By Bob Brigham
The Raw Story (9/18/18)
For the second time during Donald Trump’s presidency, a sex scandal involving a Republican judge is causing heartaches for the GOP.
In the fall of 2017, former Judge Roy Moore’s campaign for the United States Senate seat vacated by Jeff Sessions was rocked by allegations of sexually assaulting women and girls. The Washington Post won a Pulitzer Prize for their reporting and Democrat Doug Jones won the December special election.
Now, Judge Brett Kavanaugh is facing allegations of attempting to rape Dr. Christine Ford when was an underage high school girl. The allegations against Judge Kavanaugh are threatening to derail his nomination to the United States Supreme Court.
On MSNBC’s “Deadline: White House” on Tuesday, host Nicolle Wallace noted, “whichever way this goes, the optics of Republicans rallying around someone now accused of sexual assault is perilous in and of itself.”
“It is,” said former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele.
“And it is somewhat reminiscent of the Roy Moore case, where you had Republicans rallying around Roy Moore and the alleged pedophilia cases that he was involved in,” Steele noted. …
Read the Rest and 9+-Minute Video
- WATCH: Accused Child Molester Roy Moore Vouches For Kavanaugh In Worst Endorsement Yet — Inan interview with the pro-Trump One American News network, failed GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore urged his fellow Republicans to vote with their “conscience” and support Brett Kavanaugh‘s Supreme Court nomination. … Read the Rest and 4-Minute Video
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Facing Serious Sexual Assault Accusations, Alleged Perjury Doesn’t Help Kavanaugh’s Credibility
While the nominee has a history of dishonesty and obfuscation, Ford has proven a very reluctant—yet so far compelling—witness to the events that took place more than three decades ago.
By Jon Queally
Common Dreams (9/
Amid calls for Brett Kavanaugh to withdraw his nomination to the Supreme Court after he was publicly accused of sexual assault and attempted rape by college professor Christine Blasey Ford on Sunday, the credibility of both the accused and the accuser was the center of U.S. politics on Monday just days before a scheduled vote by the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday.
And while many are calling for a thorough investigation into the matter, even a cursory look at the record—including damning evidence that Kavanaugh has already committed perjury before congressional lawmakers—reveals the nominee has a history of dishonesty and obfuscation whereas Ford has proven a very reluctant, yet so far compelling, witness to the events that took place more than three decades ago. …
(Commoner Call cartoon by Mark L. Taylor, 2017. Open source and free for non-derivative use with link to www.thecommonercall.org )
- Brett Kavanaugh In 2015: ‘What Happens At Georgetown Prep Stays At Georgetown Prep’ — Brett Kavanaugh, the president’s Supreme Court pick being accused of sexual assault when he was in high school, bragged about keeping tight-lipped about what he got up to while at his school. “We had a good saying that we’ve held firm to to this day, as the dean was reminding me before the talk,” Kavanaugh said during a 2015 speech at the Catholic University of America’s Columbus School of Law in Washington, D.C. “Which is what happens at Georgetown Prep stays at Georgetown Prep. That’s been a good thing for all of us.” … Read the Rest and 16-Second Video
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The Company He Keeps: Kavanaugh Bro Mark Judge Is A Scummy Piece of Work — In his opening statement at his confirmation hearing, “calculated liar,” evidently repeat perjurer and alleged sexual assaulter Brett Kavanaugh cited his time at Bethesda’s Georgetown Prep high school in the 1980s with reverence. “The motto of my Jesuit high school was ‘Men for others,’ he intoned, nobly adding, ”I’ve tried to live that creed.” Uh huh. Alas, growing evidence – thanks, hard-working enemies of the people – says otherwise. Along with Kavanaugh’s longtime, malleable relationship with the truth, his reportedly dubious finances, and the clear and present danger he poses to women’s rights, Kavanaugh’s choice of friends likewise raises to one critic “the question of his integrity and character and fitness.” Enter Mark Judge, Kavanaugh’s high school best bud and alleged fellow assaulter of Dr. Christine Ford, who oddly has already said, through his lawyer, he does not wish to testify at upcoming hearings. Again, thanks to extensive media sleuthing – here, here, here and elsewhere – we now know that Judge was a teenage alcoholic who grew up to be a racist, homophobic, writer for right-wing rags perhaps best known for his stone-age attitude towards women and sexual assault. … Read the Rest
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Russ Feingold: Kavanaugh Has Lied Already… Repeatedly
By Russ Feingold
HuffPost (9/17/18)
This nation is suffering a significant breakdown of civility, bipartisanship and ethical behavior. For the Trump administration and the Republican leaders who enable it, truth is no longer a cherished value. To them, lying seems to be part of the strategy, a cynical weapon to be used against their opponents.
This week, we are witnessing the full depth of that cynicism, as the White House and its supporters smear a woman who makes credible, significant accusations of sexual assault against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. At the same time, another fact has become clear: Kavanaugh himself has a casual relationship with the truth ― and in that, he fits right in with the way President Donald Trump and his party behave.
As an illegitimate administration goes to work attacking the credibility of a brave woman recounting her assault, let’s recognize the enormously cynical hypocrisy: The nominee they’re desperate to protect is a calculated liar who uses dishonesty to advance his own career.
At the White House event announcing Kavanaugh’s nomination, the appellate judge offered a remark that seemed odd. Praising Trump, he said, “No president has ever consulted more widely, or talked with more people from more backgrounds, to seek input about a Supreme Court nomination.”
I personally found this hard to believe. How would Kavanaugh know that? Why would he be so sure and definitive about it? I did what we all do these days with the overwhelming list of lies coming out of this White House — I figured that Republicans were all “in on it,” that this comment would stand as just another obviously false spin in the process of getting another illegitimate seat on the Supreme Court for a conservative judge. But it turns out this was only a glimpse into the nominee’s disturbing willingness to avoid the truth. …
- John Nichols: Brett Kavanaugh Should Be Impeached for Lying to Senate — Lying to the Senate should be a concern for conservatives as well as liberals, for Republicans as well as Democrats. Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, the dean of the Senate and the senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh gave “untruthful testimony, under oath and on the record,” to the committee. Kavanaugh’s lies came in response to questions from Leahy and others about an incident involving Republican committee staffers who, between 2001 and 2003, hacked into the private computer files of six Senate Democrats and stole 4,670 files. Those files, Leahy explained, were then “used to assist in getting President Bush’s most controversial judicial nominees confirmed.” The scheme was exposed in 2003, when The Wall Street Journal published some of the stolen materials, revealing what Leahy described as a “scandal” that “amounted to a digital Watergate — a theft not unlike Russia’s hacking of the DNC.” … Read the Rest
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Call Wisconsin’s Senators And Tell Them To Reject Kavanaough For A Life-time Appointment To The Supreme Court!
Sen. Ron Johnson’s Office: (202) 224-5323
Sen. Tammy Baldwin’s Office (202) 224-5653