Charlie Pierce summarizes the Kavanaugh hearing in three short essays

1.

Senator Lindsey Graham, last seen doing a passable Yosemite Sam imitation all through the halls of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, was positively bubbly as he lined up in front of a cluster of TV cameras near a bank of elevators. The Senate Judiciary Committee had just reported Judge Brett Kavanaugh's nomination favorably to the full Senate, but not until Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, had wrung from the committee a promise to re-open the FBI background investigation into Kavanaugh for no more than a week.

By all accounts, Flake, who was stopped on his way to the committee room that morning by two survivors of sexual assault, made it quite clear that the votes on Kavanaugh would not be there in the Senate unless his demand was met. That he was not bluffing was made plain after the committee vote when Republican Lisa Murkowski and Democrat Joe Manchin both immediately signed onto the deal. That is what brought Graham to the microphones and the cameras.

"Somebody's got to explain this to Trump," Graham said. "I guess that's up to me."

  Charles P Pierce

To "Trump"? Not "President Trump?" That surely takes away a point on Lindsey's bid for AG.

"Democrats will say, if we do what Jeff said, that would end the process dispute. I don't expect any of them to vote for the guy, but if we ask the FBI to look at what's in front of us, no later than a week, no longer than a week, they would say that would be a better process. That would be progress...You can have the FBI, the CIA and the Foreign Legion, but you know what you know, and you've heard what you're gonna hear. But having said that, this is called democracy."

Still high from his earlier rant? Because I'm finding that a bit garbley.

El Caudillo Del Mar-A-Lago was uncharacteristically muted—which, I will grant you, has proven ominous in the past—and compliant with the committee's actions.

[...]

According to a statement from the Judiciary Committee released late Friday afternoon, the renewed FBI probe cannot last longer than a week and will concern only what the statement calls "current credible allegations against the nominee."

There's a lot of ozone in that sentence, to be sure. There are currently at least three allegations against the nominee, and their credibility is purely a subjective matter. What the committee plainly means is that the FBI should only look into Dr. Ford's allegations. Even so, it was significant that, after the deal was announced on Friday, the lawyer for his elusive high-school sidekick, Mark Judge, said that Judge would cooperate with the FBI. In addition, earlier this week, the lawyer for Judge's former girlfriend, who has said that Judge confessed to her that he'd been involved with the gang rape of a girl when he had been in high school, also said she'd be willing to talk to the FBI. None of these developments would seem to be good news for Mark Kavanaugh.

It's good that they're saying they're willing to talk to the FBI. But even if they weren't willing, I don't think they get the choice, unless they're willing to go to prison.

The odds in favor of [Kavanaugh's] ultimate confirmation have dropped, but, for the moment, that's still the way to bet. But there's enough hedging in it now to landscape a golf course.

I would have agreed until the FBI got called back in. I'm no longer sure I'd bet on it.

2.

Stars and Stripes [...] had a story [Friday morning] about how the senior enlisted advisor to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is under serious investigation by the Defense Department's inspector general for "a complaint of alleged misconduct."

[...]

The military doesn't accept spittle-flecked, half-mad tirades as dispositive evidence. The military has its own problems with sexual assault, and obstruction, and all the usual crimes and offenses. But, in these two cases anyway, it is plainly cleaning up after itself. Go back through history and take a look at what happens to republics when the military becomes the most trusted institution in the government. Nothing good, is what happens.

The military doesn't accept spittle-flecked, half-mad tirades as dispositive evidence. The military has its own problems with sexual assault, and obstruction, and all the usual crimes and offenses. But, in these two cases anyway, it is plainly cleaning up after itself. Go back through history and take a look at what happens to republics when the military becomes the most trusted institution in the government. Nothing good, is what happens.

[...]

In plain terms, for all his spleen and outrage, Judge Kavanaugh lies about everything. In his earlier hearings, he lied about his judicial philosophy, and he lied about his days as a Republican operative, both in and out of the White House. On Monday, he lied to Martha McCallum of Fox News. On Thursday, he lied about his entire adolescence and his college days.

He lied even when he didn't have to lie. He lied in preposterous ways easily disproven by common sense. (The "Devil's Triangle"? "Renate Alumnius"?) He lied like a toddler, like a guilty adolescent, and like a privileged scion of the white ruling class, which is a continuum with which we all are far too familiar. He lied and he dared the Democratic members of the committee, and the country, to call him on his lies.

[...]

And, an update: Intriguingly, the scheduled Sunday debate between Beto O'Rourke and Ted Cruz in Houston has been postponed. The stated reason? Cruz "will be in Washington, D.C. for weekend votes." The railroad is picking up


  Charles P Pierce

3.

There are two things I know now for certain, having watched Judge Brett Kavanaugh perform the Bud Light King Lear he performed for the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday. The first is that, having watched him in high dudgeon, I don't want to be around him when he has, as the auld wans say, drink taken. Especially at the beginning of his session, he gave every indication that he would very much be the angry, belligerent inebriate that many of his college friends have said he is. He's the guy from whom you move to the other end of the bar rather than engage.

And second, and probably ultimately more important, the Hour of Angry White Male Rage is far from passing out of our politics. This was manifested not only in Kavanaugh's angry truculence with Democratic members of the committee, but also by the mid-session defenestration of Rachel Mitchell, the Arizona prosecutor who handled all the questioning for the Republicans when Dr. Christine Blasey Ford was on the stand, and who was handling all the questioning of Kavanaugh until she asked him about one specific entry in his beloved calendar—the one for July 1, 1982, that read:

Tobin's house -- workout. Go to Jimmy's for 'Skis with Judge, Tom, PJ, Bernie, and Squi.

  Charles P Pierce

And that's when Kavanaugh asked for a break. Or that's when Grassley said Kavanaugh asked for a break. They took a break, and when they came back, Ms. Mitchell had indeed been defenestrated, Lindsey Graham did his Yosemite Sam for the cameras, for Trump and for Kavanaugh, and no one mentioned that suddenly the Republican members were back in the driver's seat.

There was a certain interest in this entry, because it conforms to the timeframe of Dr. Ford's allegation and, pretty obviously, "'Skis" was short for "brewskis." Equally obviously, "Judge" was the notoriously elusive Mark Judge, whom all the Democrats want to get under oath, and whom all the Republicans want to send to Neptune. (He's already in Delaware, after all.) Mitchell was gently leading Kavanaugh to deny the possibility that the July 1 entry referred to the gathering at which Ford alleges she was attacked.

[...]

[W]hen she edged up against the possibility of what may have happened on that long ago day in July, it was time for her to go. The Hour of Angry White Male Rage had come 'round at last. And Lindsey Graham was its proud herald.

Graham had already had a televised nutty at the lunch break and, once Mitchell was shuffled out of the way, he proceeded to signal to all his Republican colleagues that it was time to let the freak flag fly.

[...]

This was the old Huckleberry, the fire-eyed house manager of the impeachment of Bill Clinton, before his Chang-and-Eng act with the late John McCain took some of his edge off him. Back in the late 1990s, of course, Graham was hunting presidential privates—and, of course, Brett Kavanaugh was practicing all the things he deplored Thursday on behalf of Ken Starr, and leaking his brains out while he was doing so. (His lachrymose bellowing about the toll his family has paid over these 10 days of "hell" is pretty rich when you consider all the lives he and the rest of those merry men shredded in Washington and Arkansas, and even richer when you recall that it was Kavanaugh who insisted that President Bill Clinton be questioned in the most prurient way possible when Clinton finally sat for a deposition.) Sooner or later, please god, the 1990s will be over.

Anyway, while Graham cued up his fellow Republican committee members for the rest of the afternoon, it was Kavanaugh himself, with his raving opening statement, that first cleared the decks for them. On Wednesday, he released a set of "prepared remarks" that pretty plainly were a feint. What emerged on Thursday was a stunning outburst of wounded privilege and raging contempt for people who would deny him that to which he was entitled.

[...]

The charges are not "last minute [as Kavanaugh claimed in his opening statement]." There is no clock on this thing. I don't know how often we have to point this out. It was hard on Kavanaugh's family, but he's still living at home and, no matter how this turns out, he's going to have a sinecure in the federal judiciary.

I thought this, too. But it's conceivable that if the FBI investigation provides something near to confirming that Kavanaugh did what Dr. Ford is claiming (and that July 1 entry might be the key), then I think it's possible someone will bring charges or impeachment proceedings against his current seat on the Appellate Court. And, what if he actually did rape someone at some point? And that woman has proof, or lots of corroboration?

But it was this next bit that really opened the door on who this guy is.

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 and money from outside left-wing opposition groups. This is a circus. The consequences will extend long past my nomination. The consequences will be with us for decades. This grotesque and coordinated character assassination will dissuade competent and good people of all political persuasions from serving our country, and as we all know, in the United States political system of the early 2000s, what goes around, comes around.

Frankly, this was as lunatic as it was fraudulent. I think we can stipulate that as much outside money has been spent promoting Kavanaugh's nomination as fighting against it. That, alas, is part of our politics now, thanks partly to Kavanaugh's old mentor, Anthony Kennedy. Much later, when Senator Cory Booker pinned him on whether or not he thought Dr. Ford was part of a "calculated and orchestrated political hit," Kavanaugh as much as crawled under the table. He smarmily retreated to the notion that something really bad may have happened to Ford, but that his alleged grinding on her while Mark Judge giggled and turned up the stereo wasn't it. And "revenge on behalf of the Clintons"?

[...]

Oh, and that threat right there at the end? The going around and the coming around. He will overturn Roe now, not merely because he thinks it's bad law, but because the circus made him do it. He will have his revenge on all these drones who put him and the kids through this "hell," and it will come from the highest court in the land. This, I guarantee you.

He can't overturn Roe on his own, but I take Charlie's point. This is a dangerous, vengeful POS to have on the Supreme Court.

With the Democratic members of the committee, Kavanaugh remained an enraged, entitled twerp through the whole long day. There was his interchange with Senator Amy Klobuchar, in which, after she asked him about his alleged blackout drinking, Kavanaugh sneered, "Have you?" If any ordinary person had treated a sitting United States Senator with that kind of virulent disrespect, they'd have been hauled off in irons. [...] I suspect it played pretty well in MAGA precincts outside the Potomac. But what I also know is that Brett Kavanaugh is now far more dangerous a nominee for the Supreme Court than he was when the day began. He will be a wrathful judge. He pretty much said so, and his supporters on the committee enthusiastically encouraged it.

[...]

But the memory I have is that of poor Rachel Mitchell, who flew all the way out here to try and do the best she could in an impossible job that she freely accepted, gently pushing her way out of the committee room as the Hour of Angry White Male Rage receded all around her.

"What happened?" I asked her.

"Excuse me, " she answered. "I have to get out of here now."