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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsMore Than Once, Kavanaugh Failed A Character Test
Gene Lyons
September 20, 2018 7:00 am
Probably its not possible to prove beyond a reasonable doubt whether or not Judge Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted then-fifteen year old Christine Blasey Ford at a high school house party back in 1982. However, thats not the issue. Kavanaughs not being charged with a crime, but with being a creep.
Actually, theres already ample evidence of that. But hold that thought. Nobody has a right to a lifetime appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court.
No less an authority than that great American (and Kavanaughs former boss) Kenneth Starr says its too late for there to be any serious consideration at this stage. But whats the rush? Republicans thought it was just fine to leave a Supreme Court seat vacant throughout 2016 for purely partisan reasons. Theres no compelling reason for hurry now.
Except that the longer this spectacle continues, the likelier it appears that Kavanaugh will be forced to withdraw. Gun-shy Republicans in close congressional races may insist upon it. Because, see, chances are the judge doesnt actually know if he forced the young girl into a bedroom, tried to tear off her clothes, pinned her down and clapped his hand over her mouth to silence her screams, or if he didnt.
Thats because theres plenty of circumstantial evidence that Judge Kavanaugh spent his years at Georgetown Prep getting hammered: knee-walking, toilet bowl-hugging, where-am-I-and-how-did-I-get-here blackout drunk. The other fellow Prof. Ford named as her attacker was his prep school pal, a conservative opinion writer named Mike Judge.
Judge denies everything. Its just absolutely nuts, he said. I never saw Brett act that way. However, Judge has also published two book length memoirs of his own struggles with drugs and alcohol. His book Wasted: Tales of a Gen-X Drunk, features one Bart OKavanaugh, who puked in someones car the other night and passed out on his way back from a party.
The pseudonym gives thinly-disguised a new meaning.
Also, in his high school yearbook, Kavanaugh himself claims membership in something called the Beach Week Ralph Club and the Keg City Club. (Ralphing, of course, being slang for projectile vomiting.) There are coarse sexual references too. At Yale, Kavanaugh belonged to a fraternity notorious for carousing. As recently as 2014, he gave a humorous speech to the Yale Law School Federalist Society on the theme of how drunk were you? in law school.
Answer: falling-down. Literally.
None of this is a crime either, but it definitely lends credibility to Prof. Fords memory of Judge and Kavanaughs intoxication that awful night. She says that she only got away because while Kavanaugh was holding her down and tearing at her bathing suit, Judge piled on, they all three tumbled to the floor and she managed to escapelocking herself in a bathroom until she heard Beavis and Butthead stumble away.
As I say, the nominee may honestly remember none of this. But does he recall getting blackout drunk? I doubt he wants to answer that question. What people sometimes dont understand is that heavy drinkers can carry on carousing and making idiots of themselves for hours before passing out coldoften with no memory in the morning.
Hopefully, Kavanaugh grew up. But its his boozing the Senate needs to question him about as much as Prof. Fords allegation. There are high-functioning alcoholics everywhere.
Perhaps this is all terribly unfair to Kavanaugh. But its an important job he wants. Then too, as Heather Digby Parton comments, [w]hen it comes to unfairness and character assassination, hes an expert.
Few in Little Rock have forgotten his years-long harassment of Vince Fosters family after the White House attorneys suicide. At the behest of the incompetent Starr, who got his own investigative tips from Rush Limbaugh, Kavanaugh made their lives miserable.
Digby: He spent three years and $2 million attempting to dig up dirt on the dead man, at one point demanding that Fosters teenage daughter give the authorities specimens of her hairan apparent attempt to prove or imply that a hair found on Fosters jacket had belonged to Hillary Clinton.
Failing at that, Kavanaugh next served as one of Starrs chief leakers in the Monica Lewinsky affair. Bill Clintons sexual sins brought out the Torquemada in him. It is our job, he wrote colleagues in Starrs office in an email, to make his pattern of revolting behavior clearpiece by painful piece.
Revolting, no less. Prominent among the questions he thought the President needed to be asked under oath and on camera was this: If Monica Lewinsky says that you ejaculated into her mouth on two occasions in the Oval Office area, would she be lying?
Pervert or prig? You tell me.
Next Kavanaugh wrote the infamous Starr Report whose salaciousness shocked most Americans, helping Clinton get away with it and humiliating Monica Lewinsky, whom the prosecutors seemed to regard as collateral damage.
All perfectly in character, it seems to me.
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http://www.nationalmemo.com/kavanaugh-failed-character-test/
Full article posted with the permission of the author -- Don
katmondoo
(6,456 posts)Guilded Lilly
(5,591 posts)hideously dark and repulsive character crisis among the men of all the branches of government.
Republican men, in particular.
Conservative white men mostly.
Epidemic. Insidious. Dangerous.