RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/notable-quotable-silverglate-on-kavanaugh-1538170255

From “Kavanaugh: A Legal Assessment—With Some Personal Reflections” by Harvey Silverglate,

When does “adolescence” occur? I’ve represented a lot of kids in trouble. And I can tell you that in the modern era, adolescence begins around age 12 and lasts through college graduation (or, for kids who don’t attend college, the age at which kids would graduate).

This is not just my opinion: Society has juvenile courts for transgressions committed in adolescence; the legal system does not want to give mere kids a permanent criminal record. Even at a time when too many juveniles are treated as adults, it is more often than not a widely accepted guiding principle that kids are given a pass by being treated and taught more than punished.

Among many of my friends in Cambridge and Boston, my view of [Brett] Kavanaugh is considered wrongheaded—if not reckless, even dangerous. So, I’ll make matters worse by saying that so much of the case being made against Kavanaugh is cynical, if not outright dishonest. It has nothing to do with his qualifications to be a Supreme Court justice. Nor is it reflective of how Kavanaugh’s most ardent critics really feel about the extent to which adults should be punished later in life for their adolescent transgressions. They would not want their own children, nor themselves for that matter, treated in the way they are campaigning for Kavanaugh to be treated. This is a classic example of the hypocrisy of the current socio-political moment.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/09/republicans-should-not-have-delayed-the-kavanaugh-vote/

“Maybe Republicans instructed Mitchell to refrain from asking Ford hard questions; or maybe, her experience notwithstanding, Mitchell took it on herself to conduct a gentle, confrontation-free examination. Either way, in the one and only chance they will ever have to question Ford, Republicans failed to highlight the deep flaws in her account.

Mitchell invited Ford to wax scientific about how “the etiology of PTSD is multi-factorial,” and to school Mitchell on the topography of Montgomery County. But if you were listening for basic questions about the alleged sexual assault, you listened in vain. This isn’t hard. A lawyer could have been completely respectful of Dr. Ford’s emotional distress and still have asked elementary questions:
Isn’t it a fact that you don’t know where or when this purported assault happened?
Isn’t it a fact that you can’t tell us how you got there?
You just know the house was several miles from your home, but it is a fact, is it not, that you can’t tell us how you got home?
You’ve told us that you were terrified running out of the house after the attack, but you can’t tell us who rescued you and drove you away?
You remember 36 years ago that you had exactly one beer at the party, you remember hearing your alleged attackers go downstairs, you remember exactly the route you took to get out of the house, yet you can’t tell us what happened after you left the house?

So, you’re sure the party happened, but you can’t say when it happened, you can’t say where it happened, you don’t know how you got there, you don’t know how you got home, and every person you’ve identified as a witness says that they have no memory of the party and that they never saw Brett Kavanaugh act the way you’ve described, isn’t that right?”

You have opponents whose first and only objective is delay. From the start of the confirmation proceedings on Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court, those opponents, Senate Democrats, have thus pushed for delay. At every turn. Of course they never come out and say that’s what they’re doing — they never come out and say, “We’ve abused the confirmation process and dropped a bomb at the eleventh hour, an uncorroborated, 36-year-old allegation of sexual assault, because we’re trying to delay the vote until after the midterms.” But delay is what they want.

It doesn’t matter what sheep’s clothing the wolf comes in; the wolf is always delay. When they say, “We’re protecting survivors,” they mean, “We want delay.” When they posture that “women must be believed,” their aim is more delay. When they say, “The FBI must investigate to remove any cloud over the nominee,” the translation is: “Give us a delay so we can come up with new reasons for delay.”

Get it?

Dems say, “potato,” they mean “delay”;
Dems say “tomato,” they mean delay;
Tomato, delay, potato, delay;
Let’s call the whole thing off.

So, finally, we get to a committee vote over two weeks after it should have happened; after reopening a hearing that involved 31 hours of testimony from the nominee; after 65 meetings with senators and followed by over 1,200 answers to post-hearing questions, more than the combined number of post-hearing questions in the history of Supreme Court nominations. We finally get Kavanaugh’s nomination voted out of committee. And then, as a final floor vote is about to be scheduled and debated, Republicans — taking their lead from the ineffable Jeff Flake — agree to accede to one more Democratic request (really, just one more, cross-our-hearts . . .). And what would that be?

What else? Another week of delay.

The rationale for this delay is priceless: We need an FBI investigation. It is understandable that the public does not realize how specious this demand is. But who would have thought Senate Republicans were in need of a civics lesson?

Let’s try to give them a brisk one.

https://amgreatness.com/2018/09/28/revenge-of-the-

In one scene in “When Harry Met Sally,” Meg Ryan’s character insists she had great sex in college with a guy named Shel. Billy Crystal’s character doesn’t buy it.

“Sheldon? No, no, you did not have great sex with Sheldon. A Sheldon can do your income taxes, if you need a root canal, Sheldon’s your man . . . but humpin’ and pumpin’ is not Sheldon’s strong suit. It’s the name. ‘Do it to me Sheldon, you’re an animal Sheldon, ride me big Shel-don.’ Doesn’t work.”

Since we all reliving the 1980s, that clip came to mind as I watched Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) grill Judge Brett Kavanaugh on Thursday about his high school hijinx and in-crowd jargon from Georgetown Prep’s 1983 yearbook. The former prosecutor applied his keen interrogation skills against the Supreme Court nominee as Whitehouse delved into an unfamiliar world of teenaged popularity and partying, a place where guys like Kavanaugh strode past the likes of Whitehouse in the high school hallway with nary a glance, and Kavanaugh’s gal pals never gave poor Shel a chance to score.

Whitehouse revealed depravity of the highest order as he exposed the elite prep-school caste system. He finally was clued into its secret dialect and, acting like he was uncovering the cool kids’ Rosetta Stone, he made Kavanaugh admit that “ralph” is a reference to vomiting, and “boofed” means flatulence. The judge finally explained to an anxious nation what all those Fs were before his mention of the FFFFFFFourth of July. (Poor Squi.)

Whitehouse even exposed how these campus kings entertained themselves on the weekend while he was at home sharpening his Dungeons and Dragons skills. In one riveting exchange, peering over his glasses, the two-term senator cross-examined the former star athlete and student:

Whitehouse: Devil’s Triangle?

Kavanaugh: Drinking game.

Whitehouse: How’s it played?

https://www.wsj.com/articles/another-kavanaugh-flakeout-1538176574

Democrats must be secretly delighted, not that they’ll admit it. A couple of GOP Senators fell on Friday for their ruse of seeking an FBI investigation of an assault accusation against Brett Kavanaugh, and now this Supreme Court nomination ordeal will continue for at least another week. Who knows what new dirt against the judge they can throw on the Senate wall?

On Friday the Senate Judiciary Committee approved the Supreme Court nominee in an 11-10 party-line vote, with Arizona Senator Jeff Flake the last convert. That should have sent the nomination to the Senate floor and a vote early next week.

But then Mr. Flake had a crisis of, well, something and said he wanted another FBI investigation before a floor vote. After Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski said she agreed with Mr. Flake, GOP Senate leaders agreed to a one-week FBI probe into current accusations. President Trump obliged and put the FBI on the case again.
***

The mystery is what new evidence Mr. Flake and Ms. Murkowski expect the FBI to find. The Senate this week heard six hours of public testimony from Judge Kavanaugh and his accuser, Christine Blasey Ford.

The potential witnesses Ms. Ford has named have given statements under penalty of perjury saying they don’t recall the 1982 party she describes. No corroboration has materialized, leaving Democrats and the media to pick over high-school yearbook entries from 1983. Ms. Ford said Thursday that she is “100%” certain Judge Kavanaugh assaulted her. He told the Senate that he is “100%” certain of his innocence.

Now the FBI will spend a week redoing all these interviews. To what end? FBI background investigations aren’t criminal probes. They reach no conclusions. The agents conduct interviews, record what the subjects say, and put the summaries in a nominee’s file. The Senators are then expected to draw their conclusions and vote. After a week Mr. Flake and Ms. Murkowski may find themselves in the same place, since Ms. Ford’s charge is too imprecise in date, place or recollections to corroborate.