Month: October 2018

All of this drinking in high school stuff is bringing up a lot of memories for me, not all of which I’ll share because my mother doesn’t really need to have flashbacks or be triggered at this point in her life.  On the matter of the drinking age, my memory of this mainly pertains to Vermont because it was one of the last states in the country to raise its age to 21, and they had a grandfather clause that affected people who graduated in the class before mine.  It was of particular interest to me because my best friend growing up went to Middlebury College and my next door neighbor went to the University of Vermont.

I graduated in the spring of 1987, and Vermont had raised their drinking age on July 1st, 1986. Anyone who was eighteen before that date was still allowed to drink in Vermont and also, critically, able to purchase alcohol for their buddies. As a practical matter, this meant than anyone born more than fourteen months before me was legal up there, and that included my next door neighbor. My best friend was actually a couple of months younger than me, so he was out of luck.

We talked about these things because they seemed pretty arbitrary and because they actually mattered to us since, much like Brett (Bart) Kavanaugh (O’Kavanaugh), we really liked beer.

Now, Maryland, where Kavanaugh grew up, went about the same process four years earlier. They changed their drinking age on July 1, 1982. They also used the grandfather clause, meaning that anyone who had been legally able to drink or buy alcohol would still be allowed to do so even if they were only eighteen. I imagine it created the same issue, where some people who were just slightly older were now relied upon to purchase the alcohol that their peers were legally barred from obtaining themselves.

In any case, July 1, 1982 was a significant day for high school drinkers in Maryland. It was the first day under the new law and the day that changed everything. Brett Kavanaugh just missed the deadline and was not grandfathered in. He did have a fairly easy work-around, though. The District of Columbia was even later than Vermont in raising its drinking age. Their law went into effect on September 30, 1986, so Kavanaugh could drive tens miles south into the District and purchase beer or drink in Georgetown bars. He did manage to mention this during his testimony, as though it was somehow exculpatory.

Where I lived in New Jersey, the process played out on January 1, 1983 when I was still in middle school. In high school, we didn’t have a ready supply of grandfathered acquaintances, so we had to be more creative. In our case, it helped to have a 21 year old friend land a job as the delivery driver for a local liquor store. We just called in orders and viola!, the problem was solved. It worked for a while until too much suspicion was aroused and our great plan collapsed. Then we moved on to other schemes.

Because Brett Kavanaugh had the odd habit of recording his social life in calendars that he has preserved, we actually know what he did on the day Maryland screwed him over and jacked up the drinking age just before he became eligible. He wrote: “Tobin’s House — Workout / Go to Timmy’s for Skis w/ Judge, Tom, PJ, Bernie, Squi.”

On July 1, 1982, he went to Tim “Timmy” Gaudette’s house to drink brewskis with Mark Judge, Tom Kaine, P.J. Smyth, Bernie McCarthy, and Chris Garrett (a.k.a. Squi or Squee). It’s a good bet that the beer for this party was bought the night before.

Now this “Squi” character is interesting. He’s clearly listed on Kavanaugh’s calendar as having been in attendance at the July 1st brewski party at Tim Gaudette’s house. He’s also the person that conservative activist Ed Whelan tried to accuse of being the real perpetrator of the attempted rape of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford.

But just when you think everything might be falling into place and making sense, there are two other things to consider. Dr. Ford did not list Chris Garrett as having been present at the party where she was assaulted. But she referred to him in her prepared statement to Congress:

“I had been friendly with a classmate of Brett’s for a short time during my freshman year, and it was through that connection that I attended a number of parties that Brett also attended.

Without naming him, she also testified that she “went out with” Garrett for a couple of months before the attempted rape incident and that he had provided her connection to Kavanaugh.

FORD: [Garrett] was somebody that, we use the phrase, I went out with — I wouldn’t say date — I went out with for a few months. That was how we termed it at the time. And after that we were distant friends and ran into each other periodically at Columbia Country Club, but I didn’t see him often.

MITCHELL: OK.

FORD: But I saw his brother and him several times.

MITCHELL: Was this person the only common link between you and Mr. — Judge Kavanaugh?

FORD: He’s the only one that I would be able to name right now — that I would like to not name, but you know who I mean. And — but there are certainly other members of Columbia Country Club that were common friends or they were more acquaintances of mine and friends of Mr. Kavanaugh.

Dr. Ford said she specifically recalled four boys being at the party where she was assaulted: “Brett Kavanaugh, Mark Judge, P. J. Smyth, and one other boy whose name I cannot recall.” If Squi had been the fourth boy, it seems like she would have remembered it since she had been dating him and knew him better than any of the other kids. It would also have increased the violation of protocol if Kavanaugh had assaulted Garrett’s recent girlfriend while Garrett was present.

But, you know, there probably wasn’t too much honor involved with that crew. Dr. Ford didn’t go to a “respectable” Catholic girls school which is something Kavanaugh was eager to point out during his congressional testimony.

I was 17 years old, between my junior and senior years of high school at Georgetown Prep, a rigorous all-boys Catholic Jesuit High School in Rockville, Maryland. When my friends and I spent time together at parties on weekends, it was usually the — with friends from nearby Catholic all-girls high schools, Stone Ridge, Holy Child, Visitation, Immaculata, Holy Cross.

Dr. Ford did not attend one of those schools. She attended an independent private school named Holton-Arms and she was a year behind me. She and I did not travel in the same social circles.

We know what Kavanaugh’s crew thought about the girls at “independent” Holton-Arms because Mark Judge and two other classmates wrote an underground newspaper called The Unknown Hoya and we have a copy of an article they published entitled “The Truth About Holton.”

Fifteen year old Chrissy Blasey was a “Holton Hosebag,” one of “the most worthless excuses of a female human”. All you needed to get her to agree to have sex with you was a Montgomery Count Public Library Card. She was in training to be a prostitute.

You can understand why Judge and Kavanaugh might have considered Dr. Ford an easier mark than the more “moral” girls from Stone Ridge, Holy Child, Visitation, Immaculata, and Holy Cross. Give her a beer or two and she’ll do anything you want.

Still, the calendar says that Squi was there and Dr. Ford doesn’t remember it that way at all, and that’s a conflict that isn’t easy to resolve. Perhaps the assault didn’t happen on July 1st, but there’s plenty of reason to believe that it occurred on or very near that date.

When Dr. Ford initially told her story about Kavanaugh, she wasn’t certain of the year it took place, but she remembered that she ran into Judge a “six to eight weeks” later while he was working at the Potomac Village Safeway grocery store. We know he worked briefly at a grocery store in July/August of 1982 because he wrote about it in his book: Wasted: Tales of a Gen X Drunk.

This is the kind of detail that she could not have made up, and it not only helps us place the time but it gives her story a tremendous amount of credibility. Another thing that gives her credibility is that she could identify people thirty-six years later who were going to parties and drinking beer that match up with the people on Kavanaugh’s calendar. After all, she didn’t keep a calendar to help her refresh her memory, and by Kavanaugh’s account she and he did not even travel in the same social circles. How could she know that PJ, for example, wasn’t in Ireland with his parents the summer that Judge worked at Safeway? If she’d concocted this story, there would likely be easily refutable mistakes of that nature, but what we see instead are relatively minor discrepancies that could be explained by her partial memory of events.

Kavanaugh argued that his calendar somehow proves that her story is impossible and that he never even attended a gathering where Dr. Ford was present, but it really only helps us rule out certain dates on which this event could have taken place. July 1, 1982 is not one of those dates.

Focusing too much on the precise date and precise locale and precise attendees runs the risk of losing the point of why we’re discussing this at all. We want to examine those things to see if we can disprove Dr. Ford’s story. There’s actually almost no chance in the world that we can verify that she’s telling the truth because there were no cameras recording the event. But if we could say that certain people could not have been present in that time period, that would call her account into serious question. The problem for Kavanaugh is that nothing of that sort has emerged. She may have been wrong about the general vicinity of the house, but it’s clear that he did drink beers with this specific list of friends in this specific period of time. He was close friends with her short-time boyfriend Squi, who is listed more than a dozen times in Kavanaugh’s calendar entries from that summer, so she really was in his circle of friends.  Matt Judge really did work at a local grocery story in the exact weeks that fit her story.  Add to all of this, the general level of credibility she provided in her testimony before Congress, and you have to think that she could not have made up this story even if she wanted to.

We also know that she has been talking about being assaulted by a man who later became a federal judge for years now. She has at times mentioned Kavanaugh by name, and this is in conversations with friends and in therapy sessions with her husband. Her therapist documented this going back to 2012, long before she knew a Republican would be elected in 2016 and that Kavanaugh might be nominated to the Supreme Court. And she didn’t wait until Kavanaugh had actually been nominated to contact her congresswoman and ultimately one of her senators with this information. She reacted while President Trump was still weighing his options and she thought she might be able to dissuade him from picking Kavanaugh.

This all adds up, for me, to someone who is telling the truth as best as they can remember it, and I think she remembers the most critical details better than she would like. That she took and passed a lie detector test doesn’t add much for me because I don’t put a lot of stock in lie detectors, but it certainly is one more example of a failure to discredit her story.

And what is her story, really? Why does it matter?

If Brett Kavanaugh got really drunk at a friend’s house when he was seventeen and tried to force himself of a fifteen year old, and he doesn’t remember it, would that of necessity count for more than everything he has done in the intervening thirty-six years to reach this position in life?  What if he no longer drank alcohol and was truly sorrowful for many of the things he had done in his life when under the influence? What if he acknowledged that, while he doesn’t remember the incident, it’s not impossible that it or something like it did in fact occur and that he’s terribly sorry if it did?  What if he acknowledged that he acted disrespectfully toward women when he was an adolescent and young adult, and said he has learned to be a better person? What if he were honest about how much he drank and what the high school Ralph Club was about?

In truth, Dr. Ford was raising a question about Kavanaugh’s character when she knew him, and the logical thing to do in response is look at his character in the intervening years and in the present to see if anything has changed.  Is he still the kind of person who would shove a girl into a bedroom, turn up the music so her cries could not be heard, and try to force himself on her?  In other words, even if the allegations are true, are they disqualifying?

If Kavanaugh had character, he’d admit that he can’t rule out that this event happened and he’d explain precisely why he can’t rule it out and express real genuine remorse about it. And if still wanted the job, he could then make his case for it.  I think most people would not conclude that he should be rejected under those circumstances, at least not solely for the allegations put forward by Dr. Ford.

But Kavanaugh cannot even admit the most basic of facts, like that his bathroom dorm on the Old Campus at Yale was so covered in vomit that no one would use it or that he often got so staggering drunk both in high school and in college that he became aggressive and belligerent, as many witnesses now attest. He says he never once drank so much that he suffered even partial memory loss despite acknowledging that he sometimes drank too much.

Mark Judge, the other participant in the alleged assault on Dr. Ford, has admitted he is an alcoholic, quit drinking, and written a tell-all book about his time spent partying with Kavanaugh. He has admitted to his girlfriend that he once joined other boys to have sex with a girl who was too drunk, and expressed genuine remorse about it. Under the circumstances, I’d rather have Judge be the judge.

Dr. Ford began a conversation about Kavanaugh’s character. She raised a red flag. And that has allowed the whole world to step back and look more carefully at the kind of person Kavanaugh is and has been. He won’t tell the truth about nearly anything in his high school yearbook, calling “Devil’s Triangle” a drinking game and denying that he and other football players basically advertised that they’d run a train on a girl from a neighboring school. All the references to vomit he made in his yearbook and in his Beach Week letter are really just references to his “weak stomach,” which evidently followed him to New Haven. He can’t even be honest about the drinking age in Maryland. Instead of contrition or humility he spins out Clinton conspiracy theories to explain Ford’s motives.

Meanwhile, Kavanaugh’s supporters are left trying to raise doubt about whether Dr. Ford exaggerated her fear of flying or maybe knew how to cheat on a lie detector test.

When I balance these things out, it’s clear to me that one person is a whole lot more credible than the other.

But this is no longer about what did or did not happen in that bedroom long ago. It’s about what this process has revealed about Kavanaugh. I believe Dr. Ford for all the reasons set out above but what I believe now more than ever is that Kavanaugh should never sit on the Supreme Court.

In fact, following a more thorough investigation, it’s quite possible he should be removed from his position on the DC District Court.

I want to give Politico’s Morning Score some credit for how they reported on indicted and disgraced Rep. Duncan Hunter’s scurrilous political advertisement that suggests that his opponent is part of a secret Islamic takeover of our country.

RACE-BAITING — A recent ad from embattled GOP Rep. Duncan Hunter went well into the race-baiting territory and “earned” four Pinocchios from The Washington Post Fact Checker’s Salvador Rizzo. Rizzo wrote that the ad used “naked anti-Muslim bias in an effort to scare Californians into voting for an indicted Republican incumbent. The Democrat on the receiving end of these attacks isn’t even Muslim. All the claims in the ad are false, misleading or devoid of evidence.”

— A spokesman for Ammar Campa-Najjar, the Democrat challenging Hunter, forcefully pushed back against the ad. “You know who is responsible for our actions is ourselves, and Duncan Hunter is the one under indictment and who has been stripped of his committee assignments,” campaign spokesman Nick Singer told my POLITICO colleague Jeremy White. “This is a man who is unhinged and is willing to play on our darkest corners, on the racism that has plagued this country for many years.”

If you look carefully, you’ll see that Politico nowhere repeats the actual “false, misleading or devoid of evidence” allegations. Why do Duncan Hunter’s work for him?

Ammar Campa-Najjar, the Democratic nominee in California’s San Diego-based 50th congressional district, is only 29 years old. That means he was not yet born when Black September Palestinian terrorists took Israeli athletes hostage and executed them at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Campa-Najjar’s grandfather was apparently one of the perpetrators of that unconscionable crime. It’s obviously unfair and insane to blame somebody for a crime their grandfather committed nearly two decades before they were born, but it’s also notable that Rep. Hunter is trying to turn this into a question of Islamic influence and terrorism.

Somewhere around seven percent of Palestinians are Christians and Sirhan Sirhan, who was (rightly or wrongly) convicted of assassinating Robert Kennedy, was a Christian who was reportedly incensed about America’s support for Israel. Clearly, Palestinian resistance, whether violent or non-violent, is not a strictly Islamic matter. In any case, Mr. Campa-Najjar is a Mexican-American Palestinian, and he is not a practitioner of the Islamic faith.

And it’s not just the advertisement, either. Duncan Hunter has been making the same case on the stump.

U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter, the Alpine Republican fighting charges of misusing campaign funds, appeared to suggest in a speech to a women’s group that his election opponent is a “radical Muslim” and part of an attempt by Islamists to infiltrate the federal government.

“He changed his name from Ammar Yasser Najjar to Ammar Campa-Najjar so he sounds Hispanic,” Hunter said Monday night, according to audio of the event recorded by Ken Stone of the Times of San Diego.

“He just changed it again; he added a Joseph in there,” Hunter can be heard saying on the audio recording. “So his signs could actually say Joseph Campa or, or something. That is how hard, by the way, that the radical Muslims are trying to infiltrate the U.S. government. You had more Islamists run for office this year at the federal level than ever before in U.S. history.”

Here’s how the campaign responded when the Los Angeles Times called them on their rhetoric:

Hunter campaign spokesman Mike Harrison said the candidate was not calling Campa-Najjar a Muslim.

“He never made the claim that his opponent is Muslim. That’s for his opponent to answer,” Harrison said Wednesday. “What we have heard is he’s claimed to be a Christian, and again, that’s for Ammar’s campaign to discuss.”

In his speech, Hunter also brought up the fact that Campa-Najjar’s grandfather was a mastermind of the terrorist attack at the 1972 Munich Olympics that killed 11 Israelis. The grandfather was killed by Israeli commandos in 1973.

“What is a fact is our opponent has changed his name; that’s not in dispute. He does have family ties to terrorists; that’s not in dispute,” Harrison said. “Mr. Hunter was not saying he’s a Muslim.”

Duncan Hunter said that Ammar Campa-Najjar’s supposed name change demonstrated “how hard…the radical Muslims are trying to infiltrate the U.S. government,” but he did not say he was Muslim?

Huh. That does not make sense.

And it’s not even a fair description of why he changed his name, which is why the claim earned Four Pinocchios from the Washington Post‘s fact checker.

Campa-Najjar was born Ammar Yasser Najjar. He said he changed his last name to Campa-Najjar in honor of his mother’s family, the Campas, who helped raise him. The name change happened years before this House race in California…

…The claim that Campa-Najjar changed his name to “hide his family’s ties to terrorism” falls flat. “Najjar” is still there in his last name, just as “Ammar” remains his given name. The timing of these changes, well before this campaign began, for us dispel the notion that Campa-Najjar is trying to hide his family’s past from voters.

Both Duncan Hunter and his wife have been indicted for using more than a quarter million dollars in campaign funds to support their lifestyle, and it looks like a slam-dunk case. Yet, the district is so Republican that Hunter is still leading by fifteen points in the latest poll. Maybe Rep. Hunter doesn’t believe the polling data or maybe he’s just one of the worst people in the world, but he’s obviously not taking any chances with these kind of campaign tactics.

With any luck, the unfairness and bigotry and hatred and inaccuracy involved here will lead to a backlash and cause him to lose a campaign he was almost assured of winning despite his looming felony conviction.

It’s interesting to read the following paragraph without having any idea of the context. What were they asking about? What did Eric Trump do?

The White House referred a request for comment to the president’s outside counsel. Jay Sekulow, a lawyer for Mr. Trump, declined to comment. A person close to the situation said Eric Trump had acted as the president’s son and not in his role as a company executive. The Trump Organization declined to comment. Lanny Davis, a lawyer for Mr. Cohen, declined to comment.

Here we can surmise that something occurred that would be illegal or at least highly unethical if Eric Trump did it in his capacity as a Trump Organization chief executive, but completely kosher and forgivable if he did it strictly as a favor to this father. In a way, that this argument can even be made is part of the problem with having a president who has not adequately divested himself from a sprawling business empire. If what Eric Trump did was wrong, then maybe Eric Trump shouldn’t be put in a position to choose between ethics and family. And if what he did is ordinarily considered a crime, then it’s a problem that his relationship with the president is inoculating him against accountability.

So, what did Eric Trump do?

President Trump personally directed an effort in February to stop Stormy Daniels from publicly describing an alleged sexual encounter with Mr. Trump, people familiar with the events say.

In a phone call, Mr. Trump instructed his then-lawyer Michael Cohen to seek a restraining order against the former adult-film actress, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, through a confidential arbitration proceeding, one of the people said. Messrs. Trump and Cohen had learned shortly before that Ms. Clifford was considering giving a media interview about her alleged relationship with Mr. Trump, despite having signed an October 2016 nondisclosure agreement.

Mr. Trump told Mr. Cohen to coordinate the legal response with Eric Trump, one of the president’s sons, and another outside lawyer who had represented Mr. Trump and the Trump Organization in other matters, the people said. Eric Trump, who is running the company with his brother in Mr. Trump’s absence, then tasked a Trump Organization staff attorney in California with signing off on the arbitration paperwork, these people said.

Set aside the dysfunction of this family which has the father’s second son working to cover up that his dad cheated on his third wife by having an extramarital tryst with a pornographic actress in the same hotel room he had shared the night before with a Playboy bunny. Eric Trump shouldn’t have been using Trump Organization employees to do legal work on this. That’s why they argued the lawyer wasn’t really doing this work as an employee, but more as a favor.

In March, the Trump Organization denied any role in the arbitration, saying its lawyer assisted in her “individual capacity.” At the same time, the White House issued blanket denials when asked about a hush payment to Ms. Clifford and directed questions to Mr. Cohen, who had called the deal a private transaction between himself and the former adult-film star.

When a chief executive orders an employee to do some legal work, it turns out neither of them are doing anything as part of the company. If either of them were, that would be a problem, but they’re just working informally–moonlighting, if you will.

On Friday, we saw the highly unusual development of a federal judge ruling that 200 members of Congress actually do have standing to take the president to court for violating the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution by doing business with foreign governments at his hotels and resorts. This will be appealed to the Supreme Court where, if seated, Brett Kavanaugh could be the deciding vote. But however the dispute is decided legally, it’s another example of why it’s problematic to have a president who has not truly divested himself from a business. For one thing, the Trump Organization stands to make or lose money based on decisions Trump makes. For another, foreign leaders and domestic lobbyists know they can curry favor with the president by patronizing his businesses.

According to Forbes, the president is losing money despite his best efforts to profit off his presidency.

By refusing to divest, Trump raised an unprecedented question: How would the most divisive presidency in modern American history affect a company built on the president’s persona? Forbes has been working to answer that question since the moment Trump got elected, interviewing nearly 200 colleagues, partners and industry observers. While the experiment continues to unfold, in real time, the early results are in. Much as he’s trying—and he’s definitely trying—Donald Trump is not getting richer off the presidency. Just the opposite. His net worth, by our calculation, has dropped from $4.5 billion in 2015 to $3.1 billion the last two years, knocking the president 138 spots lower on the latest The Forbes 400 (which will be published in full tomorrow).

I’d argue that this is about the worst possible result. A president with a healthy, profitable business would have some ethical conflicts, but a president with a faltering unprofitable business has too much motive to use his position to try to turn things around.

Trump isn’t a sympathetic example here, but I could picture another businessperson whose company and assets were harmed by his political career for whom we might feel some genuine empathy. It shouldn’t cost someone a fortune or innocent employees their jobs just because a businessman runs for and wins the presidency.

That’s why total divestiture is an absolutely vital requirement. If you don’t want to give up or damage your business, then don’t take the risk of running for president.

In fairness, Trump didn’t think he would win and doesn’t appear to have even contemplated that he might. But he did win, and then he didn’t do what he was ethically required to do as a result.

If the Democrats take control of Congress, I’ll be fascinated to see how they try to handle this.

August is traditionally termed “the silly season” in the northern hemisphere anglophone media because that is the time when governments, legislatures, and their associated media handlers are on holidays, and newspapers are stuck with having to make up their own news. Many editors keep a stock of non-time specific stories with which they can use to fill their column inches and keep their punters entertained on the beach or wherever else they feel an urge to keep connected to “the real world”.

In the UK, the silly season often extends to the party conference season in late September/early October just ahead of when Parliament, the Courts and the Universities  traditionally emerged from their summer hiatus. It probably dates back to the time that September was the harvest season, and no one could be expected to be away from their country estates until the crops were safely garnered in.

And so we have the Labour Party conference where Corbyn continued his slow dance of moving to the political centre, supporting a second referendum as a decidedly second choice to his preferred option of a general election to put the Tory government out of it’s Brexit misery. Now we have the Tories disporting themselves in their patriotic red white and blue colours, declaring their undying love for the Union, (the UK, that is) and telling Jonny foreigner where to get off. It is time for the EU to get realistic, apparently, and put forward an alternative to the Prime Minister’s absolutely fabulous Chequers proposals. You couldn’t make this up…
Pat Leahy, political correspondent of the Irish Times (in an email circular) begins by offering some free advice:

If you are a Minister or a Taoiseach dealing directly with Brexit (Yes, Messers Coveney, Donohoe, Varadkar) or a senior official guiding the ship of state in the background or a journalist trying to make sense of the British position or indeed a concerned Irishman or woman who pays attention to these matters: do not, on any account, tune in the Conservative Party conference, currently under way amid Birmingham’s ancient arches and dreaming spires.

It will not do your mental equilibrium any good, and as we are all tediously advised these days, you must mind your mental health, whatever that means.

Symptoms of exposure to the Tory conference include holding your head in your hands and sobbing, banging your head against a wall or shouting “BUT THEY ARE THE ONES LEAVING” and “THE NORTH IS DIFFERENT, THAT’S THE WHOLE POINT OF THE GOOD FRIDAY AGREEMENT” at passing strangers. Should you find yourself experiencing any of these symptoms, on no account should you share your feelings, or attempt to talk to someone about it. Just shut up and get on with things.

Apparently, Dominic Raab, offered the EU this sage advice:

Britain is willing to listen to “alternative ways” of delivering Brexit as negotiations with the European Union move into their final phase, Brexit secretary Dominic Raab has told the Conservative Party conference. “If the EU want a deal, they need to get serious. And they need to do it now,” he said.

The Irish Times feels constrained to counter:

It’s usually wise to treat the overblown rhetoric of party conferences as theatrical “noises off”, fodder for an excitable rank-and-file. But when a foreign minister speaks, even to party loyalists, the world listens.

What then are we to make of British foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt’s preposterous and offensive comparison on Sunday, echoing the reactionary leaders of Poland and Hungary, of the EU to the Soviet Union, a “prison” whose inmates are punished for trying to escape. Describing the EU’s Brexit approach as an attempt to “keep the club together” by punishing “a member who leaves”, Hunt asked: “What happened to the confidence and ideals of the European dream? The EU was set up to protect freedom. It was the Soviet Union that stopped people leaving.

“The lesson from history is clear: If you turn the EU club into a prison, the desire to get out won’t diminish. It will grow and we won’t be the only prisoner that will want to escape.”

Britain’s foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt said it was “counterproductive” to “insult” Britain’s referendum vote talks. “One might expect tact and sensitivity would be the order of the day for a country’s senior diplomat. Yet your comparison with the Soviet Union could not be calculated to be more offensive to states that remember that regime only too well.”

Prisoner? Yet the door is open. You are free to leave any time, Mr Hunt. Go, and take your baggage with you. But the trouble is that you don’t want just to leave. You want to retain all the rights of those remaining incarcerated – free lunches, participation in communal training, the right to sell your wares in the cellblocks unhindered ….

And then there’s the small matter of your other commitments. Like that to Ireland and a frictionless Border – there’s your insistence that when you make a choice to leave the EU, it is the EU, not you, which must change its rules to accommodate your obligations to your own citizens.

At a time when negotiations with partners are particularly sensitive, with 10 days to the crucial October summit, one might expect tact and sensitivity would be the order of the day for a country’s senior diplomat. Yet your comparison with the Soviet Union could not be calculated to be more offensive to states that remember that regime only too well, to leaders like Angela Merkel who emerged from that system. “Open a history book from time to time,” the European Commission’s spokesman suggested politely yesterday.

As Baiba Braže, Latvia’s ambassador to Britain, tweeted: “Soviets killed, deported, exiled and imprisoned 100 thousands of Latvia’s inhabitants after the illegal occupation in 1940, and ruined lives of 3 generations. The EU has brought prosperity, equality, growth, respect. #StrongerTogether.” The EU will take no lectures from a Tory minister on protecting freedom.

And Hunt is not the only Tory playing dangerous conference games. Prime minister Theresa May’s repeated insistence in recent days that the EU has yet to explain its objections to UK proposals is patent nonsense.

It is also verging on a level of bad faith that bodes ill for any prospect of agreement.

As if that were not enough, Arlene Foster, Leader of the DUP has also been attending the Tory conference, speaking of her admiration for Boris Johnson, and having this to say about the Good Friday Agreement, which brought peace to Northern Ireland even though it was opposed by the DUP every step of the way:

DUP leader Arlene Foster has said the Belfast Agreement should not be considered untouchable in Brexit negotiations.

Speaking to the Daily Telegraph, Mrs Foster said it was not a sacrosanct piece of legislation.

She said: “It has been deeply frustrating to hear people who voted Remain and in Europe talk about Northern Ireland as though we can’t touch the Belfast Agreement.

“Things evolve, even in the EU context.”

Mrs Foster also said she wanted to see more focus on the positives of Brexit.

“I think the reason why so many people are turned off by Brexit is because they are being fed a diet of negativity – whether it’s infighting, Brussels, being disrespected by people over there.

“We haven’t been able to talk about the aspirations for the nation [because] we’ve spent so much time arguing about what’s happened, is it going to be a disaster for Ireland in inverted commas, instead of actually focusing on what we can achieve in the UK with the Brexit negotiations.”

She’s right about one thing: No one has been able to articulate the benefits of Brexit for Northern Ireland, mainly because there aren’t any. But fear not: Boris Johnson is about to address the conference today, and he is a noted scholar on all things Irish. NOT.

Mrs Foster was speaking ahead of the Tory party conference where Boris Johnson will use his speech to issue a clarion call to activists to “believe in Conservative values”.

In what will undoubtedly be seen as a pitch to replace Theresa May as leader, Mr Johnson will not only restate his opposition to the prime minister’s handling of Brexit but call on Tories to focus on law and order, tax cuts and house-building in order to defeat Labour.

As Mrs May celebrated her 62nd birthday, Mr Johnson was pictured jogging through a field near his Oxfordshire home, in a photo apparently designed to mock the prime minister’s famous memories of “running through wheatfields” as a mischievous schoolgirl.

Mrs Foster praised Mr Johnson’s “belief” and “spirit” and said she’d be happy to work with him as prime minister.

It should be noted that the Tory Party is formally named the “Conservative and Unionist” party, but its links are traditionally more with the anglophile “Ulster Unionist Party”, not with the Paisleyite Free Presbyterian DUP traditionally more closely associated with Scottish “planters” of Presbyterian stock: I.e. people who emigrated form Scotland to take over lands confiscated from Irish Catholics who failed to aligned themselves with the British crown.

So while all the talk now is of an alignment between the DUP and the Tory party, this is an alignment strictly for short term politically expedient pragmatic motives. Culturally, there is little love lost between them, which may also explain why Arlene Foster has not been slow to speak well of Boris Johnson at a time when any such comments might not go down well with any remaining Theresa May faithful.

For some reason the EU27 is supposed to take all this guff on the chin as one would indulge a 4 year old engaged in a petulant screaming session. The EU27 are expected to re-engage in talks next week as if none of this had happened, or if it did, that it was purely for domestic consumption. We shall see. There is every prospect of the Brexit talks going completely off the rails, such has been the emotional gulf which has opened up between them at this late stage in the talks, at a time when negotiators are usually engaged in trying to minimize the the remaining gaps between opposing positions.

Once the conference and silly season is over, next week, Theresa May is expected to unveil her bright new, shining, proposals for the Irish border. Various reports suggest this may include renewed attempts to kick this whole issue into the post Brexit transition period, enabling the UK to blame “EU intransigence” for failing to agree “friction-less trade” in any post Brexit situation resulting in a hard Irish border; giving the currently defunct Northern Ireland Assembly a role in deciding on any “regularity divergence” between the UK and N. Ireland, which might result in some customs controls “in the Irish sea”; and agreeing to full regularity alignment between the UK and EU pending the development of technological solutions to avoiding customs controls at the border. Somehow it is always up to the EU to develop an alternative workable solution.

As Fintan O’Toole notes in the Irish Times, the UK has had many years to develop such “technological solutions” to avoid a hard border between the British territory of Gibraltar which is outside the Customs Union, and Spain, and yet has failed to do so. And that is with a territory with just one border crossing, whereas there are 208 official crossings between N. Ireland and Ireland, and an infinite number of unofficial ones.

But no report entitled “the silly season” would be complete without repeating Boris Johnson’s epic contribution:

In a speech which delighted an audience at the Conservative Party conference, Mr Johnson called for no new taxes and extra health service spending while the room erupted into cheers when he said Mrs May needed “to chuck Chequers,” as her Brexit proposals are known.

With just six months before Britain leaves the European Union, Mrs May’s precarious position at the helm of her party has been further shaken by criticism of her plans, both at home and in Brussels.

Mr Johnson, who became the figurehead for the campaign to leave the EU, has been one of her loudest critics.

“Do not believe them when they say there is no other plan and no alternative,” Mr Johnson told the hundreds of Conservatives who queued to get a seat in a 1,500-seat conference hall.

“This is the moment to chuck Chequers,” he said. “If we cheat the electorate, and Chequers is a cheat, we will escalate that sense of mistrust.”

Mrs May’s team had hoped the party’s annual conference would hand her a platform to revitalise a pledge she made when she became prime minister in 2016 to help those people who are “just about managing” and try to steal the initiative from Labour.

But the conference has been dominated by Brexit, with eurosceptic lawmakers attracting hundreds of Conservative members to their events on the fringes. Only handfuls turned out to hear ministers’ speeches in the main hall.

I made an easy prediction in ‘Chasing Coral’: awards and nominations and looking forward to next year’s Emmys 4 last December.

I expect I’ll be able to tell my students about “Chasing Coral” earning an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Nature Documentary next summer and its likely win in the fall.  I’m looking forward to that.

That happened, as “Chasing Coral” earned a nomination for Outstanding Nature Documentary at the News and Documentary Emmy Awards along with nominations in two other categories, Best Documentary and Outstanding Music & Sound.  It is competing with “Putin’s Revenge” on Frontline, “The Witness” from Independent Lens, “Life, Animated,” an Oscar nominee for Documentary Feature in 2017, and “My Love, Don’t Cross That River” from POV for Best Documentary.  Out of that field, I’m rooting for “Chasing Coral,” but “Life, Animated” is very tough competition.

That written, both “Chasing Coral” and “Last Men in Aleppo” have already won a prestigious award for documentaries, the Peabody Award.  Here is the award profile for “Chasing Coral.”

Climate change is often described as a slow-moving catastrophe, a serious yet distant threat. “Chasing Coral,” a Netflix documentary, upends that comfortable premise. As waters warm, coral reefs starve, with massive bleaching events occurring at record pace unseen beneath the waves. Approximately 90 percent of coral reefs may be lost over the coming decades. “Chasing Coral” dramatically illuminates this ongoing disaster, first immersing the audience in the gorgeous and diverse marine world that is the Great Barrier Reef, and then documenting–using underwater time-lapse cameras invented specifically for the project–how vast swaths of it die. The emotional impact is heightened by watching a team of passionate scientists and idealistic young assistants witness the bleaching event, which suggests nothing less than a kind of underwater holocaust. Somehow, in spite of the scope of the tragedy, the documentary nevertheless remains hopeful, calling for engagement and urging action. For bringing climate change and its deadly consequences into sharp and immediate focus, “Chasing Coral” wins a Peabody Award.

And now, director Jeff Orlowski’s acceptance speech.

This surprisingly emotional film expertly documents, through time-lapse underwater photographs, the effects of climate change on the rapid decimation of the world’s coral reefs, events known as coral bleaching that affected 29 percent of the shallow-water coral in the Great Barrier Reef in 2016 alone.

“A story that matters because the Earth matters” — indeed, it is.

Follow over the jump for the other nominees competing against “Chasing Coral” in the other two categories.

While I think that “Chasing Coral” is the favorite for Outstanding Nature Documentary, I also think its main competition for that award is the “Nature” episode “Yosemite,” which also has three nominations at the News and Documentary Emmy Awards and also examines the effects of climate change, this time on my favorite National Park.  Watch YOSEMITE on NATURE | Official Trailer | PBS.

The Sierra Nevada, a mountain range running about 400 miles along the eastern side of California and stretches into Nevada, is home to three national parks: Sequoia, Kings Canyon and Yosemite. This is a land of giants, whether speaking of trees soaring to nearly 300 feet, or massive stone monoliths far taller than any skyscraper. But the force that has given rise to the earth’s largest living trees and carved out the iconic natural landmarks of the Sierras is water. The role that water has played in the creation and evolution of Yosemite Valley cannot be overstated – feeding its numerous wild rivers and countless waterfalls, and making life in this stone wilderness possible. The second force, crucial to the Giant sequoias’ ability to reproduce, is fire. It is the delicate balance of these two elements, water and fire, that is vital to the continued existence of the wildlife and trees that inhabit the Sierras.

Despite the recent heavy rains and snowfall, scientists are finding that water is scarcer and the threat of fire is more likely as the area continues to experience rising temperatures upsetting that important balance. Geologists, ecologists, researchers and adventurers investigate how the changing climate is affecting Yosemite, one of America’s greatest wildernesses.

CBS This Morning has even more in Documentary explores how climate change is impacting Yosemite.

PBS’ “Nature” series will premiere “Yosemite,” a sublime look at one of our nation’s most stunning national parks. It’s also a sobering one, as the park’s ecosystem is threatened by climate change. Award-winning nature filmmaker Joseph Pontecorvo, who produced, wrote and served as a cinematographer, joins “CBS This Morning: Saturday” to discuss the filming process and the park’s future.

The camera work is indeed lovely and captures the beauty of Yosemite National Park, which is why I think “Yosemite” has a good chance to win Outstanding Cinematography: Documentary.  There, it faces another nominee for Outstanding Nature Documentary, “Ireland’s Wild Coast” for its second nomination.  This is my third choice of Outstanding Nature Documentary.  The other nominees in this category, fellow “Nature” episode “Naledi: One Little Elephant” and “Independent Lens” episode “SEED: The Untold Story,” only have the one nomination for nature documentary.

The other nominees for Outstanding Cinematography: Documentary include the “Frontline” episode “Mosul” and the “Nature” episodes “Forest of the Lynx” and “Spy in the Wild: A NATURE Mini-series.”  “Mosul” also has a nomination for Outstanding Short Documentary, but the two “Nature” episodes only have the nominations for cinematography.  Given the field, my comment last year that nature documentary nominees are well photographed at the News and Documentary Emmy Awards is still true.

For their third nominated category, both “Chasing Coral” and “Yosemite” are competing for Outstanding Music & Sound along with the HBO Documentary Films “Cries From Syria” and “The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble” and the “Independent Lens” episode “Tower.”  The most formidable overall are “Cries from Syria,” which also has nominations for Outstanding Current Affairs Documentary, Outstanding Writing, and Outstanding Research, and “Tower,” about the first mass school shooting in U.S. history at the University of Texas, which earned a nomination for Outstanding Historical Documentary as well.*  However, I suspect “The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble” might be the fiercest competitor for Outstanding Music & Sound; it also earned nominations for Outstanding Arts & Culture Documentary and Outstanding Editing: Documentary.  Still, I’m pleased “Chasing Coral” has this nomination, as it is the closest thing at the News and Documentary Emmy Awards to what I hoped it would get elsewhere, nominations for “Tell Me How Long” for Best Original Song at the Academy Awards and Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics at the Creative Arts Emmy Awards.

Jennifer Rubin makes a good point:

Right-wing male politicians such as Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) have the audacity to declare that [Dr. Christine Blasey] Ford has been victimized … by Democrats. (Maybe ask her?) Even if you thought that, why would anyone say such a stunningly condescending thing? Telling someone who has said she is the victim of a sexual assault whom she should and should not hold responsible for her pain represents a new low in Senate Republicans’ twisted exercise in blame-shifting.

I don’t know who leaked her identity, so I can’t say whether any Democrats were responsible or not. It’s possible that a Democrat is responsible and that Dr. Ford is angry about it, and I guess it might be interesting to see how she’d answer a question about that possibility.

But one thing should be clearer than anything else in this whole sad, sordid mess. Dr. Ford wrote the letter because she did not want Brett Kavanaugh to be nominated to the Supreme Court. Some people might believe that that was her sole motive. Perhaps she made the whole thing up and her motive was no different from anyone else who doesn’t want to see the Republicans put a conservative on the bench. But she singled out Kavanaugh well in advance of him being selected, and we all know why she says she objected to him in particular.

Assuming that at the very least she earnestly believes that Kavanaugh attacked her (even if, implausibly, it was really his doppelgänger), it should be obvious that the seeing him confirmed as a Supreme Court Justice would the cruelest blow she could possibly receive. That would be victimization on a level that dwarfs the terror of being outed as the author of the letter.

Yet, the Republicans continue to act like they’re concerned for her welfare and to blame the Democrats for causing her to suffer. It’s a sickening, cynical argument.

Almost every Republican in the Senate will vote to confirm Kavanaugh. Perhaps it will be unanimous. And every vote for Kavanaugh is a vote to tell Dr. Ford that either she is not believed or that her experience was just part of a youthful indiscretion on Kavanaugh’s part that ultimately does not matter.

They do not care about her in the slightest.

The kicker, of course, is the word “legitimate” in the title of this piece. At its highest levels the FBI has never been legitimate, if that word means uninvolved in political considerations. It was founded by J. Edgar Hoover…a serial blackmailer…and remains today an ally of whatever political situations strike its leadership as most profitable for its own interests.

However…deep-seated FBI hostility to Trump and his regime may yet save the day.

Let us pray it so.

Kavanaugh’s disgraceful performance at the hearings should by itself be reason for his confirmation to fail, but then…as Trump’s ascent to power bears strong witness, there are no laws against acting like an asshole in public.

There are laws against lying to Congress, however. There are none about Congress lying to us, but that’s a matter for another day.

The proofs of Kavanaugh’s lying to Congress are multiplying by the minute, and the general public…that part of the general public that witnessed more than a few minutes of his act at the hearing, anyway…knows full well who and what he is on that evidence alone. If Trump cannot finesse the investigation…or if it becomes clear that Kavanaugh’s ascension to the Supreme Court would cost the Republicans and Trumpists more votes in November than would the withdrawal of his nomination…he is toast. (Always remember…the Republicans and the Trumpists are two different groups. Trump ravaged the Republican Party in the primaries, and those scars are still fresh and well-remembered. Revenge is a dish best served cold.)

Read on:

Brett Kavanaugh was ‘belligerent and aggressive’ drinker, Yale classmate says

Another Yale classmate of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh has challenged the truthfulness of the Supreme Court nominee’s Senate testimony, saying Kavanaugh was often “belligerent and aggressive” when he drank.

Charles “Chad” Ludington, an associate professor of history at North Carolina State University, released a statement saying Kavanaugh “has not told the truth” when denying he never blacked out and otherwise downplayed his drinking as a young man.

“On many occasions I heard Brett slur his words and saw him staggering from alcohol consumption,” Ludington wrote. “When Brett got drunk, he was often belligerent and aggressive.”

—snip—

Last week, prominent Seattle physician and Yale classmate Liz Swisher said Kavanaugh was a “sloppy drunk” in college. And freshman-year roommate James Roche said Kavanaugh was a “notably heavy drinker, even by the standards of the time, and that he became aggressive and belligerent when he was very drunk.”

—snip—

Ludington said he was a varsity basketball player and that Kavanaugh enjoyed socializing with athletes. Ludington said he “cringed” when he watched Kavanaugh describe his drinking on a Fox News TV interview and in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

“In recent days I have become deeply troubled by what has been a blatant mischaracterization by Brett himself of his drinking at Yale,” Ludington wrote. “Brett was a frequent drinker, and a heavy drinker.”

Ludington wrote that heavy drinking as a youth should not “condemn a person for the rest of his life.” But he said the statements Kavanaugh is making now do matter.

“If he lied about his past actions on national television, and more especially while speaking under oath in front of the United States Senate, I believe those lies should have consequences,” Ludington wrote. “It is truth that is at stake, and I believe that the ability to speak the truth, even when it does not reflect well upon oneself, is a paramount quality we seek in our nation’s most powerful judges.”

—snip—

Stay tuned.

Later…

AG

P.S. Trump’s business model is built upon Roy Cohn’s “Never admit to anything” approach. Can he…will he…admit defeat in this situation?

I doubt it, myself.

This will result in another substantial sliver off of his…and the Republicans’…support in November. It will not be so much a “blue” wave as an anti-Trump wave.

Any port in a storm…

AG

Chad Ludington wasn’t a star basketball player at Yale. Over four years, he had six starts and he only averaged 6.4 minutes played per game in his collegiate career. I undoubtedly saw him in action though, because I attended several Princeton-Yale basketball games during my high school years, which overlapped with his college years exactly. I actually learned to enjoy Princeton basketball in middle school, when Michelle Obama’s brother Craig Robinson was absolutely dominating the Ivy League. But he graduated the year before Ludington’s freshman year and neither of them went on to be NBA stars. Robinson was drafted by the Philadelphia Sixers but did not make the team. Both he and Ludington had brief careers playing ball in Europe and then they got serious about having more realistic careers.

For Robinson, that meant coaching the sport. He eventually was successful enough to land a job as head coach of the Oregon State University Beavers, and now he is the vice president for player and organizational development for the New York Knicks. For Ludington, it meant getting a doctorate in Philosophy and History from Columbia University, writing a book (The Politics of Wine in Britain: A New Cultural History), and landing a job at North Carolina State University as an associate professor.

Ludington is in the news this week because he used to socialize with Brett Kavanaugh and he wrote a letter to the New York Times that was published on Monday detailing some of his firsthand experiences, which contradict Kavanaugh’s sworn testimony before Congress about his drinking history. One reason that Ludington and Kavanaugh drank together is because Kavanaugh was also a basketball player at Yale, although he was never able to crack the varsity roster.  Nonetheless, they practiced together and ran in the same circles, went to the same parties, and shared a common culture.

Ludington acknowledges that he would be a hypocrite to condemn Kavanaugh for his college drinking, but he considered his testimony grossly dishonest.  The most glaring example he gave of Kavanaugh’s behavior seems to have disturbed Ludington enough to cause him to create some distance from the future federal judge.

When I watched Brett and his wife being interviewed on Fox News on Monday, and when I watched Brett deliver his testimony under oath to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday, I cringed. For the fact is, at Yale, and I can speak to no other times, Brett was a frequent drinker, and a heavy drinker. I know, because, especially in our first two years of college, I often drank with him. On many occasions I heard Brett slur his words and saw him staggering from alcohol consumption, not all of which was beer. When Brett got drunk, he was often belligerent and aggressive. On one of the last occasions I purposely socialized with Brett, I witnessed him respond to a semi-hostile remark, not by defusing the situation, but by throwing his beer in the man’s face and starting a fight that ended with one of our mutual friends in jail.

You tend to remember incidents that result in fights and arrests better than incidents that don’t. You also tend to take note of people who are volatile when drunk because you have to be careful what you say to them. Kavanaugh’s college room and suite-mates have already painted a grim picture of Kavanaugh’s early college years.

Especially disgusting was the shared bathroom, which was always covered in vomit. Kavanaugh and his crowd, whom [Kit] Winter characterizes as “loud, obnoxious frat boy-like drunks” were the hardest drinkers on campus even back then, when hard drinking did not hold the stigma it does today. In a statement earlier this week, [James] Roche recalled Kavanaugh “frequently drinking excessively and becoming incoherently drunk,” and Winter corroborates that recollection. “There was a lot of vomit in the bathroom. No one ever cleaned it up. It was disgusting. It wasn’t incidental. It wasn’t, ‘Oh, this weekend someone puked in the bathroom.’ People were constantly puking in the bathroom. Constantly.” Lori Adams, a retired psychiatrist in Underhill, Vermont, was a friend of Winter’s at Yale. “I remember,” she says, “that you couldn’t use the bathroom because his roommates vomited all over the floor and didn’t clean it up.”

His freshmen roommate James Roche also used the words “belligerent” and “aggressive” to describe Kavanaugh’s drunken persona.

When Kavanaugh’s high school and college drinking first came up, it was in the context of an alleged sexual assault he committed while highly intoxicated.  The accuser, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, is 100 percent sure it was Kavanaugh who attempted to rape her, but she also said that she believed she was able to escape largely because Kavanaugh was so drunk at the time.  Under those circumstances, it’s not unlikely that Kavanaugh would not even have remembered what he had done.

Understanding that his denials would be discounted if he admitted drinking to excess, Kavanaugh has been unwilling to admit that he was a heavy drinker in high school or college. But, in the process, he has clearly and deliberately made an effort to mislead Congress while testifying under oath.  He has denied ever drinking to the point that he had only a partial recollection or no recollection at all of what happened the night before.  Under direct questioning from the Republicans’ own expert on sexual crimes, Kavanaugh refused to admit that he had ever passed out or blacked out from drinking too much alcohol.

Contrast that with the fact that his dorm bathroom was so consistently covered in vomit that people still remember not being able to use it.

Clearly, it is plausible that Kavanaugh had an encounter with his accuser, and did not remember it.  All his lies have been aimed at preventing us from coming to that conclusion, but we have enough witness testimony, and the testimony of his own high school yearbook, to know that he might not remember having committed the assault.

Two other concerns have emerged during this process. The first is a matter of temperament. Kavanaugh’s associates in college are in agreement that he was an aggressive and belligerent drunk, and I think we all have known people who are transformed in that way by heavy alcohol consumption. But Kavanaugh’s appearance last week before Congress was also alarmingly aggressive and belligerent, and he was presumably sober at the time.  It seems to me like an even temperament is an asset in all circumstances, but it’s particularly valued in judges.  Kavanaugh has a very uneven temperament, to put it mildly, and he says he still likes beer, which means he hasn’t concluded that he and the sauce are not good partners.  I don’t think this is a good recipe for a lifetime appointment.

The second concern is honesty, and we certainly want judges to be honest. Kavanaugh has clearly dissembled about things great and small, and that’s the primary reason why people should care about his college drinking. It’s not that he partied hard; it’s that he denied engaging in the kind of heavy drinking that causes memory loss when it’s as clear as day that he got completely trashed on a regular basis.

Back when I was a high schooler watching Princeton play Yale in basketball, I never imagined that I was looking at the brother of a future First Lady or the guy who would one day tell the FBI that a Supreme Court nominee had perjured himself before Congress. But these are elite institutions, and I probably should have realized that the guys on the court were destined for bigger things.