Quote:Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s freshman-year roommate is accusing Kavanaugh of lying under oath about his college drinking habits. Jamie Roche, who shared a dorm with Kavanaugh at Yale, penned an op-ed for Slate in which he said Kavanaugh “baldly” lied under oath “without hesitation or reservation.” “His willingness to lie to avoid embarrassment throws doubt on his denials about the larger questions of sexual assault,” Roche wrote in the op-ed. Roche also told CNN Wednesday night that the Supreme Court nominee was “notably heavier in his drinking than other people” in college, and offered examples purporting to contradict Kavanaugh’s testimony. “I didn’t socialize with Brett,” Roche told CNN. “But being in the same room where he slept, I saw him when he arrived at home regularly and I saw him in the morning.  And I can tell you that he would come home and he was incoherent, stumbling.” “He would sometimes be singing,” Roche continued. “He would throw up.  And then in the morning would have a lot of trouble getting out of bed. … I saw him both what I would consider black out drunk and also dealing the repercussions of that in the morning.”

Quote:Forgoing these interviews undermines the FBI’s report and makes it easy for critics to contend that this has been a sham investigation. So why would the White House take such a step? The Democrats on Senate Judiciary Committee have a theory: Trump White House officials blocked an interview with Ford because they were worried about the FBI questioning Kavanaugh.  According to Democratic sources, committee Democrats have concluded that the White House believed that a Kavanaugh interview would be too risky.

During the hearing last week on Ford’s allegations, Kavanaugh frequently dodged questions from Democratic senators, who each were limited to five-minutes of time. He filibustered, he sidestepped queries, and he was often combative. And during the Republicans’ allotted time for questioning, Rachel Mitchell, the Arizona prosecutor retained by the committee GOPers, was not given the chance to pose many queries to Kavanaugh. Though the committee Republicans—all men—relied on Mitchell to question Ford, when it was Kavanaugh’s turn at the witness table, they essentially shoved Mitchell aside in order to issue grandstanding speeches defending Kavanaugh and assailing the Democrats. (See Lindsey Graham.)  Kavanaugh, that is, did not undergo a true and professional grilling. An FBI interview would have been a much different experience.

The White House instruction to not interview Ford and Kavanaugh, as could have been expected, has created a firestorm and undermined the credibility of the the FBI’s work and its report. The case remains unresolved. To many, it looks like the fix was in. Yet Trump and his aides, including White House counsel Don McGahn (a longtime friend of Kavanaugh), apparently preferred taking this hit over having Kavanaugh face federal investigators. It does make one wonder just what Trump, McGahn, and other White House officials feared about a Kavanaugh sit-down with the FBI.

Quote:Twenty-three years ago I crossed swords with a younger Brett Kavanaugh in one of the weirdest and most disturbing episodes of my career as a journalist. What happened leaves me in no doubt that he lacks judicial character and is unfit to serve on the US Supreme Court for the next thirty years or more, whatever his political ideology.

He was not a teenager. It related to his duties in the mid-1990s as Assistant Independent Council for the Starr investigation, then probing Bill and Hillary Clinton in the most sensitive case in the country.

Brett Kavanaugh sits behind Kenneth Starr during his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee regarding the possible impeachment of President Bill Clinton in 1998CREDIT: DAVID HUME KENNERLY/GETTY IMAGES

To my surprise, the incident has suddenly become a second front in his nomination saga on Capitol Hill. Senator Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, has accused him of violating secrecy laws by revealing the details of a federal grand jury. “Disclosing grand jury information is against the law,” she told Politico. She said it also showed he had misled the Senate by assuring categorically that he had never leaked grand jury material to journalists.

Sen Feinstein released a ‘smoking gun’ document from the archive files of the Starr investigation. It shows Mr Kavanaugh’s efforts to suppress a news story about his wild cross-examination of a witness, including a wayward discussion of “genitalia” that particularly worried him. This piqued my interest since I am named in the document and the witness – Patrick Knowlton – was in a sense ‘my witness’..

Quote:A former Yale classmate of Brett Kavanaugh, who lived with him tells Ari Melber he attempted to contact the FBI but the FBI failed to return the call. The former classmate, William Scheuerman, says he knows of others who may have potentially corroborating information, including someone who recalls Deborah Ramirez tell him about her allegation in the years it is alleged to have occurred. Former Judge, Robert S. Smith also joins Ari Melber to discuss why he has retracted his support for Kavanaugh, citing the most recent hearings, where he appears to have mislead the Senate.

Quote:Lawyers for Christine Blasey Ford, the first woman to publicly accuse Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault, blasted senators on Friday for "false" claims about the days-long FBI investigation into the allegations ahead of Friday's cloture vote. In a statement late Friday, attorneys Debra Katz, Lisa Banks and Michael Bromwich said the FBI's supplemental background investigation, which included interviews with nine individuals in connection with the allegations, was not "meaningful," as Kavanaugh and Ford were not interviewed or allowed to provide further evidence outside of what was presented to the Senate Judiciary Committee during last week's hearing. "An FBI investigation that did not include interviews of Dr. Ford and Judge Kavanaugh is not a meaningful investigation in any sense of the word," the attorneys wrote. "Had the FBI interviewed Dr. Ford, she would have answered questions about Judge Kavanaugh’s assault, including questions that Ms. Mitchell and the Judiciary Committee members failed to ask during the hearing," they added. "She would have provided corroborating evidence, including her medical records and access to the phone from which she sent messages to a reporter about the assault prior to his nomination to the Supreme Court."

Quote:Hillary Clinton is drawing a contrast between the sexual misconduct allegations against her husband, former President Clinton, and those leveled against President Trump. In an interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour, said the main difference between the allegations is that there was an investigation led by Republicans into the claims against her husband, while Clinton said there has been no serious investigation of Trump.  "There's a very significant difference, and that is the intense, long-lasting, partisan investigation that was conducted in the '90s," Clinton said. "If the Republicans, starting with President Trump on down, want a comparison, they should welcome such an investigation themselves," she added.

Quote:Meanwhile, last fall, the Republicans were anxious that the impending “Blue Tsunami” in the mid-term elections just might wipe away Republican majorities in one or both houses of Congress and lead to strengthening voting rights, the Affordable Care Act, and Roe v Wade. To stop that kind of legislation, which is supported by the vast majority of Americans, would require an impenetrable conservative majority on the Court to act as a bulwark.

As a result, for the Republican party leadership, there was no rule that could not be invented, ignored, twisted, or lied about to secure that goal.
Yet, in its rush to fill the seat, the Republicans, like eager buyers, ignored warning signals that the House of Kavanaugh was not as solid as it originally appeared. Numerous credible allegations of sexual assault were brought against Kavanaugh. And, of course, there was Kavanaugh’s unforgettable rage-filled partisan opening statement.

That was more than enough for the American Bar Association to announce that it would re-evaluate Kavanaugh’s ABA rating. The National Council of Churches wanted his nomination withdrawn. The Jesuits backed away from him. Faculty and students from his alma mater urged the senate to vote “no.” More than 2,000 law professors came out against Kavanaugh’s elevation to the highest court in the land. Even former Justice John Paul Stevens declared that after that partisan rant, it was clear that Kavanaugh was unfit and didn’t have the required judicial temperament to sit on the Supreme Court.

Despite all of the warning signs, however, Kavanaugh was still confirmed by the slimmest of margins with Senator Susan Collins, a key swing vote, convinced that he was committed to precedent and “would not vote to overturn Roe v Wade.” As this spectacle unfolded, it became clear, just like the subprime mortgage fiasco, that our institutions have once again failed the American people. Accountability collapsed under the weight of a party unnecessarily fearful of demographic change. And, equally important, that fear has put the nation at risk.

Someone is now ensconced on the highest court in the land who was not properly vetted. The Republicans glossed over questions about judicial temperament and partisanship, alcohol abuse, sexual violence, perjury, and how hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt accrued and disappeared within a year. It was as if they were looking at an applicant with an 810-credit score, 50% down, and a debt-to-credit ratio that was well within bounds. But once the veneer of girls’ basketball coach, Yale Law, and carpool dad was pulled away, Kavanaugh exuded the telltale signs of a major credit risk on the bench.

We don’t know to whom he actually owed $200,000 and what the source of funds were to pay it off so quickly. We don’t know how a judge can afford a country club fee that’s nearly half his salary. In short, we don’t know who owns him. Because his work with the George W Bush administration during the War on Terror is still locked away in the 93% of documentation that was hidden from the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, we don’t know if a case involving torture, Guantanamo Bay, or NSA wiretapping would be a conflict of interest because he was somehow involved. We simply don’t know..

Quote:Donald Trump’s decision to change definitions of domestic violence and sexual assault has rolled back women’s rights by half a century, campaigners have warned. The Trump administration quietly changed the definition of both domestic violence and sexual assault back in April but the move has only just surfaced.   The change could have significant repercussions for millions of victims of gender-based violence. The Trump Justice Department’s definition only considers physical harm that constitutes a felony or misdemeanour to be domestic violence – meaning other forms of domestic violence such as psychological abuse, coercive control and manipulation no longer fall under the department’s definition.

Quote:But that year, as one of his first acts as in office, President Trump banned federal aid for international organizations that so much as talk about abortion. So Family Health Options had to decide: stop offering abortion referrals and education to patients in need, or lose $2 million in international aid. “It was a catastrophe,” Melvine Ouyo, a nurse and then a Family Health Options clinic director in Nairobi, said. Ultimately, her organization decided it couldn’t sacrifice the quality of care it provides to patients and refused to agree to the Trump administration’s new stipulations. “As someone who has ethically declared that I will provide these services, I don’t discriminate against which service to provide and which not to provide.” Ouyo said. “As long as the patient comes to me seeking my help, I can provide it.”

Soon, the organization’s 16 clinics began to run out of contraceptives. More women sought help for unplanned pregnancies. In August 2017, seven months after Trump’s policy was implemented, FHOK saw its first clinic close: a center in Mombasa that had provided free services to marginalized communities including drug addicts and sex workers. By then, the organization had also ceased most of its outreach efforts, which had brought care to another 76,000 women in remote parts of the country annually. Two more clinics were shuttered the following year, and those remaining saw staff numbers continue to drop drastically, Ouyo said. When she left the organization last May to pursue an advanced degree in reproductive health policy at Harvard, her closest clinic was staffed by a single nurse. “She would act as the pharmacist, the person in the lab, the person at reception, as well as the clinician to see the patients,” Ouyo said. “She was basically doing everything.”

Quote:On January 23, 2017, however, much of AMODEFA’s work came to an abrupt halt. The reason was the Republican U.S. administration’s desire to limit abortions abroad—a reinstatement of what’s known as the “global gag rule.” Since last week, that step has seemed particularly ironic. Last Thursday, peer-reviewed medical journal The Lancet published a study confirming what reproductive health experts have long suspected: Surveying 26 countries in sub-Saharan Africa between 1995 and 2014 (a time period during which the gag rule was reinstated by Republican administrations and rescinded by Democratic ones), the countries relying heavily on U.S. aid saw much higher rates of abortion—40 percent more—when the gag rule was in place. In other words, in addition to the steep costs imposed on other forms of health care when the gag rule is instituted, it has the exact opposite effect of what conservative policymakers say they intend.