Jesuit Review: The Kavanaugh Nomination Must Be Withdrawn

Brett Kavanaugh attended Georgetown Prep - a school run by the Jesuit order of the Roman Catholic Church.  Not surprisingly, initially America, the official review of the Jesuit order in America - endorsed Kavanaugh's nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court.  Like the Catholic Church leadership the Jesuits want judges and justices who will give deference to - indeed, in my view, special rights - to adherents of discriminatory, ignorance embracing religious traditions.  Now, the editorial board of America has rescinded its endorsement of Kavanaugh and that "for the good of the country" Kavanaugh's nomination should be withdrawn.  I agree with the call for the nomination to be withdrawn not only because I believe that Kavanaugh has lied to Congress, is likely guilty of assault as alleged, and demonstrated by his behavior of Friday that he is utterly unfit temperamentally to sit on the nation's highest court.  A piece in the New York Times looks at the stunning reversal here.  Here are excerpts from America's call for Kavanaugh to withdraw his nomination:

Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee today clearly demonstrated both the seriousness of her allegation of assault by Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh and the stakes of this question for the whole country. Judge Kavanaugh denied the accusation and emphasized in his testimony that the opposition of Democratic senators to his nomination and their consequent willingness to attack him was established long before Dr. Blasey’s allegation was known.

Evaluating the credibility of these competing accounts is a question about which people of good will can and do disagree. The editors of this review have no special insight into who is telling the truth. If Dr. Blasey’s allegation is true, the assault and Judge Kavanaugh’s denial of it mean that he should not be seated on the U.S. Supreme Court. But even if the credibility of the allegation has not been established beyond a reasonable doubt and even if further investigation is warranted to determine its validity or clear Judge Kavanaugh’s name, we recognize that this nomination is no longer in the best interests of the country. While we previously endorsed the nomination of Judge Kavanaugh on the basis of his legal credentials and his reputation as a committed textualist, it is now clear that the nomination should be withdrawn.

[T]he question is not solely about Judge Kavanaugh’s responsibility, nor is it any longer primarily about his qualifications. Rather it is about the prudence of his nomination and potential confirmation. In addition to being a fight over policy issues, which it already was, his nomination has also become a referendum on how to address allegations of sexual assault.

When Republican leaders in the Senate refused even to hold hearings on the nomination of Judge Merrick Garland, they were not objecting to his qualifications or character but to the likely outcome of his vote on the court were he to be confirmed. When Senate Democrats were mostly united in opposition to Judge Kavanaugh well in advance of any hearings (and before any rumor of Dr. Blasey’s accusation was known), they were using the same calculus. While regrettable in both cases, such results are, as we have said before, the predictable outcome of the fact that “fundamental questions of social policy are increasingly referred to the court for adjudication as constitutional issues.”

What is different this time is that this nomination battle is no longer purely about predicting the likely outcome of Judge Kavanaugh’s vote on the court. It now involves the symbolic meaning of his nomination and confirmation in the #MeToo era. The hearings and the committee’s deliberations are now also a bellwether of the way the country treats women when their reports of harassment, assault and abuse threaten to derail the careers of powerful men.

Dr. Blasey's accusations have neither been fully investigated nor been proven to a legal standard, but neither have they been conclusively disproved or shown to be less than credible. Judge Kavanaugh continues to enjoy a legal presumption of innocence, but the standard for a nominee to the Supreme Court is far higher; there is no presumption of confirmability. The best of the bad resolutions available in this dilemma is for Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination to be withdrawn.

If Senate Republicans proceed with his nomination, they will be prioritizing policy aims over a woman’s report of an assault. Were he to be confirmed without this allegation being firmly disproved, it would hang over his future decisions on the Supreme Court for decades and further divide the country.

For the good of the country and the future credibility of the Supreme Court in a world that is finally learning to take reports of harassment, assault and abuse seriously, it is time to find a nominee whose confirmation will not repudiate that lesson.

Today's GOP: Pigs All the Way Down

Students, faculty members and staff members walked out of Yale University’s Sterling Law
Building on Monday to protest Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination. 

Like women, gays are looked down as some form of lesser human by the macho "boys club" that rules much of the nation's political system and most of corporate America.  Of course, once one is viewed as "other" or "lesser," it becomes easy for the privileged class - in this case, heterosexual white males - to mistreat those they deem their inferiors.  For gays, we are often targeted for abuse and continued discrimination.  For women, less than equal rights and having their lives/bodies controlled by men are a consequence.  Over the years, I have experience such males in high school, the fraternity scene at the University of Virginia, and, of course, in the Virginia legal community and large law firms.   A column in the New York Times looks at this ugly reality in America and why male Senate Republicans are desperate to confirm Brett Kavanaugh if for no other reason than to reassert that they are privileged and gays, women, minorities are not.  Indeed, we are less than equal.  Here are column excerpts: 

Over the weekend, the controversy over Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination evolved in a way guaranteed to create maximum partisan bitterness and mistrust.

Regardless of what happens to Kavanaugh, however, this scandal has given us an X-ray view of the rotten foundations of elite male power. Despite Donald Trump’s populist posturing, there are few people more obsessed with Ivy League credentials. Kavanaugh’s nomination shows how sick the cultures that produce those credentials — and thus our ruling class — can be.

Let’s start with Kavanaugh’s high school, Georgetown Prep, also the alma mater of Neil Gorsuch, Trump’s first Supreme Court pick. There’s now a wealth of reporting painting the private school as a bastion of heedless male entitlement. Kavanaugh’s high school friend Mark Judge — who Christine Blasey Ford, Kavanaugh’s first accuser, says was in the room when Kavanaugh allegedly assaulted her — has written extensively of his drunken teenage debauchery. According to The New Yorker, Judge confided in an ex-girlfriend, Elizabeth Rasor, about an incident where he and other boys took turns having sex with a drunken woman. (Judge denies this.)

From Georgetown Prep, Kavanaugh went to Yale. There he joined the fraternity Delta Kappa Epsilon, or DKE, which was, according to The Yale Daily News, “notorious for disrespecting women.” (Long after Kavanaugh graduated, the fraternity, once headed by George W. Bush, was banned from campus after video emerged of pledges chanting, “No Means Yes! Yes Means Anal!”) Kavanaugh was also a member of an all-male secret society called Truth and Courage, which had an obscene nickname affirming its dedication to womanizing.

It may not be fair to judge Kavanaugh by the company he kept. But it’s telling that these were the crucibles in which he and other members of our ostensible meritocracy forged their identities and connections.

The Boys’ Club That Protects Brett Kavanaugh

At élite institutions like Georgetown Prep, where Brett Kavanaugh was a student, high
school doesn’t end when you’re eighteen; it’s a lifelong circle of mutual support.

Perhaps I am beating a dead horse, but I continue to believe that Brett Kavanaugh NOT be confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court regardless of whether or not he assaulted Christine Blasey Ford as alleged.  Why?  Because he epitomizes the mindset that has fostered bigotry and discrimination for decades, if not far longer.  It is noteworthy that 1000 alumni of Blasey Ford's high school have signed a letter stating that the facts of her allegations against Kavanaugh is completely consistent with the atmosphere that they witnessed and experienced. A lengthy piece in The New Yorker looks at the system that formed Kavanaugh and it makes it clear that Kavanaugh is incapable of identifying with those not from his privileged white world.  Here are excerpts:

Ten days later, Christine Blasey Ford, a psychology professor at Palo Alto University, publicly accused Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her at a high-school house party in Bethesda, Maryland. Ford described Kavanaugh as “stumbling drunk” at the time of the assault. He has flatly denied the accusation. His defenders point out that she dates the assault to thirty-six years ago, when Kavanaugh was only a teen-ager. But Kavanaugh has made his high-school years a very prominent part of his personal narrative. In a speech three years ago at Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law, Kavanaugh said, “What happens at Georgetown Prep stays at Georgetown Prep,” adding, of himself and his friends, “That’s been a good thing for all of us, I think.” When he answered Kennedy in the Senate hearings, Kavanaugh mentioned that Jim Fegan, his high-school football coach, had texted him just three nights before, and that since being nominated he’s been running on the Georgetown Prep track on the weekends. Some people put high school behind them. Kavanaugh has not. 

Kavanaugh managed to avoid testifying on whether he snuck a few beers past Jesus. But, as has been widely reported, the inside jokes on his high-school yearbook page list him as the treasurer of the “Keg City Club” and a member of the “Beach Week Ralph Club,” and make reference to “100 Kegs or Bust.” Close readers of his yearbook page have debated whether “Have You Boofed Yet?” refers to the practice of anally ingesting alcohol or drugs. According to many graduates of Washington prep schools, the party culture described in yearbooks often created occasions for sexual harassment and assault. More than a thousand women who attended Holton-Arms, the girls’ school from which Ford graduated, have signed a letter that describes the alleged assault as “all too consistent with stories we heard and lived while attending Holton. Many of us are survivors ourselves.” Now the rest of us are learning about the hierarchy of Washington private schools—about what it meant, in the eighties, to go to Georgetown Prep as opposed to Landon or Gonzaga, and about the girls’ schools Stone Ridge, Visitation, and Holton-Arms. By all appearances, the kids from these prep schools almost exclusively socialize with one another, and that social network informs their identities for the rest of their lives. As reporters have investigated Kavanaugh’s high-school years, many alumni have expressed fear about going on the record and alienating themselves from a close-knit community. “I guess you could call it a fraternity between a bunch of rich kids,” an anonymous alumnus of Georgetown Prep, who overlapped with Kavanaugh there, told the Huff Post. “All this shit happens, and then nobody really wants to talk about it, because if one person crumbles, the whole system crumbles, and everybody tells on everybody.” I spoke with another Georgetown Prep alumnus, who hated high school but still didn’t want to go on the record about what it was like there. Even for those who take less pride in the institution, what happens at Georgetown Prep stays at Georgetown Prep. What Kavanaugh appears to have been taught, as a young person, is that goodness is working at a soup kitchen or volunteering on a mission to a poorer country; it’s granted to other people as an act of charity. Meanwhile, less good behavior would be tolerated, as long as it happened under the veil of drunkenness, or as a joke. The Jesuit fathers would turn a blind eye to the yearbook, and U.S. senators would chuckle at frat-boy antics. In this world, high school doesn’t end when you’re eighteen; it’s a lifelong circle of mutual support, an in-crowd that protects itself.

One quote on Kavanaugh’s yearbook page is an apparent reference to his friend Mark Judge, who Ford says was in the room when Kavanaugh assaulted her. Judge, who says he has “no memory” of the incident and that he does not want to testify, is the author of a 1997 memoir called “Wasted: Tales of a Gen X Drunk.” The quote is from Benjamin Franklin ; the emphasis is Kavanaugh’s: “He that would live in peace and at ease must not speak all he knows, nor JUDGE all he sees.” The next few days will show whether Kavanaugh was right to place his faith in this system.