Links - 16th December 2019 (1) (Kavanaugh)

Lisa Britton on Twitter - "My friend’s 14-year-old daughter told me that girls in her class always use the threat “I’ll say you raped me!” towards the boys. She laughed. This is bad. Very, very bad What can we do about this?"

Jan Crawford on Twitter - "We report tonight the real bombshell: Christine Ford’s close HS friend (who Ford says was at the party when Kavanaugh allegedly assaulted her) said Ford’s story is not believable and told the FBI Ford’s allies pressured her, threatened her with a smear campaign to say otherwise"

Christine Blasey Ford's Lawyer: Okay Fine, Protecting Abortion Was Part of Why She Accused Kavanaugh - "New video has surfaced of leftist activist Debra Katz, the attorney for Christine Blasey-Ford, admitting her client (falsely) accused Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh of sexual  misconduct in order to protect abortion and Roe v. Wade. "In the aftermath of these hearings I believe that Christine's testimony brought about more good than the harm the misogynist Republicans caused by allowing Kavanuagh on the court," Katz said during an event in Baltimore. "He will always have an asterisk next to his name. When he takes a scalpel to Roe v. Wade we will know who he is, we know his character and we know what motivates him. It's important that we know and that's part of what motivated Christine."... After Kavanaugh was confirmed to the Supreme Court, the Senate Judiciary Committee released a 400-page long report. In it, investigators found no evidence that any claims, including the ones brought by Blasey-Ford, were true."

TOTO: Did A 'Star Wars' Actress Lose Her Gig After Doing A Comedic Impression Of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford? - "Kevin Hart lost his dream job as Oscar host, we’re told, because he didn’t follow the Academy’s demand to apologize for his insensitive comments about homosexuality.That’s balderdash.Had Hart offered up a full-throated mea culpa the Social Justice crowd would have demanded his professional scalp all the same. Just ask Roseanne Barr and Megyn Kelly, two superstars whose apologies couldn’t save their respective gigs.Did the same fate befall Rachel Butera?... Meanwhile, Oscar winner Matt Damon famously portrayed Kavanaugh as an angry, drunken cad who likely committed the assault in question on “Saturday Night Live.” He didn’t suffer a single career repercussion from the sketch. In fact, it might have undid the damage he did late last year when he tried to say the sexual assault allegations against Harvey Weinstein were more severe that the groping incidents allegedly committed by Sen. Al Franken."

Ethics Complaints Against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh Dismissed - ""It is unacceptable that Supreme Court justices are fully beyond the reach of any system of accountability. This outcome means that the last chance for any serious look into these complaints against Brett Kavanaugh rests with the House Democrats but Jerry Nadler still has not lifted a finger. Nadler is dragging his feet on the Kavanaugh matter even more than he is with Trump, and that is saying something," Brian Fallon, executive director of Demand Justice, one of the groups that signed the letter to Democrats, said in an email to BuzzFeed News."
Of course, if Republicans were investigating a "Democratic" judge, that would be shocking political interference and a threat to judicial independence

NYT updates Kavanaugh 'bombshell' to note accuser doesn't recall alleged assault - "The New York Times suddenly made a major revision to a supposed bombshell piece late Sunday concerning a resurfaced allegation of sexual assault by Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh — hours after virtually all 2020 Democratic presidential candidates had cited the original article as a reason to impeach Kavanaugh.The update included the significant detail that several friends of the alleged victim said she did not recall the purported sexual assault in question at all. The Times also stated for the first time that the alleged victim refused to be interviewed, and has made no other comment about the episode. The only firsthand account concerning the supposed attack in the original piece, which was published on Saturday, came from a Clinton-connected lawyer who claimed to have witnessed it. (The lawyer, Max Stier, did not actually provide his account directly; the Times acknowledged that "two officials who have communicated with Mr. Stier" had relayed his supposed version of events.)... The update came only after The Federalist's Mollie Hemingway, who reviewed an advance copy of the book, first flagged the article's omission on Twitter — prompting other commentators to press the issue... The revitalized, longshot push to get Kavanaugh removed from the high court came as Democrats' apparent effort to impeach President Trump has largely stalled. Trump, for his part, suggested Sunday that Kavanaugh should sue for defamation.The Times piece by Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly, adapted from their forthcoming book, asserted that a Kavanaugh classmate, Clinton-linked nonprofit CEO Max Stier, "saw Mr. Kavanaugh with his pants down at a different drunken dorm party, where friends pushed his penis into the hand of a female student."The Times did not mention Stier's work as a Clinton defense attorney, or Stier's legal battles with Kavanaugh during the Whitewater investigation, and simply called him a "respected thought leader."... "Omitting these facts from the @nytimes story is one of worst cases of journalistic malpractice that I can recall," wrote the National Review's Washington correspondent, John McCormack, on Twitter.McCormack wrote separately: "If Kavanaugh’s 'friends pushed his penis,' then isn’t it an allegation of wrongdoing against Kavanaugh’s 'friends,' not Kavanaugh himself? Surely even a modern liberal Yalie who’s been to one of those weird non-sexual 'naked parties' would recognize both the female student and Kavanaugh are both alleged victims in this alleged incident, barring an additional allegation that a college-aged Kavanaugh asked his 'friends' to 'push his penis.' The Times went on to note in the article that it had "corroborated the story with two officials who have communicated with Mr. Stier," but the article apparently meant only that the Times had corroborated that Stier made his claim to the FBI. No first-hand corroboration of the alleged episode was apparently obtained.Nevertheless, Democrats announced a new effort to topple Kavanaugh. Hawaii Democratic Sen. Mazie Hirono -- who infamously said last year that Kavanaugh did not deserve a fair hearing because he might be pro-life -- said the Senate Judiciary Committee should begin an impeachment inquiry to determine whether Kavanaugh lied to Congress... During the hearings, Harris strongly implied that she knew Kavanaugh had improperly discussed Special Counsel Robert Mueller's then-ongoing probe with a Trump-connected lawyer.Harris provided no evidence for the bombshell insinuation, which went viral on social media and sent the hearing room into stunned silence, even as she directly accused Kavanaugh of lying under oath.Castro and Warren echoed that sentiment and said Kavanaugh had committed perjury"

Witnesses Defended Kavanaugh. NYT Authors Falsely Claimed Silence - "A new Atlantic-published, adapted excerpt of the book attempts to resurrect Pogrebin and Kelly’s anti-Kavanaugh smears but once again has a major error. “We Spent 10 Months Investigating Kavanaugh. Here’s What We Found” was published in the Atlantic.Their reporting must not have been thorough. In a section explaining why they believe the accusers despite the lack of any evidence, they write that their emotional reaction to the claims was that the claims rang true. But they get major facts wrong... 'The people who allegedly witnessed the event—Kavanaugh’s friends Kevin Genda, David Todd, and David White—have kept mum about it. Kavanaugh has denied it. If such an incident had occurred, Kavanaugh said, it would have been the “talk of campus.”'...
'One of the male classmates who Ramirez said egged on Kavanaugh denied any memory of the party. ‘I don’t think Brett would flash himself to Debbie, or anyone, for that matter,’ he said. Asked why he thought Ramirez was making the allegation, he responded, ‘I have no idea.’ The other male classmate who Ramirez said was involved in the incident commented, ‘I have zero recollection.’In a statement, two of those male classmates who Ramirez alleged were involved in the incident, the wife of a third male student she said was involved, and one other classmate, Dan Murphy, disputed Ramirez’s account of events: ‘We were the people closest to Brett Kavanaugh during his first year at Yale. He was a roommate to some of us, and we spent a great deal of time with him, including in the dorm where this incident allegedly took place. Some of us were also friends with Debbie Ramirez during and after her time at Yale. We can say with confidence that if the incident Debbie alleges ever occurred, we would have seen or heard about it—and we did not. The behavior she describes would be completely out of character for Brett. In addition, some of us knew Debbie long after Yale, and she never described this incident until Brett’s Supreme Court nomination was pending'...
Pogrebin and Kelly’s work has a pattern of omitting exculpatory evidence that supports Kavanaugh’s consistent claim that he never sexually assaulted anyone. The Atlantic piece is excerpted from the book, which has the same error"