Is Kavanaugh Still A Coke Freak? Will The FBI Tell Us?

Playin' the long game

People who looked at Kavanaugh's calendar and thought that the July 1, 1982 reference to "heading over for 'Skis' was about 'Brewskis,' are unaware that in '80s prep schools for rich white kids, 'skis' was cocaine, not beer. Just sayin'. Pelosi didn't mention that in her masterful Kavanaugh put down during an interview with the Texas Tribune in Austin yesterday. Her point was that Kavanaugh lacks the temperament to serve on the Supreme Court. "It’s not time, shall we say, for a hysterical, biased person to go to the court and expect us to say, 'Isn’t that wonderful.' ... I couldn't help but think that if a woman had ever performed that way, they would say 'hysterical.' I think that he disqualifies himself with those statements and the manner in which he went after the Clintons and the Democrats... I will say this-- if he is not telling the truth to Congress or to the FBI, then he's not fit not only to be on the Supreme Court, but to be on the court he's on right now."

Jim VanderHei approached the Kavanaugh debacle from a different perspective-- an opportunity lost. "Imagine," he wrote, "if Brett Kavanaugh had offered his emotional, tearful, you-ruined-my-life opening speech to the Judiciary Committee-- and then called for a quick FBI probe to clear his name and perhaps find the true assailant. He would have looked confident, humble, even a tad heroic, given the president who nominated him opposed the FBI probe. Well, he and Republicans had an epic failure of imagination: Instead, they were forced reluctantly and publicly into what should have been a fairly easy-to-anticipate moderate compromise: agree to a vote after a quick FBI probe. Instead of looking hungry for truth, Kavanaugh heads into the week looking fearful of findings."

There's a reason for this miscalculation:

• Republicans, from the earliest days of the allegations, were overly confident they could just jam this through, several people involved the process tell us.
• They thought he would be better defending himself-- and that Dr. Ford would seem less credible.
• Republicans treated this like a bare-knuckles political fight. They calculated a Fox News appearance, a Trump endorsement, a headstrong Mitch McConnell, a fired-up base, a fast vote would hold the party together.
• In the GOP’s defense, the strategy might have worked had Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) not changed his mind at the very last minute. 

In an interview posted this morning, Flake tells The Atlantic's McCay Coppins that his dramatic call for further FBI review came because he felt the Senate was "coming apart at the seams... I’m a conservative. He’s a conservative. I plan to support him unless they turn up something-- and they might."

That self-righteous freak, clearly, does not belong on any court of law, Supreme or otherwise-- and whether he still snorts coke or not. He gives new meaning to the phrase "sober as a judge." And he lies with a vile, repulsive sense of entitlement. This is the most unabashedly partisan Supreme Court candidate I've ever seen nominated. During the hearing on Thursday, Kavanaugh struggled to give a single straight answer, straining credulity "when he argued before the Senate Judiciary Committee that the 'Devil’s Triangle'-- a phrase that appeared on his high school yearbook page-- referred to a drinking game, a definition which, before Thursday, you’d have a hard time finding anywhere. (It actually refers to a sex act involving two men and a woman). He also unabashedly claimed that the term 'boof' is a reference to 'flatulence,' rather than other butt stuff, and that 'ralph,' which means to vomit-- implicitly from the overconsumption of alcohol-- was a reference to Kavanaugh’s weak stomach."

Kavanaugh’s choice to lie about things that are easily disproved speaks to a kind of hubris, or entitlement, that befits someone of his pedigree. He insinuated that he was of drinking age during the summer of 1982 because, back then, in Maryland, 18 year olds could legally imbibe. With artful wording, he testified that drinking was “legal for seniors,” even though it was decidedly illegal for him-- a rising senior who wouldn’t turn 18 until the following year. At other moments, he claimed ignorance about the consequence of plainly relevant evidence-- railing against the suggestion that his high school yearbook, a totem to debauchery and sexual frustration, could be relevant to the issue of whether he committed blacked-out sexual assault in high school. “Have at it, if you want to go through my yearbook,” he told Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) with disdain. As though the inquiry itself was made in bad faith.

In fact, Kavanaugh dissembled about whether he ever drank to excess at all-- an incredible claim given the contents of his yearbook; his friend Mark Judge’s damning memoir, which is titled “Wasted: Tales of a GenX Drunk;” and the sheer number of  times Kavanaugh mentioned “beer” during Thursday’s hearing. Although he admitted in his opening statement that “sometimes I had too many beers,” when pressed on how much was too much, he was evasive again: “I don’t know. You know, we-- whatever the chart says, a blood-alcohol chart.”... No lie, it seems, is too small for Kavanaugh.

... Kavanugh's apparent willingness to perjure himself over accusations of underage drinking or sexual innuendo-- which, alone, don’t necessarily bear on his suitability for the bench-- is troubling both because of what it implies about his integrity, and because of what it suggests about his reasoning as an adjudicator.

How should we judge someone who, during his testimony, repeatedly misrepresented facts and dissembled when pressed for detail? Should we understand these moments as lies, or as misinterpretations rooted in substandard analytical rigor? And given the importance of the position at hand, which is worse?

Some of this may seem like parsing hairs, but the law, in large part, is parsing hairs. Easy questions don’t make it to the Supreme Court. Slam dunk cases settle out. Outside of constitutional issues, the Supreme Court only agrees to hear cases that are so subject to interpretation, they’ve been inconsistently decided between states or federal circuits. Analytical precision, therefore, is a big part of the job.

That being the case, it was concerning to hear a federal judge clamor for “due process” as he sidestepped an opportunity to call witnesses, hear evidence, or have his name cleared by a federal investigation. How should we view a federal judge who seems not to understand, or who for political reasons ignores, that he is not, in fact, on trial, but at a job interview? Who, either due to a lack of understanding or a surfeit of political ambition, emotes as though the stakes were that of a criminal proceeding where the high burden of proof would militate in his favor? Do we want a justice who artfully aims for what’s “technically” true (and misses often), or one whose integrity is, well, unimpeachable?

...What matters, then, is whether Kavanaugh is of sufficiently fit character to fairly and ethically interpret the law. Thursday’s hearing, perhaps as much as the allegations against him, has thrown that into serious doubt.

A primary question here, and one that has largely been skipped over by the general public, is why, precisely, Kavanaugh’s past behavior, up to and including Thursday’s hearing, has any bearing on his ability to serve on the Supreme Court. What behavior would we consider disqualifying as a matter of principle? What qualities are non-negotiable in the nation’s top jurists-- women and men whose decisions directly affect the lives of over 300 million citizens, and billions across the world who are often beholden to the toxic effects of domestic policy?

We would argue that honesty is key to administering justice.

A Supreme Court judgeship is a lifetime appointment. And as Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) recently pointed out, members of the Supreme Court are asked to make dozens of decisions every year directly relating to the life, liberty, and happiness of Americans-- half of whom are women, and all of whom deserve jurists who possess a baseline level of integrity.

As Blumenthal, the Connecticut senator, said at the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Friday meeting, Kavanaugh’s character and fitness give ample reason to vote “no.”

UPDATE: What Are Susan Collins Constituents Seeing This Weekend?

The Portland newspaper in Susan Collins' state, the Press Herald ran a blistering editorial: Brett Kavanaugh has shown he doesn’t belong on the Supreme Court. "Based on what he demonstrated in his own testimony, Kavanaugh lacks the character and judgment to serve on the Supreme Court."

In his widely watched appearance, Kavanaugh revealed that he has an explosive temper and resorts to bullying when he feels threatened. He was understandably under stress and fighting a high-stakes battle for his reputation, but his temperament was tested during the hearing, and he failed the test.

Kavanaugh also showed himself to be impermissibly political for a job that is supposed to be above politics. We’re not naive. We understand that federal judges are nominated by presidents and confirmed by senators, and that electoral politics influences their decisions about who gets to serve.

But we have never had a Supreme Court nominee who ripped off the nonpartisan mask the way Kavanaugh did Thursday and identified himself as an enemy of a political party that represents the policy preferences of millions of Americans. He blamed his predicament on bizarre conspiracy theories, claiming that his troubles stemmed from “pent-up anger about President Trump” and opponents seeking “revenge on behalf of the Clintons” and were not the result of allegations that emerged while he was being evaluated for an important job. After his partisan rant, Kavanaugh will never be able to judge a case without the animus he expressed being considered a factor in his decision. This is not the road we want to take.

And when he was talking about his high school years, he said things that, frankly, could not be believed. The self-proclaimed treasurer of the “100 Kegs or Bust” club says he was not much of a drinker.

His comment about “ralphing” was an innocent reference to his sensitive stomach and not related to heavy drinking. And, most incredibly, a group of football players posing for a picture calling themselves “the Renate Alumni”-- a stunt that reeked of sexual boasting about a girl named Renate-- were “clumsily” trying “to show affection” for a friend. The attempt was so clumsy that they never shared it with their friend, who learned about the joke only recently. She told the New York Times: “The insinuation is horrible, hurtful and simply untrue. I pray their daughters are never treated this way.”

These are small things, but they matter. Many adults are embarrassed about what they did when they were young, and it is human nature to minimize some of the details. But when you have taken an oath to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, it’s not time to fudge the facts. If confirmed, Kavanaugh would bring this same lack of credibility with him to the place in the country where credibility matters more than anything.

If there were nothing else on his record, the Senate would have solid grounds not to confirm Kavanaugh. But it’s not the only thing. Not by a long shot.

Kavanaugh is the subject of credible allegations of sexual misconduct. It is incredible that any senator would want to vote to confirm him until the allegations have been thoroughly investigated.

...After Ford’s testimony, it would be a mistake to confirm Kavanaugh without a full investigation into her charges. But senators don’t even need to consider these explosive allegations. They can use their own eyes and ears and apply their own common sense.

The man who appeared before the Judiciary Committee on Thursday can’t control his temper, he is overtly partisan and he doesn’t always tell the truth. Based on his own testimony, Kavanaugh has shown that he does not belong on the Supreme Court.

Blood on Their Hands by Nancy Ohanian