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Brett Kavanaugh Confirmation Thread


Hugo Stiglitz

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25 minutes ago, Lurch said:

She has already explained the note was wrong. It was four boys at the party.

Can she provide the names of those four boys?  Or the names of anybody else who was at the party?

We are still in the same place we were yesterday, especially if she won't testify.  One person corroborates elements of the allegation, that Kavanaugh was at the party should suffice, and he is done. 

FTR, I think that asking her to testify in an open hearing with Kavanaugh at the same table is some bullshit. They should take this behind closed doors initially. Doug Jones had a reasonable idea of identifying one senator from each side to talk with her initially. But either way, it does not appear that testimony is going to take place. I don't think that asking the FBI to interview the Dr and Kavanaugh and DB Cauveaux with purpose of generating leads for corroborate the story is out of bounds.  That should be able to be completed in an expedited fashion. 

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1 minute ago, horncyclist said:

I had to undergo a background investigation for my federal position. If one of the persons they talked to said I had attempted to rape someone, they would fully pursue that and I likely would be out of a job. Kavanaugh deserves the same scrutiny. The prior 6 investigations are irrelevant since I to my knowledge they didn't have this information.
/Personal capacity/
I will just add the entire GOP is a morally corrupt criminal enterprise. Defending someone accused of rape to achieve their Supreme Court take over is just further evidence of that. Anyone that continues to associate with the GOP is complicit in this moral corruption and subversion of our basic principles. Fuck these guys.

/In my personal capacity/

What about defending someone elected as president who was accused of rape?  Not convicted, not even charged, just accused,  Paula Broderick on the hot line for you.  I don't remember anyone on the left clamoring for Clinton to be kicked out of the White House based on allegations of sexual assault.  Take your hypocrisy and fuck off.  If this was an Obama appointment no one on the left would give the accuser one iota of credibility.

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15 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

Or path three:  get a better person than Kavanaugh

I could go with that if we could do it right. We need to solve the problem of a 4-4 Court in October.  A Ginsburg resignation would address this issue.  A Breyer resignation is also acceptable.  Even better would be a resignation by Kagan and best of all would be a resignation by the Wise Latina.

If the new plan produces a better Court by October 1 I'm all for it.

Out of curiosity, who on Trump's list, is better than Kavanaugh?  Would you preser, say, Amy Coney Barrett?

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11 minutes ago, Iconoclast Texan said:

If this woman turns out to be a fraud with a vendetta, the tables will be turned and the Democrats will have pinned their hopes on her and look like fools. It would be absolutely beautiful.

Not really, just means he was vetted and underwent a strong background investigation.  In the news cycle today, Trump will do something in a few hours that will totally distract from any and all of this.

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56 minutes ago, Iconoclast Texan said:

Why should the Republicans give a shit about the “truth” when this entire allegation was a corrupt attempt at trying to derail a confirmation that was sailing through. I would turn up the heat today on the accuser if I was a Senator. They’ve been handling this situation with kid gloves. Her basically backing away from testifying means that they can go in for the kill. Treat this situation for what it is, a desperate political ploy.

Okay so now this is a corrupt attempt to derail the confirmation?

Who is prejudging this matter now?

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I'd like to see how all you damn idiots would react if someone walked into your boss'es office and made a fuzzy, vague, non-specific accusation against you of sexual assault based on something that supposedly occurred 35 years earlier.  Would you still be claiming the accuser must be believed and that there would be no reason for her to be making anything up?  Would you be good with your boss saying "well there's no real proof of your guilt here but since she is accusing you of it we must believe her now get your shit out of your office and hit the road?"

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30 minutes ago, MixtyMotions said:

I have a solution: Proceed on two paths.

Path One is to go ahead and confirm Kavanaugh.  Path Two is to conduct a full FBI investigation and then hold a full hearing on the matter.  I believe the hearing could be held some time early next year.

R's are trying to ram it home as quickly as possible while they have numbers. They do not have the time for an investigation and hearing.  

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Appears that they're gonna move it forward and confirm if she doesn't testimony. GOP gonna get their short term conservative majority. Democrats will may political hay out of it, and probably use it as one justification for packing the court when they take full control. GOP will lose their shit. Dems will pay some political price with backlash at some level. Political death spiral closes two revolutions.  

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What about defending someone elected as president who was accused of rape?  Not convicted, not even charged, just accused,  Paula Broderick on the hot line for you.  I don't remember anyone on the left clamoring for Clinton to be kicked out of the White House based on allegations of sexual assault.  Take your hypocrisy and fuck off.  If this was an Obama appointment no one on the left would give the accuser one iota of credibility.
(1)I was 8 years old when that happened. (2)Appointment to Supreme Court is different than a political position where the voters do the vetting.(3) Obama administration was competent enough not to appoint a possible rapist to the fucking Supreme Court.
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9 minutes ago, EMAWesome said:

What about defending someone elected as president who was accused of rape?  Not convicted, not even charged, just accused,  Paula Broderick on the hot line for you.  I don't remember anyone on the left clamoring for Clinton to be kicked out of the White House based on allegations of sexual assault.  Take your hypocrisy and fuck off.  If this was an Obama appointment no one on the left would give the accuser one iota of credibility.

I was one of those but I'm not on the left.  Clinton was a sexual harasser.  He took advantage of his position of power for sexual gratification.  In my view there is no valid "consent" for his conduct with an intern, regardless of what that intern might have thought at the time.

Thread drift over.

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4 hours ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

Let’s say she didn’t sit on it.  How would it have played out?  We would have likely missed all the other reasons Kavanaugh is a shitty nominee.  The whole confirmation would have been about this from the get go.

While Feinstein was being strategic, it was more fair to Kavanaugh to bring this up at the end instead of the beginning.

 The American people got a chance to evaluate Kavanaugh on his legal views and professional work instead of his alleged attempted rape in high school.

If Kavanaugh didn’t prove himself misleading and deceptive AF during the hearings, this issue might not have come up the way it did.  If Kavanaugh was forthright, candid, and transparent during the confirmation hearings, his word would be much more credible than Dr. Ford’s.

But no, he turned out to be just another GOP good old boy scumbag.

Womp Womp

Jesus Christ on a pogo stick remind me never to get into a game of Twister with you.

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3 minutes ago, EMAWesome said:

What about defending someone elected as president who was accused of rape?  Not convicted, not even charged, just accused,  Paula Broderick on the hot line for you.  I don't remember anyone on the left clamoring for Clinton to be kicked out of the White House based on allegations of sexual assault.  Take your hypocrisy and fuck off.  If this was an Obama appointment no one on the left would give the accuser one iota of credibility.

And they was killin' people like Vince who was Hillary's lover whenever Hillary wudn't bein' a damn lesbian. I red it in the 'Merican Spectator!

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this is, of course, all political gamesmanship from all sides with a lot of horrible human beings leveraging an alleged sad past act for their opportunistic arsenals...

however, i suspect if she does not accept an opportunity to provide testimony in private to the committee next week, the credibility of this whole hurrah will be lost and trump will provide a timely tweet/statement to distract attention for long enough to ram through the vote of someone who will continue to maintain the corporatocracy and its complete control over our society.

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14 minutes ago, MixtyMotions said:

Out of curiosity, who on Trump's list, is better than Kavanaugh?  Would you preser, say, Amy Coney Barrett?

Barrett would be better just for optics alone but she’s not getting the nomination because woman.  Something like 87% of Trump’s appointed judges are white guys.  There’s no empirical evidence to indicate they would nominate a woman to the Supreme Court regardless of how right wing her ideology.

Since Kavanaugh wasn’t on the original list, I imagine all the guys on Trump’s original list would be a better option since they’ve likely been more thoroughly vetted but I honestly don’t know.

Edited by Hugo Stiglitz
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3 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

Appears that they're gonna move it forward and confirm if she doesn't testimony. GOP gonna get their short term conservative majority. Democrats will may political hay out of it, and probably use it as one justification for packing the court when they take full control. GOP will lose their shit. Dems will pay some political price with backlash at some level. Political death spiral closes two revolutions.  

The Republicans will have the upper hand because Gorsuch and Kavanaugh are in their 50s and have a couple of decades in them at least. Janus was a huge victory that will hopefully help eviscerate the strength and influence of public sector unions. The Supreme Court has become a political beast. Locking in 2 conservatives for lifetime appointments will pay dividends even if the GOP is a minority party for years to come 

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12 minutes ago, EMAWesome said:

I'd like to see how all you damn idiots would react if someone walked into your boss'es office and made a fuzzy, vague, non-specific accusation against you of sexual assault based on something that supposedly occurred 35 years earlier.  Would you still be claiming the accuser must be believed and that there would be no reason for her to be making anything up?  Would you be good with your boss saying "well there's no real proof of your guilt here but since she is accusing you of it we must believe her now get your shit out of your office and hit the road?"

I'd be more than happy to get any law enforcement involved to investigate and document my innocence and their lying. 

Edited by SmokeyTheBear
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Well, from what I can tell from the facts, the whole thing seems shady.

1.  Timing

2.  Wanting the FBI to investigate-they can't..its local jurisdiction, not a federal crime.  It's also way past the statute of limitations.  They have also said they wont investigate

3.  She has no details of the event.  Doesnt know when it was or where it was.  If it was a traumatic sexual assault, her adrenaline would kick in and she would probably remember those details.  I can remember all details of any traumatic events I've been a part of..car accidents, fights, where I was when challenger blew up, etc.  

4.  The Democrats seem eager to call this attempted rape but dont care about recent domestic abuse allegations against Keith Ellison.

5.  People who commit rape or attempted rape continue the same patterns throughout life.  Nobody else has come forward with a similar story. 

6.  Apparently,  one of Ford's classmates came forward on Twitter to substantiate this was a well known rumor around school at the time but Ford had already publicly stated she didnt tell anyone about the incident until 2012 so the tweet was deleted.   

7.  Ford allegedly passed a lie detector test that supports her statements that something happened.

8.  Law enforcement could not and would not pursue a case based upon known statements from Ford.

 

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3 minutes ago, SmokeyTheBear said:

I'd be more than happy to get any law enforcement involved to investigate and document my innocence and their lying. 

Or maybe you did something bad 35 years ago and had thought that chicken was never gonna come home to roost. In that case, maybe you keep up the denial. 

Edited by FondrenRoad
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27 minutes ago, horncyclist said:

I had to undergo a background investigation for my federal position. If one of the persons they talked to said I had attempted to rape someone, they would fully pursue that and I likely would be out of a job. Kavanaugh deserves the same scrutiny. The prior 6 investigations are irrelevant since I to my knowledge they didn't have this information.
/Personal capacity/
I will just add the entire GOP is a morally corrupt criminal enterprise. Defending someone accused of rape to achieve their Supreme Court take over is just further evidence of that. Anyone that continues to associate with the GOP is complicit in this moral corruption and subversion of our basic principles. Fuck these guys.

/In my personal capacity/

Let's back up..nobody is accused of rape

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21 minutes ago, Mdhorn said:

R's are trying to ram it home as quickly as possible while they have numbers. They do not have the time for an investigation and hearing.  

Which is why the Democrats intentionally waited to bring the matter forward which they knew about in July.  They don't care if this woman was sexually assaulted or raped or dragged behind a truck.  They just want to protect abortion assuming he would overturn Roe which I dont think he would do anyway

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1 minute ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

Let’s be honest, if the allegations are true, Kavanaugh is a failed rapist. 

If true yeah, but I'm not calling somebody a rapist on the allegations of someone from 35 years ago who can't recall some fairly major details of the situation.  If she testifies and has credibility then I'll get on the band wagon, but right now its just an incendiary, un substantiated term being thrown about.  

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1 minute ago, AtticusFinch said:

Which is why the Democrats intentionally waited to bring the matter forward which they knew about in July.  They don't care if this woman was sexually assaulted or raped or dragged behind a truck.  They just want to protect abortion assuming he would overturn Roe which I dont think he would do anyway

Who's sock is this? 8badmofo?  September 3 account, a few really stupid football takes, and then a ton of QAnon reddit talking points.  

Be better.

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36 minutes ago, retread said:

Like used2b said

Even in cases that are not high profile, victims are often very reluctant to come forward. Just consider the Penn St, Mich St, & Catholic priest crimes. Many victims kept quiet for years and years.

Or US gymnastics, where a doctor abused nearly every single one of them for decades. They won gold medals, were America's sweethearts, and didnt say a word because they were afraid. 

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1 minute ago, AtticusFinch said:

Which is why the Democrats intentionally waited to bring the matter forward which they knew about in July

What would the Republican narrative be if this issue was brought up in July?

How would it have played out?

Would it have made the situation any better for the Republicans? 

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1 minute ago, FondrenRoad said:

Or US gymnastics, where a doctor abused nearly every single one of them for decades. They won gold medals, were America's sweethearts, and didnt say a word because they were afraid. 

Well yeah, because some cavemen on the internet start calling them attention whores, sluts, reminiscing about the good old days when you could hold a bitch down and cover her mouth to keep from screaming and get away with it, the best days of hanging out at the mall and flirting with the high school girls at the Orange Julius, etc.   I wonder why they don't say anything.

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1 minute ago, AtticusFinch said:

Which is why the Democrats intentionally waited to bring the matter forward which they knew about in July.  They don't care if this woman was sexually assaulted or raped or dragged behind a truck.  They just want to protect abortion assuming he would overturn Roe which I dont think he would do anyway

Yeah I 'm thinking they were only going to bring it up if other delaying tricks didn't work.  The woman has stated (allegedly) she didn't want publicity, so there's that.

Feinstein may very well have been saving this as a last ditch effort to derail, with the added benefit it would still give her cover for not coming forward immediately based on Dr. Fords wishes.  It was a win win for her (Feinstein that is).

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The strategy has been obvious but this article puts it succinctly. 

Quote

The Republican strategy to get Brett Kavanaugh confirmed is to do the absolute minimum necessary to appear as if they are taking the sexual assault charges against him seriously — while doing all they can to limit the ability of the American people to make a fully informed judgment about those charges themselves.

The words and actions of Republicans themselves confirm the rationale behind this strategy: Any delay and further fact finding might make it less likely that Kavanaugh gets confirmed and could threaten more political damage to the GOP’s chances in the midterms. And if confirmation is delayed past the election, and Democrats somehow do win the Senate, that throws the seat’s fate into some doubt.

On Tuesday night, Christine Blasey Ford’s lawyers sent a letter to the Judiciary Committee demanding an FBI investigation into her allegations against Kavanaugh before she testifies to the committee, as Republicans have invited her to do next Monday.

In the letter, Ford’s team notes that since she came forward, she has been the target of “vicious harassment” and “death threats,” and argues that an FBI probe is necessary because some GOP Senators have already made up their minds that she is “mistaken” and “mixed up,” as Senator Orrin Hatch so delicately put it.

“A full investigation by law enforcement officials will ensure that the crucial facts and witnesses in this matter are assessed in a non-partisan manner, and that the Committee is fully informed before conducting any hearing,” Ford’s lawyers wrote, adding that no serious investigation can be conducted by Monday, which is when Republicans have scheduled the hearing at which she and Kavanaugh would testify.

Republican Senators are flatly rejecting these demands. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the chair of the Judiciary Committee, said that “we’ve offered Dr. Ford the opportunity to share her story with the committee,” and “the invitation for Monday still stands.” Bob Corker of Tennessee claimed: “Republicans extended a hand in good faith. If we don’t hear from both sides on Monday, let’s vote.” John Cornyn of Texas glibly remarked: “She’s not in really a position to make conditions in my view.”

But why is it that the hearing cannot be delayed past Monday? Fortunately, this morning Senator Lindsey Graham gave the game away, perhaps without meaning to:

Graham does not say why a Judiciary Committee vote must take place “ASAP,” but his previous tweet does: An investigation might end up “delaying the process till after the midterms.” Graham blames Democrats for tacitly wanting to do this, but what Graham cannot explain here is why the fact that this could be delayed until after the midterms should place limits on the Senate’s efforts to determine what happened.

That’s because the real answer is obvious, and it’s untenable as a public position: Because if this is delayed until after the midterms, and Republicans lose the Senate, they’d have to confirm the justice in the lame duck period. As Brian Beutler points out, Trump would be badly weakened, and this would cast a further cloud of illegitimacy over the process of filling the seat — whether with Kavanaugh or someone else — and compounding the legitimacy problem, that justice could end up ruling on matters related to Trump’s legal travails.

The Wall Street Journal editorial board is helpfully explicit on the real calculus here as well, warning: “If Democrats take the Senate majority, they’ll then insist on no vote until the new Senate convenes in January.” Republicans would not listen to that, of course, but as this basically concedes, moving forward at that point would put them in a politically brutal position.

By the way, Democrats may well partly want to delay this until after the midterms. But even if true, the fact that Republicans are citing this is still revealing. Republicans, after all, could support a fuller investigation into what happened while also getting in the vote before the elections — there is still time for both. The only thing that would delay this until after the elections is if Kavanaugh’s nomination became untenable due to that fuller investigation, forcing Trump to nominate a replacement. Thus, that is what they really want to avoid — a fuller accounting that could scuttle the nomination.

Giving away the game

What’s more, when Senator Corker claims Republicans have acted in “good faith” in scheduling a hearing and that this justifies sticking to a Monday vote, this, too, illuminates what’s really motivating Republicans. It’s a stretch to say Republicans showed good faith here. Remember, Grassley originally wanted to schedule only private calls between Ford and Senators, and only agreed to a public hearing for her after that became politically untenable. Again, the desire was to do the absolute minimum to appear to be taking the charges seriously while doing everything possible to limit a full accounting in the eyes of the public. Corker is doing the same again.

This is also at the core of the current GOP stance. Republicans — President Trump included — say it’s not the FBI’s role to investigate Ford’s claims. But as NBC News points out, as part of the background check process, the White House could ask the FBI to look into the veracity of her claims if it wanted to. What’s more, Democrats have proposed that, if an FBI investigation doesn’t happen, the Judiciary Committee could conduct a fuller investigation, hearing from more witnesses other than just Ford and Kavanaugh. But Republicans don’t want to.

To be clear, it’s a good thing that Republicans have invited Ford to testify. And if the FBI does not conduct an investigation, our preference should be that Ford goes forward with the testimony anyway (though that is her decision, obviously). But there is no obvious reason why this can’t be accompanied by as robust an effort as possible to determine the truth.

One big lesson the #MeToo movement has taught us is that we need to move beyond treating allegations of sexual assault and harassment as mere he-said-she-said affairs, because that subjects women who come forward to brutal public exposure in exchange for little in the way of a serious hearing, leaving them no recourse. Republicans seem to want to keep the proceedings constrained in a way that guarantees it is perceived as he-said-she-said.

But in this case, a robust fact-finding effort could actually end up benefiting Kavanaugh, the court, and even the GOP. If such an effort were undertaken and did not conclusively settle the matter, you could easily see 50 or 51 Republicans — and perhaps a few Democrats — confirming Kavanaugh. And the fact that a serious investigation did take place would put his ascension on firmer ground.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2018/09/19/these-quotes-from-republicans-give-away-their-game-on-kavanaugh/

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3 minutes ago, Washpark said:

Like Trump calling all Mexicans rapist? 

https://www.politifact.com/virginia/statements/2016/aug/08/tim-kaine/tim-kaine-falsely-says-trump-said-all-mexicans-are/

 

Trump never actually said that.  He said some are.  Shoot, 20% of all federal inmates are aliens.  That's a lot of victims of crime.  Why dont you go tell all those victims that illegal immigration is a good thing

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It sure is considering.
1.  The supposed crime committed was a state crime not a federal crime.  The FBI would have no jurisdiction to investigate anything.



Just stop with the conclusory assertions that are demonstrably false.

https://abovethelaw.com/2018/09/christine-blasey-ford-wants-the-same-thing-anita-hill-got-an-f-b-i-investigation-into-her-claims/

Hint: This would be related to the FBI’s function regarding performing background checks on appointees.
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