October 1, 2018

Washington Times settles lawsuit with Seth Rich's brother, retracts conspiracy editorial

Source: The Hill


BY JOE CONCHA - 10/01/18 08:30 AM EDT

The Washington Times on Sunday issued a retraction and apology as part of a settlement over a story that included the brother of former Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich, whose murder in 2016 fueled political conspiracy theories.

Aaron Rich sued the right-leaning publication in March after it published an editorial that implied he and his brother had sent emails from Democratic National Committee servers and provided them to Wikileaks for cash.

The op-ed was titled “More cover-up questions: The curious murder of Seth Rich poses questions that just won’t stay under the official rug" and was written by retired Admiral James Lyons.

"The Column included statements about Aaron Rich, the brother of former Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich, that we now believe to be false," the Times writes in the retraction.

Read more: https://thehill.com/homenews/media/409200-washington-times-settles-lawsuit-with-seth-richs-brother-retracts-conspiracy

October 1, 2018

As Kavanaugh Storm Rages On, Biden Has To Reckon With Thomas-Hill Hearing

By Kate Riga
October 1, 2018 8:31 am

Former Vice President Joe Biden, who seems to be actively considering a run for the presidency in 2020, has largely stayed in the background during the hearings with Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and his accuser, professor Christine Blasey Ford, due to his controversial role in the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill hearings almost 30 years ago.

According to a Monday New York Times report, Biden has publicly apologized for some of his actions as then-Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, though he privately expresses frustration that his words have been taken out of context and the political moment of the early 1990s largely forgotten.

Now, as he mulls a presidential run in two years, he needs to figure out how to deal with that part of his past.

“If he handles it right, it could be a plus; if he handles it wrong, it’ll be a minus, former Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) told the New York Times. “And handling it right means stepping up to the plate.”

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https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/biden-anita-hill-clarence-thomas

October 1, 2018

Outrage Grows As Omissions From Kavanaugh Probe Become Apparent

By Kate Riga
October 1, 2018 7:54 am

The limit on the list of people the FBI plans to talk to about Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s past, as well as the difficulty many would-be witnesses are facing in their attempts to contribute their information, is raising Democratic hackles.

According to a Sunday New Yorker article, multiple people have tried to go to the FBI with pertinent information about Kavanaugh, only to be stymied by seemingly unorganized and uninterested agents.

One of these potential witnesses is Elizabeth Rasor, an ex-girlfriend of Mark Judge. Rasor says that Judge told her about an episode where he and his friends “took turns” having sex with a drunk woman, an act that seems to mirror third accuser, Julie Swetnick’s, allegation. Judge has also been accused by professor Christine Blasey Ford of being an accomplice to Kavanaugh during a separate alleged sexual assault.

Another is an unnamed Yale classmate who wanted to corroborate Deborah Ramirez’s accusation that Kavanaugh had exposed himself to her at a college party. “I thought it was going to be an investigation, but instead it seems it’s just an alibi for Republicans to vote for Kavanaugh,” the unnamed Yale classmate told the New Yorker.

Both Rasor and the unnamed Yale classmate were allegedly stonewalled by the FBI, eventually being told to leave their accounts with an 800-number tip line.

According to the New Yorker, Blasey Ford herself also has tried to cooperate with the FBI, but per her attorney has “heard nothing back.”

more
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/outrage-grows-as-omissions-from-kavanaugh-probe-become-apparent

October 1, 2018

GOP Cuts Off Sixth House Incumbent, Continuing Suburban Triage

By Cameron Joseph
October 1, 2018 8:37 am

The National Republican Congressional Committee has canceled its TV reservations for Rep. Kevin Yoder (R-KS), making him the sixth House incumbent that either the group or its closely aligned super-PAC are leaving for dead heading into the campaign’s final month.

The NRCC canceled the ads in recent days, GOP sources confirm, walking away from Yoder in a suburban Kansas City district that President Trump lost by 1 point in 2016. Yoder is facing attorney and former mixed martial arts fighter Sharice Davids in the seat. If she wins, which now looks likely, she’ll become the first Native American woman and only the second openly gay woman ever to be elected to Congress.

He joins Reps. Mike Coffman (R-CO), Mike Bishop (R-MI), Barbara Comstock (R-VA), Rod Blum (R-IA) and Keith Rothfus (R-PA) as incumbents that either the NRCC or the Congressional Leadership Fund, the GOP’s main super-PAC, have been forced to give up on to save their money for more winnable districts.

These half-dozen members, paired with more than a half-dozen open that Republicans aren’t seriously spending in, give Democrats roughly half the seats they need for the House majority this fall.

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https://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/gop-cuts-off-sixth-house-incumbent-continuing-suburban-triage

October 1, 2018

Former classmate reveals Kavanaugh and buddy Chris Dudley drunkenly busted in on couple...

Former classmate reveals Kavanaugh and buddy Chris Dudley drunkenly busted in on couple to humiliate a woman

https://twitter.com/CuomoPrimeTime/status/1045487271451885568

October 1, 2018

In MS Senate race, an African American Democrat faces a Republican using a Confederate symbol

By Cleve R. Wootson Jr.
September 30 at 5:57 PM

YAZOO CITY, Miss. — For the past five months, U.S. Senate candidate Mike Espy has tried to remind Mississippians how he has served them in the past: a son of the Delta with three terms in the U.S. House who spent time as Bill Clinton’s agriculture secretary.

But even Espy’s most ardent supporters worry that when many voters go to the polls on Nov. 6, what Espy has done will matter much less than what he is: a black man running for one of the highest elected offices in a state with a Confederate emblem on its flag.

One of his opponents is hearkening to another version of the past: Republican Chris McDaniel, a conservative fond of provocative statements whose yard signs boast the “stainless banner” — the second flag of the Confederate States of America.

The state’s appointed Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, a Republican, is the other candidate who will be on the special-election ballot; she took over from Thad Cochran, who resigned in ill health in April. The winner will fill the remaining two years of Cochran’s term; if no candidate wins a majority, the race heads to a Nov. 27 runoff.

Espy, 64, whose family has deep roots in Mississippi, must draw large numbers of black and Democratic voters to the polls. But his biggest challenge will be persuading a large enough swath of others, including white moderates, to ignore the two main Republicans on the ballot and vote for a Democrat who happens to be black.

more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/in-mississippi-senate-race-an-african-american-democrat-faces-a-republican-using-a-confederate-symbol/2018/09/30/a7414410-bdb6-11e8-8792-78719177250f_story.html

October 1, 2018

The world reacts to the Kavanaugh battle

The battle over the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh has roiled the country and — yet again — highlighted the depth of polarization in American society.

By Ishaan Tharoor October 1 at 12:59 AM

-snip-

But it’s not just Americans who have been watching. My colleague Siobhan O’Grady charted the international response to Thursday’s hearing, which was beamed across the world.

Some found inspiration in the airing of sexual violence allegations in the loftiest halls of power. “I wonder if some day in India, in appointments to the judiciary, there will be a strict scrutiny of the nominee’s conduct and treatment toward women?” asked Vrinda Grover, a high-profile Indian lawyer, in a Facebook post. “Some day will indecency, sexual misconduct be the deciding factor in appointments to the judiciary?”

Others saw only a sordid mess. “I simply cannot imagine any country in Europe carrying out such a bizarre hearing, least of all one for all the world to see. It showed the U.S. in a very poor light,” a British reader wrote to the New York Times. “Some might say that it was at least transparent, but what it showed was a country massively at odds with itself and in no way fit to lead in the world.”

Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland saw in Kavanaugh’s defense the same “toxic masculinity” as that of President Trump, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte — who jokes about rape — and other right-wing populists around the world.

“It is a swaggering machismo that believes rules are for limp-wristed wimps; that in its most radical form places itself above the law,” wrote Freedland. “This phenomenon stretches beyond the partisan battles of Washington DC, beyond even the battlefield of sexual harassment: it is instead a core, if underplayed, aspect of the populist wave currently upending the politics of Asia, continental Europe and Britain.”

Nana Agyei Baffour Awuah, a prominent Ghanaian lawyer, expressed his disbelief over Kavanaugh’s diatribe against the Democrats during his testimony. Kavanaugh, he told O’Grady, “failed the temperament test, also the independence of the impartiality test for me.” He also reckoned that a “cross-party consensus” in Accra would have nixed the candidacy of such a politically compromised judge.

more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2018/10/01/world-reacts-kavanaugh-battle/?utm_term=.ab091b482b51&wpisrc=nl_politics&wpmm=1

October 1, 2018

For Warren, 'engaged and enraged' Democratic women strong base for potential presidential run

By John Hilliard GLOBE CORRESPONDENT OCTOBER 01, 2018

When Senator Elizabeth Warren told a town hall audience in Holyoke on Saturday that she’d “take a hard look” at running for president after next month’s midterm election, she further stoked talk of her national ambitions.

Political observers on both sides of the spectrum who have long speculated about the liberal Democrat’s future on Sunday had a mixed response to Warren’s surprising statement, which came in response to a question from the audience.

A favorite of progressives and the party faithful, Warren has appeared emboldened by the growing anger toward President Trump and his conservative base. That anger, particularly among women, was never more apparent than on Thursday, when Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh was questioned about sexual assault allegations before a Senate panel.

As a high-profile Democrat, Warren is well-positioned to tap into the anti-Trump sentiment, particularly among female voters, said Ray La Raja, a professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

more
https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2018/09/30/for-warren-engaged-and-enraged-democratic-women-strong-base-for-potential-presidential-run/J3lLFQN1B9jyzG70f0QIQP/story.html

October 1, 2018

The Compelling Case Against Kavanaugh

Steve Chapman

October 1, 2018 2:42 am

Christine Blasey Ford and Brett Kavanaugh appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee with different purposes — she to offer an account of violent behavior that would disqualify him from the Supreme Court and he to counter her allegations and prove himself suitable for the post. But it was the nominee who offered the most irrefutable evidence of his unfitness.

Kavanaugh was a spectacle in belligerence and self-pity, vilifying Democrats for having the utter gall to take seriously the woman who says he attacked her at a party when they were in high school.

He furiously condemned the supposed injustice visited upon him, raging through his tears at a process he called “a calculated and orchestrated political hit” and “a national disgrace.” He even blamed the Clintons.

The studious judge and mild suburban dad Americans saw before was replaced by a bitter partisan warrior with a butane lighter and a box of matches, scorching the earth as he went.

In the absence of the FBI investigation that Democrats wanted and Republicans rejected, viewers were left to ponder which witness to trust. “Why don’t you believe him?” demanded Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.

more
http://www.nationalmemo.com/the-compelling-case-against-kavanaugh/

October 1, 2018

General Electric replaces new chief executive and announces massive $23 billion charge amid struggle

Source: The Washington Post



By Washington Post Staff

October 1 at 7:43 AM

Just a year after John Flannery took over the industrial giant, General Electric announced it would replace him as chief executive. Lawrence Culp, former chief executive of Danaher Corp., will replace him. GE also said it will take a $23 billion non-cash charge for its power business and said it will fall short of earnings expectations in 2018.

GE’s stock has declined dramatically in the past year as the company saw its stock price fall and its market capitalization decline to less than $100 billion.

This is a developing story. It will be updated.

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Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2018/10/01/general-electric-replaces-new-chief-executive-and-announces-massive-23-billion-charge-amid-struggles/