US Politics: Judge Dread

[Bonnot OG]

I see one of our resident white supremacist apologists is also a rape apologist too.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

In other non-Kavanaugh news:

We now know why Trump thinks China is meddling in our elections:

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Donald Trump has accused China of seeking to interfere in US congressional elections in November, using his chairmanship of the UN security council to spring a surprise on his fellow world leaders.

Asked for proof, the president later cited a Chinese-funded newspaper advertisement in Iowa, a battleground state in the congressional campaign, that the Chinese government had paid for, lobbying against his trade policies.

Administration officials – who also appeared to have been taken unawares by the allegation – were able to give few other supporting details, and pointed instead to repressive actions by the Chinese government to suppress domestic dissent. The surprise claim created a short-lived storm, temporarily diverting attention from Wednesday’s security council session, which underlined Trump’s isolation at the UN over his Iran policies.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/sep/26/trump-china-beijing-election-midterms-interference-claim

I mean, that's really no different than what Russia did, right?

 

This is exactly why Trump is not fit for office. Our Emoluments Clause is calling:

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Zimbabwe's leader says he is willing to offer land to President Donald Trump to build a golf course in a national park teeming with wildlife.

President Emmerson Mnangagwa was speaking to a New York investors' forum ahead of his first address to a United Nations annual gathering of world leaders this week.

Mnangagwa said he made the offer to Trump staffers earlier this year at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, pitching land in the tourist town of Victoria Falls. Trump is a keen golfer.

"I had offered President Trump ground to build a state-of-the-art golf course so that as he plays he can be able to see the big five," Zimbabwe's president said. The "big five" refers to big game: lion, rhino, elephant, buffalo and leopard.

Mnangagwa is trying to warm up to the United States in a sharp departure from his predecessor, Robert Mugabe, whose icy relations with Western countries over human rights abuses led to sanctions.

https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/zimbabwes-leader-offers-trump-land-golf-58091780

The corruption is so open....

[James Arryn]

If this were a trial, a moment that went unremarked would have HUGE implications. 

At one point when listing off the allegations he’s had to suffer, he specifically highlighted one as “...and that one is just ridiculous!”

That’s...ummm...that’s not a good look as a defendant. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Oh hey, and on that golf course note,  looky here:

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A federal judge ruled Friday that congressional Democrats have standing to sue President Donald Trump over what they claim are violations of an arcane constitutional clause because he is still conducting business overseas.

There are two separate lawsuits aimed at the president for allegedly violating the emoluments clause of the Constitution, which bars elected officials from receiving gifts, payments, or benefits from foreign governments without the consent of Congress.

US District Judge Emmet Sullivan ruled that roughly 200 members of Congress, led by Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Democratic Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York, had standing to sue Trump because he did not ask Congress before accepting anything that could be considered a foreign emolument.

The judge did not rule as to whether Trump was in violation of the emoluments clause. But he ruled that because Trump's business' acceptance of revenue from foreign entities was not approved by Congress, members to have a right to sue and find out whether Trump is indeed in violation. Sullivan ruled that Trump has an obligation to get Congress to approve such foreign business.

https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-emoluments-clause-lawsuit-judge-democrats-standing-2018-9

[Kalbear]

This is a cool chart.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/9/28/17914308/kavanaugh-ford-question-dodge-hearing-chart

[Mexal]

1 minute ago, Kalbear said:

This is a cool chart.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/9/28/17914308/kavanaugh-ford-question-dodge-hearing-chart

Yea, that's pretty cool.

[SweetPea]

1 minute ago, Mexal said:

Sure, that's possible. Still has nothing to do with Ford having anything to gain which was my original assertion and which you called me dishonest for.

There's been endless talks about how Kavanaugh is going to get rid of Roe v. Wade if he is chosen for the SC seat. Ford is a woman. There's a motive for you. But my main point is that there could be various alternative reasons why she would come forward with these accusations, that she personally has something to gain, or that she was pushed into it, for example.

[Mexal]

8 minutes ago, SweetPea said:

There's been endless talks about how Kavanaugh is going to get rid of Roe v. Wade if he is chosen for the SC seat. Ford is a woman. There's a motive for you. But my main point is that there could be various alternative reasons why she would come forward with these accusations, that she personally has something to gain, or that she was pushed into it, for example.

If she was afraid of Roe v Wade, she wouldn't have written a single note on a single nominee before Kavanaugh was nominated, nor would she request everything to be confidential until someone else leaked it. Again, your assertions doesn't fit the fact pattern. At the end of the day, this wasn't a partisan attack by Ford, it was clearly her trying to let the public know, after her name was leaked to the press, that she believe Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her. You can say her memory is wrong, you can fail to believe her, but saying she was doing this for partisan reasoning doesn't fit anything that has happened, not the timing of her note, her unwillinness to go on record until her name was leaked, all the shit that has happened to her family and the 2012 therapist notes or 2013, 2014, 2016 and 2017 conversations with close friends. You can keep trying to back your point where you called me dishonest for something I never said or you can just admit it makes no sense and move on.

[Kalbear]

5 minutes ago, SweetPea said:

There's been endless talks about how Kavanaugh is going to get rid of Roe v. Wade if he is chosen for the SC seat. Ford is a woman.

Who is 50 years old and past menopause, so Roe isn't exactly a big deal here.  AND her stated goal was to stop Kavanaugh from being nominated in the first place, and wishes that some other conservative was chosen. AND she put in her note before Kavanaugh was chosen, meaning that if he hadn't been none of this would have mattered. 

So no, that's not a motive.

5 minutes ago, SweetPea said:

But my main point is that there could be various alternative reasons why she would come forward with these accusations, that she personally has something to gain, or that she was pushed into it, for example.

Well, she was pushed into coming public with the allegations - because the media found out who she was. 

And sure, it's possible that she's doing this entirely for personal gain. It's very unclear what personal gain she would have from, say, telling her therapist in 2012 about this, but that's a possibility. It's just incredibly unlikely, and the far more likely reason is that she really believes what she's saying. 

And the cool thing? There are some many ways to obviously disprove it that it should be easy to check. Did Mark Judge work at that grocery store, for example? Or call him on the stand and let him bear witness. Or talk to the other people at Yale about Kavanaugh's character. Or some of his friends at High School, including this Renate person. While it's almost certainly true that we will never get objective evidence that this happened, we can rule out a whole lot of things by a simple investigation that won't take a crazy amount of time.

One person has asked for that investigation to happen. The other has not. 

[James Arryn]

8 minutes ago, SweetPea said:

There's been endless talks about how Kavanaugh is going to get rid of Roe v. Wade if he is chosen for the SC seat. Ford is a woman. There's a motive for you. But my main point is that there could be various alternative reasons why she would come forward with these accusations, that she personally has something to gain, or that she was pushed into it, for example.

None of this ever accounts for the timing. How does this go in your head, exactly?

Hey, this guy might be SC in a few years, and that might threaten Roe v Wade, so I’d better start telling people I know that I was sexually assaulted. And, oooh, now that I think about it, there was that extreme sudden change in my social behaviour back in HS that can be well attested to, so that works!

But are you saying you didn’t find her testimony credible? Because though they are trying to do some weird 2 step about believing her that ‘something’ happened to her, just not BK, even Fox is admitting she was extremely credible. 

[The Mance]

9 minutes ago, SweetPea said:

But my main point is that there could be various alternative reasons why she would come forward with these accusations, that she personally has something to gain, or that she was pushed into it, for example.

Now I'm no accused sexual predator/SCOTUS nominee, but I would think that Kavanaugh would be keen to have those possibilities looked in to.  You know, to clear his good name.  If only there were some federal bureau we could call upon to investigate that type of thing.

[SweetPea]

13 minutes ago, Mexal said:

If she was afraid of Roe v Wade, she wouldn't have written a single note before Kavanaugh was nominated

There has always been the possibility of Kavanaugh being nominated, even many years ago.

15 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

And sure, it's possible that she's doing this entirely for personal gain. It's very unclear what personal gain she would have from, say, telling her therapist in 2012 about this, but that's a possibility. It's just incredibly unlikely, and the far more likely reason is that she really believes what she's saying. 

I agree with this, I think it likely that she really believes what she's saying.

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And the cool thing? There are some many ways to obviously disprove it that it should be easy to check. Did Mark Judge work at that grocery store, for example? Or call him on the stand and let him bear witness. Or talk to the other people at Yale about Kavanaugh's character. Or some of his friends at High School, including this Renate person. While it's almost certainly true that we will never get objective evidence that this happened, we can rule out a whole lot of things by a simple investigation that won't take a crazy amount of time.

Also agree, but this all could and should have been done long ago, privately. The fact that it happened this way reeks of deliberate character assassination.

[Mindwalker]

33 minutes ago, SweetPea said:

There's been endless talks about how Kavanaugh is going to get rid of Roe v. Wade if he is chosen for the SC seat. Ford is a woman. There's a motive for you.

Yup. Clearly being a woman is her agenda. Er, I mean, uterus impaired person, sorry.

[Zorral]

2 hours ago, polishgenius said:

  2 hours ago, King Ned Stark said:

No, I don’t think that.

Do you think that if Ford’s claims somehow turn out to be completely false, that Kavanaugh is still unqualified for SCOTUS 

Absolutely!  Thought so long before Dr. Blasey courageously came forward with her story of what he did to her.

Among all the many traits of his characters and his behaviors, his contempt and disgust for women and people of diversity disqualifies him.

 

[Kalbear]

3 minutes ago, SweetPea said:

There has always been the possibility of Kavanaugh being nominated, even many years ago.

Sure. So? Are you saying that she should have thrown her life into hell because there's a possibility that a person who might get nominated at some point is a bad dude and people should know?

3 minutes ago, SweetPea said:

Also agree, but this all could and should have been done long ago, privately. The fact that it happened this way reeks of deliberate character assassination.

And...she tried to do it privately. Ultimately anything of this nature will never be private in a Democracy, no matter how hard you try, especially when the other person fervently denies and blocks attempts to get more information. In a perfect world, Feinstein's recommendation to the FBI to investigate would have quietly been picked up by Trump, followed through, and done with in a closed session hearing. That was what attempted to happen with Thomas in the 90s; it leaked when the FBI investigated. 

Sometimes it's not deliberate character assassination; it's simply news. As it stands, Republicans literally allowed Ford to do this and only this as the way for her to get her side out in any official way. She offered an FBI investigation, a quiet private hearing, and to do this all before Kavanaugh got the nomination; they declined. 

[King Ned Stark]

1 hour ago, SweetPea said:

I also think it's worth mentioning that she has received over half a million dollars of gofundme donations so far. 

Well, that is something.  It’s pertains to why I think it is silly to disregard presumption of innocence and burden of proof and all that.  It’s all fine and well as long as it’s a political weapon to use against your enemies; if said tactic is used against you, then it starts to seem a bit unfair.

 

To everyone who said they think Kavanaugh, even if innocent, is unworthy of SCOTUS, that’s fine.  Everyone has a right to an opinion.  

[Martell Spy]

Why Conservatives Could Regret Confirming Brett Kavanaugh

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/09/brett-kavanaugh-confirmation-vote-why-conservatives-could-regret-this-john-roberts.html

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Nevertheless, it is impossible to understand how Democratic voters could have voiced approval for what was, in the aggregate, the most conservative decade of Supreme Court jurisprudence in modern American history without stipulating that they genuinely believed in the justices’ good faith. Try as they might, the more radical wing of the progressive base couldn’t persuade ordinary Democrats to see the court as a partisan, anti-democratic policy-making body whose power must be questioned and contested.

With Kavanaugh on the court, the radicals will.

Already, Democratic operatives are discussing the role that calls for Kavanaugh’s impeachment will play in the 2020 primary. The formation of a (potentially) anti-Roe majority was always likely to increase the salience of the Supreme Court to the Democratic base. But the formation of an anti-Roe majority secured by the confirmation of an alleged sex criminal and self-professed enemy of the Clintons — who spent his final confirmation hearing openly disrespecting Democratic senators and telling bald-faced lies — will mobilize Democrats against Roberts’s majority in an unprecedented (and wholly avoidable) way.

From one angle (and only one angle) then, Senate Republicans will be doing progressives a favor by confirming Kavanaugh. Were President Trump to withdraw Kavanaugh today — and replace him with a less incendiary far-right justice — it is overwhelmingly likely that said justice would win confirmation before the next Senate is sworn in. And a conservative majority that didn’t include a justice as divisive as Kavanaugh would be one far more capable of handing down radically reactionary decisions without facing political blowback.

By all accounts, John Roberts is deeply protective of his court’s legitimacy — which is to say, the public perception that its authority is just. Many informed observers have speculated that it was this very protectiveness that prevented Roberts from voting to strike down the Affordable Care Act with his four conservative colleagues. To the extent that Roberts believes himself to be constrained by public opinion, putting Kavanaugh on the court — instead of a Gorsuch clone — could actually substantively hamper the conservative project.

And if doesn’t — if the new conservative majority continues its steady march toward Neo-Lochernism — then Kavanaugh’s confirmation will increase the likelihood of a direct confrontation between a Democratic Congress and the Supreme Court at some point in the medium-term future.

 

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Given this reality, there is a good chance that the GOP’s primary source of federal power in the coming decades (or, at least, during significant portions of the coming decades) will be its vestigial claim to the judiciary. And that claim will be much less valuable if Democratic voters come to see judges as mere legislators in robes. After all, it only takes 51 Senate votes to end the legislative filibuster — and then simple majorities in both Houses (and a president’s signature) to pack the court, or else, radically reform its structure. If the Supreme Court is seen as a team of neutral umpires, such reforms will remain beyond the pale; if they’re seen as a partisan policymaking body, such reforms could become unavoidable.

 

[James Arryn]

One other point I’d like to make is this:

Everyone seems to be treating it as a given that pushing Kavanaugh through will be a gain/loss for the Republicans, that it will automatically cost them at the midterms. 

But there is a pretty unique feature in American culture that treats ‘winning’ as it’s own virtue. It doesn’t even need to be a real competition or w/e, just an understood conflict. There are plenty of political instances...Iran-Contra, Lewinsky, etc. where it is even understood that the perceived victory was known to stand in direct contradiction to the truth of events, but which never the less served to portray the winner as somehow validated just by virtue of having ‘won’. Another example would be that there was a significant bump in public support for the war in Iraq following Bush’s Presidential win in late 2004. Nothing in Iraq itself had changed, but the war was suddenly more popular because of Bush’s ‘win’.

So, given how contentious this nomination has become, I think that there is a very real chance that to casual/neutral observers, the GOP successfully pushing Kavanaugh through will be read as a ‘win’ and that rather than resulting in a backlash, it might generate positive momentum.

I know that there’s no obstacle to the GOP except the fear of unpopularity, so it’s not really a ‘win’, but my point is that except to the serious political watchers, that’s how it might very well be perceived. Anyways, that’s my recurring fear. 

[Week]

7 minutes ago, King Ned Stark said:

To everyone who said they think Kavanaugh, even if innocent, is unworthy of SCOTUS, that’s fine.  Everyone has a right to an opinion.  

People who support Kavanaugh support a dissembling, partisan hack who is accused of sexual assault.  That's their opinion. Great. Please don't freak out the next time people are referred to as "deplorables" because *gestures towards the first sentence*.Yep.

[King Ned Stark]

1 minute ago, Week said:

People who support Kavanaugh support a dissembling, partisan hack who is accused of sexual assault.  That's their opinion. Great. Please don't freak out the next time people are referred to as "deplorables" because *gestures towards the first sentence*.Yep.

You don’t think that every SCOTUS is partisan?