kpete

kpete's Journal

September 29, 2018

"It's Not That We Don't Believe Your Story. It's That We Don't Care."

September 29, 2018

"He made up his mind a generation ago & if he's confirmed-he'll have nearly 2 generations to impose"

David Brock on NBC:

.....Twenty years ago, when I was a conservative movement stalwart, I got to know Brett Kavanaugh both professionally and personally. Brett actually makes a cameo appearance in my memoir of my time in the GOP, "Blinded By The Right." I describe him at a party full of zealous young conservatives gathered to watch President Bill Clinton's 1998 State of the Union address — just weeks after the story of his affair with a White House intern had broken. When the TV camera panned to Hillary Clinton, I saw Brett — at the time a key lieutenant of Ken Starr, the independent counsel investigating various Clinton scandals — mouth the word "bitch."

...................

A detailed analysis of Kavanaugh's own notes from the Starr Investigation reveals he was cherry-picking random bits of information from the Starr investigation — as well as the multiple previous investigations — attempting vainly to legitimize wild right-wing conspiracies. For years he chased down each one of them without regard to the emotional cost to Foster’s family and friends, or even common decency.

Kavanaugh was not a dispassionate finder of fact but rather an engineer of a political smear campaign. And after decades of that, he expects people to believe he's changed his stripes.

Like millions of Americans this week, I tuned into Kavanaugh's hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee with great interest. In his opening statement and subsequent testimony, Kavanaugh presented himself as a "neutral and impartial arbiter" of the law. Judges, he said, were not players but akin to umpires — objectively calling balls and strikes. Again and again, he stressed his "independence" from partisan political influences.

But I don't need to see any documents to tell you who Kavanaugh is — because I've known him for years. And I'll leave it to all the lawyers to parse Kavanaugh's views on everything from privacy rights to gun rights.

But I can promise you that any pretense of simply being a fair arbiter of the constitutionality of any policy regardless of politics is simply a pretense. He made up his mind nearly a generation ago — and, if he's confirmed, he'll have nearly two generations to impose it upon the rest of us."

MORE AT:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/9/28/1799871/-MUST-READ-David-Brock-on-Brett-Kavanaugh

September 28, 2018

The women who confronted Jeff Flake in the elevator. "I wanted him to feel my rage."

NEW: NY Times spoke to the women who confronted Jeff Flake in the elevator.

“I wanted him to feel my rage."

Sept. 28, 2018

...........

“On Monday, I stood in front of your office,” one of the women, Ana Maria Archila, forcefully told Senator Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona. “I told the story of my sexual assault.”

Mr. Flake had just announced his intention on Friday morning to vote to confirm Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court, despite emotional testimony a day earlier from Christine Blasey Ford, who had accused Judge Kavanaugh of sexual assault.

Reporters swarmed around as Mr. Flake waited in the elevator, but the two women interrupted and demanded that he listen.

Ms. Archila, a national committee member of the Working Families Party and an executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy, a New York-based liberal organizing group, said the moment had come together in a flash of righteous rage. She had spent the week in Washington protesting Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination, she said, and had just read about Mr. Flake’s decision when she saw him in a Capitol Hill hallway.

VIDEO:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/28/us/politics/jeff-flake-protesters-kavanaugh.html
ttps://twitter.com/KFILE/status/1045729502163341313

September 28, 2018