really incredible character" on display this week. Calls Kavanaugh a "jurist with a sterling record of public service." Trump says, "He has suffered. The meanness. The anger."

Trump: "I love polls. Only when they're good. When they're not good, I don't talk about them." For the 8th time, he lies that the "fake news" intentionally manipulates poll numbers to suppress his vote.

Trump says a vote for Kavanaugh is a vote to reject "the ruthless and outrageous tactics" of Democrats. He's framing the vote as a partisan statement.

Trump again with a word many Native Americans consider a slur in this context: "Pocahontas is now considered a conservative in the Democrat party...Pocahontas, Elizabeth Warren...they've gone crazy. They've gone LOCO."

Trump says he gets "hugged backstage" by miners, big tough guys, and asks them if they want to make "little delicate computer parts," but they say no, they wanna mine coal. (The miners were not crying this time.)

Trump calls Democratic West Virginia congressional candidate Richard Ojeda "a total whacko" unfit to be in government. He adds, "That person is stone-cold crazy."

Trump boasts that he won West Virginia by 42 points in 2016. He adds that it's extra-impressive because he won by 42 points "against a Democrat," "not, like, an independent."

Who wants to bet that the only preparation he does for these rallies is to find out how much he won the state by?

WV Senate candidate Patrick Morrisey: "For far too long, Barack Obama" - crowd: BOOOO! - "Hillary Clinton" - crowd: BOOOO! - "and Washington liberal Joe Manchin" - crowd: softer BOOO - "all of these individuals, and the coastal elites, they abandoned our West Virginia values."

He should have thrown in Maxine Waters instead of Joe Manchin - they would have booed louder.  Those people don't know who Joe Manchin is.

Morrisey is still talking. He repeatedly describes Manchin as "Washington Liberal Joe Manchin," linking him to "radical" Democrats like Chuck Schumer and Maxine Waters. He also advocates standing for the national anthem. The crowd roars, chants "U-S-A."

There you go.

Trump says he uses "Democrat" rather than "Democratic" because "I hate the way it sounds, and that's why I use it." He then insists that "Democrat Party" is the real name of the party. He explains: "When you see 'Democratic Party,' it's wrong. There's no name."

Trump on Democrats: "The party of crime. It's the party of crime."

Trump, whose administration is arguing in court that the ACA's pre-existing protections are unconstitutional and should be voided: "I will always fight for and always protect patients with pre-existing conditions. You have to do it. You have to do it."

Trump calls the media "fakers" for not reporting that Republicans want to protect people with pre-existing conditions. Republican AGs, including WV candidate Morrisey, have a lawsuit to get the ACA and its pre-existing protections voided. Trump endorses the lawsuit.

Trump: "How 'bout Cory Booker. Did you watch the performance? He ran Newark, New Jersey into the ground, and now he wants to be president. What was the moment he said he had?" Crowd: Spartacus! Trump: "I don't think so. I think we'd take Kirk Douglas in his prime."

I think that's the first time Trump has bashed Cory Booker at a rally, certainly in recent months. Trump adds, of the potential 2020 Democratic field: "I dream of these people every night."

Trump is on the part about MS-13 "animals" using knives instead of guns to inflict extra pain. He criticizes Pelosi for saying you shouldn't call them animals.

Trump: "Who the hell wouldn't vote for me from law enforcement?"

Trump: "We've added nearly - it will soon be 600,000 new manufacturing jobs." As of the August jobs report, it was 348,000 manufacturing jobs added since January 2017.

For the 67th time, Trump lies that the U.S. has long had a $500 billion trade deficit with China. That has never once happened. It was $337 billion last year.

"I don't like having deficits with every country," Trump says on trade, so he is fortunate because the U.S. had surpluses last year with more than half of all countries.

Trump: "The stupid days are over, folks, I'm sorry."

Trump complains about U.S. military support for wealthy Saudi Arabia, Japan and South Korea, saying the U.S. should be paid more for its protection.

"We were going to war with North Korea. That was what was going to happen. Millions of people would've been killed...(Obama) said he was, you know, very close to going to war," Trump says. Zero evidence this happened. Former Obama officials say zero chance Obama told Trump this.

"Obama with the Iran deal gave them $150 billion," Trump falsely claims for the 21st time. Less than $100 billion of Iran's own assets was unfrozen as part of the deal.

Trump says the media is going to scold him for saying he fell in love with Kim Jong Un, but it's true, and it's easy to be boring and presidential, but his way is better.

With African-American unemployment at the lowest level in history, Trump says, "Who the hell's gonna beat me?" (It's gone from 12.7% to 7.8% under Obama and then from 7.8% down to 6.3% under Trump.) He adds that Kanye West supports him.

Trump: "The steel people love me. The coal people love me. Many people love me. You know who loves me? Our country has never done better. That's who loves me."

Don't forget Kim Jong Un.

For the 18th time, Trump falsely claims that the Veterans Choice program couldn't get passed for decades until he came along. ("45 years they couldn't - we got it passed.") It was passed in 2014 under Obama. Trump's new law makes changes to the program.

Trump begins to repeat his "we reject globalism and embrace patriotism" UN lines, but stops himself: "We embrace the doctrine of - let's put it this way: we love our country. That's our doctrine. You can call it patriotism, but it's really the doctrine of we love our country."

For the first time, Trump reads a line about registering to vote and when the registration deadline is. He then adds that he "hates to break up this" - like, his speech momentum - by saying such a thing, but "those are the facts."

Trump seems to be getting to his conclusion, but he stops to talk about how Election Night 2016 was "one of the great evenings."

He'll never forget that night.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Unfit

"It will be a good thing," the president said of the bureau's re-opened background check into Kavanaugh, according to a pool report. Trump authorized the inquiry Friday after a dramatic meeting of the Senate Judiciary Committee, at which Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) joined the panel's Democrats in demanding a one-week investigation of allegations by Christine Blasey Ford ahead of a full vote by the chamber to confirm Kavanaugh to the high court.

[...]

"NBC News incorrectly reported (as usual) that I was limiting the FBI investigation of Judge Kavanaugh, and witnesses, only to certain people," he wrote online. "Actually, I want them to interview whoever they deem appropriate, at their discretion. Please correct your reporting!"

[...]

The president also said he expects the investigation to be completed ahead of schedule, and emphasized that law enforcement officials "have free rein" to pursue whichever leads they desire to uncover the truth.

"They can do whatever they have to do, whatever it is that they do. They'll be doing things we have never even thought of," Trump said. "And hopefully, at the conclusion, everything will be fine."

  

It makes no sense to say "they'll be doing things we never even though of." He's so hard wired to make every claim something outsized that he does it not only as hyperbole, an exaggerated boast, but when it makes no sense.  What can the FBI do in an investigation that we've never thought of?  I guess we'll find out when they do it.

I wonder if it's true that Trump hasn't limited the FBI's scope. If it is, then I have to also wonder if he himself leaked - or cause to be leaked - to NBC that report that he was limiting the scope to certain witnesses and not allowing them to question why Kavanaugh's description of his drinking so differs from that of his acquaintances. Then he could once again point to the media as untrustworthy.  (A main goal of tyrants everywhere throughout history.)  Or maybe he was tossing those things out in a rant and somebody decided that's what he was going to do and leaked it. Who the hell knows with this fool?

At a rally Saturday evening in West Virginia, Trump's invocations of Kavanaugh served more to demonize congressional Democrats than hype the prospect of a majority conservative court.

“The entire nation has witnessed the shameless conduct of the Democrat Party. They’re willing to throw away every standard of decency, justice, fairness and due process to get their way," Trump said.

The projection is awesome.

“A vote for Judge Kavanaugh is also a vote to reject the ruthless and outrageous tactics of the Democrat Party — mean obstructionists, mean resistors," Trump added, lamenting attacks on Kavanaugh's character.

“I will tell you, he has suffered — the meanness, the anger," Trump said.

Yes, Kavanaugh is the victim here.

The president has maintained his steadfast praise of Kavanaugh, telling reporters Saturday: "I don't think there's ever been any person who's been under scrutiny like he has."

Projection and hyperbole. The two defining characteristics of Trump's lies.

I think Julie Swetnick goes on TV today. That should stir the already boiling pot.

Swetnick submitted a written statement to the committee in which she said she witnessed Kavanaugh spike drinks at parties where girls were then sexually assaulted. In the statement, Swetnick asserts Kavanaugh was present when she was the victim of a “gang rape” by multiple boys at one party. She described Kavanaugh as “a mean drunk” whom she witnessed acting “verbally abusive toward girls, including pressing girls against him without their consent," and, “Grinding against girls and attempting to remove or shift girls’ clothing to expose private body parts.

Poor Kavanaugh. Hasn't he suffered enough already?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

This was his choice for West Virginia

While speaking at a rally for Senate candidate and state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey (R) in West Virginia, Trump spoke about his evolving relationship with Kim [Jong Un].

"I was really being tough and so was he," he said. "And we would go back and forth. And then we fell in love. No really. He wrote me beautiful letters."

"They were great letters. And then we fell in love."

  The Hill

There wasn't a lot of wild cheering.  No chanting "KIM JONG UN!"  What an odd choice of phrasing.  Do you suppose the whacakadoodles are starting to wonder what they've bought?

He seemed to be having a Dick Nixon sweaty upper lip issue...







...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Dare we believe this?

UPDATE  9/30:

This is still being debated in the news media.  Trump is still saying he's okay with letting the FBI run its investigation however they see fit, and claims are that it's White House Counsel Don McGahn who is handing out limitations to the FBI.  The FBI is not talking.

This guy gets it

America will be destroyed from the inside

Another...



Support our troops.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

FBI investigation limited to Ford and Ramirez

The White House is limiting the scope of the FBI’s investigation into the sexual misconduct allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, multiple people briefed on the matter told NBC News.

While the FBI will examine the allegations of Christine Blasey Ford and Deborah Ramirez, the bureau has not been permitted to investigate the claims of Julie Swetnick.

  NBC News

Well, that's a little suspicious, isn't it? I mean, that's the one that talks about gang rape.

Instead of investigating Swetnick's claims, the White House counsel’s office has given the FBI a list of witnesses they are permitted to interview, according to several people who discussed the parameters on the condition of anonymity.

Oh, FFS! What kind of investigation is that?!

The limited scope seems to be at odds with what some members of the Senate judiciary seemed to expect when they agreed to give the FBI as much as a week to investigate allegations against Kavanaugh.

Yeah, and the backlash is going to be loud. The GOP and Trump have blocked access to the truth in this shitshow from the getgo.

Sen. Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, who led an 11th hour move in the Senate committee for an FBI inquiry, said he thought the bureau would decide how to carry it out. His Democratic colleague Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island said he expected the FBI probe to include "adequate staffing," support from the committee for "rapid immunity and subpoena decisions as needed, plus the ability to investigate claims of a "penchant for drunkenness and inappropriate treatment of women, particularly where specifically related to incidents under investigation.

[...]

White House spokesman Raj Shah said that "the scope and duration has been set by the Senate. The White House is letting the FBI agents do what they are trained to do.”

The Senate has only said that supplemental FBI background investigation “be limited to current credible allegations against the nominee and must be completed no later than one week from today.”

[...]

A U.S. official briefed on the matter said its not unusual for the White House to set the parameters of an FBI background check for a presidential nominee. The FBI had no choice but to agree to these terms, the sources told NBC News, because it is conducting the background investigation on behalf of the White House.

If the FBI learns of others who can corroborate what the existing witnesses are saying, it is not clear whether agents will be able to contact them under the terms laid out by the White House, the two sources briefed on the matter said.

Some areas are off limits, the sources said.

Un.fucking.believable.

Investigators plan to meet with Mark Judge, a high school classmate and friend of Kavanaugh's whom Ford named as a witness and participant to her alleged assault.

But as of now, the FBI cannot ask the supermarket that employed Judge for records verifying when he was employed there, one of the sources was told. Ford said in congressional testimony Thursday that those records would help her narrow the time frame of the alleged incident which she recalls happening some time in the summer of 1982 in Montgomery County, Maryland.

Two sources familiar with the investigation said the FBI will also not be able to examine why Kavanaugh’s account of his drinking at Yale University differs from those of some former classmates, who have said he was known as a heavy drinker.

Well, what the fuck CAN they do?

This is seriously not going to fly.

The White House may as well just put out a press statement that says Kavanaugh is a serial sex offender.

UPDATE:

Already on it

The FBI moved immediately given the short time frame. By Friday night, agents had sought to schedule an interview with one of two other women who, after Blasey Ford went public, made accusations of their own about alleged assaults dating to Kavanaugh’s days in high school and at Yale University, according to two sources with knowledge of the investigation who asked to remain unidentified given the sensitivity of the matter.

FBI investigators contacted the attorneys for the woman and asked to interview her “as early as tonight,” according to one of the sources. Her attorneys countered with a later time, but the interview could occur this weekend, the sources said.

  LA Times

And, a peek at how things were moving yesterday:

Good point

Flake' explains his decision

I was getting calls and emails for days from friends and acquaintances saying, “Here’s my story, here’s why I was emboldened to come out.” Dr. Ford’s testimony struck a chord, it really did, with a lot of women.

[...]

I didn’t expect it. I mean, we’re getting women writing into the office. People we don’t know. Other offices, I’m told, are having the same experience.

[...]

You know, when I got back to the committee, I saw the food fight again between the parties—the Democrats saying they’re going to walk out, the Republican blaming everything on the Democrats.

And then there was [Democratic Senator] Chris Coons making an impassioned plea for a one-week extension to have an FBI investigation. And you know, if it was anybody else I wouldn’t have taken it as seriously. But I know Chris. We’ve traveled together a lot. We’ve sat down with Robert Mugabe. We’ve been chased by elephants, literally, in Mozambique. We trust each other. And I thought, if we could actually get something like what he was asking for—an investigation limited in time, limited in scope—we could maybe bring a little unity.

We can’t just have the committee acting like this. The majority and minority parties and their staffs just don’t work well together. There’s no trust. In the investigation, they can’t issue subpoenas like they should. It’s just falling apart.

[...]

One, the Supreme Court is the lone institution where most Americans still have some faith.

  The atlantic

I doubt it.

And then the U.S. Senate as an institution—we’re coming apart at the seams. There’s no currency, no market for reaching across the aisle. It just makes it so difficult.

Just these last couple of days—the hearing itself, the aftermath of the hearing, watching pundits talk about it on cable TV, seeing the protesters outside, encountering them in the hall. I told Chris, “Our country’s coming apart on this—and it can’t.” And he felt the same.

It's still coming apart, no matter what happens on this.

I’m a conservative. [Kavanaugh]’s a conservative. I plan to support him unless they turn up something—and they might.

[...]

I’ve felt that this delay is as much to help him as us. My hope is that some Democrats will say “Hey, we may not change our vote, but this process was worthy of the institution, and we feel satisfied.” That means something. The country needs to hear that.

That still doesn't address Kavanaugh's financial mysteries or his lying about using stolen documents and two prior judicial nominations.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The politicization of the Supreme Court

In the first round of his Supreme Court confirmation hearings early this month, Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh kept his cool under hostile questioning, stressed his independence, and exhibited the calm judicial demeanor that characterized his dozen years on a prestigious appeals court bench.

“The Supreme Court,” he said, “must never be viewed as a partisan institution.”

  NYT

And he himself put the last nail in that Thursday! People already see it that way. If he gets seated, there might not be a single person left who doesn't.

[During his Thursday testimony,] Judge Kavanaugh was angry and emotional, embracing the language of slashing partisanship. His demeanor raised questions about his neutrality and temperament and whether the already fragile reputation of the Supreme Court as an institution devoted to law rather than politics would be threatened if he is confirmed.

“This whole two-week effort has been a calculated and orchestrated political hit,” he said, “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.”

In a sharp break with decorum, Judge Kavanaugh responded to questions about his drinking from two Democratic senators — Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island — with questions of his own about theirs. He later apologized to Ms. Klobuchar.

The charged language recalled Judge Kavanaugh’s years as a partisan Republican, working for Ken Starr, the independent counsel who investigated a series of scandals involving Bill and Hillary Clinton, and serving as an aide in the administration of George W. Bush. It was less consistent with the detached judicial temperament that lawyers associate with an ideal judge.

All of this, said Judith Resnik, a law professor at Yale, was “partisan and not judicious.” Judge Kavanaugh’s confirmation in the wake of his performance, she added, could leave the Supreme Court “under a cloud of politics and scandal from which it would not recover for decades.”

On the other hand, what actual impact on its decisions would lack of confidence in it have?

Ideology has long figured in the Supreme Court’s work, but a sharp partisan split on the court is a recent phenomenon. Starting in 2010, the court became divided along party lines, with all five Republican appointees to the right of all four Democratic ones.

That's what I'm talking about.

As it happens, a reliable way to predict how justices will vote in highly charged cases is to check the political party of the president who appointed them. There was one exception to that rule in recent decades: Justice Anthony M. Kennedy could be unpredictable.

Which is, I assume, why he had to go.

“Every bit of research ever done on the subject concludes that judges are human beings with emotional reactions that influence how they decide cases,” said Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, a law professor at Cornell.

“This process clearly has ignited a passionate reaction in Judge Kavanaugh that will doubtless influence him for the rest of his life,” Professor Rachlinski said. “Research on how emotions influence judges suggests that he will be unable to set this experience aside when deciding cases involving relevant subjects or parties who are closely aligned with those he has today treated as personal enemies.”

Which include women in general.



As if it's ever been any different since the two-party system first took hold.



Plaid shirt guy makes a great meme for our age.

Kavanaugh testimony fact check

The New York Times fact-checked his testimony, comparing his statements against the recollections of former classmates and acquaintances from his youth, as well as records from his time working in the administration of George W. Bush.

The combative nominee was compelled to answer questions he clearly found embarrassing or offensive. What emerges is the image of a skilled lawyer who, when pressed on difficult subjects, sometimes crafted responses that were misleading, disputed or off point. When asked about his alcohol consumption in high school, he said his classmates were “legal to drink” in their senior year, even though the legality of the drinking was not the issue (and, in fact, he could not legally drink because the age was raised to 21 before he even turned 18).

[...]

The faded references to heavy drinking and sexual pursuits [in his 1982 calendar] had taken on evidentiary significance, and he was pressed by senators to acknowledge their meaning. Judge Kavanaugh instead offered benign alternative explanations — an apparent reference to throwing up from drinking could have referred to spicy foods upsetting his stomach, he said.

[...]

At his first hearing, Judge Kavanaugh, a Yale Law School graduate, fielded questions on policy and political work in the bland, studiously noncontroversial tradition of nominees to the high court. Still, even then some answers raised flags, as when he claimed not to know or suspect that internal Democratic documents about judicial nominations, shared with him when he worked in the Bush administration, had been stolen from Democrats’ computers.

[...]

Judge Kavanaugh repeatedly testified that three people had exonerated him of Christine Blasey Ford’s allegations that he sexually assaulted her during a gathering of teenagers outside Washington in the summer of 1982.

[...]

While it is true that the three people did not corroborate Dr. Blasey’s account, they did not “refute” it either. Dr. Blasey had said that two of them were in the house, and one of them was in the room at the time of the alleged assault.

[...]

All three said they did not recall the gathering, and two of them — friends of Judge Kavanaugh’s — said they had not, in general, seen him act in an aggressive manner.

[...]

Judge Kavanaugh portrayed himself in his testimony as enjoying a beer or two as a high school and college student, but not as someone who often drank to excess during those years.

[...]

In interviews before his testimony, nearly a dozen college classmates of Judge Kavanaugh’s said they recalled him indulging in heavy drinking, some saying it went beyond normal consumption. (To be sure, a smaller number of classmates said his drinking was unexceptional.)

[...]

Reached after the hearing, Lynne Brookes, an undergraduate classmate of Judge Kavanaugh’s at Yale University, said she believed he had “grossly misrepresented and mischaracterized his drinking.”

“He frequently drank to excess,” she said. “I know because I frequently drank to excess with him.”

[...]

Another Yale classmate, Elizabeth Swisher, now a Seattle physician, said: “I drank a lot. Brett drank more.”

“I definitely saw him on multiple occasions stumbling drunk where he could not have rational control over his actions or clear recollection of them,” said Daniel Lavan, who lived in Mr. Kavanaugh’s dorm freshman year. “His depiction of himself is inaccurate.”

[...]

[Kavanaugh's] high school yearbook [...] refers to him as the treasurer of the Keg City Club, noting “100 Kegs or Bust.” Multiple high school classmates, in interviews, described Judge Kavanaugh as a heavy and frequent drinker.

  NYT

More precisely, he refers to himself as the treasurer of the Keg City Club. Students submitted their own "bios".

He also recounted his own drinking exploits in speeches. In a 2014 address to Yale Law students, he recalled a night of “group chugs” in Boston that ended with his group “falling out of the bus onto the front steps of Yale Law School at about 4:45 a.m.”

[...]

In one entry, he described himself as a “Renate Alumnius,” referring to Renate Schroeder, now Renate Dolphin, who attended a nearby Catholic school. A number of his football teammates had similar entries. Judge Kavanagh said: “That yearbook reference was clumsily intended to show affection, and that she was one of us. But in this circus, the media’s interpreted the term is related to sex. It was not related to sex.”

Four of Judge Kavanaugh’s former schoolmates, including Sean Hagan, said the notion that the phrase was meant affectionately did not ring true. They said that Judge Kavanaugh and his friends often made disrespectful sexual comments about Ms. Dolphin, and that the understanding at the time was that the many yearbook references to her were boasts about sexual conquests.

[...]

Judge Kavanaugh’s yearbook page included the entries “Judge — Have You Boofed Yet?” and “Devil’s Triangle.” On Thursday, he said that “boofed” meant “flatulence” and that “Devil’s Triangle” was a drinking game in which three glasses were arranged in a triangle.

[...]

“Boofed” in the 1980s was a term that often referred to anal sex, and that is how Judge Kavanaugh’s classmates said they interpreted his comment. They said they had never heard it used to refer to flatulence.

Similarly, they said that they had never heard of a drinking game called Devil’s Triangle, but that the phrase was regularly used to describe sex between two men and a woman. “The explanation of Devil’s Triangle does not hold water for me,” said William Fishburne, who managed the football team during Judge Kavanaugh’s senior year.

“Our senior yearbook pages were a place to have a little bit of fun with commemorating inside jokes,” said Bill Barbot, who overlapped with Judge Kavanaugh at Georgetown Prep, an all-boys Catholic school. “However, the spin that Brett was putting on it was a complete overstatement of the innocence with which they were intended.”

I assume the FBI will talk to all these people, and I assume Republicans will discount them.

Asked about the intersection of his and Ms. Blasey’s friend groups, Judge Kavanaugh said: “When my friends and I spent time together at parties on weekends, it was usually with friends from nearby Catholic all-girls high schools — Stone Ridge, Holy Child, Visitation, Immaculata, Holy Cross. Dr. Blasey did not attend one of those schools. She attended an independent private school named Holton-Arms, and she was a year behind me.”

[...]

“Holton-Arms was definitely part of our social scene,” Mr. Barbot said. Another Georgetown Prep alumnus who was in Judge Kavanaugh’s class said, “Holton was as much a sister school as the others.”

[...]

During his confirmation hearings earlier this month, Judge Kavanaugh said that when he worked in the White House of George W. Bush, he was unaware that a Republican staffer had stolen documents about judicial nominations from the computer servers of Democratic lawmakers. He maintained that receiving the documents did “not raise red flags” because “information sharing was common.”

Documents released by the National Archives show that Manuel Miranda, the Republican aide, had sent Judge Kavanaugh several of the stolen files between 2002 and 2003. One email chain released by the Archives describes wanting to meet at Mr. Miranda’s house so that Judge Kavanaugh, who was a White House lawyer working on judicial confirmations, could receive “useful info” about two Democratic senators.

[...]

Emails from Mr. Miranda to Judge Kavanaugh included remarkable detail about Democratic plans, and some were marked as “highly confidential” or “intel.”

But Judge Kavanaugh offered a more benign interpretation, saying that he merely assumed at the time that Mr. Miranda had received the information from friendly Democratic staffers.

Dear god. He's his own worst enemy under examination. I hope the FBI talk to him during their investigation.

In 2006, Judge Kavanaugh told senators that when he was in the White House Counsel’s Office, he did not work on a controversial appeals court nomination and played only a small role in another. The nomination of Judge William H. Pryor Jr. was “not one that I worked on personally,” he said. He also said that Judge Charles W. Pickering Sr. was “not one of the judicial nominees that I was primarily handling.”

"Primarily." He should have used that for Pryor, too.

Emails released after Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court showed that during his White House tenure, he was invited to participate in a conference call on Judge Pryor’s confirmation. The email went to a group called the “Pryor Working Group.” The emails also show that he worked on the Pickering nomination, and was called by one colleague “much more involved in the Pickering fight.”

[...]

Judge Kavanaugh has sought to assure some senators — and the abortion rights groups that support them — by calling Roe v. Wade a matter of settled law. At a hearing on Sept. 6, he said the case was “an important precedent” and “has been reaffirmed many times.”

At the same hearing, the judge declined to directly answer questions by Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, as to whether he believed the 1973 ruling was “correct law.”

[...]

Last year, he cited Roe v. Wade as an example of former Chief Justice William Rehnquist’s “massive and enduring impact on American law.” Chief Justice Rehnquist had dissented in the case.

And, while we're at it, let's fact check the asshat who nominated Kavanaugh...



False.  Kavanaugh has never been investigated by the FBI.  He's only had background checks done by them.  Background checks will not pick up anything that hasn't been reported to law enforcement if it has not been offered by the people interviewed, which consist mainly of the people the person being background checked lists as references and family.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.