Kavanaugh in 2015: A Judge Must Keep “Emotions in Check” and Not Be a “Political Partisan”

And, the Supreme Court nominee said, “don’t be a jerk.”

DAVID CORNOCTOBER 1, 2018 1:53 PM

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/10/kavanaugh-in-2015-a-judge-must-keep-emotions-in-check-and-not-be-a-political-partisan/



At Thursday’s historic and dramatic Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Judge Brett Kavanaugh issued a fiery and angry response to the testimony of Christine Blasey Ford, who has accused him of sexually assaulting her more than three decades ago. An upset Kavanaugh—who alternated between bursts of belligerence and tear-suppressing sniffles—assailed the hearing as “a calculated and orchestrated political hit.” He railed against “outside left-wing opposition groups” and claimed this “circus” was a Democratic plot fueled by “revenge on behalf of the Clintons,” whom he investigated in the 1990s. When questioned by Democratic senators, Kavanaugh was contentious, argumentative, and combative.

Kavanaugh’s performance at the hearing immediately raised questions about his judicial temperament. During his first set of confirmation hearings, Kavanaugh had declared, “The Supreme Court must never, never be viewed as a partisan institution.” Yet here he was now, hurling politicized vitriol. Judith Resnik, a law professor at Yale, told the New York Times his remarks were “partisan and not judicious.” And legal experts quickly began discussing whether Kavanaugh—whose previous work for independent counsel Kenneth Starr and the George W. Bush administration had already cast him as one of the more partisan federal judges—could be a fair-minded and politics-free arbiter as a Supreme Court justice.

Judicial temperament—and its importance—is a topic much discussed by legal mavens. One described it this way: “Judicial temperament, at its best, is a form of restraint that appears as an even-handedness of vision, a thorough-going fairness that eschews anger in favor of reason and clings to respect of all parties as an essential ingredient for the operation of justice.” Certainly, Kavanaugh’s testimony did not meet those standards.

In 2015, Kavanaugh gave a speech—titled “The Judge as Umpire”—at the Columbus Law School at Catholic University. It was during this event that he now-infamously said, “What happens at Georgetown Prep stays at Georgetown Prep.” But later in the speech, Kavanaugh explained the importance of judicial temperament. He described the attributes required for a “good judge”: to have the “proper demeanor,” to keep “our emotions in check,” to be “calm amidst the storm,” and to “demonstrate civility.” And, Kavanaugh added, “Don’t be a jerk.”

Here’s what he said:

Kyle Griffin
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NBC News: Text messages between two friends of Brett Kavanaugh "suggest that the nominee was personally talking with former classmates about [Deborah] Ramirez's story in advance of the New Yorker article that made her allegation public."

https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1046880156391018496

Kyle Griffin
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NBC News notes that Kavanaugh told the Judiciary Committee under oath that the 1st time he heard about Deborah Ramirez's allegation was in the New Yorker article. These text messages would seem to refute that timeline, if accurate.

https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1046885029283028994

Third Kavanaugh accuser Julie Swetnick names police officer she went to after she claimed she was raped

Swetnick, who is represented by Michael Avenatti, said that she heard about six weeks ago that Kavanaugh was being considered. When she heard what happened to Dr. Christine Blasey Ford she thought about some information she recalled from her own youth and decided she would release the information.

Swetnick said she was in community college when she began attending parties. She recalled meeting Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge, who she said, had distinguished faces. She noted that many boys from Georgetown Prep would wear parts of their uniforms to parties.

“He was a very aggressive, very sloppy, mean drunk. I saw him go up to girls and paw on them, try to, you know, get a little too handsy, touching them in private parts. I saw him try to shift clothing,” Swetnick recalled. “I saw him push girls up against walls. He would pretend to stumble into them. He would push his body against them, grope them.”

She said that she contacted the police and told her mother about the incident. Swetnick did name an officer she spoke with but he has since died. Montgomery County officials said it could take up to a month for them to locate the records. She’s also named friends that she said can confirm attending the parties.

https://www.rawstory.com/2018/10/julie-swetnick-names-police-officer-went-said-raped/

By Jennifer Rubin
Opinion writer
October 1 at 11:30 AM

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/opinions/wp/2018/10/01/a-first-class-temperament-whos-got-it/

The mingling of right-wing populism and the disintegration of conservative tone are inextricably linked. Right-wing populism thrives on anger, resentment and hostility toward elites. To defend irrational policies built on non-facts and fear of outsiders, vast conspiracies are required. (You really don’t see many rational, humble, modest, respectful right-wing populists.) If know-nothingism is essential to support your movement, you’re not likely to see many intellectually honest, measured leaders.

As (#NeverTrumper Eliot A. ) Cohen observes in recollecting the happy warrior Ronald Reagan, “The spirit of a president who celebrated America as a city on a hill that was generous abroad, welcoming to newcomers, and self confident at home, has been replaced by the sour meanness of a party chiefly of men, who build walls to keep the world out, erect tariffs to destroy free trade, despise the alliances that keep Americans secure, and sanction the deliberate plucking of babes from their mothers’ breasts in order to teach illegal immigrants a painful lesson. In such a world, decorum and courtesy are irrelevant.”

The temperament that Cohen and I define as conservative has nearly vanished on the right — or will when another tranche of Republicans retire or lose this year. The Republicans who remain will be angrier, loopier and more belligerent than we see even now. (Think about the Republican Judiciary Committee without Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona.)

Cohen is doubtful, as am I, that the GOP can recover. “It is impossible at this moment to envisage the Republican Party coming back,” he writes, “Like a brontosaurus with some brain-eating disorder it might lumber forward in the direction dictated by its past, favoring deregulation of businesses here and standing up to a rising China there, but there will be no higher mental functioning at work.” He concludes that the GOP “will plod into a future in which it is detested in a general way by women, African Americans, recent immigrants, and the educated young as well as progressives pure and simple.”

Lindsey Graham
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All they want is a political outcome. Keep this seat open and hope they win the midterms.

Pathetic.

7:17 AM - 1 Oct 2018

https://twitter.com/LindseyGrahamSC/status/1046766053857153024

Aaron Rupar
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Trump shouts down @kaitlancollins as she tries to ask him a question about Kavanaugh!!! She asks it anyway. He won't answer.

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1046794795690147840

WASHINGTON — The F.B.I. moved on Sunday to quickly complete an abbreviated investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct against Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, even as Democrats demanded more information about the inquiry’s scope, warning that its apparent constraints could make it a “farce.”

As agents conducted their review, which involves interviewing four potential witnesses, a college professor in North Carolina became the latest in a series of former Yale classmates of Judge Kavanaugh’s to accuse him of giving untruthful testimony by minimizing his use of alcohol when he was a student.

The professor, Chad Ludington, said he frequently saw Judge Kavanaugh “staggering from alcohol consumption” during their student years. He said he planned to tell his story to the F.B.I. at its office in Raleigh, N.C., on Monday. A spokesman for the White House declined to comment on Mr. Ludington’s allegations.

Officials said the F.B.I.’s “limited” supplemental background check of Judge Kavanaugh could be finished by Monday morning. Set in motion late last week by three Senate Republicans, the inquiry was supposed to shed further light on accusations that Judge Kavanaugh engaged in sexual misconduct during his high school and college years and help resolve the fierce national debate over whether he should win confirmation to the Supreme Court.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/30/us/politics/fbi-kavanaugh-investigation-scope-democrats.html

With attention fixed on the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a new $3.1 trillion tax cut on Friday. The vote was 220 to 191, including three Democrats.

The down-to-the-wire 2017 tax act passed in late December contained a mix of permanent and temporary changes that had to result in a net increased cost that fell within a structural limit of $1.5 trillion that allowed the Senate to approve the bill with a simple majority.

The House’s new bill takes effect starting in 2025, and would add $600 billion to the national debt within the next decade, and then $3.2 trillion in the 10 years after that, according to Howard Gleckman of the Tax Policy Center.

Despite the House vote, it is unlikely the Senate will take up the legislation. The first round of tax cuts landed with a thud, with even a leaked Republican National Committee poll—reported on by Bloomberg News—showing American voters thought it benefited “large corporations and rich Americans” by an overall 2-to-1 margin and the same margin among independent voters.

http://fortune.com/2018/09/28/house-3-8-trillion-tax-cut-passes/

Sheryl Gay Stolberg
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NEW: FBI has not responded to requests from Christine Blasey Ford to do an interview. “We have not heard from the FBI, despite repeated efforts to speak with them,” her lawyer, Debra S. Katz, told me, when asked.

11:07 AM - 30 Sep 2018

https://twitter.com/SherylNYT/status/1046461621223215105