Brett Kavanaugh, Mark Judge, and High School Debauchery

Some on the right are trying to describe the encounter described by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford as mere  "hijinks for boys."  Most of these defenders of Brett Kavanaugh, of course,  make Attila the Hun look like a liberal and are not known for the championing of women's rights.  Please understand, I am no prude nor am I unfamiliar with a privileged youth - I had one of my own and remember the hijinks of my summers at the family "camp" on Brantingham Lake in the Adirondacks with a circle of similarly privileged friends where lots of drinking occurred. That was followed by years of fraternity parties in college, so I do know about partying and drinking perhaps to excess.  But at no time do I recall any attempted sexual assault having occurred.  I also reflect that sometimes too much alcohol reveals who we really are at the core and some display their true feelings about others, especially women.  With Brett Kavanaugh, we are talking about someone who is seeking a life time appointment and a position where he can do untold good or harm.  My concern about the story from long ago is that it shows an underlying lack of concern for others and their rights.  Do we really want someone like that on the Court.  My position is no.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at Mark Judge, one of Kavanaugh's bets buds, through his own writings which suggest that Kavanaugh should not be on the Court.  Here are excerpts:

As Christine Blasey Ford tells it, only one person can offer eyewitness confirmation of her account of a sexual assault by Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh: Mark Judge, Kavanaugh’s friend and classmate at Georgetown Prep. . . . Ford’s legal team has asked the Senate Judiciary Committee to compel Judge to testify.

A review of books, articles and blog posts by Judge — a freelance writer who has shifted among jobs at a record store, substitute teaching, housesitting and most recently at a liquor store — describes an ’80s private-school party scene in which heavy drinking and sexual encounters were standard fare.

Judge wrote about the pledge he and his friends at the all-male school on Rockville Pike in North Bethesda, Md., made to drink 100 kegs of beer before graduation. On their way to that goal, there was a “disastrous” party “at my house where the place was trashed,” Judge wrote in his book “God and Man at Georgetown Prep.” Kavanaugh listed himself in the class yearbook as treasurer of the “100 Kegs or Bust” club.

“I’ll be the first one to defend guys being guys,” Judge wrote in a 2015 article on the website Acculturated. He described a party culture of “drinking and smoking and hooking up.” During senior year, Judge said he and his pals hired a stripper and bought a keg for a bachelor party they threw to honor their school’s music teacher.  “I drank too much and did stupid things,” he said in his memoir.

While many of his classmates moved on to careers in law, politics, business and education, Judge seemed to some friends to stay fixed in the experiences of his adolescence. Over time, his politics shifted from left to right, and his writing often focused on his view of masculinity (“the wonderful beauty of uncontrollable male passion”) and his concern that gay culture was corroding traditional values.

In one column for Acculturated, Judge wrote that it is “important that for some brief moments in his life — preferably when he is young — a man should be, at times, arrogant, a little reckless, and looking for kicks.”

Judge — who did not respond to emails and phone calls requesting comment and who has deleted his Twitter account and taken down videos from YouTube and Vimeo — is a recovering alcoholic who has traveled a rocky road since high school. He took seven years to earn his bachelor’s degree at Catholic University — a delay he attributed to “my fondness for bars and rock and roll.”

Maryland state Sen. Richard S. Madaleno Jr. (D-Montgomery), one of Judge’s classmates at Georgetown Preparatory School, recalled him as “an unhappy person who was happy to make other people unhappy. ‘Bully’ may be an overused term, but he regularly belittled people he perceived as being lower on the high school hierarchy.”

McKee said Judge blew up at him after the rejections. McKee, who is gay, said Judge sent a vituperative email wishing him the same fate as Matthew Shepard, the gay college student who was beaten and left to die in Wyoming in 1998.

“He shows signs of true hatred,” said McKee, now the editor of Landscape Architecture magazine. “It was one of those few kind of showstopping moments at the paper.”  McKee said he forwarded the email to his editor, David Carr, who banned Judge from writing for the paper again.

In 2003, a student named Eric Ruyak reported to school authorities that a Jesuit priest who was a teacher at Georgetown Prep had touched him inappropriately. Some Prep alumni, including Judge, rallied around the teacher, the Rev. Garrett Orr, according to several Prep graduates.

“Numerous alumni told me that Judge was going around saying I was emotionally unstable and a sexual deviant,” Ruyak said Thursday. “He told people that the only reason I wasn’t being expelled was my dad was a powerful lawyer and president of Prep’s board.”

An investigation by Jesuit authorities later confirmed Ruyak’s account. Orr was placed on a leave of absence from his order. When another Prep student later alleged that Orr had sexually abused him, the priest was arrested. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced in 2011 to five years of probation.

“For years, I couldn’t shake Judge,” Ruyak said. “He would write about the case to advance his agenda about the school being a nest of liberalism and homosexuality. This guy did unbelievable damage to me when I was a kid.”

Judge was and is, in my opinion, a total train wreck.  That he was one of Kavanaugh's best friends says - at least to me - a lot about Kavanaugh, none of it good.  Do we wan someone of the Court who counted a bully and misogynist among his closet friends during his formative years?  I for one do not.  Kavanaugh could do unbelievable damage to many Americans.

Trump's Improper War on Blue States

Among the many threats that Der Trumpenführer directs at all kinds of targets - typically, those who reject his lies and/or refuse to embrace his racist agenda - is that federal funds will be withheld from blue states that voted against Trump in the presidential election and/or refuse to cooperate in Trump's effort to terrorize undocumented immigrants. The irony, of course, is that blue states contribute far more to the federal government that they receive back and, therefore, indirectly finance red states that are the states equivalents of the welfare queens constantly derided by right wing Republicans.  The ongoing warfare between the White House and blue states such as California (with its voting record of late and Democrat led state government, Virginia could soon find itself a target of Trump's untethered wrath).   In the eye of the storm is the always despicable Jeff Sessions, and man with a long documented history of racism and bigotry, who is acting with no statutory authority.  A piece in the New York Times looks at this disturbing situation.  Here are article excerpts:

In the civil war now being waged in this country, the combatants are not the blue and the gray of old. It’s the White House versus the blue states.

And the weapons aren’t cannon balls but rather the threatened withholding of federal money from “sanctuary” cities and states, the plan for the next census that would have the effect of shrinking liberal states’ representation in Congress, and the cap on tax deductions that will strike at residents of cities and states where high tax rates support decent public services.

While California is most prominently in the administration’s cross hairs . . . . the free state of California is not the only target. Chilling headlines like a recent one in a local newspaper in New Haven — “ICE Lies in Wait at Elm Street Courthouse” — are appearing all over the country as federal agents stalk and capture undocumented immigrants and leave the rest of us to shudder at tactics we used to ascribe to countries we regarded with disdain.

Those old enough to remember the Rehnquist federalism revolution of the 1990s and early 2000s will recall how startling it was when Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist’s long-sought majority began to rein in the federal government’s authority over the states with an enthusiasm and to a degree not seen since the early years of the New Deal.

The federal government can’t “commandeer” the states to carry out its enforcement objectives, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote for the majority in a 1992 case, New York v. United States, invalidating a federal plan to oblige the states to help dispose of radioactive waste. “Congress must accord states the esteem due them as joint partners in a federal system,” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote in a 1999 case, Alden v. Maine, immunizing the states from suits for violations of federal labor law.

[T]he current reversal of polarity is head-snapping. The Trump administration is not only commandeering local courthouses as convenient places to trap its prey, it also seeks to punish cities and states that resist.

That effort ran into a major roadblock last week in the form of a decision by the federal appeals court in Chicago. The three-judge panel blocked the effort by Attorney General Jeff Sessions to withhold millions of dollars in federal law-enforcement grant money from cities and states that fail to give advance notice to federal authorities when individuals who are “believed to be aliens” are expected to be released from custody or deny federal agents access to jails to meet with them . . . 

[A]ll three judges were Republican appointees, . . . .  Attorney General Sessions, Judge Rovner wrote, “repeatedly characterizes the issue as whether localities can be allowed to thwart federal law enforcement. That is a red herring. First, nothing in this case involves any affirmative interference with federal law enforcement at all, nor is there any interference whatsoever with federal immigration authorities. The only conduct at issue here is the refusal of the local law enforcement to aid in civil immigration enforcement . . . .

The judge added, “The choice as to how to devote law enforcement resources — including whether or not to use such resources to aid in federal immigration efforts — would traditionally be one left to state and local authorities.”

Congress granted the department no such authority, the appeals court concluded, nor can the statute be interpreted as bestowing it inherently. To quote Judge Rovner: “We are faced, then, with conditions on the receipt of critical law enforcement funds that have been imposed by the attorney general without any authority in a manner that usurps the authority of Congress — made more egregious because Congress itself has repeatedly refused to pass bills with such restrictions.”

Judge Rovner wrote . . . The founders of our country well understood that the concentration of power threatens individual liberty and established a bulwark against such tyranny by creating a separation of powers among the branches of government. If the executive branch can determine policy, and then use the power of the purse to mandate compliance with that policy by the state and local governments, all without the authorization or even acquiescence of elected legislators, that check against tyranny is forsaken.”

And if that wasn’t strong enough medicine, her opinion includes this observation: “It falls to us, the judiciary, as the remaining branch of the government, to act as a check on such usurpation of power.”

Nor is there middle ground in another front in the new civil war: the Trump administration’s decision, announced on March 26, to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census. California, New York, the N.A.A.C.P., and others promptly filed lawsuits.

The legal complaints assert that requiring people to reveal their citizenship status will predictably depress participation, thereby preventing the government from obeying the constitutional command to conduct an “actual enumeration” every 10 years. . . . . In other words, while there is little chance that the citizenship question will produce a more accurate census, there is every chance that it will bring about a shift in the national balance of power.

New York, heading a plaintiff coalition of 16 states and several cities, asserts in its complaint that “a person-by-person citizenship demand that leads to a systematic undercount of minority populations across the United States will impair fair representation of those groups and the states in which they live.”

“A state of war is not a blank check for the president,” Justice O’Connor famously wrote in one of the cases that reached the court during that period. That goes for a civil war, too.

Trump Will Rule By Threats and Intimidation

As Adolph Hitler rose to power, many conservative politicians and wealthy industrialist thought that they would be able to control Hitler and moderate his extremism.  History, of course, showed that these individuals were hubris filled fools.  A similar hubris has been on display among many Republicans, especially those like Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan, who throughout the GOP primary and presidential campaign have smugly thought that they could rein in Donald Trump.  Now, with Trump maintaining his own security forces - hired mercenaries, if you will - unlike any previous president or president elect and his clear intent to threaten and intimidate Republicans who oppose him, it is quickly becoming apparent that these members of the GOP are just as stupid as their German counterparts from over eight decades ago.  In some ways, it will be delicious to watch these Republicans be crushed by Trump.  The draw back, of course, is that such defeats will only increase Trump's authoritarian rule.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the nightmare Republicans have brought onto themselves and the nation.  Here are highlights:

Back when Republicans were fretting about Donald Trump’s ideological inconsistencies and lack of devotion to conservative orthodoxy, one might have predicted that if he became president there would be constant tension within the Republican world, as everyone sought to shape administration policy and maximize his or her own influence.

That looks to be true — just not quite in the way we thought it would be. Instead of conservatives outside the administration pressuring Trump to adhere to conservative principles, we may see a situation where the pressure moves in a different direction, enforcing unanimity behind Trump’s agenda, whatever it may turn out to be. Rachael Bade reports today that there’s already a system being constructed to punish anyone on the right who questions Trump:

Since the election, numerous congressional Republicans have refused to publicly weigh in on any Trump proposal at odds with Republican orthodoxy, from his border wall to his massive infrastructure package. The most common reason, stated repeatedly but always privately: They’re afraid of being attacked by Breitbart or other big-name Trump supporters. . . . . An editor at Breitbart, formerly run by senior Trump adviser Steve Bannon, said that fear is well-founded.

Bade tells an interesting story about one Republican congressman who made some mild comments about how there might at some point be areas of disagreement between Trump and Republicans on Capitol Hill. He was skewered in Breitbart, then Sean Hannity — who has made himself into Trump’s Renfield — took up the criticism, and in short order the congressman was deluged with threats and abuse.

It’s awfully handy that the administration has Breitbart at its disposal, an influential (at least within the right) media outlet that can not only echo the White House line but also target dissenters for retaliation, supported by an army of online enforcers standing ready to take anyone who strays and make his or her life miserable.

What we’re seeing so far is a conservative movement that, whatever its prior feelings, is now utterly devoted to the greater glory of Trump. And the message is going out that anyone who objects is going to regret it. This is something conservatives have practice at — after all, the tea party movement spent a great deal of its time punishing those who showed any signs of insufficient devotion to the cause and maintaining unanimity through fear.

[N]ow, no matter what they thought before, members of the right are coming together around the idea that their goals demand unswerving loyalty to Trump. As Tim Alberta reports in National Review, conservative lawmakers “are understandably reluctant to preemptively criticize an incoming president who’s popular with their constituents back home — and who could jeopardize their political careers and livelihoods with a single retaliatory tweet.

[P]ublic dissent is going to be met with swift retribution. We know that Trump is hypersensitive to even the mildest criticism and intensely vindictive when it comes to those he feels have crossed him. It looks as though those tendencies are going to be embodied not just in his administration but also in the entire conservative movement.

 

The moral, of course, is that an amoral narcissistic bully should never be elected to any high office, particularly the presidency.  Sadly, what should have been so obvious to anyone rational was beyond the comprehension of angry white Trump voters that put emotion and their desire to reclaim their so-called white privilege ahead of all else, including the best interest of the nation.  We all will pay a high price I fear before this is all over.

Hundreds Allege Donald Trump Doesn’t Pay His Bills

Throughout my legal career I have encountered sleazy businessmen  - and businesswomen - who I'm sure viewed themselves as "tough business people," but by any moral standard they were liars and sought to screw people over and avoid paying just debts.  In a scathing piece, USA Today reviews Donald Trump's unethical business practices.  It's not pretty and also focuses on Trump's failure to comply with labor laws.  The Trump University scam is just the tip of the iceberg.  Combined with Trump's practice of uttering untruths roughly 75% of the time, the story and others shows just how low the Republican Party has fallen.  It's also an indictment of the evangelical Christians supporting him.  Here are article highlights:

During the Atlantic City casino boom in the 1980s, Philadelphia cabinet-builder Edward Friel Jr. landed a $400,000 contract to build the bases for slot machines, registration desks, bars and other cabinets at Harrah's at Trump Plaza.

The family cabinetry business, founded in the 1940s by Edward’s father, finished its work in 1984 and submitted its final bill to the general contractor for the Trump Organization, the resort’s builder.

Edward’s son, Paul, who was the firm’s accountant, still remembers the amount of that bill more than 30 years later: $83,600. The reason: the money never came. “That began the demise of the Edward J. Friel Company… which has been around since my grandfather,” he said.

Donald Trump often portrays himself as a savior of the working class who will "protect your job." But a USA TODAY NETWORK analysis found he has been involved in more than 3,500 lawsuits over the past three decades — and a large number of those involve ordinary Americans, like the Friels, who say Trump or his companies have refused to pay them.

At least 60 lawsuits, along with hundreds of liens, judgments, and other government filings reviewed by the USA TODAY NETWORK, document people who have accused Trump and his businesses of failing to pay them for their work. Among them: a dishwasher in Florida. A glass company in New Jersey. A carpet company. A plumber. Painters. Forty-eight waiters. Dozens of bartenders and other hourly workers at his resorts and clubs, coast to coast. Real estate brokers who sold his properties. And, ironically, several law firms that once represented him in these suits and others.

Trump’s companies have also been cited for 24 violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act since 2005 for failing to pay overtime or minimum wage, according to U.S. Department of Labor data. That includes 21 citations against the defunct Trump Plaza in Atlantic City and three against the also out-of-business Trump Mortgage LLC in New York. Both cases were resolved by the companies agreeing to pay back wages.

In addition to the lawsuits, the review found more than 200 mechanic’s liens — filed by contractors and employees against Trump, his companies or his properties claiming they were owed money for their work — since the 1980s. The liens range from a $75,000 claim by a Plainview, N.Y., air conditioning and heating company to a $1 million claim from the president of a New York City real estate banking firm. On just one project, Trump’s Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, records released by the New Jersey Casino Control Commission in 1990 show that at least 253 subcontractors weren’t paid in full or on time, including workers who installed walls, chandeliers and plumbing.

The actions in total paint a portrait of Trump’s sprawling organization frequently failing to pay small businesses and individuals, then sometimes tying them up in court and other negotiations for years. In some cases, the Trump teams financially overpower and outlast much smaller opponents, draining their resources. Some just give up the fight, or settle for less; some have ended up in bankruptcy or out of business altogether.

Juan Carlos Enriquez, owner of The Paint Spot, in South Florida, has been waiting more than two years to get paid for his work at the Doral. The Paint Spot first filed a lien against Trump’s course, then filed a lawsuit asking a Florida judge to intervene.

In courtroom testimony, the manager of the general contractor for the Doral renovation admitted that a decision was made not to pay The Paint Spot because Trump “already paid enough.” As the construction manager spoke, “Trump’s trial attorneys visibly winced, began breathing heavily, and attempted to make eye contact” with the witness, the judge noted in his ruling.

That, and other evidence, convinced the judge The Paint Spot’s claim was credible. He ordered last month that the Doral resort be foreclosed on, sold, and the proceeds used to pay Enriquez the money he was owed. Trump’s attorneys have since filed a motion to delay the sale, and the contest continues.  Enriquez still hasn’t been paid.

Read the entire piece.  It paints a picture of lies and unethical business practices.  Trump is morally bankrupt and so is the GOP with Trump as it standard bearer.   The media needs to focus nonstop on his ruthless and unsavory business practices.