Month: September 2018

The congressional handwringers

by digby

Mark Warner D-Va:

In the last three months, we have had the president with a disastrous policy with the president separating kids from the border, we had the embarrassment of the president kowtowing Vladimir Putin, in Helsinki. We had this zigging and zagging on his trade and tariff policies. We have had, as I indicated already guilty pleas of some of his senior campaign and personal lawyers. We have had horrible treatment of John McCain after he passed. And now we have had the Woodward book and this op-ed come out.

Clearly you’ve got a president who is lashing out. He is lashing out in terms of whoever wrote the op-ed, and I wish the person would have revealed their identity, but you’ve also got the president attacking his Justice Department and also attacking the Justice Department for indicting Republican congressmen. Does this president not understand that the Justice Department is not a tool of his own personal power. That is one of the reasons I think you’re seeing not only Republican members but what appears to be a lot of folks in the White House have real concern about this president’s stability.

Which Republican members? Where? Who? Corker, Flake? Hah.

Consider this lukewarm bucket of warm spit:

Sen. Ben Sasse said Sunday morning that he probably thinks about leaving the Republican Party “every morning,” while decrying the way he said Republicans and Democrats get caught up in the political furors of the day instead of having a “long-term vision” for the country.

Speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Sasse (R-Neb.) said he considers himself an “independent conservative who caucuses with the Republicans.” But despite his misgivings, he said he is “committed to the party of Lincoln and Reagan as long as there is a chance to reform.”

Sasse said he backed many of President Trump’s decisions when it comes to judicial nominations and regulatory changes. But he said the daily drama and tumult surrounding the White House are a distraction from many key issues facing the country, including its involvement in ongoing wars and cybersecurity concerns.

Last week, Sasse raised the issue of becoming an independent when he responded on Twitter to an Iowa woman who said she left the Democratic Party because she dislikes both the major parties.

“Yep — regularly consider it,” he tweeted back.

Sasse, a former president of Midland University, which lies west of Omaha, pointed out to CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday that he was just one of a few members of the Senate who has never been a politician before. And he said his disillusionment was directed at the entire political system, not just the GOP.

“The main thing the Democrats are for is being anti-Republican and anti-Trump,” he said. “The main thing Republicans are for is being anti-Democrat and anti-CNN. And neither of these things are really worth getting out of bed in the morning for.”

Asked whether he would run for president in 2020, he said he was more likely to run for the local “noxious weed control board.” But he didn’t completely rule out a White House run.

“We spend way too much time talking about campaigning,” he said.

Later, speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” he said the daily drama coming out of the White House was a “distraction.”

He’s so special. He’s above all this icky political drama that has all those lower level humans concerned. Everyone should be as “independent” as he is.

Look, if Sasse does something truly bold and worthy like go Independent and agree to caucus with the Democrats, I’d give him some props. But he, McCain, Corker, and Flake should have all done it over a year ago to save the Republic. Handwringing at this late date is completely worthless.

By the way, it’s not that unprecedented for people to switch parties. It has happened from the beginning. I recall this huge switch in 94-95 as a bunch of Democrats switched to GOP in the wake of that cycle’s big wave:

1994 – Walter B. Jones, while running as a Democrat for U.S. Representative from North Carolina. U.S. Representative from North Carolina (1995–present)
1994 – Ed Whitfield, the day before filing as a candidate for the U.S. House in Kentucky. U.S. Representative from Kentucky (1995–2016)
1994 – Mike Bowers, while Attorney General of Georgia (1981–1997)
1994 – Fob James, former Governor of Alabama (1979–1983). Later Governor of Alabama (1995–1999)
1994 – Richard Shelby, while U.S. Senator from Alabama (1994–present)
1995 – Jimmy Hayes, while U.S. Representative from Louisiana (1987–1997)
1995 – Greg Laughlin, while U.S. Representative from Texas (1989–1997)
1995 – Ben Nighthorse Campbell, while U.S. Senator from Colorado (1993–2005)
1995 – Billy Tauzin, while U.S. Representative from Louisiana (1980–2005)
1995 – Nathan Deal, while U.S. Representative from Georgia (1993–2011). Later became the 82nd Governor of Georgia (2011–present)
1995 – Mike Parker, while U.S. Representative from Mississippi (1989–1999)

Interestingly, I could find zero GOP to Democratic sitting federal officeholders switches for the last 30 years. I guess in this modern iteration of the Republican Party they make you drink blood and pledge to commit suicide and take the country with you rather than become a Democrat.

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A Handman’s Tale

by digby

Chilling:

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Friendly reminder: delusional

by digby

President Donald J. Trump has claimed he won the electoral vote in a “landslide,” but he ranks below most presidents in the electoral vote and popular vote margins.

Electoral vote:

46th out of 58 elections

Popular vote margin:

47th in the last 49 elections

Mr. Trump won 30 states, gathering 306 of 538 electoral votes. There have been 45 presidential elections in which the winning candidate won a larger share of the electoral vote.

Robbed
by Tom Sullivan

“With Trump as president and the next redistricting process looming large, a slew of new and old organizations is scrambling to figure out how and if they can make wonky, procedural voting issues ones that excite and motivate turnout.”

They certainly become issues when Election Days go badly. The trick is to make them issues before that happens.

Not limited to Republicans, Democrats’ hands are dirty too. A friend tells a story about visiting the office of leading North Carolina lawmaker before Democrats lost control of the legislature in the 2010 election. She’d some to advocate for nonpartisan redistricting. He listened patiently, then leaned back in his chair and smiled, saying, “Democrats draw great districts.” Soon after, they lost the ability to for the first time in decades. The rest, as they say….

The latest entry in Talking Points Memo’s “Retreat from Democracy” series examines efforts by voting rights groups to undo the rat’s nest of vote suppression efforts that took hold across the country in the wake of 2010:

“It is striking how much people have recognized there is no downside, and a strong upside, to staking out pretty clear, strong positions on voting rights,” says Zachary Roth, a journalist and the author of “The Great Suppression,” published in 2016. Roth recalls much more reticence among Democrats even five years ago, saying: “Leaders had been in wait-and-see mode, to see how these issues were going to play politically.”

With a Democrat “trifecta” in Washington, Gov. Jay Inslee passed automatic voter registration and same-day registration last March. New Jersey under Democrat Phil Murphy in late 2017 passed automatic voter registration that Republican Gov. Chris Christie had twice vetoed. Oregon was the first with automatic registration in 2015. Other states followed.

But the fight for voting rights has moved beyond nonpartisan groups such as Common Cause, the NAACP, and Demos to Let America Vote founded in 2017 by Missouri Democrat Jason Kander, and the National Democratic Redistricting Committee (NDRC), organized in 2017 by launched by former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder:

NDRC is not just focusing on governor’s mansions and congressional races. In May Ohioans voted overwhelmingly in favor of a constitutional amendment for a bipartisan redistricting commission. Holder’s group spent $50,000 supporting this effort, and in addition to Ohio, four more states have redistricting on the ballot this November. (This is a big shift: Only five states had redistricting ballot initiatives in entire the preceding decade.) NDRC also intervened this year in the heavily gerrymandered state of Wisconsin, spending more than $500,000 to elect Rebecca Dallet, a state Supreme Court candidate who won a ten-year term in April.

With the Roberts Supreme Court an unlikely ally, efforts to give democracy an upgrade have moved to the states. In Michigan, a successful, citizen-led petition drive to put a constitutional amendment for an independent redistricting commission on the fall ballot “has dropped the jaws of cynics and pundits across the country.”

Michigan is one of the most heavily gerrymandered states in the country, and Republicans have commanded nine of the state’s fourteen congressional seats in every election since 2010, despite Democrats earning far more votes statewide some years. Republicans deny they manipulated the voting maps, but newly disclosed emails, released this summer as part of a federal court challenge, reveal GOP operatives consciously drawing the maps in their favor. Their redistricting efforts were done “in a glorious way that makes it easier to cram ALL of the Dem garbage in Wayne, Washtenaw, Oakland, and Macomb counties into only four districts,” wrote a Republican congressman’s chief of staff in 2011 to a GOP strategist and mapmaker. Another email drafted by a lawyer helping to design the maps said, “We’ve spent a lot of time providing options to ensure we have a solid 9-5 delegation in 2012 and beyond.”

And I thought North Carolina Republicans were brazen. Common Cause cites its role in Common Cause v. Rucho in striking down North Carolina’s congressional maps as unconstitutional last month:

North Carolinians were robbed of their ability to elect the candidates of their choice through a blatant partisan gerrymander by the legislature. Republican legislators publicly and repeatedly stated that their goal was to gerrymander congressional districts to ensure an overwhelming Republican majority despite an evenly split electorate. They produced district lines that effectively let them choose the voters rather than permitting voters to choose their representatives. That’s the exact opposite of government of the people, by the people, and for the people as promised in our Constitution. Whether they favor Democrats or Republicans, gerrymanders cheat voters.

When elected officials don’t have to worry about getting reelected, they lose their incentive to be responsive to constituents. Legislators are supposed to represent everyone, not just the wealthy and/or those who share their views. We must replace the backroom deals in which politicians draw districts for political advantage with real transparency and impartial redistricting systems so the results of our elections will truly reflect the will of the people.

There is more in Rachel Cohen’s report (sponsored by the American Federation of Teachers) on citizen efforts to roll back efforts to have politicians pick their voter. Free choice? Or just the illusion of free choice?

During arguments in Wisconsin’s Gill v. Whitford case, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg observed, “if you can stack a legislature in this way, what incentive is there for a voter to exercise his vote? Whether it’s a Democratic district or a Republican district, the result — using this map, the result is preordained in most of the districts.”

Getting readers of political blogs interested in going to the polls to stop that is one thing. Making the gerrymandering issue “accessible and exciting” for non-geeks is another, and the challenge that lies ahead for voting rights advocates. But perhaps Common Cause is onto something. Republican politicians don’t mind cheating. Fairness is not their goal. Power is. But what drives their voters up a wall is the notion that they are being cheated somehow: by “welfare” cheats, undocumented immigrants, etc. Fictitious voter fraud “steals your vote,” voter fraud hucksters tell their marks. Convince them (somehow) that gerrymandering robs them out of their choice and maybe you have something. (I’m not holding my breath.)

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For The Win 2018 is ready for download. Request a copy of my county-level election mechanics primer at tom.bluecentury at gmail.

Saturday Night at the Movies

Where the wild things are: We the Animals (**½)

By Dennis Hartley

In my 2009 review of Lea Pool’s film Mommy is at the Hairdressers, I wrote:

It’s a perfect film about an imperfect family; but like the selective recollections of a carefree childhood, no matter what the harsh realities of the big world around you may have been, only the most pleasant parts will forever linger in your mind.

I could almost say the same thing about Jeremiah Zagar’s We the Animals. I say “almost”, because Zagar’s film falls short of “perfect” (more on that shortly). Still, it does succeed in conveying how those “selective” memories of childhood become increasingly ephemeral and abstract as we careen through adult life, slipping ever closer to the abyss.

Adapted by the director and Dan Kitrosser from Justin Torres’ novel, the film is a lyrical slice of life about a working-class Puerto Rican family living in central New York State. The narrative primarily unfolds through a 9-year-old’s point-of-view. His name is Jonah (Evan Rosado). He and older siblings Joel (Josiah Gabriel) and Manny (Isiah Kristian) are de facto latchkey kids, because their young parents (Shelia Vand and Raul Castillo) are often too preoccupied with the drama that generates from their tempestuous marriage.

As a survival mechanism, the brothers have created an idiosyncratic sub-family unit a la Lord of the Flies, with their own set of rules, hierarchy and ritualistic behaviors. Joel and Manny are already displaying signs that they may be inheriting their father’s prideful machismo, whereas Jonah shares his mother’s empathic sensitivity and emotional frailty.

Jonah’s internalized dialog throughout implies he is sharing these sense memories with some benefit of hindsight from an indeterminate point in the future. Oddly, unlike the adult Sean Penn character reassembling bits and pieces of his lost childhood in Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life (a film that feels like a looming influence, to put it politely), it’s Jonah’s 9-year-old “self” who is doubling here as our omniscient narrator (far out, man).

I’m not saying there is anything wrong with emulating Malick; after all, as Woody Allen retorts in Manhattan after someone derisively tells him he has a God complex, “I gotta model myself after someone.” I’m willing to grade on a curve, especially given this is Zagar’s first narrative feature (his previous films have been documentaries). On the plus side: Zagar coaxes naturalistic performances from the first-time child actors, Zak Mulligan’s “magic hour” cinematography is striking, and Nick Zammuto’s soundtrack nicely complements (I strongly suspect his favorite album is “Dark Side of the Moon”).

On the down side: there’s nothing wrong with an art film, but this one leans toward being a little too self-consciously arty for its own good. I think Zagar is a talent to keep an eye on; I’m just hoping that his future narrative features will feature a little more…narrative.

Previous posts with related themes:

The Tree of Life
Where the Wild Things Are
The Wolfpack
Bad Hair
Little Tito and the Aliens
Lane 1974

More reviews at Den of Cinema
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–Dennis Hartley

Murkowski needs to check in with her office

by digby

She has a problem on her hands if she votes for Kavanaugh:

For all the speculation about Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and whether she’ll vote for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, there is an issue beyond abortion rights perhaps weighing more heavily on her as she makes her decision: protections for Alaska Natives.

Advocates for Alaska Natives, who were crucial to Murkowski’s re-election in 2010, tell HuffPost they’ve been flooding her office all week and urging her to oppose Kavanaugh.

They’re raising concerns about his record on climate change, which is already causing real damage in Alaska. As a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, Kavanaugh in 2017 held that the Environmental Protection Agency lacks the authority to regulate hydrofluorocarbons, chemicals linked to global warming. They’re also unhappy with his record on voting rights. Kavanaugh voted in 2012 to uphold a South Carolina voter ID law that disenfranchised more than 80,000 minority registered voters.

The most pressing matter, however, is a case the Supreme Court is reviewing on Nov. 5 that could devastate Alaska Natives’ subsistence fishing rights. The case, Sturgeon v. Frost, raises questions about who has the authority to regulate water in national parks in the state ― the federal government or the state of Alaska. The case arose after Alaska resident John Sturgeon, who was on an annual moose-hunting trip, was riding a hovercraft on a river running through a national park when Park Service officials threatened to give him a citation. Sturgeon is arguing that his ability to use his hovercraft in this scenario is about states’ rights and that federal authority should be eliminated.

Kavanaugh has previously ruled to limit federal power in cases before him. If he gets confirmed and votes with the other four right-leaning justices in favor of Sturgeon’s argument, it will destroy the way of life for tribal communities who rely on subsistence fishing in protected federal waters, some Alaska Native rights groups say.

“This would be a death knell to us in Alaska, absolutely,” said Heather Kendall-Miller, an Alaska Native and an attorney with the Native American Rights Fund. “If this goes down, Alaska will be in a state of chaos when the fishing season begins. There will be lots of civil disobedience. It will be explosive.”

They are also worried about health care since a large majority of Alaska natives benefit from Medicaid and Obamacare. (So do plenty of non-native Alaskans for that matter.)

Breaking with the man who thinks it’s funny and cool to call Elizabeth Warren “Pocohontas” won’t hurt her:

[T]he Republican senator owes her 2010 re-election to tribal communities, so anything harmful to them is going to be a significant issue for her.

That year, Murkowski unexpectedly lost her primary to a tea party challenger. She responded by running as an independent, launching a write-in campaign and winning the race against all odds. Whose support didn’t she have? The Republican Party. Whose support did she have? Alaska Natives, who turned out for her and fueled her victory.

“If the Alaska Native community raises its decibel level on matters from subsistence to civil rights, that would register with Sen. Murkowski,” said a source familiar with Murkowski’s thinking, who requested anonymity to speak freely.

Here’s what her fearless leader has wrought:

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Man’s gotta make a living

by digby

He works so hard:

While many past presidents have held rallies on behalf of congressional candidates before midterm elections, the focus of those events generally has been the candidates, not the president. The campaign rallies President Trump attends as president are instead Trump campaign rallies, with the candidate generally given a few minutes to make some comments and Trump spending a little time praising them and bashing their opponents.

Trump’s rally Thursday night in Montana checked those and all of the other expected boxes: inflammatory comments, questionable assertions, enthusiastic fans. Trump has held two dozen campaign-style rallies as president in 16 states, all but two of which voted for him in 2016. Over the past month, he’s held three such rallies; extend that window back to the beginning of August and the number climbs to five.

The president also spent much of August at his private golf club in New Jersey. He spent a lot of July there, too. That club, Bedminster, is to the summer what Mar-a-Lago is to the winter: Trump’s refuge away from the confines of the White House. Refuges that, of course, are also close to Trump-owned golf courses, of which the president often avails himself.

The effect of those diversions from Washington is remarkable. By our count, Trump has either held a rally or visited one of his own properties on 48 of the past 92 days; that is, since June 7.

He’s probably played golf on at least 30 of those days, about a third, but it’s hard to say. When he’s at Bedminster, it can be tricky to know when Trump is playing golf because the media generally isn’t given access to the facility. But since it is his primary form of exercise, it’s safe to assume he usually plays when he’s there.

The government pays out big bucks to the Trump Organization for security and other amenities every day he’s at his own properties. (They say they only charge “cost.” Yeah. Sure they do.) Millions of dollars go right into Trump’s pocket.

It’s also where he sells access to his donors and makes personal appearances to advertise his business. As president.

If he could find a way to monetize twitter and Fox news watching he’s be as rich as Bezos.

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Why the spooks are spooked

by digby

The New York Times has published a big story today revealing that members of the Trump administration met with Venezuelan military coup plotters who were seeking help to overthrow president Maduro. It’s a long story that indicates that the plotters had assumed the US was hands off until Trump announced publicly that he was considering a “military option” at which point they reached out and some members of the administration decided to meet. According to regional exerts, the way they went about it, sending out public hints of support and even dispatching a diplomat to attend a meeting with the plotters, gave encouragement in a way which, considering the sordid history of American interference in Latin America, was extremely risky. The plan went nowhere.

According to Woodward’s book, Trump is fixated on going to war with Venezuela and there’s a lot of chatter that this is ramping up within the administration. It makes you wonder if this “coup” plot might have been yet another attempt to appease and distract our Commander in Chief from doing what he really wants to do:

In the summer of 2017, Trump suggested to then-national security adviser H.R. McMaster that the United States invade Venezuela to remove its autocratic president, Nicolás Maduro. McMaster did his best to dissuade Trump — and thought he had succeeded — until Trump raised the possibility publicly at a media appearance and in a meeting with Latin American leaders at the U.N. General Assembly.

“My people tell me this is not a good idea, but . . .” Trump said in the private meeting before raising the possibility of an invasion or regime change in Venezuela, according to officials.

Said one senior White House official on why Trump kept bringing it up: “Even when the staff says no, I think he holds out hope that he’ll find someone who thinks it’s a good idea.

He’s nuts. And he wants a nice little war so he can have a big parade.

Members of the intelligence community are speaking out about many things, which they normally do not do. This op-ed by John McLaughlin outlines their concerns:

People frequently ask me why so many former intelligence officers are commenting these days on matters that seem essentially political. The question usually goes “Shouldn’t you stay neutral — above the fray? Isn’t that the tradition for intelligence professionals, both former and still serving?”

The short answer is yes, that is the tradition. Neutrality has certainly been our ethic on political issues, which gave us credibility when we gathered or delivered information that presidents might not want to hear. It goes against every instinct to wade into domestic politics by openly criticizing the president on personal actions or behavior. And make no mistake: Those of us who have chosen to speak out are outside our comfort zones.

This leads people to fairly ask a second question: Do our actions mean that, in the future, intelligence officers will not be believed when they claim to be thoroughly professional and nonpolitical? Are we raising doubts about our ability to provide balanced assessments, free of political spin?

These questions must be taken seriously. If we lose the trust of those who receive our information and analyses, the intelligence community will be seen as just another calculating player in the Washington political game — and our national security will suffer.

So what has pushed us out of our comfort zone? How can we ensure that our claims of objectivity and neutrality are believed in the future? Let’s take these one at a time.

First, we are reacting to today’s extraordinarily unprecedented context, one that transcends traditional party politics. (Most of us have served administrations led by both parties.) For many of us, keeping our mouths shut about what we see in our own country would be akin to not alerting our government to a threat from abroad.

Failure to warn is the ultimate sin in the intelligence world. It feels equally sinful in the world of citizenship.

A colleague from another field said to me recently: “For you and others the normal rules no longer apply, because we are all in upside-down-world today” — a world where most of the normal rules of civic discourse no longer work. Witness the unnamed Trump administration insider who just let loose in the New York Times about the president’s dangerous behavior.

Of course, we would all love to be back in right-side-up world, where it would be unimaginable for a president to advocate jailing an election opponent, assail the Justice Department and the FBI, call a free press “the enemy of the people,” insult allies, and, most important, refuse to combat a well-documented covert foreign attack on U.S. elections — in the process weakening efforts by others to do so and encouraging Russia to keep it up. And although all politicians spend time in the spin room, how wonderful it would be if our president’s basic truthfulness were not automatically suspect.

All of us in intelligence have been shaped by careers assessing societies where free speech, democratic institutions and rule of law don’t exist or are under attack — places such as Russia and China. We have also seen how fragile democracy can be and how it can be eroded almost imperceptibly — consider Turkey and parts of Central Europe. So our senses are finely tuned to the classic warning signs: attacks on institutions, neutralization of opponents, cowed legislatures, publics numbed by repeated falsehoods.

This is the thing about the Trump era Deep State critique. They have alot of power but they have always before used it clandestinely. They have ways of manipulating the situation that don’t require them to leave fingerprints. But these intelligence community leaders are coming forward in a way they’ve never done before. And if what they were saying didn’t track so obviously with what we can all see with our own eyes, namely that Trump is a dangerous, unstable, cretinous moron, it would be bizarre. Instead, they are being transparent with their concerns which makes it a much more democratic situation than normal. They are lending expertise and credibility to what everyone with a brain is screaming at the television every single day.

This is the idiot to whom we have entrusted our security:

After hearing that a U.S. intelligence source in Russia was in enough danger that the CIA wanted to remove that person from the country, President Donald Trump reportedly responded by criticizing the use of human sources.

“These are people who have sold their souls and sold out their country,” Trump said, according to reporting from a new tell-all book by famed Watergate journalist Bob Woodward that was obtained by NBC News.

“I don’t trust human intelligence and these spies,” Trump added.
[…]
The CIA stresses the importance of its human intelligence resources, often abbreviated to “humint.” “Human intelligence plays a critical role in developing and implementing U.S. foreign and national security policy and in protecting U.S. interests,” The agency’s website reads.

Some time after the briefing, Brennan reportedly quipped, “I guess I won’t tell the employees” about Trump’s stance.

Think about that for a moment. He doesn’t like Russians who are “selling out their country” by giving information helpful to the United States government. And yet his own son knowingly met with Russian agents who were offering information on his political rival and publicly defends the act, saying anyone would have done it.

Think about that.

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Kavanaugh is a movement hack

by digby

An apostate speaks:

Twenty years ago, when I was a conservative movement stalwart, I got to know Brett Kavanaugh both professionally and personally.

Brett actually makes a cameo appearance in my memoir of my time in the GOP, “Blinded By The Right.” I describe him at a party full of zealous young conservatives gathered to watch President Bill Clinton’s 1998 State of the Union address — just weeks after the story of his affair with a White House intern had broken. When the TV camera panned to Hillary Clinton, I saw Brett — at the time a key lieutenant of Ken Starr, the independent counsel investigating various Clinton scandals — mouth the word “bitch.”

But there’s a lot more to know about Kavanaugh than just his Pavlovian response to Hillary’s image. Brett and I were part of a close circle of cold, cynical and ambitious hard-right operatives being groomed by GOP elders for much bigger roles in politics, government and media. And it’s those controversial associations that should give members of the Senate and the American public serious pause.

Call it Kavanaugh’s cabal: There was his colleague on the Starr investigation, Alex Azar, now the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Mark Paoletta is now chief counsel to Vice President Mike Pence; House anti-Clinton gumshoe Barbara Comstock is now a Republican member of Congress. Future Fox News personalities Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson were there with Ann Coulter, now a best-selling author, and internet provocateur Matt Drudge.

At one time or another, each of them partied at my Georgetown townhouse amid much booze and a thick air of cigar smoke.

In a rough division of labor, Kavanaugh played the role of lawyer — one of the sharp young minds recruited by the Federalist Society to infiltrate the federal judiciary with true believers. Through that network, Kavanaugh was mentored by D.C. Appeals Court Judge Laurence Silberman, known among his colleagues for planting leaks in the press for partisan advantage.

Related

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Tom Steyer and Ron Fein: Stop Kavanaugh’s confirmation until Mueller’s investigation is done
When, as I came to know, Kavanaugh took on the role of designated leaker to the press of sensitive information from Starr’s operation, we all laughed that Larry had taught him well. (Of course, that sort of political opportunism by a prosecutor is at best unethical, if not illegal.)

Another compatriot was George Conway (now Kellyanne’s husband), who led a secretive group of right-wing lawyers — we called them “the elves” — who worked behind the scenes directing the litigation team of Paula Jones, who had sued Clinton for sexual harassment. I knew then that information was flowing quietly from the Jones team via Conway to Starr’s office — and also that Conway’s go-to man was none other than Brett Kavanaugh.

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That critical flow of inside information allowed Starr, in effect, to set a perjury trap for Clinton, laying the foundation for a crazed national political crisis and an unjust impeachment over a consensual affair.

But the cabal’s godfather was Ted Olson, the then-future solicitor general for George W. Bush and now a sainted figure of the GOP establishment (and of some liberals for his role in legalizing same-sex marriage). Olson had a largely hidden role as a consigliere to the “Arkansas Project” — a multi-million dollar dirt-digging operation on the Clintons, funded by the eccentric right-wing billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife and run through The American Spectator magazine, where I worked at the time.

Both Ted and Brett had what one could only be called an unhealthy obsession with the Clintons — especially Hillary. While Ted was pushing through the Arkansas Project conspiracy theories claiming that Clinton White House lawyer and Hillary friend Vincent Foster was murdered (he committed suicide), Brett was costing taxpayers millions by pedaling the same garbage at Starr’s office.

A detailed analysis of Kavanaugh’s own notes from the Starr Investigation reveals he was cherry-picking random bits of information from the Starr investigation — as well as the multiple previous investigations — attempting vainly to legitimize wild right-wing conspiracies. For years he chased down each one of them without regard to the emotional cost to Foster’s family and friends, or even common decency.

Kavanaugh was not a dispassionate finder of fact but rather an engineer of a political smear campaign. And after decades of that, he expects people to believe he’s changed his stripes.

Like millions of Americans this week, I tuned into Kavanaugh’s hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee with great interest. In his opening statement and subsequent testimony, Kavanaugh presented himself as a “neutral and impartial arbiter” of the law. Judges, he said, were not players but akin to umpires — objectively calling balls and strikes. Again and again, he stressed his “independence” from partisan political influences.

But I don’t need to see any documents to tell you who Kavanaugh is — because I’ve known him for years. And I’ll leave it to all the lawyers to parse Kavanaugh’s views on everything from privacy rights to gun rights. But I can promise you that any pretense of simply being a fair arbiter of the constitutionality of any policy regardless of politics is simply a pretense. He made up his mind nearly a generation ago — and, if he’s confirmed, he’ll have nearly two generations to impose it upon the rest of us.

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Trump says he doesn’t “talk that way“?

by digby

As President Trump tries to rebut the portrayal in the latest attention-grabbing book, he has denied not only saying the things attributed to him, but also that he has ever said anything like them. The problem for Mr. Trump is that, in some cases at least, the record shows that he has.

“The Woodward book is a scam,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter on Friday morning about “Fear: Trump in the White House,” the new volume to be published by Bob Woodward next week. “I don’t talk the way I am quoted. If I did I would not have been elected President. These quotes were made up.”

In particular, Mr. Trump has denied that he called Attorney General Jeff Sessions “mentally retarded” or a “dumb Southerner,” as the book reports. “I said NEITHER, never used those terms on anyone, including Jeff, and being a southerner is a GREAT thing,” the president wrote earlier this week.

But, in fact, Mr. Trump has used the phrase “mentally retarded” on recorded radio shows that have been unearthed this week. And in a previously unreported incident, a journalist who used to interact with Mr. Trump during his days as a real estate developer in New York said this week that he even used the phrase “dumb Southerner” to describe his own in-laws.

Jeane MacIntosh, a former deputy editor at Page Six, the New York Post gossip column that Mr. Trump for decades gave stories to, recalled him using the phrase “dumb Southerner” with her in a very specific context.

Ms. MacIntosh had called Mr. Trump one day in May 1997 to ask him about a tip she had received that his second wife, Marla Maples, had purchased two gold Lexus cars and that he had made her return them.

“He said, ‘I have something better for you,’” Ms. MacIntosh recalled in an interview on Wednesday. If she dropped that story, he said, he would give her bigger news — that he planned to divorce Ms. Maples. When Ms. MacIntosh pressed him on why, he “essentially blamed her family,” she said, referring to Ms. Maples’s Georgia-based relatives.

“Are you old enough to remember the show ‘The Beverly Hillbillies?’” he asked Ms. MacIntosh.

She replied yes, and Mr. Trump laughed and said, “That’s exactly her family, except they came to New York City instead of Beverly Hills.” Ms. MacIntosh added, “I said, ‘What do you mean?’ And he said she was constantly surrounded ‘by an entourage of dumb Southerners.’” He even adopted a fake southern accent to mimic Ms. Maples’s mother, Ms. MacIntosh said.

Mr. Trump has been known to use the terms “retarded” or “mentally retarded” as well. In an appearance on Howard Stern’s show on April 16, 2004, Mr. Trump used the phrase to denounce a reporter who criticized his business dealings.

“I know I was criticized in one magazine where the writer was retarded, he said: ‘Donald Trump put up $7 million, they put up $193 million and they are 50/50 partners. Why isn’t Donald Trump putting up more money?’ And you know it is supposed to be because I am smart,” Mr. Trump said.

In another appearance in September of that year, he used it again. “I have a golf pro who’s mentally retard —,” Mr. Trump told Mr. Stern, then stopped short as he seemed to catch himself. “I mean he’s really not a smart guy. And I’m playing golf and I’m thinking about what I’m going to tell NBC and this golf pro comes up to me and tells me, ‘Yeah, but your show is an hour and ‘Friends’ is a half-hour.’”

The Daily Beast reported in 2016 that Mr. Trump also used to refer to Marlee Matlin, the deaf actress, as “retarded” when she appeared on his television show, “Celebrity Apprentice.”

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