Today in Supreme Court History: February 12, 1965

2/12/1965: Justice Brett Kavanaugh's birthday.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh

Comments

[Cal Cetín]

And his first act was to touch some woman's breasts.

[Dr. Ed 2]

A keg with 55 candles on it.

You could do that with the tub-style keg (with handles) that are popular today -- but not with the keg-shaped kegs popular in the 1980's.

[Dr. Ed 2]

"And his first act was to touch some woman’s breasts

I imagine his mothers -- as that is what infants tend to do.

[Cal Cetín]

Thank you for explaining the joke, Captain Obvious.

[grb]

Since we’re celebrating Brett Kavanaugh it’s probably worth noting he was the most corrupt partisan hack to ever run a special counsel investigation. He spent over three years “investigating” the suicide of Vince Foster - not that far from twice the length of Mueller’s inquiry. He inherited a finished & thorough five-month investigation from Robert Fiske and added nothing to it except trivia in the margins. He later gleefully admitted he knew Foster killed himself all along.

So what did he “investigate” ? Basically, it was a scam where Kavanaugh recycled dreg from the right-wing gutter press. An Ambrose Evans-Pritchard or Christopher Ruddy would print Foster was a secret agent being blackmailed by Mossad. No doubt smirking, Kavanaugh would then dispatch the FBI to run down this “theory”. Meanwhile, he was leaking like a sieve right back people producing this garbage. He kept this charade churning for years.

Meanwhile, Foster’s surviving family begged for an end to what they considered a torment. Remember Kavanaugh whining about his family’s suffering over a few days of hearings? Well, he put the Foster family thru years of hell – and over what he knew was a farce all along. Two-plus years in and he sicced the FBI on Foster’s teenage daughter for a lock of her hair. (“We have Foster’s hair,” an agent working for Mr. Kavanaugh reported in triumph.). Why? The daughter was blonde & Kavanaugh was still hoping to prove Vince & Hillary had “done it”.

Special counsel investigations have a deservedly poor reputation, but only one was a total sham from beginning to end : Kavanaugh’s. No one else holding the position has ever shown such contempt for the law.

[Dilan Esper]

Kavanaugh did not distinguish himself during the Foster prong of the investigation.

But I would argue that his memo on examining Bill Clinton was correct. Bill Clinton had one goal before the Grand Jury- to maintain the fig leaf of his defense that he did not "really" commit perjury because he only had oral sex with Monica and that didn't constitute "sexual relations" under the definition.

The problem is, that was not true. And Kavanaugh knew it. In fact, Bill Clinton had done things with fingers and cigars that clearly fell within the definition of sexual relations. He wasn't giving a careful legalistic answer to Paula Jones' lawyers based on a weird definition- he was lying.

The Starr lawyers who questioned Clinton were afraid of him. They were afraid of asking about sex in detail. So they let him slide, and to this day Clinton and some defenders claim he didn't technically lie under oath. That shouldn't have happened. Kavanaugh's memo was right. You ask him what he did with that cigar, and then if he denies it, you ask him why Monica would ever lie about anything like that.

[grb]

A lot depends on how you see Ken Starr. I've always been inclined to view him with just a sliver of sympathy and here's why:

One year into his tenure as Special Counsel, Starr pretty much knew where he stood. Whitewater was a joke. The premise there was - yeah - McDougal defrauded the Clintons - but you might still assume the parts of his fraud that tangentially benefited them might also have included them. But even after one year that was clearly going nowhere - and Starr's five-plus years never came close to changing that equation.

If Whitewater was a joke, the rest of Starr's crap was even more laughable & pathetic. Kavanaugh did his best, pitching the Foster suicide as a profitable business plan (GOP-wise), but that was just another joke (albeit a particularly ugly one). So Starr decided to bail, announcing he was accepting a position at Pepperdine.

And was eviscerated by his tribal brethren on the Right. Their response was cold rage & scorching fury. It was clear Kenny would never warm a right-wing think-tank seat or eat another conservative conference rubbery chicken unless he stuck it out & got Clinton. If blow jobs was what it took in the end, blow jobs just had to do.

But he did try to escape his fate. There was one brief moment where he tried to save his integrity. I have to grant him that.

(It's more than I can say about Kavanaugh)