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Maryland authorities have no choice but to investigate the latest allegations against Kavanaugh

Maryland authorities have no choice but to investigate the latest allegations against Kavanaugh

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Mark Joseph Stern writes: On Wednesday, attorney Michael Avenatti revealed a sworn declaration by his client, Julie Swetnick, alleging that, while in high school, Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh targeted women for group sexual assault. Swetnick’s horrific allegations, put forth under penalty of perjury, describe “numerous boys” drugging and raping young women in Maryland during the early 1980s. Her declaration contradicts Kavanaugh’s statements while bolstering the accusation of Christine Blasey Ford, who claims a very drunken Kavanaugh and his friend…

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How Rosenstein can protect the Mueller investigation — even if he’s fired

How Rosenstein can protect the Mueller investigation — even if he’s fired

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Neal Katyal writes: Thursday’s meeting between Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein and President Trump carries the highest of stakes: Besides special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, Rosenstein is the most important person involved in the investigation of the Trump administration’s possible ties to Russian interference in the 2016 election. That is by design. The special counsel regulations, which I had the privilege of drafting in 1999, make Rosenstein what corporate mavens call a “key man.” If Rosenstein is removed,…

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How the Koch brothers built the most powerful rightwing group you’ve never heard of

How the Koch brothers built the most powerful rightwing group you’ve never heard of

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Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, Caroline Tervo, and Theda Skocpol write: The cries of “Shame! Shame! Shame!” rang throughout the marbled walls of the Wisconsin state assembly chamber. Disgusted Democratic politicians, some of whom had been up for over 60 hours by this point, punctuated their chants by throwing papers – and even drinks – at their Republican counterparts. Police officers had to be summoned to physically restrain one Democratic representative yelling “Cowards!” across the aisle. The source of this confrontation, in the…

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Skripal suspect ‘Ruslan Boshirov’ identified as GRU Colonel Anatoliy Chepiga

Skripal suspect ‘Ruslan Boshirov’ identified as GRU Colonel Anatoliy Chepiga

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Bellingcat Investigation Team reports: Bellingcat and its investigative partner The Insider – Russia have established conclusively the identity of one of the suspects in the poisoning of Sergey and Yulia Skripal, and in the homicide of British citizen Dawn Sturgess. Part 1 and Part 2 of Bellingcat’s investigation into the Skripal poisoning suspects are available for background information. In these previous two parts of the investigation, Bellingcat and the Insider concluded that the two suspects – traveling internationally and appearing…

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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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