Berger/Moore Wants The US Supreme Court's Help. You Bet They Do!

The Berger/Moore vandals in the NC General Assembly got their champion Brett Kavanaugh on the US Supremes, so naturally they now want to appeal to that bunch for a ruling: Our gerrymandering of North Carolina is just fine, right?

A three-judge Federal panel ruled last month that the General Assembly's latest congressional redistricting was an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander. The judges allowed this fall's election to go forward under the old maps but warned that this is the last time those maps will be used.

What an opportunity for Kavanaugh to begin repaying his partisan debts!

Kavanaugh Makes Excuses for His Temper

How long did it take Brett Kavanaugh to realize he'd laid a turd in the punchbowl last Thursday? However long it took -- a six-pack? -- you can read what resulted in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, titled by the paper, "I Am an Independent, Impartial Judge; Yes, I was emotional last Thursday. I hope everyone can understand I was there as a son, husband and dad."

He focuses entirely on emotion. “I was very emotional last Thursday, more so than I have ever been. I might have been too emotional at times. I know that my tone was sharp, and I said a few things I should not have said.”

He published the little essay in the Wall Street Journal for a very select conservative readership (paywall protected), including probably some conservative justices on the US Supreme Court who might be looking at the prospect of Brett Kavanaugh in one of their robes the way we look at the prospect of the radiator over-heating in the Mojave.

He wants the justices to know that his emotional outburst in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee was justified by righteous indignation. "They made me do it, by attacking my character. My character is righteous, but I have a temper, and surely you can understand the combination of those two things caused me to go too far, at least in the eyes of some."

That almost sounds like an apology, but he never really apologizes. He excuses.

He does not mention this partisanship, every word of which he uttered last Thursday:

Since my nomination in July, there’s been a frenzy on the left to come up with something, anything to block my confirmation. Shortly after I was nominated, the Democratic Senate leader said he would, quote, “oppose me with everything he’s got.” A Democratic senator on this committee publicly — publicly referred to me as evil — evil. Think about that word. It’s said that those who supported me were, quote, “complicit in evil.” Another Democratic senator on this committee said, quote, “Judge Kavanaugh is your worst nightmare.” A former head of the Democratic National Committee said, quote, “Judge Kavanaugh will threaten the lives of millions of Americans for decades to come.” ...

You sowed the wind for decades to come. I fear that the whole country will reap the whirlwind.

The behavior of several of the Democratic members of this committee at my hearing a few weeks ago was an embarrassment. But at least it was just a good old-fashioned attempt at Borking.

Those efforts didn’t work. When I did at least OK enough at the hearings that it looked like I might actually get confirmed, a new tactic was needed.

Some of you were lying in wait and had it ready. This first allegation was held in secret for weeks by a Democratic member of this committee, and by staff. It would be needed only if you couldn’t take me out on the merits....

This whole two-week effort has been a calculated and orchestrated political hit, fueled with apparent pent-up anger about President Trump and the 2016 election. Fear that has been unfairly stoked about my judicial record. Revenge on behalf of the Clintons. and millions of dollars in money from outside left-wing opposition groups.

This is a circus. The consequences will extend long past my nomination. The consequences will be with us for decades. This grotesque and coordinated character assassination will dissuade competent and good people of all political persuasions, from serving our country.

And as we all know, in the United States political system of the early 2000s, what goes around comes around.... [official transcript]

I quote at length because Kavanaugh went on at length. His vitriol at "the Democrats" and the "left-wing" comes from a deep well of ... what? Resentment? Outright hatred? A dehumanizing contempt? These are the words of a partisan Republican warrior, not a fair, balanced, or impartial judge. He was delivering a warning: You will most certainly "reap the whirlwind" and "what goes around comes around." May we paraphrase? "You better watch out. You think I'm emotional now. Just you wait until I get one of your pet liberal government programs in front of me. Just you wait until the vast Federal regulatory infrastructure comes under my purview. Just you wait for my ruling on abortion and the other one on presidential powers. Then we'll see who's the snot-nosed brat."

The partisanship got no acknowledgement in the Wall Street Journal op-ed.

Wipe Your Nose, Bro. They Got Your Back

Apparently -- and why not, after all? -- the FBI has been given instructions that severely shorten their leash in the Brett Kavanaugh investigation. They're not even questioning Blasey Ford. White House counsel Donald McGahn, who sat directly behind Kavanaugh at all his hearings before the Judiciary Committee, also apparently has his back through this additional investigation, limiting the people the FBI may talk to --"Kavanaugh, his first two accusers, and people who have been identified as present for the incidents."

So Kavanaugh's Yale classmate and drinking buddy, Chad Ludington, for example, who has said he has plenty of evidence of Brett's abuse of alcohol and who also said he'd be turning in his evidence to the FBI office in Raleigh this morning -- he can save his shoe leather, because McGahn has ordered the FBI to ignore everything that isn't in the narrow scope outlined above.

Are we seeing a whitewash underway?

In the meantime, and while you're waiting to see holy water sprinkled all over fratboy, you might want to Google "dry drunk syndrome" for some insight into the behavior we all saw last Thursday.

A Devil's Triangle

Guess who supports this:

These guys:

Here's the letter that Phil Berger and Tim Moore jointly wrote in support of Brett Kavanaugh, as though they needed to dip their wicks into that particular vat of brine.

The Kavanaugh Saga: Did Too Much Virginity Make Him Mean?

Most telling moment of the entire day yesterday was the very last question: Senator Kamala Harris asked Brett Kavanaugh if he watched Christine Blasey Ford's testimony that morning. "No," he answered.

If you were innocent, as he insists, wouldn't you want to watch what she was saying about you in a Senate hearing room?

Clearly, he needed to come in hot. That was the gameplan. That was what Trump wanted. So watching Blasey Ford's testimony might have done something else to Kavanaugh -- especially if it's true. Unimpaired by the sight of his accuser, Kavanaugh marched in there like a thundercloud, complete with lightning bolts and raindrops.

What to make of the tears? And the gulping of water? Gosh, I was beginning to feel sorry for the dude, but then the QandA kicked in, first with the woman sex crimes prosecutor and then with a visibly alarmed Dianne Feinstein, and we watched Kavanaugh literally begin to disintegrate.

He was clearly coached to be aggressive with a self-righteous and self-pitying script. "This is all an ambush. I should have been informed of these charges weeks ago. It's a Democrat plot to get me. Because of the Clinton thing. I was a sterling scholar in school. I was a good boy. I went to the best law school in the nation, and women love me. They really do."

Poking at that façade, the Democratic senators got back belligerence. It was combativeness like on a schoolyard -- "So's-yer-old-man!" "Takes one to know one!" He actually implied that Senator Amy Klobuchar might be a blackout drunk when she asked him if he was a blackout drunk, and he practically hissed at Sheldon Whitehouse, "Whaddya you like to drink, Senator? Whaddya you like to drink?" 

Dick Durban finally knocked him off his script, and Kavanaugh completely collapsed, physically collapsed. It's painful to watch. And it's part of the record now for eternity.

Watching this implosion of their boy, the Republican senators ditched the woman sex crimes prosecutor, and Lindsey Graham volunteered to throw the public hissy fit with the counter-allegations and the finger-pointing theatrics -- the ole Trump counter-punch -- of -- gasp! -- collusion amongst the Democrats and extreme malpractice against an upstanding young man. 

With that hired woman from Arizona out of the way, the Republican men all took turns doubling the charges of ambush against the Democrats or praising the choir boy before them, and thus they rallied their troops, made the Christine Blasey Ford testimony simply disappear, and probably saved Kavanaugh's ass. At least for a day.

(Lindsey Graham was so clearly talking to Senator Jeff Flake when he warned his fellow senators not to be fooled by this whole "farce." Don't even think of voting against "this fine man.")

The Only Child

When Kavanaugh said he was an only child, I sat up straight. In my experience -- and my experience is limited, granted -- only-children can sometimes be spoiled brats, entitled from birth to the best and indignant when things don't work out to their expectations. Aggressively indignant.

I suddenly saw him for what he was.

And I don't think this man belongs in a judge's robes. I seriously don't. The tantrum thrown to get his way -- topped by the tantrum Lindsey Graham threw, but never mind that! -- and the rank partisanship of dragging up Trump's election and the prosecution of the Clintons over White Water -- it all speaks to his tribal mentality. This is a not a good judge of anything.

Cruising for a Bruising?

I've been reading -- always a dangerous provocation to thinking -- about the male frat-brat culture at Georgetown Prep in the early 1980s and about the male drinking society at Yale University (particularly in the DKE fraternity, "the Dekes") in the mid-1980s, both places where Brett Kavanaugh cobbled his character, and I'm beginning to understand the "incandescent fury" that's arisen among American women about male privilege (that phrase in quotes belongs to Michelle Goldberg).

Brett Kavanaugh, standing far left.
1983, Georgetown Prep

Those entitled guys, swaggerers and takers -- haven't we all known at least one? (And where's there one, there's usually a clique.) Guys who are either completely oblivious about the feelings of anyone outside their circle, or completely indifferent. The true elites of this society, "masters of the universe" on Wall Street and everywhere else there's power, and not because they're smarter than anyone else but because they've been groomed, trained in the levers of control. They got to go to Georgetown Prep, and you didn't.

At Georgetown Prep, the elite Catholic boys school where Kavanaugh was on the football team and captain of the basketball team, the guys dated Catholic girls from nearby schools like Stone Ridge, Holy Cross, and Georgetown Visitation. Kavanaugh's football team, which included the now notoriously absconded Mark Judge (who supposedly jumped on the bed that night and inadvertently broke up the fun) -- the nine varsity football players all listed an obscure club on their senior yearbook pages: "Renate Alumnus" (that's the picture from the yearbook to the right).

The word “Renate” appears at least 14 times in Georgetown Prep’s 1983 yearbook, on individuals’ pages and in that group photo (Kate Kelly and David Enrich). "Renate" -- is that Latin? No, turns out, the key to who "Renate" was lies in this short poem popular in Kavanaugh's clique and also printed in that 1983 yearbook: “You need a date / and it’s getting late / so don’t hesitate / to call Renate.”

Okay, we get it. "Renate Alumnus" was an inside joke that all those guys had had sex with Renate Schroeder, then a student at one of the nearby Catholic girls’ schools. She didn't know she was the butt of that joke. In fact, Renate (now Renate Dolphin) didn't know about those references in the Georgetown Prep yearbook of 1983 until this week, when someone showed her.

Wanna know the big irony? Renate Schroeder Dolphin was one of those 65 women who had been induced to sign a letter testifying to Brett Kavanaugh's sterling character and his high regard for women. That was then. (About 60 of those women have subsequently rescinded their testimonials.)

“I learned about these yearbook pages only a few days ago,” Ms. Dolphin said in a statement to the New York Times. “I don’t know what ‘Renate Alumnus’ actually means. I can’t begin to comprehend what goes through the minds of 17-year-old boys who write such things, but the insinuation is horrible, hurtful and simply untrue. I pray their daughters are never treated this way. I will have no further comment.”

I'm inclined to believe she's telling the truth.

I'm also inclined to believe Kavanaugh when he said this last night on Fox: 

KAVANAUGH: ...I did not have sexual intercourse or anything close to sexual intercourse in high school or for many years thereafter. And the girls from the schools I went to and I were friends -- 

MACCALLUM: So you’re saying that through all these years that are in question, you were a virgin? 

KAVANAUGH: That’s correct. 

MACCALLUM: Never had sexual intercourse with anyone in high school – 

KAVANAUGH: Correct. 

MACCALLUM: – and through what years in college since we’re probing into your personally life here? 

KAVANAUGH: Many years after. I’ll leave it at that. Many years after.

Jumping clumsily on Blasey Ford at a drunken party, with his best swordsman friend standing right there as witness and egging him on, and trying to get her one-piece down, and then what, Brett? Whattya gonna do then, Big Boy? Put your hand over her mouth, because this girl apparently didn't get the memo about your right to have sex?

The adolescent clunk-headedness of what Blasey Ford has told seems obvious to me now, if I believe what Kavanaugh said -- his actual virgin male panic of needing that first notch on the ole belt buckle, the need to prove oneself a man in a male culture that values conquest above courtship, and the need for a witness (or backup) and the flagrant use of a 15-year-old woman that he thought could be used for this purpose -- that's the only scenario I can come up with ... when I believe them all, and I believe them all, even Kavanaugh.

How totally recognizable is this pasty-faced frat-brat who bragged with the boys to fit in? I wouldn't want him making decisions about my rights if I were a woman. I don't want him making decisions about anybody's rights.

If Michelle Goldberg is correct, Brett Kavanaugh is a type that's so used to its privilege that it's blind to others not of its club. These guys never see their comeuppance coming and are outraged at its arrival.