To be clear, the therapist's notes do not contain Kavanaugh's name, although you may have been speaking from hypothetical example instead of specifically about this case.
GOP holds the House
Dems win the House by less than 12 seats
Dems win the House by 12-25 seats
Dems win the House by 25-38 seats
Dems win the House by 38+ seats
GOP gains 1 or more seats in the Senate (52-48 or more)
GOP holds the same number of seats in the Senate (51-49)
GOP loses seats but still holds the Senate (50-50 with Pence breaking tie)
Dems win the Senate (49-51 or more)
To be clear, the therapist's notes do not contain Kavanaugh's name, although you may have been speaking from hypothetical example instead of specifically about this case.
Well, so much for that. Link
"Amazing what a minute can do."
From a USA Today article, here are the requests for the hearing made by Ford / Ford's legal team according to senate aides:
The real negotiations are probably between Mitch McConnell and the R Senators, particularly the squishy ones. If the Rs have the votes on Kavanaugh, I expect them to continue to insist on a Monday hearing and to claim that many of these requests are unreasonable.
And just when you thought it couldn't get any nuttier, we've hit a whole new level of crazy.
A guy named Ed Whelan put on his CSI hat and concocted a theory that one of Kavanaugh's Georgetown Prep classmates who looks kind of like Kavanaugh might have been the real attacker. Now, Whelan is no Alex Jones-type crank (or at least, he wasn't thought of as one before yesterday). He's a very prominent player in DC conservative circles, and is one of Kavanaugh's Federalist Society pals who's been involved in preparing Kavanaugh for his confirmation hearings. Anyway, Whelan posted his theory on Twitter yesterday afternoon, including THE NAME, FORMER HOME ADDRESS, AND PAST AND CURRENT PICTURES OF THE OTHER STUDENT, who's now a middle school teacher in Atlanta.
You read that right. In an effort to get his buddy on the Court, Whelan just explicitly identified some other unsuspecting random dude and threw him to the wolves.
There was an immediate and severe backlash, and Whelan has now deleted his Twitter thread. It's been screenshotted, though, and is all over social media. You can go find it if you want to. I'm not going to link to it here because it's beyond lunacy, probably libelous and defamatory, and I don't want to give it more bandwidth than it's already getting. But here's the Washington Post's story about it.
Link.Amid the maneuvering, the nomination was roiled further late Thursday by incendiary tweets from a prominent Kavanaugh friend and supporter who publicly identified another high school classmate of Kavanugh’s as Ford’s possible attacker.
Ed Whelan, a former clerk to the late justice Antonin Scalia and president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, pointed to floor plans, online photographs and other information to suggest a location for the house party in suburban Maryland that Ford described. He also named and posted photographs of the classmate he suggested could be responsible.
Ford dismissed Whelan’s theory in a statement late Thursday: "I knew them both, and socialized with" them, Ford said, adding that she had once visited the other classmate in the hospital. "There is zero chance that I would confuse them."
Republicans on Capitol Hill and White House officials immediately sought to distance themselves from Whelan’s claims and said they were not aware of his plans to identify the former classmate, now a middle school teacher, who could not be reached for comment and did not answer the door at his house Thursday night.
Whelan did not respond to requests for comment. He had told people around him that he had spent several days putting together the theory and thought it was more convincing than her story, according to two friends who had talked to him.
Whelan has been involved in helping to advise Kavanaugh’s confirmation effort and is close friends with both Kavanaugh and Leonard Leo, the head of the Federalist Society who has been helping to spearhead the nomination. Kavanaugh and Whelan also worked together in the Bush administration.
Kavanaugh and his allies have been privately discussing a defense that would not question whether an incident happened to Ford, but instead would raise doubts that the attacker was Kavanaugh, according to a person familiar with the discussions.
I can't begin to describe the utter boneheadedness and breathtaking irresponsibility of this move from someone who's supposedly an ally of Kavanaugh's. This kind of whackery smells of panic and makes Kavanaugh look guilty as sin. At the very least, assuming there's a hearing, Kavanaugh will certainly be asked under oath if he had anything to do with this nonsense, and his relationship and communications with Whelan will be subjected to a full proctological exam. And Whelan was a Scalia clerk! I thought they were supposed to be smart.
Between this, Ralph Norman's jokes, and Trump's attacks on Dr. Ford last night and this morning, the Rs are actively working to torpedo a confirmation they probably had in the bag 24 hours ago.
ETA: Earlier in the week, Ed Whelan was also pushing a "false recovered memory" attack against Dr. Ford via Twitter (which he also has now deleted). Lordy.
Whelan tweet.JPG
Last edited by Tom B.; 09-21-2018 at 11:19 AM.
"I swear Roy must redeem extra timeouts at McDonald's the day after the game for free hamburgers." --Posted on InsideCarolina, 2/18/2015
Ford has responded:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...=.657b1a37c466Ford dismissed Whelan’s theory in a statement late Thursday: “I knew them both, and socialized with” the other classmate, Ford said, adding that she had once visited him in the hospital. “There is zero chance that I would confuse them.”
It's hard for me to imagine any real hard evidence proving/disproving the allegations at this point. The only thing that can have real effects on the nomination process is one side or the other shooting themselves in the foot.
I remain a little skeptical that all these supposed gaffes by Rs will have that effect, though. It's become common to say that we live in a different environment regarding issues of sexual harassment and assault than decades ago. That's probably true to some degree, but we still had someone elected to our highest office who was recorded ON VIDEO bragging about his ability to commit sexual assault with relatively minor effect on voting numbers. So I am not quite sure I agree on the supposed large effects all these gaffes will have.
Who? And I realize there was probably a link to this Ralph Norman chap somewhere upthread, but news cycles being what they are... I'll also be asking "Who?" if you mention Ed Whelan to me in a couple days. Of the three things you listed, only Trump's twitter could possibly move the needle if he keeps tweeting stupid attacks on Ford. Possibly.
Bottom line, here's what we're looking at, imo. Are 51 R Senators okay with the following point/counterpoint dominating the news: "She couldn't be expected to attend an unfair hearing" vs "We gave her a chance, and she didn't show"
If 51 R Senators are okay with that discussion, then the Rs will press for Monday. And if she then doesn't attend, Kavanaugh is the next SCOTUS judge.
Here's McConnell this morning speaking at the Values Voter Summit, per CNN (there's video if you click on the link):
@CNN 1h1 hour ago
Mitch McConnell: “You’ve watched the fight. You’ve watched the tactics, But here’s what I want to tell you: In the very near future, Judge Kavanaugh will be on the United States Supreme Court… Don’t get rattled by all of this. We’re gonna plow right through it and do our job.”
Ralph Norman is a GOP congressman who made a joke about sexual assault at a reelection debate yesterday:
-Jason "talk about shooting yourself in the foot... Norman won his seat in congress in a Special Election in 2017 by less than 4 points over Parnell" EvansRep. Ralph Norman opened up a debate between himself and Democratic challenger Archie Parnell on Thursday afternoon by making a joke about the sexual assault allegations surrounding Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
"Did y'all hear this latest late-breaking news from the Kavanaugh hearings? Ruth Bader Ginsburg came out that saying she was groped by Abraham Lincoln," the South Carolina Republican said to the crowd at the Kiwanis Club in Rock Hill, South Carolina.
Laughter and some applause could be heard after Norman made the remark Thursday.
While Parnell did not immediately respond to the comment during the debate, he released a response soon after it ended.
"My opponent apparently thinks sexual assault is a joke. It is not. But I guess that's the best we can expect from someone who pulled a loaded gun on his own constituents," Parnell said in a statement.
He was referring to an April event where Norman pulled out his loaded, personal .38-caliber Smith & Wesson handgun and laid it on the table at a diner where he was meeting with his constituents in Rock Hill.
Why are you wasting time here when you could be wasting it by listening to the latest episode of the DBR Podcast?
Why are you wasting time here when you could be wasting it by listening to the latest episode of the DBR Podcast?
Yeah, I don't the get the "testify after Kavanaugh" demand. I agree that seems strange. It may be that her side wanted to make a few demands they could give on so it would not look like they got everything they asked for. I dunno.
I was merely saying that I think she wants to tell her story in public. The moment she divulged her name to the Wash Post she had to know that this thing would blow up and she would end up testifying in front of congress. The previous post seemed to imply that she would use McConnell's words as an excuse to get out of testifying. I was just saying that I don't think she is looking for a way to get out of testifying.
--Jason "I strongly suspect Ford will get some of her demands satisfied and will end up testifying toward the end of next week" Evans
Why are you wasting time here when you could be wasting it by listening to the latest episode of the DBR Podcast?
That would be explosive if the Senate requested therapist notes in an attempt to "investigate" or get at the truth, and yet refused to subpoena Mark Judge who was allegedly the third person in this particular "Devil's Triangle" which allegedly occurred in a room at an alleged non-specified party that that neither Judge nor Kavanaugh allegedly attended.
"okay -- but only if it's late afternoon and over by dusk. All questions must be posed in the passive, not active, form of the verbs used. Gerunds are right out."
This whole thing is getting absurd at this point, and takes away from the substantive impact of whatever the testimony might be.
That's what they did for the Thomas/Hill hearings in 1991. Thomas went first, then Hill, then Thomas came back and was allowed to respond to Hill's allegations.
If I'm Ford, I say I'll agree to go first and let Kavanaugh go second, but only if I'm allowed the option of coming back to respond after Kavanaugh testifies.
"I swear Roy must redeem extra timeouts at McDonald's the day after the game for free hamburgers." --Posted on InsideCarolina, 2/18/2015
Maybe I'm a jaded lawyer (okay, I am that regardless) but:
Lay witnesses generally don't get to dictate the terms under which they will provide relevant evidence. Not in criminal cases. Not in civil cases. Not in front of governmental bodies. Not in front of investigatory agents.
Personally, I am not in favor of Kav's nomination for reasons wholly unrelated to this issue. But everyone has known since Kennedy retired that the Senate was going to try and have his replacement by the opening of the Supreme Court's term -- which is one week from Monday. Dr. Ford's identity was known to at least one Senator since July. Demands that the witness now cannot be available before Thursday, or trying to dictate the order of questioning, or who gets the last word, or who does the questioning is just silly -- and Dr. Ford's lawyer knows that these will not fly. It is counterproductive to suggest such things as demands or conditions of testifying.
Issues surrounding safety and publicity are certainly reasonable and I am sure would be accommodated by even the densest opponent of the witness. But it does not take a week or more of negotiations to get a witness with relevant information who supposedly wants to testify to come in and do so. And, unfairly IMHO, it makes this look like a political act more than anything.
I don't think that Ford's lawyers are doing her any favors here and in fact are hurting their cause.