Kennedy to retire - USSC will swing even further right

[continued]

‘The drinking age was 18 in Maryland’

“My friends and I sometimes got together and had parties on weekends,” Kavanaugh testified. “The drinking age was 18 in Maryland for most of my time in high school, and was 18 in D.C. for all of my time in high school.”

The legal drinking age was raised to 21 in Maryland when Kavanaugh was 17 years old in 1982, which is when Blasey’s alleged assault took place.

Not only is Kavanaugh wrong about the drinking age when he was in high school; he wasn’t even 18 years old (the incorrect drinking age he claims) when he recorded his own beer drinking on his calendar at the time.

Who cares about a little underage drinking? It wouldn’t matter if this weren’t about two bigger issues: the event in question and whether Kavanaugh is credible. His dishonesty here shows he gets even the little things wrong.

‘Boofs’ and ‘Devil’s Triangle’

“Judge, have you boofed yet?” The question appears on Kavanaugh’s 1983 senior yearbook page. It corresponds with Judge’s page, which says, “Bart, have you boofed yet?” Kavanaugh’s entry includes other terms that refer to heavy drinking (“100 kegs or bust” and “Beach Week Ralph Club”) and a curious phrase, “Devil’s Triangle.”

What does “boof” mean? And “Devil’s Triangle”? The first term “refers to flatulence,” Kavanaugh said in response to Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), and the second is a “drinking game” akin to quarters.

But many people, including Kavanaugh’s classmates at Georgetown Prep, said that’s not what those terms mean and that’s not what Kavanaugh was referring to at all. “Boof” has a history of being a slang term for anal sex, and “Devil’s Triangle” refers to sex between two men and one woman.

“Based on extensive interviews by me and @katekelly with Kavanaugh’s former Georgetown Prep classmates, what he just said about the meanings of ‘boofed’ and ‘Devil’s Triangle’ is not true,” tweeted David Enrich, who broke the story about Kavanaugh’s yearbook writings.

‘Renate Alumnius’

In his high school yearbook, Kavanaugh listed himself as a “Renate Alumnius.” (The misspelling of “alumnus” is in the original text.) This was a reference to Renate Dolphin, a female contemporary who attended a Maryland Catholic girls’ school.

“That yearbook reference was clumsily intended to show affection and that she was one of us,” Kavanaugh testified. “But in this circus, the media’s interpreted the term is related to sex. It was not related to sex.”

But two other Georgetown Prep classmates of Kavanaugh’s told The New York Times that it was related to sex. The prep school boys who wrote “Renate Alumnius” in their yearbooks intended it as a claim of conquest ― that they had some kind of physical relations with her.

“They were very disrespectful, at least verbally, with Renate,” Sean Hagan, one of Kavanaugh’s high school classmates, told The New York Times.

Another Georgetown Prep classmate wrote a ditty about Dolphin clearly documenting that their reference was not about friendship: “You need a date / and it’s getting late / so don’t hesitate / to call Renate.” They were saying she was easy.

Dolphin had signed a letter to the committee with 64 other women in support of Kavanaugh after Blasey’s allegations emerged. When the Times contacted her about the “Renate Alumnius” yearbook reference, she said she had not known about it and that it greatly hurt her to learn of it.

“I don’t know what ‘Renate Alumnus’ actually means,” she told the Times. “I can’t begin to comprehend what goes through the minds of 17-year-old boys who write such things, but the insinuation is horrible, hurtful and simply untrue. I pray their daughters are never treated this way. I will have no further comment.”

A statement from Kavanaugh’s lawyer Alexandra Walsh to the Times said that her client and Dolphin attended a high school event once and “shared a brief kiss good night following that event.”

“I think Brett must have me confused with someone else, because I never kissed him,” Dolphin said through a lawyer in response.

And yet Kavanaugh said the reference was “not related to sex” after claiming a kiss that the woman in question denies.

‘Beach Week Ralph Club, Biggest Contributor’

Kavanaugh listed himself as the biggest contributor to the “Beach Week Ralph Club.” Beach Week is a party week in the D.C.-Maryland-Virginia area where high school students go to nearby beaches to drink heavily. “Ralph” is slang for “vomit.” When Whitehouse asked Kavanaugh about this reference, he said it was about spicy food.

“I’m known to have a weak stomach, and I always have,” Kavanaugh testified. “In fact, the last time I was here, you asked me about having ketchup on spaghetti. I always have had a weak stomach.”

“So the vomiting that you reference in the Ralph Club reference, related to the consumption of alcohol?” Whitehouse followed up.

To which Kavanaugh sputtered a non sequitur reply about how he went to Yale: “Senator, I was at the top of my class academically, busted my butt in school. Captain of the varsity basketball team. Got in Yale College. When I got into Yale College, got into Yale Law School. Worked my tail off.”

“Did it relate to alcohol? You haven’t answered that,” Whitehouse pressed.

“I like beer. I like beer. I don’t know if you do,” Kavanaugh sneered.

“OK,” Whitehouse said, as Kavanaugh weirdly pressed the senator on whether he liked beer and what he preferred to drink.

It is simply laughable to consider that “Beach Week Ralph Club, Biggest Contributor” is in reference to anything other than drinking so much alcohol that one vomits.

 

[continued]

‘No connections to Yale’

“I have no connections there,” Kavanaugh insisted regarding his ties to Yale University, where he went as an undergraduate and for law school. “I got there by busting my tail.”

But his grandfather, Everett Edward Kavanaugh, went to Yale for undergrad. The Intercept dug up a copy of his grandfather’s yearbook, showing him as a student.

Yale has said that 20 to 25 percent of its students are classified as legacy students.

No one accused me of sexual misconduct ‘until last week’

“Throughout my 53 years and seven months on this Earth, until last week, no one ever accused me of any kind of sexual misconduct,” Kavanaugh declared in his Sept. 27 hearing.

But Blasey alerted Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the ranking member on the committee, of her allegations in July. Blasey publicly revealed herself in a Sept. 16 article in The Washington Post.

Mark Judge’s memoir was ‘fictionalized’

Kavanaugh’s friend Judge wrote a book titled “Wasted: Tales of a GenX Drunk,” in which a character named Bart O’Kavanaugh (sound familiar?) vomits on someone’s car during Beach Week and passes out.

Kavanaugh denied that he was the inspiration for O’Kavanaugh. “He wrote a book that is a fictionalized book,” he said in his hearing.

But a note at the beginning of Judge’s book states, “This book is based on actual experiences.”

Judge Alex Kozinski

Kavanaugh repeatedly denied knowing that Judge Alex Kozinski, a mentor for whom Kavanaugh clerked from 1991 to 1992, was a sex predator who harassed women in his office and maintained a private server in his offices for p*rn. Kozinski is the most important judicial figure, aside from now-retired Justice Anthony Kennedy, in Kavanaugh’s life. Kozinski introduced Kavanaugh when the latter was nominated to the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

It’s impossible to know if Kavanaugh provided misleading testimony when he said the revelations about Kozinski were a total surprise and “a gut punch.” But it seems very unlikely.

Kozinski was first accused of “sadistic” and “abusive” behavior in 1985. When the allegations emerged, the Senate Judiciary Committee reopened hearings into his nomination after it already voted to send his nomination to the full Senate. He was still confirmed to the 9th Circuit.

Reports about his harassment of female clerks and his maintenance of a website hosting p*rn came out in 2008. Kozinski was also known to send to a listserv wildly inappropriate content that demeaned women. He was admonished in 2009 and stepped down as chief judge of the 9th Circuit in 2014. Yet Kavanaugh appeared with Kozinski at a Federalist Society event in 2015.

Kozinski’s behavior was not unknown. Legal reporters Dahlia Lithwick and Ian Millhiser have written that they knew about Kozinski. Yale Law School students told HuffPost that professors Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld, who are married to each other, intimated that they avoided clerking with Kozinski because he was known to sexually harass women. Chua is friends with Kavanaugh, has directed multiple students to clerk with him and endorsed his nomination.

Heidi Bond, one of the women who came forward in 2017 to tell their stories of harassment at Kozinski’s hands, wrote in Slate, “Kozinski’s sexual comments — to both men and women — were legendary.”

“Having clerked in his chambers, I do not know how it would be possible to forget something as pervasive as Kozinski’s famously sexual sense of humor or his gag list, as Kavanaugh has professed to in his hearings,” Bond wrote.

Kavanaugh said in his hearing that he could not remember receiving emails from Kozinski’s email list, known as the “Easy Rider Gag List.”

It’s hard to confirm what Kavanaugh knew about Kozinski. It would be possible to find out if he ever received some of those creepy emails Kozinski sent to his listserv, but Kavanaugh did not offer to search his emails to find out.

William Pryor nomination

William Pryor was nominated by President George W. Bush to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in 2003. Pryor, a protege of now–Attorney General Jeff Sessions, was controversial for his views on abortion. Kavanaugh, who handled judicial nominations for the White House at that time, denied that he personally handled Pryor’s nomination when he was questioned during his appeals court confirmation hearings.

“I was not involved in handling his nomination,” Kavanaugh said. “I am familiar generally with Mr. Pryor, but that was not one that I worked on personally.”

But emails showed that Kavanaugh was consulted on Pryor’s nomination.

“How did the Pryor interview go?” Kyle Sampson, a Bush-era Justice Department staffer, emailed Kavanaugh in 2002. “Call me.”

This email did not refute Kavanaugh’s careful testimony, as he said he was “not involved in handling this nomination.” But Democratic senators felt that he misled with his testimony. When he was asked whether he lied or misled about this during his Supreme Court confirmation hearing, he responded, “As I recall at least, I was not the primary person on that.”

Judge Charles Pickering Sr. nomination

During Kavanaugh’s 2006 confirmation hearing for his seat on the D.C. Circuit, he was asked about his role in the Bush White House during the 2001 nomination of Charles Pickering Sr. to a seat on the 5th Circuit. Pickering had solicited letters of support for his nomination from lawyers who had business before his court in Mississippi. Kavanaugh was asked whether he knew about those letters of support.

“My first question is this,” then-Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) asked Kavanaugh. “Did you know that Judge Pickering planned to solicit letters of support in this manner before he did so? And if not, when did you become aware that Judge Pickering had solicited these letters of support?”

“The answer to the first question, Senator, is no,” Kavanaugh replied. “This was not one of the judicial nominees that I was primarily handling.”

But recently disclosed emails show that Kavanaugh played a significant role in Pickering’s nomination process, which dragged on into 2004 because of a Democratic Party filibuster. Kavanaugh was often the only person included on emails about Pickering’s nomination and helped place op-eds and news stories to help the nominee.

This doesn’t directly refute Kavanaugh’s statement that he wasn’t “primarily handling” the Pickering nomination. Feingold, however, believes he was misled at the time by Kavanaugh.

“Taking all his testimony together, we see a clear pattern emerge: Brett Kavanaugh has never appeared under oath before the U.S. Senate without lying,” Feingold wrote in a HuffPost opinion piece.

 

[continued]

Warrantless wiretapping

When Kavanaugh was nominated to serve on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2006, he was asked whether he knew anything about the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping policy.

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) pressed Kavanaugh on whether he had ever seen “documents relating to the president’s [National Security Agency] warrantless wiretapping program.”

“I learned of that program when there was a New York Times story — reports of that program when there was a New York Times story that came over the wire, I think on a Thursday night in mid-December of [2005],” Kavanaugh said at the time.

Emails that came out during Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearing, however, tell a different story on both accounts.

In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Kavanaugh asked John Yoo, an Office of Legal Counsel lawyer who helped justify warrantless surveillance and torture programs, “Any results yet on the [Fourth Amendment] implications of random/constant surveillance of phone and e-mail conversations of non-citizens who are in the United States when the purpose of the surveillance is to prevent terrorist/criminal violence?”

While Bush did not authorize the NSA surveillance program until 2002, Kavanaugh’s email indicates he was aware of discussions about the program before he said he learned about it from news reports.

Yoo defended Kavanaugh, stating that he was not involved in the development of the NSA program known as Stellarwind.

Stolen emails

In 2003, Kavanaugh received information based on documents that were stolen from Senate Democrats by a Republican staffer. This included one fully copied stolen document. The documents provided inside information about Democrats’ strategy to oppose Bush’s judicial picks.

Leahy, whose documents were stolen, asked Kavanaugh about this in 2006. He denied knowing the source of the information he received.

Leahy returned to this question during Kavanaugh’s hearing last week ― this time with access to Kavanaugh’s emails from the time. One of those emails included the first draft of a memo composed by Leahy’s staff, although it was not labeled as such. Another came with a subject line of “Spying,” although this one simply suggested the author had a “mole” among Democrats providing intelligence on their strategy.

Leahy pressed Kavanaugh on the draft memo, which he said was “obviously taken from my internal emails.” He asked, “Did any of this raise a red flag in your mind?”

“It did not, Senator, because it all seemed consistent with the usual kind of discussions that happen,” Kavanaugh responded.

As to the question of the “mole” email labeled “Spying,” Kavanaugh chalked it up to bipartisanship, saying, “There was a lot of bipartisanship among the staffs. There were a lot of friendships and relationships where people would talk to — ‘Oh, I’ve got a friend on Sen. Ted Kennedy’s staff’ or ‘I have a friend on Sen. Hatch’s staff or Sen. Specter’s staff.’ That kind of information sharing did not raise red flags.”

Kavanaugh never apologized to Leahy about receiving or using the stolen documents. Leahy concluded, “It’s fair to say that he was not forthright with me, and I’m bothered by it.”

Sucking up to Trump

“No president has ever consulted more widely or talked with more people from more backgrounds to seek input about a Supreme Court nomination,” Kavanaugh said moments after President Donald Trump announced his nomination in the Rose Garden.

Not only is this an impossible claim to prove ― one would have to review the details of every past president’s vetting process for every Supreme Court nominee ― but it certainly appears that Trump did next to no consulting on his court pick. He was given a list of possible nominees by the Federalist Society, a conservative group that has tremendous sway over Trump’s judicial nominees, and told to pick one.

It took Trump two weeks to pick Kavanaugh from the list. For some contrast, President Barack Obama spent about a month reviewing his options before nominating Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan to the court.

 

smdh

 

Since the left now desperately tries to paint Kavanaugh as a drunk, he should fit right in once he is confirmed.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...e-court-ginsburg-state-of-the-union/23360117/

 

The left is saying that Kavanaugh has downplayed his alcohol excesses in High School and at Yale.

 

to be fair, I can't care less if someone drank a lot in high school or university. The most important thing is the sexual assault allegations.
I mean who didn't drink when they were 16-17 or in university. If he has a alcohol problem now, that's a different issue, but whether he blacked out drinking high school, come on.

 

The issue isn't his drinking. It's his dishonesty about how he was some kind of a choir boy in his youth, when he clearly was not

 

The issue isn't that he drank. The issue is that he has lied about much of his youth and the activities. He has been lying and dishonest at his hearing.

Again, if any of us lied that much at a job interview we wouldn't get the job.

 

He never claimed anything like this. Not even close. He testified he passed out drinking many times . The biggest problem right now is the media. Basic journalistic principals say you never run a sexual harrasement story (especially pedophilia) unless you can verify it some how because you can ruin lives. The media is running non stop stories they cant confirm against kavanaugh and ruining his life. Its awful.

 

He did in his Fox interview.

 

Why are you lying for him?

He specifically said he never passed out, insisting that he only went to sleep after drinking.

 

Kavanaugh lied about Devil's Triangle, Boof, throwing up from drinking, when he found out about the Ramirez allegations, his involvement with Pryor, and a long list that just keeps growing. He's shown that he doesn't have a judicial temperament, has exhibited that he's more belligerent and rude to women, that he isn't impartial and is partisan.

You are mistaken or lying about what he testified to. Kavanaugh said he fell asleep but never passed out.

edited because it was already posted.

You are so eager to have the dishonest lying Kavanaugh in the court that you are willing to lie as well? Why? This board isn't a job interview. There are not high stakes, low stakes, or any stakes at all involved with that you post here.

Maybe you were just mistaken and not actually informed about Kavanaugh's statement. If that was the case, then you should admit it, and try to move forward with a better-informed position.

 

no he didn't. the 'choir boy' claims come from some friend describing him as not being that.

 

followed by him saying he went to sleep from drinking too much which is the definition of passing out.

 

Yes he did.

"I was focused on academics and athletics, going to church every Sunday at Little Flower, working on my service projects, and friendship – friendship with my fellow classmates, and friendship with the girls from the local all-girls Catholic schools."

 

That was one of my favorite lines from him. Lol we know Kav...we've all been there!

 

No where in that quote does he call himself a choir boy. In fact in the same interview he describes his drinking. Like I said, the choir boy comment comes from someone else. Also like i said, the media has been **** and thats why you have people confused.

 

Kavanaugh himself made a specific distinction. He referred to the term passing out and said the word "no".

You claimed that he admitted to passing out many times. That was your claim.

You are so desperate that you are lying and not willing to admit that you were wrong.

I'm just curious why? What do you get out of this? Are you related to Kavanaugh?

I'm not trying to be facetious. I really want to know why you would be driven to dishonesty to defend the liar Kavanaugh?