Older people may remember how Anita Hill was vilified and her name dragged through the mud when she came forward with allegations of odious behavior by then US Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas. He was finally confirmed after he cowed craven Democrats, including then judiciary chair Joe Biden, by alleging racism when it was nothing of the sort. And that was before the days of the internet. Now new allegations have emerged about even worse behavior, this time an attempted rape of a 15-year old, by current nominee Brett Kavanaugh. (The full interview can be read here but may have a paywall restriction.)
According to the Post, Ford described how Kavanaugh and a friend – both “stumbling drunk” – corralled her into a bedroom at a house in Montgomery county, Maryland.
The Post reported: “While his friend watched, she said, Kavanaugh pinned her to a bed on her back and groped her over her clothes, grinding his body against hers and clumsily attempting to pull off her one-piece bathing suit and the clothing she wore over it. When she tried to scream, she said, he put his hand over her mouth.”
…According to her account, she escaped when Kavanaugh’s Georgetown Preparatory School friend, Mark Judge, jumped on top of them, “sending all three tumbling”. She said she ran, briefly locked herself in a bathroom and then fled the house.
The report adds that Ford told no one of the incident in any detail until 2012, when she was in therapy with her husband. The Post said it reviewed the therapist’s notes, provided by Ford. The notes do not mention Kavanaugh’s name but say she reported that she was attacked by students “from an elitist boys’ school” who became “highly respected and high-ranking members of society in Washington”.
After initially seeking anonymity, the accuser’s name has now been revealed to be Christine Blasey Ford, a psychology professor in California, and you can expect Trump’s band of fervent supporters, never known for their restraint and with a ‘take no prisoners’ attitude, to unleash hell on her because the Republicans are determined to have Kavanaugh on the bench before the November elections.
The Trumpistas must have known this was coming: in 30 minutes, Sen. Grassley produced a list of 65 women Kavanaugh had not attempted to rape.
@ 1 Pierce R. Butler
Is Grassley smart enough to realize that even a dedicated serial sexual offender cannot attack everyone. Err, no I guess not. What a vile piece of crap.
Come to think of it, what was the original sampling space that gave them the 65? I mean, if they had to contact 500 women before they found 65….
Clearly there are some real bottom feeders at work. Sorry, forgot it was the Republicans.
Imagine Jeffrey Dahmer’s attorney presenting a list of 65 people he didn’t try to eat.
Yes, they are going to make her, and her families, lives miserable. Sad to say but between the GOP operating assumption that ‘boys-will-be-boys’, the time that has gone by, old-me-v-new-me (possibly jazzed up with some ‘washed in the blood of Christ’) , and the working assumption that her story is simply a means to a political end (The right does this sort of thing all the time and they project their methods onto Dems.) and there is little chance this is going to make a difference. I wish it was otherwise. Odds are that the bastard is going to get away with it.
The good news is that there are other issues:
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/09/brett-kavanaugh-baseball-debt-democrats-hearing-missing.html
The bad news is that it is going to be some rough sledding for Christine Blasey Ford and, despite the other issues, Kavanaugh is likely to end up on the SCOTUS. He is clearly, IMHO, a bloodless ideologue groomed and indoctrinated by the GOP to fill the roll of protecting the GOP judicial flank when they are weak on the other two branches of government.
@jrkrideau
Yes. The effect of producing such a list on the reasonably curious is to force one to wonder why it wouldn’t be trivial exercise to produce a list of more than 3 billion women and girls Kavanaugh hasn’t assaulted or raped.
Only 65, Kavanaugh? That seems poor evidence indeed.
The difficulty for Kavanaugh was that if he was able to say, “Oh, yeah, I remember who that was. I didn’t rape her,” the question becomes, “How did you identify this particular thing you did not do?” If he doesn’t remember who it was, since the accusation was anonymous and sufficiently nebulous he can’t defend against that particular accusation in specific. So how do you go about defending yourself?
I get it. It presents some difficulties, PR-wise. But making up a list of 65 women you haven’t raped just fails on so many levels.
There are a couple of answers by some law “experts” that I find shocking
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/09/17/what-should-the-senate-do-with-brett-kavanaugh-219985