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Category: Politics

As a ‘stumbling’ drunk, Kavanaugh sang, ‘I look like a fool’

As a ‘stumbling’ drunk, Kavanaugh sang, ‘I look like a fool’

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The Washington Post reports: On Monday night, Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh said in a nationally televised interview that in his younger years, he was focused on sports, academics and “service projects.” But it was his comments about drinking that rankled some Yale University classmates, prompting them to speak out for the first time. Liz Swisher, who described herself as a friend of Kavanaugh in college, said she was shocked that — in an interview focused largely on his…

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Brett Kavanaugh and the cruelty of male bonding

Brett Kavanaugh and the cruelty of male bonding

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Lili Loofbourow writes: For what it’s worth, and absent evidence or allegations to the contrary, I believe Brett Kavanaugh’s claim that he was a virgin through his teens. I believe it in part because it squares with some of the oddities I’ve had a hard time understanding about his alleged behavior: namely, that both allegations are strikingly different from other high-profile stories the past year, most of which feature a man and a woman alone. And yet both the Kavanaugh…

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I used to vet judicial nominees. Here’s why Kavanaugh needs the FBI

I used to vet judicial nominees. Here’s why Kavanaugh needs the FBI

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Mike Zubrensky writes: From August 2010 to January 2017, I served as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Policy. In the role, I supervised the vetting of about 300 judicial nominees and reviewed the FBI’s background investigation report for each nominee. We initiated a supplemental investigation of a judicial nominee on numerous occasions. These would occur after the FBI had already conducted basic background vetting, but when there were factual discrepancies in an FBI…

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Rosenstein is keeping his job for now, but our democratic institutions aren’t looking so healthy

Rosenstein is keeping his job for now, but our democratic institutions aren’t looking so healthy

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Yascha Mounk writes: Humans are tribal animals. As Jonathan Haidt argues in The Righteous Mind, even—perhaps especially—the smartest and best educated among us don’t look at a body of evidence dispassionately, drawing logical conclusions from objective data. Instead, we approach any question with strong priors. If we want to believe some proposition because it fits our general worldview, we ask: “May I believe it?” If we know that it would challenge some of our long-held beliefs, we go: “Do I…

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Trump allies pushing him to ditch Kavanaugh and nominate a woman

Trump allies pushing him to ditch Kavanaugh and nominate a woman

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Gabriel Sherman writes: On Monday morning, a Republican briefed on Trump’s thinking said the president has been considering pulling Kavanaugh’s nomination. According to the source, Trump allies are imploring him to cut Kavanaugh loose for the sake of saving Republicans’ electoral chances in the midterms. The argument these advisers are making is that if Kavanaugh’s nomination fails, demoralized Republicans will stay home in November, and Democrats will take the House and the Senate and initiate impeachment proceedings. The end result:…

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How Russia swung the election for Trump

How Russia swung the election for Trump

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Jane Mayer reports: [W]hen I met recently with [Kathleen Hall] Jamieson, in a book-lined conference room at the Annenberg Center, in Philadelphia, and asked her point-blank if she thought that Trump would be President without the aid of Russians, she didn’t equivocate. “No,” she said, her face unsmiling. Clearly cognizant of the gravity of her statement, she clarified, “If everything else is a constant? No, I do not.” Jamieson said that, as an academic, she hoped that the public would…

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Georgetown Prep students ‘treated women like meat’

Georgetown Prep students ‘treated women like meat’

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Ronan Farrow and Jane Mayer report: [Christine Blasey] Ford’s allegation has made [Mark] Judge a potentially pivotal witness for Kavanaugh. Judge told The New Yorker that he had “no recollection” of such an incident. Judge, who is a conservative writer, later gave an interview to The Weekly Standard in which he called Ford’s allegation “just absolutely nuts,” adding, “I never saw Brett act that way.” Asked by the interviewer whether he could remember any “sort of rough-housing with a female…

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Trump’s party of men

Trump’s party of men

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The Washington Post reports: The Republican Party’s fight to save President Trump’s embattled Supreme Court nominee amid allegations of sexual assault has surfaced deep anxieties over the hypermasculine mind-set that has come to define the GOP in the nation’s roiling gender debate. The images are striking: The specter of Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee — all 11 of them men — questioning U.S. Appeals Court Judge Brett A. Kavanaugh’s female accuser. A senior GOP aide working on the confirmation…

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Why women’s rage is healthy, rational and necessary for America

Why women’s rage is healthy, rational and necessary for America

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Carlos Lozada writes: She looked at me with arched eyebrows as I read aloud several passages from the two books late one night. “You didn’t know that?” my wife asked quietly. No, I didn’t. Even now, a year since the Harvey Weinstein revelations and nearly two years since the “Access Hollywood” video, after hearing so many #MeToo stories and reading books on the structures of misogyny, there was still so much I didn’t know about the depths of anger that…

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Memo to Kavanaugh’s defenders: Passage of time doesn’t erase youthful mistakes in the criminal justice system, especially for people of color

Memo to Kavanaugh’s defenders: Passage of time doesn’t erase youthful mistakes in the criminal justice system, especially for people of color

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President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh. AP Photo/Andrew Harnik By Eileen M. Ahlin, Pennsylvania State University The accusation of sexual assault against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, made by California professor Christine Blasey Ford, has been met with a variety of responses. Among those responses has been the idea that what happens when someone is young should not be held against them, especially if they’ve led a commendable life ever since. My research and that of others on…

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Big-spending casino boss Sheldon Adelson sees a lot to like in Trump’s Washington

Big-spending casino boss Sheldon Adelson sees a lot to like in Trump’s Washington

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The New York Times reports: The return on investment for many of the Republican Party’s biggest political patrons has been less than impressive this year. But not for Sheldon Adelson. Mr. Adelson, the billionaire casino magnate, and his wife, Miriam, a physician, have emerged as the biggest and potentially most influential contributors to Republicans in the midterm season. Despite initially harboring qualms about President Trump’s leadership, the Adelsons have found much to like in a Republican-controlled government that has aligned…

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Many of America’s Jews are watching Israel in horror

Many of America’s Jews are watching Israel in horror

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Dana Milbank writes: My rabbi, Danny Zemel, comes from Zionist royalty: His grandfather, Rabbi Solomon Goldman, led the Zionist Organization of America in the late 1930s, and presided over the World Zionist Convention in Zurich in 1939. So Zemel’s words carried weight when he told his flock this week on Kol Nidre, the holiest night of the Jewish year, that “the current government of Israel has turned its back on Zionism.” “My love for Israel has not diminished one iota,”…

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Why Kavanaugh’s nomination should be withdrawn

Why Kavanaugh’s nomination should be withdrawn

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Benjamin Wittes writes: The question before us … is not whether to punish Kavanaugh or whether to assign liability to him. It’s whether to bestow on him an immense honor that comes with great power. Kavanaugh is applying for a much-coveted job. And the burden of convincing in such situations always lies with the applicant. The standard for elevation to the nation’s highest court is not that the nominee established a “reasonable doubt” that the serious allegations against him were…

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Kavanaugh reluctant to answer questions about his drinking habits and sexual behavior

Kavanaugh reluctant to answer questions about his drinking habits and sexual behavior

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The Washington Post reports: Just as he did several weeks ago to prepare for his confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court, Brett M. Kavanaugh was back inside a room at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building — again facing questioners readying him for a high-stakes appearance in the Senate. This time, the questions were much different. An array of White House aides, playing the role of various senators on the Judiciary Committee, quizzed Kavanaugh last week about his sex life and…

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Trumpworld divided on Rosenstein — not whether to fire him, but when

Trumpworld divided on Rosenstein — not whether to fire him, but when

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Politico reports: Fox News anchor Laura Ingraham, once a top recruit to serve as White House press secretary, was early out of the gate on Friday with urgent advice for the president. “Rod Rosenstein must be fired today,” she tweeted, after the New York Times reported that the deputy attorney general had floated the idea of wearing a wire in the Oval Office and removing the president from office by invoking the 25th Amendment. Ingraham, one of the 47 feeds…

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