Oct 5th, 2018 5:34 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
News from India Today:
An 18-year-old Muslim girl in Nawada district, Bihar was tied to a tree and caned by her family members for loving a Hindu boy. Her punishment was allegedly a result of the village panchayat’s diktat.
The incident happened on Wednesday (October 3) in Jogiya Maran village falling under Rajauli police station in Nawada. She remained tied to the tree for around five hours.
When she was being thrashed, no one came to her rescue.
Or while she stayed there tied to the tree for five hours either, apparently.
The two wanted to marry but her family was against it, so she ran away to his village.
The girl’s family came to know that she was
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Oct 5th, 2018 10:11 am |
By Ophelia Benson
So this is the sitch: Republicans say the [drastically constricted] FBI investigation exonerates Kavanaugh; Democrats say it does no such thing; we can’t consider the evidence because the Republicans are keeping the whole farking thing Secret.
What is utterly crazy here is that we have no way of evaluating any of this either way, because we are not allowed to see the FBI’s findings, even in summary form. Republicans and Democrats are telling vastly different stories about what those findings show: Republicans are claiming there was no corroboration of any of the charges against Kavanaugh and that there’s nothing new in them. Democrats are claiming not just that the investigation was a sham but also that it doesn’t exonerate
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Tags: Brett Kavanaugh
Oct 5th, 2018 7:54 am |
By Ophelia Benson
David Corn at Mother Jones:
On Wednesday night, the lawyers for Christine Blasey Ford responded sharply to the news that the Trump White House had blocked the FBI from interviewing her about her allegation that she was sexually assaulted by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh in 1982. This probe, her attorneys said, “cannot be called an investigation. We are profoundly disappointed that after the tremendous sacrifice she made in coming forward, those directing the FBI investigation were not interested in seeking the truth.” The decision to not interview Ford, Kavanaugh, and dozens of other witnesses related to her allegation and Deborah Ramirez’s claim that Kavanaugh engaged in sexual misconduct during his college days has drawn much criticism from
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Tags: Brett
Oct 4th, 2018 5:30 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Kavanaugh wants us to know that last Thursday he “was there as a son, husband and dad.” Really? He wasn’t nominated to the Supreme Court “as a son, husband and dad.” We don’t give a fuck about his family life (except possibly as more or less reason to think he’s simply an asshole), that’s not what he’s there for.
He makes this weird claim in the Wall Street Journal (well hey at least it’s not Breitbart).
He starts by telling us how proud he was to be at the White House with his wife and daughters to accept the nomination.
My mom, Martha—one of the first women to serve as a Maryland prosecutor and trial judge, and my inspiration to
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Tags: Brett Kavanaugh
Oct 4th, 2018 4:51 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Why did I ever think it would matter?
Michelle Goldberg at the Times:
The restarted F.B.I. background check that seemed, a week ago, like a merciful concession to decency has instead been a cover-up. Agents didn’t even question Blasey or Kavanaugh. It’s not clear if they interviewed any of the more than 20 corroborating witnesses named by Deborah Ramirez, who claimed a drunken, aggressive Kavanaugh thrust his genitals into her face when they were students at Yale. The New Yorker reported that witnesses who tried to contact the F.B.I.were ignored; some ended up submitting unsolicited statements to the bureau.
Which were filed in the bottom drawer of a rusty filing cabinet in a sub-basement filled with piranhas.
Ultimately,
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Tags: Brett Kavanaugh
Oct 4th, 2018 8:52 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Of course; the fix is in. The FBI has handed over its “report” and the Republicans are saying it’s all good and that’s the end of that.
A leading Republican said Thursday that a new FBI report on Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh found “no hint of misconduct,” while Democrats called it incomplete and suggested that the White House limited the probe to protect President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee.
The headlines are full of stories on people who had relevant information who could not get the FBI to talk to them.
“There’s nothing in it that we didn’t already know,” Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) said in a statement after being briefed on the FBI report by his staff.
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Tags: Brett Kavanaugh
Oct 3rd, 2018 5:20 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Oof, this is powerful: an open letter by 650 (and rising) law professors saying Kavanaugh does not have the temperament. It’s going to the Senate tomorrow.
Judicial temperament is one of the most important qualities of a judge. As the Congressional Research Service explains, a judge requires “a personality that is even-handed, unbiased, impartial, courteous yet firm, and dedicated to a process, not a result.” The concern for judicial temperament dates back to our founding; in Federalist 78, titled “Judges as Guardians of the Constitution,” Alexander Hamilton expressed the need for “the integrity and moderation of the judiciary.”
We are law professors who teach, research and write about the judicial institutions of this country. Many of us appear in state
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Tags: Brett Kavanaugh
Oct 3rd, 2018 4:30 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Look at this fucking lying hack.
Trump was not “stating facts” in that disgusting performance last night. It’s not “stating facts” to pretend to be someone else saying silly things. I’d like to know what Sarah Sanders would have to say if a school bully did that kind of mocking “oh look this is you” performance to one of her kids. I don’t think she would claim the bully … Read the rest
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3 comments
Oct 3rd, 2018 12:00 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Claire Potter on Kavanaugh as Trump’s surrogate bully:
While two Republican senators have condemned what is now routine behavior from the President, Kellyanne Conway, the President’s designated sexual assault spokesperson in the West Wing, indicated that Blasey had caused everyone enough trouble and she should go away now. “The woman has been accommodated by all of us, including Senate Judiciary Committee,” Conway snapped. “She’s been treated like a Faberge egg by all of us, beginning with me and the President. He’s pointing out factual inconsistencies.”
You know what seems like a Faberge egg right now? Democracy. Process. Human decency. The damage that the Kavanaugh hearings has done is so thick you can practically taste it floating in the
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Oct 3rd, 2018 11:37 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Laurence Tribe writes in the Globe that Kavanaugh, if confirmed, will vote to kill Roe v Wade, and was tricksy about it in the hearings.
Several senators have said they would not vote to confirm Judge Brett Kavanaugh as a Supreme Court justice if they believed he would vote to undo the basic protections for women upheld in Roe v. Wade and other cases. So if his testimony and his meetings with those senators had exposed that as his almost-certain path, they would vote no.
But the only reason his public testimony and private meetings didn’t reveal such a clear inclination is that Judge Kavanaugh dissembled about his views, calling the Supreme Court’s abortion rulings “precedent on precedent,”
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Tags: Brett Kavanaugh
Oct 3rd, 2018 10:09 am |
By Ophelia Benson
No wonder Trump likes Putin so much.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has labelled poisoned ex-Russian spy Sergei Skripal a “traitor” and a “scumbag”.
In a speech, he complained that the media were treating Mr Skripal as “some kind of human rights defender”, insisting he had betrayed his country.
And that’s why we poisoned him! Wouldn’t anyone?
“I see that some of our colleagues are pushing the theory that Mr Skripal was almost some kind of human rights activist,” Mr Putin said on Wednesday.
The Russian leader, a former intelligence officer himself, then described Mr Skripal as a “traitor to the motherland”.
“He’s simply a scumbag, that’s all.”
And what do we do to scumbags? We murder them. Doesn’t everyone?… Read the rest
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Oct 3rd, 2018 9:41 am |
By Ophelia Benson
Jennifer Rubin points out how rich it is for Trump to start manscreaming about the presumption of innocence.
President Trump on Tuesday cranked up the volume on his white male base’s primal scream to ear-shattering decibels. He worries that this is a “very scary time for young men” in America, who are at risk of being accused of things they didn’t do. He insists, “My whole life I’ve heard you’re innocent until proven guilty, but now you’re guilty until proven innocent. That is a very, very difficult standard.” The president — with more than a dozen accusers claiming he engaged in unwanted sexual conduct — knows a thing or two about victimhood, he’d have you believe.
As he demonstrated in … Read the rest
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3 comments
Tags: President Pig, Trump
Oct 3rd, 2018 8:11 am |
By Ophelia Benson
CNN on Trump’s sneers at Ford last night:
President Donald Trump for the first time directly mocked Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee by casting doubt on her testimony during a campaign rally.
Before the crowd Tuesday night in Southaven, Mississippi, Trump imitated Ford during her testimony, mocking her for not knowing the answers to questions such as how she had gotten to the high school party where she says Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her.
“I had one beer. Well, do you think it was — nope, it was one beer,” Trump said, mimicking Ford’s testimony last week to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“How did you get home? I don’t remember. How’d you
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Tags: President Pig, Trump
Oct 2nd, 2018 5:45 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Trump at yet another “rally” (is it every day this week?) makes fun of Christine Blasey Ford, gets maudlin about Kavanaugh and “his wife” and his “daughters, his beautiful incredible kids” [whom he would love to date in a year or two] and then ends with “these are really evil people” – meaning the ones who accuse men of sexual assault.
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Oct 2nd, 2018 5:09 pm |
By Ophelia Benson
Benjamin Wittes wrestles with the Kavanaugh issue.
I have a long relationship with Kavanaugh, and I have always liked him. I have admired his career on the D.C. Circuit. I have spoken warmly of him. I have published him. I have vouched publicly for his character—more than once—and taken a fair bit of heat for doing so.
He advised Kavanaugh (also at The Atlantic) to withdraw unless he could dispute Ford’s account without leaving a scorched earth behind.
Kavanaugh, needless to say, did not take my advice. He stayed in, and he delivered on Thursday, by way of defense, a howl of rage. He went on the attack not against Ford—for that we can be grateful—but against Democrats
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Tags: Brett Kavanaugh