Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.

For The Record  

FTR #1027 Send in The Clowns: Reflections on the Kavanaugh Circus

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“A friv­o­lous soci­ety can only achieve dra­mat­ic sig­nif­i­cance through what its friv­o­li­ty destroys.”–Edith Whar­ton.

Intro­duc­tion: The large­ly inept ques­tion­ing of Brett Kavanaugh about his youth­ful, drunk­en sex­u­al behav­ior eclipsed Kavanaugh­’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in far more seri­ous, and alto­geth­er lethal activ­i­ties dur­ing his piv­otal role with the Bush admin­is­tra­tions, pri­mar­i­ly that of George W. Bush: ” . . . . Kavanaugh, now Pres­i­dent Trump’s nom­i­nee to the Supreme Court, had an ordi­nary-sound­ing title: staff sec­re­tary. But he wield­ed extra­or­di­nary influ­ence as the advis­er respon­si­ble for screen­ing, review­ing and edit­ing doc­u­ments deliv­ered to Bush, inter­views and doc­u­ments show. . . . But no jus­tice in recent mem­o­ry has worked as intent­ly as Kavanaugh at the high­est lev­els of the nation’s polit­i­cal machin­ery, schol­ars said. . . . Doc­u­ments and inter­views show that while Kavanaugh was not a pol­i­cy­mak­er, he was direct­ly involved in help­ing the White House man­age a wide array of sen­si­tive mat­ters, includ­ing the war on ter­ror­ism . . . .  ‘It put Kavanaugh at the cen­ter of every polit­i­cal and pol­i­cy deci­sion at the Bush White House,’ said Peter Irons, pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at San Diego and author of sev­er­al books about the Supreme Court. ‘He is exact­ly the kind of per­son that the legal con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment wants on the court.’ . . . . Kavanaugh was respon­si­ble for man­ag­ing the process that helped shape the president’s think­ing and fueled the Bush admin­is­tra­tion agen­da. ‘He was every­where,’ said Michael Ger­son, a speech­writer in the Bush admin­is­tra­tion and now a syn­di­cat­ed colum­nist at The Post. . . . ‘Vir­tu­al­ly every piece of paper had to pass through the staff secretary’s hands,’ Rove said. . . .”

Kavanaugh­’s wife also had deep ties to the George W. Bush admin­is­tra­tion. ” . . . . Ash­ley Estes Kavanaugh worked as media rela­tions coor­di­na­tor for the George W. Bush Pres­i­den­tial Cen­ter from 2009–2010; worked as Direc­tor of Spe­cial Projects for the George W. Bush pres­i­den­tial Foun­da­tion from 2005 to 2009; was Pres­i­dent George W. Bush’s per­son­al sec­re­tary from 2001 to 2005; was an assis­tant in the White House from 2001 to 2005; and worked on the Bush-Cheney 2000 cam­paign from 1996 to 2000. Her time with Bush dates to his work in Texas as gov­er­nor there. She was assis­tant to Gov­er­nor George W. Bush from 1996 to 1999. She attend­ed the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas at Austin from 1994 to 1997. . . .”

In the con­text of Kavanaugh­’s Sen­ate ques­tion­ing, Mr. Emory made a num­ber of points, includ­ing the fol­low­ing:

  1. Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gor­such attend­ed the same high school. Where­as there was a huge com­mo­tion over Brett Kavanaugh­’s drunk­en sex­u­al behav­ior (as there should have been), there was no atten­tion what­so­ev­er paid to Neil Gor­such’s boast­ing of par­tic­i­pa­tion in a social group of reac­tionary stu­dents who called them­selves “The Fas­cism For­ev­er Club.” (That such a social group exist­ed was cor­rob­o­rat­ed by the edi­tors of Gor­such’s high school year­book.)  This was cov­ered in FTR #945. A screen cap­ture of the high school year­book edi­tors’ mus­ings  on Gor­such’s Fas­cism For­ev­er social cir­cle is includ­ed in the writ­ten descrip­tion for the pro­gram.
  2. Absent on the Sen­ate Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tee that queried and vet­ted Judge Kavanaugh was Al Franken, who was pro­fes­sion­al­ly destroyed in one of the most hys­ter­i­cal­ly fascis­tic, unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic events in recent mem­o­ry. (We dis­cussed this in FTR #998, and sup­ple­ment­ed it in FTR #999.) A lynch mob alto­geth­er rem­i­nis­cent of the young women fea­tured in Arthur Miller’s dra­mat­ic para­ble The Cru­cible, forced Franken’s res­ig­na­tion from the Sen­ate large­ly on the ado­les­cent, obvi­ous­ly joc­u­lar and libidi­nous events occur­ring dur­ing a USO tour. An obvi­ous gag pho­to of Franken pre­tend­ing to grope the breasts of an osten­si­bly sleep­ing LeAnn Twee­den (who was not asleep and was wear­ing a flak jack­et) fed the flames of a grotesque polit­i­cal immo­la­tion. On the same USO tour, Twee­den was pho­tographed grab­bing the butt of a male per­former, onstage.
  3. Franken said he wel­comed an inves­ti­ga­tion and vet­ting of the charges against him. There was NONE! The charges of right-wing flak Twee­den (a Birther accord­ing to her friend actor Tom Arnold) were then aug­ment­ed by an alle­ga­tion by a Trump backer that Franken groped her while she was hav­ing a pic­ture tak­en with him at the Min­neso­ta State Fair. Her Trump-back­ing hus­band and her father were present, and the pic­ture was tak­en by her fam­i­ly mem­bers.

The appar­ent assault of Chris­tine Blasey (Ford) by a drunk­en Kavanaugh, although rep­re­hen­si­ble, pales by com­par­i­son with the enor­mous destruc­tion of life that took place dur­ing the admin­is­tra­tions of George W. Bush, includ­ing:

  1. The Sep­tem­ber 11 attacks.
  2. The ongo­ing war in Afghanistan that stemmed from those attacks.
  3. The war in Iraq, which also stemmed from the 9/11 attacks.
  4. The blood­bath in the war against ISIS, also a result of the inva­sion of Iraq.
  5. The enor­mous destruc­tion of life stem­ming from the finan­cial col­lapse over­seen by Dubya’s admin­is­tra­tion. In FTR #412, record­ed in June of 2003, Mr. Emory fore­cast the eco­nom­ic col­lapse of 2008, not­ing that it was delib­er­ate­ly “engi­neered,” in order to serve as a pre­text for slash­ing fund­ing for domes­tic social wel­fare pro­grams.

The pro­gram fea­tures an excerpt from FTR #715. Not­ing that Kavanaugh­’s resume stretch­es back to the Pres­i­den­cy of George H.W. Bush and gath­ers momen­tum with the Pres­i­den­cy of his son (for whom Kavanaugh­’s wife also worked), it appears pru­dent to give some con­sid­er­a­tion of the trans-gen­er­a­tional nature of the Bush fam­i­ly and crim­i­nal activ­i­ties that are part and par­cel to that fam­i­ly’s involve­ment with fas­cism.

Among the key items of dis­cus­sion is the opaque nature of Dubya’s Harken Ener­gy and the large, mys­te­ri­ous amounts of mon­ey flow­ing into, and out of, the firm. It may well have been a mon­ey laun­der­ing vehi­cle, with the pres­ence of Alan Quasha on the board of direc­tors being sug­ges­tive.

A native of the Philip­pines, Quasha is the son of William Quasha, head of the Philip­pine branch of the Nugan Hand Bank. Part of “Team Mar­cos,” William was inevitably in close prox­im­i­ty to, if not involved with, the recy­cling of the enor­mous gold deposits stashed in the Philip­pines by the Japan­ese dur­ing World War II. In the dis­cus­sion with Russ Bak­er, he sug­gests that Harken may (among oth­er things) have been used to laun­der some of the Gold­en Lily loot from Gen­er­al Yamashita’s trea­sure.

As not­ed in FTR #‘s 356 and 1006, among oth­er pro­grams, it was Talat Othman–a for­mer direc­tor of Harken Ener­gy, a polit­i­cal advis­er and per­son­al friend of both Georges Bush and the man­ag­ing direc­tor of Grover Norquist and Karl Rove’s Islam­ic Free Mar­ket Insti­tute who inter­ced­ed with then Trea­sury Sec­re­tary Paul O’Neill on behalf of the indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions tar­get­ed by the 3/20/2002 Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids. O’Neill was fired months lat­er and then FBI Direc­tor Robert Mueller–that most spe­cial of prosecutors–helped derail the Green Quest inves­ti­ga­tion.

As high­light­ed in FTR #569, Rita Katz and John Lof­tus, who ini­ti­at­ed the Oper­a­tion Green Quest inves­ti­ga­tion and did much of the heavy lift­ing were sur­veilled by FBI and/or CIA. Robert Mueller’s FBI cov­ered up Green Quest.

The pro­gram con­cludes with dis­cus­sion of a hor­ror show that emerged in the after­math of the kid­nap­ping and mur­der of Pol­ly Klass (whose slay­ing led to the pas­sage of California’s “Three Strikes” law.) One can only imag­ine the extent to which con­nec­tions like this bear on the Sau­di spon­sor­ship of ter­ror­ism and the Unit­ed States’ reluc­tance (or inabil­i­ty) to do any­thing about it. What might sur­face if the U.S. were to tru­ly crack down on the Saud­is?

Although what was appar­ent­ly done to Dr. Ford is rep­re­hen­si­ble, it pales by com­par­i­son to oth­er hor­rors vis­it­ed on young women.

Mr. Emory notes that noth­ing has been done about this and noth­ing will be done–by ANY of the peo­ple and insti­tu­tions who weighed in on the Kavanaugh cir­cus.

For to inves­ti­gate these charges would be to cut across the U.S./Saudi pow­er axis. THAT is absolute­ly invi­o­lable, as no one knows bet­ter than Brett Kavanaugh!

” . . . . Jill saw broth­els [in Sau­di Ara­bia] where chil­dren were kept. The broth­els were plain look­ing build­ings in the cen­ter of the town, with yel­low doors. Men con­stant­ly came in and out, most­ly Arabs from the oil fields, but men from oth­er busi­ness­es as well. Jill peeked past the yel­low door into one of the broth­els and saw a room filled young girls, white-skinned, about twelve-years old. She learned lat­er that many of them were Amer­i­can, abduct­ed and shipped from the Unit­ed States. The lit­tle girls were wear­ing small, skimpy, see-through skirts. A cus­tomer would pick one of them, and take whomev­er he want­ed upstairs.

Lat­er, Jill saw some of the lit­tle girls get­ting air in the back of the broth­el, She could tell they were drugged by the way they walked. Although she nev­er learned who ran the broth­els, she found out that in two or three years the lit­tle girls were turned into the streets where they were left to die. I asked Jill if she ever report­ed what she saw, lit­tle girls who were drugged and forced into sex­u­al slav­ery. She admit­ted that she had – to some­one in the diplo­mat­ic corps. He said he would see what could be done about the abduct­ed Amer­i­can girls – but to her knowl­edge, noth­ing was ever done. . . .”

1. Brett Kavanaugh and his wife had exten­sive ties to George W. Bush. Kavanaugh also worked in the Solic­i­tor Gen­er­al’s office of George H.W. Bush. CORRECTION: Mr. Emory iden­ti­fied “ex” CIA offi­cer William Barr as George H.W. Bush’s Solic­i­tor  Gen­er­al. He was the elder George Bush’s Attor­ney Gen­er­al, not Solic­i­tor Gen­er­al.

“Brett Kavanaugh & George W. Bush: What Are the Ties?” by Jes­si­ca McBride; Heavy.com; 07/10/2018

Judge Brett Kavanaugh, Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s Supreme Court nom­i­nee to replace Antho­ny Kennedy, has long­stand­ing ties to for­mer Pres­i­dent George W. Bush, as does his wife, Ash­ley Estes Kavanaugh.

Both Brett and Ash­ley Kavanaugh served in the Bush admin­is­tra­tion and Bush nom­i­nat­ed Brett M. Kavanaugh to the posi­tion he cur­rent­ly holds on the U.S. Court of Appeals in Wash­ing­ton D.C. Trump revealed Kavanaugh as his pick for Supreme Court on July 9, 2018. Kavanaugh was one of four rumored final­ists, with Judges Amy Coney Bar­rett, Thomas Hardi­man, and Ray­mond Keth­ledge also among them. Because Trump and the Bush fam­i­ly have a pub­li­cized feud, some peo­ple thought Brett Kavanaugh’s Bush ties could hurt his chances with the pres­i­dent. How­ev­er, that didn’t stop the pres­i­dent from pick­ing him in the end, even though some con­ser­v­a­tive infight­ing broke out over the pick, with “whis­per cam­paigns” call­ing Brett Kavanaugh the “low-ener­gy Jeb Bush pick,” accord­ing to Nation­al Review..

Bush praised the selec­tion.

JUST IN: For­mer Pres. George W. Bush “Pres­i­dent Trump has made an out­stand­ing deci­sion in nom­i­nat­ing Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the; Supreme Court…He will make a superb Jus­tice of the Supreme Court of the Unit­ed States.” https://t.co/K7XhW1iSMbpic.twitter.com/T9brBFNQ1U— Evan McMur­ry (@evanmcmurry) July 10, 2018

Here’s what you need to know about Brett Kavanaugh’s Bush ties:

Brett Kavanaugh Served as the Staff Sec­re­tary to George W. Bush

Brett Kavanaugh is a judge serv­ing on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Cir­cuit Court. He is a grad­u­ate of Yale Law School who also spent time in pri­vate prac­tice.

A bio for Brett Kavanaugh also sketch­es out his Bush ties, say­ing, “From July 2003 until his appoint­ment to the court in 2006, he was Assis­tant to the Pres­i­dent and Staff Sec­re­tary to Pres­i­dent Bush.”

Kavanaugh, the for­mer staff sec­re­tary to George W. Bush, also played a role in draft­ing the Ken Starr report into the impeach­ment of for­mer Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton. When Kavanaugh was sworn in as a fed­er­al judge, Bush said, “for the past five years, he has served in the White House as Asso­ciate Coun­sel, a senior Asso­ciate Coun­sel, and as Staff Sec­re­tary.”

At the same event, Kavanaugh told Bush he had the “great­est respect” for him. “I also appre­ci­ate the oppor­tu­ni­ty to have served under the Vice Pres­i­dent and under Chiefs of Staff Andy Card and Josh Bolten. The White House staff are ded­i­cat­ed pub­lic ser­vants who have been good col­leagues and good friends, and I’ll miss work­ing with all of you very much,” Kavanaugh said at his swear­ing-in hear­ing.

He has held oth­er gov­ern­ment jobs, and served in George H.W. Bush’s admin­is­tra­tion too in the solic­i­tor general’s office. “Kavanaugh was a pro­tegé of Ken­neth Starr,” reports Vox. “He was a prin­ci­pal author of the Starr Report.”

The Dai­ly Caller, a con­ser­v­a­tive web­site, report­ed on the snip­ing against Brett Kavanaugh, quot­ing one anony­mous source as say­ing, “Kavanaugh is Jeb Bush’s pick for the Supreme Court. This is the low-ener­gy Jeb Bush pick. No one in the base will be ani­mat­ed by [Kavanaugh] — espe­cial­ly Trump sup­port­ers who reject­ed the Bush lega­cy.”

George W. Bush Called Brett Kavanaugh a ‘Good Man’ & Joked That He Arranged His Mar­riage

Bush nom­i­nat­ed Brett Kavanaugh to the Court of Appeals, and he spoke at the swear­ing-in cer­e­mo­ny in 2006. Accord­ing to a sto­ry post­ed by the White House, Bush praised Brett Kavanaugh, say­ing, “the sec­ond-high­est in our land gains a bril­liant and tal­ent­ed new mem­ber. The staff of the White House cel­e­brates a friend they admire and a col­league they will miss. I con­grat­u­late a good man and a fine pub­lic ser­vant on a job well done.” Bush then quipped, “I’m espe­cial­ly pleased to be with Brett’s wife, Ash­ley, whose face I know well and whose mar­riage was the first life­time appoint­ment I arranged for Brett.”

The for­mer pres­i­dent added, “I chose Brett because of the force of his mind, his breadth of expe­ri­ence, and the strength of his char­ac­ter.”

Bush also men­tioned Kavanaugh’s then new daugh­ter. “Wel­come the star of Brett’s most recent tele­vised hear­ing, Mar­garet Mur­phy Kavanaugh,” Bush said to laugh­ter from the crowd. “Mar­garet has his mother’s — has her mother’s good looks, and her dad’s pref­er­ence for hear­ings that do not last too long.”

At the same hear­ing, Brett Kavanaugh called Mar­garet, his only child at the time, a “dai­ly inspi­ra­tion.”

“Ash­ley and our lit­tle girl Mar­garet are a dai­ly inspi­ra­tion. Ash­ley, as the Pres­i­dent not­ed, is from Abi­lene, Texas. For those of you who don’t know much about Texas geog­ra­phy, it’s about halfway between Dal­las and Mid­land,” he said. “Ashley’s par­ents are here, and I thank them for com­ing. Ash­ley likes to remind me that true love, true love is a Texas girl who is will­ing to mar­ry a guy with a life­time appoint­ment in Wash­ing­ton, D.C.”

Accord­ing to The Wash­ing­ton Exam­in­er, “In 2004, Kavanaugh mar­ried pres­i­den­tial assis­tant Ash­ley Estes, who gave birth to their daugh­ter, Mar­garet, 13 months lat­er. The fam­i­ly lives in Chevy Chase, direct­ly across the street from White House Coun­sel Dan Bartlett.”

Kavanaugh’s Wife Has Deep Ties to the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion

Ash­ley Estes Kavanaugh, the spouse of Brett Kavanaugh, has deep ties to the admin­is­tra­tion of George W. Bush as well. Her links to Bush go back to his days as Texas gov­er­nor.

Accord­ing to her LinkedIn page, Ash­ley Estes Kavanaugh worked as media rela­tions coor­di­na­tor for the George W. Bush Pres­i­den­tial Cen­ter from 2009–2010; worked as Direc­tor of Spe­cial Projects for the George W. Bush pres­i­den­tial Foun­da­tion from 2005 to 2009; was Pres­i­dent George W. Bush’s per­son­al sec­re­tary from 2001 to 2005; was an assis­tant in the White House from 2001 to 2005; and worked on the Bush-Cheney 2000 cam­paign from 1996 to 2000.

Her time with Bush dates to his work in Texas as gov­er­nor there. She was assis­tant to Gov­er­nor George W. Bush from 1996 to 1999. She attend­ed the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas at Austin from 1994 to 1997.

Her LinkedIn page says she is Town Man­ag­er, Sec­tion 5 of the Vil­lage of Chevy Chase, Mary­land. A newslet­ter for the town reports, “She has lived in Sec­tion 5 on Under­wood Street for the last ten years along with her hus­band, Brett, and their two daugh­ters, Mar­garet and Liza.”

2. More depth on the degree of influ­ence of Kavanaugh in the Bush White House is con­tained in the arti­cle below:

” . . . . Kavanaugh, now Pres­i­dent Trump’s nom­i­nee to the Supreme Court, had an ordi­nary-sound­ing title: staff sec­re­tary. But he wield­ed extra­or­di­nary influ­ence as the advis­er respon­si­ble for screen­ing, review­ing and edit­ing doc­u­ments deliv­ered to Bush, inter­views and doc­u­ments show. . . . But no jus­tice in recent mem­o­ry has worked as intent­ly as Kavanaugh at the high­est lev­els of the nation’s polit­i­cal machin­ery, schol­ars said. . . . Doc­u­ments and inter­views show that while Kavanaugh was not a pol­i­cy­mak­er, he was direct­ly involved in help­ing the White House man­age a wide array of sen­si­tive mat­ters, includ­ing the war on ter­ror­ism . . . .  ‘It put Kavanaugh at the cen­ter of every polit­i­cal and pol­i­cy deci­sion at the Bush White House,’ said Peter Irons, pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at San Diego and author of sev­er­al books about the Supreme Court. ‘He is exact­ly the kind of per­son that the legal con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment wants on the court.’ . . . . Kavanaugh was respon­si­ble for man­ag­ing the process that helped shape the president’s think­ing and fueled the Bush admin­is­tra­tion agen­da. ‘He was every­where,’ said Michael Ger­son, a speech­writer in the Bush admin­is­tra­tion and now a syn­di­cat­ed colum­nist at The Post. . . . ‘Vir­tu­al­ly every piece of paper had to pass through the staff secretary’s hands,’ Rove said. . . .”

“Brett Kavanaugh: Bush’s Intel­lec­tu­al Body Man” by Robert O’Harrow Jr.; The Wash­ing­ton Post; 08/24/2018

It was the apogee of Brett Kavanaugh’s rise through the ranks of the con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment, a job that put him in dai­ly prox­im­i­ty to Pres­i­dent George W. Bush and made him an intel­lec­tu­al “umpire” for a wel­ter of polit­i­cal and pol­i­cy aides who were aim­ing to shape the Repub­li­can agen­da.Kavanaugh, now Pres­i­dent Trump’s nom­i­nee to the Supreme Court, had an ordi­nary-sound­ing title: staff sec­re­tary. But he wield­ed extra­or­di­nary influ­ence as the advis­er respon­si­ble for screen­ing, review­ing and edit­ing doc­u­ments deliv­ered to Bush, inter­views and doc­u­ments show.

“Ulti­mate­ly, the umpire was Brett,” said Karl Rove, a Bush advis­er and one of the peo­ple Kavanaugh worked with close­ly as staff sec­re­tary.

Many Supreme Court jus­tices over the decades have held strong polit­i­cal views or been active in lib­er­al or con­ser­v­a­tive caus­es. Jus­tice Ele­na Kagan, a law pro­fes­sor, served as an asso­ciate coun­sel and advis­er in the Clin­ton White House. For­mer Jus­tice Abe For­t­as pri­vate­ly advised Pres­i­dent Lyn­don B. John­son on polit­i­cal mat­ters. William Rehn­quist was ­active in the Repub­li­can Par­ty in Ari­zona before he became a ­jus­tice.

But no jus­tice in recent mem­o­ry has worked as intent­ly as Kavanaugh at the high­est lev­els of the nation’s polit­i­cal machin­ery, schol­ars said. His time as staff sec­re­tary, from 2003 to 2006, was the cul­mi­na­tion of a polit­i­cal and legal appren­tice­ship that last­ed more than a decade, enabling him to demon­strate his zeal for con­ser­v­a­tive prin­ci­ples and putting him on a path to the Supreme Court.

Doc­u­ments and inter­views show that while Kavanaugh was not a pol­i­cy­mak­er, he was direct­ly involved in help­ing the White House man­age a wide array of sen­si­tive mat­ters, includ­ing the war on ter­ror­ism, the treat­ment of ene­my com­bat­ants and war­rant­less wire­tap­ping.

“It put Kavanaugh at the cen­ter of every polit­i­cal and pol­i­cy deci­sion at the Bush White House,” said Peter Irons, pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at San Diego and author of sev­er­al books about the Supreme Court.“He is exact­ly the kind of per­son that the legal con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment wants on the court.”

His tenure is now a source of con­tro­ver­sy, because much of his work in the White House has been cloaked by pres­i­den­tial priv­i­lege. Repub­li­cans have declined to request records from that era, sug­gest­ing that they would not be rev­e­la­to­ry.

“He was more or less a traf­fic cop,” Sen­ate Major­i­ty Whip John Cornyn (R‑Tex.) said last month.

Ques­tions about Kavanaugh’s work in the polit­i­cal realm sur­faced in 2004, after he was nom­i­nat­ed by Bush to be a cir­cuit court judge. Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D‑N.Y.) alleged that the “nom­i­na­tion appears to be judi­cial pay­ment for polit­i­cal ser­vices ren­dered.”

“In fact, Mr. Kavanaugh would prob­a­bly win first prize as the hard-right’s polit­i­cal lawyer,” Schumer said, accord­ing to a tran­script of the nom­i­na­tion hear­ing.

Kavanaugh defend­ed him­self vig­or­ous­ly, say­ing that pri­or polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tions did not nec­es­sar­i­ly impede a good judge’s per­for­mance.

“There is one kind of judge,” he said dur­ing the hear­ing. “There is an inde­pen­dent judge under our Con­sti­tu­tion. And the fact that they may have been a Repub­li­can or Demo­c­rat … in a past life is com­plete­ly irrel­e­vant to how they con­duct them­selves as judges.”

As the Sen­ate Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tee pre­pares for con­fir­ma­tion hear­ings start­ing Sept. 4, much remains unknown about that sig­nif­i­cant stretch of Kavanaugh’s career.

Most of the mil­lions of doc­u­ments relat­ing to his White House ser­vice will not be avail­able for review before his con­fir­ma­tion. The com­mit­tee has received batch­es of records from the George W. Bush library, releas­ing tens of thou­sands of doc­u­ments in recent weeks. But most relate to Kavanaugh’s years in the White House Counsel’s Office, before he became staff sec­re­tary, and have been devoid of telling detail. Democ­rats have com­plained they can’t prop­er­ly take stock of ­Kavanaugh.

“We asked for doc­u­ments from Kavanaugh’s time as staff sec­re­tary because he admit­ted those years shaped his views as a judge, par­tic­u­lar­ly with regard to issues of exec­u­tive pow­er,” Sen. Dianne Fein­stein (D‑Calif.) said in a ­state­ment.

“We also need to know more about his involve­ment with con­tro­ver­sial issues like tor­ture, war­rant­less wire­tap­ping and pres­i­den­tial sign­ing state­ments,” Fein­stein said. “He has a far more exten­sive record in pol­i­tics than pre­vi­ous nom­i­nees. It’s crit­i­cal that sen­a­tors see the full pic­ture to under­stand how those polit­i­cal posi­tions influ­enced his cur­rent views.”

White House spokesman Raj Shah said Kavanaugh has demon­strat­ed his com­mit­ment to tak­ing a judi­cious and fair-mind­ed approach to the Supreme Court.

“What will tell you most about the type of Supreme Court Jus­tice he will make are the 307 opin­ions he wrote as a Judge on the D.C. Cir­cuit Court of Appeals, a dozen of which were affirmed by the Supreme Court, over the last 12 years,” Shah said in a state­ment. “His opin­ions are wide­ly cit­ed by judges, appoint­ed by pres­i­dents of both par­ties, in courts across the coun­try. They demon­strate inde­pen­dence and a fideli­ty to our laws and con­sti­tu­tion.”

To find clues about Kavanaugh’s role as staff sec­re­tary, The Wash­ing­ton Post exam­ined more than 2,000 pages of emails and oth­er doc­u­ments pre­vi­ous­ly released by the Bush library, along with scores of emails con­tained in 191 pages of doc­u­ments released last week by the Jus­tice Depart­ment in response to a Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act request by Fix the Court, a group advo­cat­ing for more trans­paren­cy in the fed­er­al court sys­tem.

The Bush library and Jus­tice Depart­ment emails have been heav­i­ly redact­ed, with most of the con­tent removed, as part of the government’s nor­mal appli­ca­tion of exemp­tions under the fed­er­al Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act or the Pres­i­den­tial Records Act. But com­bined with Kavanaugh’s pub­lic state­ments and writ­ings, the email address­es and sub­ject lines pro­vide gran­u­lar­i­ty to a com­pos­ite por­trait of him in the years he was staff sec­re­tary and before.

Kavanaugh was respon­si­ble for man­ag­ing the process that helped shape the president’s think­ing and fueled the Bush admin­is­tra­tion agen­da. “He was every­where,” said Michael Ger­son, a speech­writer in the Bush admin­is­tra­tion and now a syn­di­cat­ed colum­nist at The Post.

Ger­son, Rove and oth­ers said Kavanaugh was an hon­est bro­ker, even as he con­veyed com­pet­ing ideas to the pres­i­dent.

“Vir­tu­al­ly every piece of paper had to pass through the staff secretary’s hands,” Rove said.

Kavanaugh, now 53, has described the White House jobs — end­ing in 2006 when he was con­firmed as a fed­er­al judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Cir­cuit — as an unre­lent­ing mix of demands that required him to con­stant­ly con­sid­er the legal, pol­i­cy, leg­isla­tive, polit­i­cal, inter­na­tion­al and pub­lic rela­tions impli­ca­tions of White House actions.

“I spent a good deal of time on Capi­tol Hill, some­times in the mid­dle of the night, work­ing on leg­is­la­tion — it’s not a pure or pris­tine process,” Kavanaugh wrote in an essay for Mar­quette Lawyer Mag­a­zine in the fall of 2016.

“I worked on draft­ing and revis­ing exec­u­tive orders, as well as dis­putes over exec­u­tive branch records,” he wrote. “I saw reg­u­la­to­ry agen­cies screw up … I saw the good and the bad sides of a president’s try­ing to run for reelec­tion and to raise mon­ey while still being pres­i­dent. I was involved in the process for lots of pres­i­den­tial speech­es. I trav­eled almost every­where with the pres­i­dent for about three years. I ­most­ly recall the mas­sive deci­sions that had to be made on short notice.”

Kavanaugh’s roots in the con­ser­v­a­tive legal world date to at least 1988. While attend­ing Yale Law School, he joined the con­ser­v­a­tive-lib­er­tar­i­an Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety for Law and Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Stud­ies, and has since spo­ken at dozens of the group’s events.

In the ear­ly 1990s, he worked under Ken­neth Starr in the Solic­i­tor General’s Office in the admin­is­tra­tion of Pres­i­dent George H.W. Bush. He served as clerk to Supreme Court Jus­tice Antho­ny M. Kennedy and worked under Starr again in the inde­pen­dent counsel’s office that inves­ti­gat­ed Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton.

Some of the emails released by the Bush library come from Kavanaugh’s days in the White House Counsel’s Office, which he joined in 2001.

On Octo­ber 10, 2002, Kavanaugh received or was copied on emails relat­ing to ene­my com­bat­ants and the Guan­tanamo prison. The sub­ject line of one email read: “If you get asked about detainees at Quan­tanamo.” The email con­tained a set of Defense Depart­ment talk­ing points from Jan. 17, 2002, titled “The War Against Ter­ror­ism.”

“Karen — here are some on the GITMO folks. I am work­ing with Jus­tice on the domes­tic peo­ple we are hold­ing. Stay turned for more talk­ers.”

The emails also show that Kavanaugh worked with oth­ers on up to 22 drafts to refine Bush’s speech­es, while also edit­ing radio address­es and rou­tine state­ments. Peo­ple famil­iar with his work said he was effec­tive­ly an intel­lec­tu­al body man for the pres­i­dent, one who con­stant­ly asked ques­tions of his col­leagues and kept in mind the impli­ca­tions of the president’s state­ments and poli­cies.

Kavanaugh was often at Bush’s side, here and abroad. On June 5, 2004, the day that for­mer pres­i­dent Ronald Rea­gan died, Kavanaugh had to wake up Bush in the Amer­i­can Embassy dur­ing a trip to France to make a state­ment.

On Sept. 3, 2005, Kavanaugh received a call that Rehn­quist had died. He need­ed to meet with Bush and White House speech­writ­ers ear­ly the next morn­ing to pre­pare remarks.

In Decem­ber 2005, not long before he left the White House, Kavanaugh joined in an admin­is­tra­tive scram­ble to respond to bomb­shell rev­e­la­tions in the New York Times of a war­rant­less wire­tap­ping pro­gram that was launched after Sept. 11, 2001, accord­ing to the Jus­tice Depart­ment emails.

Kavanaugh and oth­ers weighed in on talk­ing points from the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Agency that spelled out the legal autho­riza­tion for the sur­veil­lance pro­gram. On Dec. 20, 2005, Kavanaugh rec­om­mend­ed that amend­ed talk­ing points be shared with the NSA before their release.

“I think we should make sure Gen­er­al Hay­den sees these before they go,” Kavanaugh wrote.

3. The pro­gram fea­tures an excerpt from FTR #715. Not­ing that Kavanaugh­’s resume stretch­es back to the Pres­i­den­cy of George H.W. Bush and gath­ers momen­tum with the Pres­i­den­cy of his son (for whom Kavanaugh­’s wife also worked), it appears pru­dent to give some con­sid­er­a­tion of the trans-gen­er­a­tional nature of the Bush fam­i­ly and crim­i­nal activ­i­ties that are part and par­cel to that fam­i­ly’s involve­ment with fas­cism.

Among the key items of dis­cus­sion is the opaque nature of Dubya’s Harken Ener­gy and the large, mys­te­ri­ous amounts of mon­ey flow­ing into, and out of, the firm. It may well have been a mon­ey laun­der­ing vehi­cle, with the pres­ence of Alan Quasha on the board of direc­tors being sug­ges­tive.

A native of the Philip­pines, Quasha is the son of William Quasha, head of the Philip­pine branch of the Nugan Hand Bank. Part of “Team Mar­cos,” William was inevitably in close prox­im­i­ty to, if not involved with, the recy­cling of the enor­mous gold deposits stashed in the Philip­pines by the Japan­ese dur­ing World War II. In the dis­cus­sion with Russ Bak­er, he sug­gests that Harken may (among oth­er things) have been used to laun­der some of the Gold­en Lily loot from Gen­er­al Yamashita’s trea­sure.

As not­ed in FTR #‘s 356 and 1006, among oth­er pro­grams, it was Talat Othman–a for­mer direc­tor of Harken Ener­gy, a polit­i­cal advis­er and per­son­al friend of both Georges Bush and the man­ag­ing direc­tor of Grover Norquist and Karl Rove’s Islam­ic Free Mar­ket Insti­tute who inter­ced­ed with then Trea­sury Sec­re­tary Paul O’Neill on behalf of the indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions tar­get­ed by the 3/20/2002 Oper­a­tion Green Quest raids. O’Neill was fired months lat­er and then FBI Direc­tor Robert Mueller–that most spe­cial of prosecutors–helped derail the Green Quest inves­ti­ga­tion.

4. The pro­gram con­cludes with dis­cus­sion of a hor­ror show that emerged in the after­math of the kid­nap­ping and mur­der of Pol­ly Klass (whose slay­ing led to the pas­sage of California’s “Three Strikes” law.) One can only imag­ine the extent to which con­nec­tions like this bear on the Sau­di spon­sor­ship of ter­ror­ism and the Unit­ed States’ reluc­tance (or inabil­i­ty) to do any­thing about it. What might sur­face if the U.S. were to tru­ly crack down on the Saud­is?

Mr. Emory notes that noth­ing has been done about this and noth­ing will be done–by ANY of the peo­ple and insti­tu­tions who weighed in on the Kavanaugh cir­cus.

For to inves­ti­gate these charges would be to cut across the U.S./Saudi pow­er axis. THAT is absolute­ly invi­o­lable, as no one knows bet­ter than Brett Kavanaugh!

Who Killed Pol­ly?; by Frank Spier­ing; Copy­right 1995 [SC]; Mon­terey Bay Press; ISBN 0–964761‑2–0‑3; p9. 215, 216.

…To reit­er­ate Ernie Allen’s state­ment, three hun­dred girls, Polly’s and Katie’s age, are dis­ap­pear­ing year­ly through­out the Unit­ed States. It is a grow­ing epi­dem­ic, a con­spir­a­cy that threat­ens every fam­i­ly in Amer­i­ca. No lit­tle girl is safe. The worst part was told to the author by a wit­ness named Jill Mur­ray, who had vis­it­ed Sau­di Ara­bia. Jill’s father, since deceased, was there on a covert mil­i­tary oper­a­tion. She said she could not men­tion the actu­al towns as she still has friends liv­ing there and ‘they would be killed.’ I asked her, who would kill them? She answered ‘The Saud­is.’ . . .

. . . . Jill saw broth­els where chil­dren were kept. The broth­els were plain look­ing build­ings in the cen­ter of the town, with yel­low doors. Men con­stant­ly came in and out, most­ly Arabs from the oil fields, but men from oth­er busi­ness­es as well. Jill peeked past the yel­low door into one of the broth­els and saw a room filled with young girls, white-skinned, about twelve-years old. She learned lat­er that many of them were Amer­i­can, abduct­ed and shipped from the Unit­ed States. The lit­tle girls were wear­ing small, skimpy, see-through skirts. A cus­tomer would pick one of them, and take whomev­er he want­ed upstairs.

Lat­er, Jill saw some of the lit­tle girls get­ting air in the back of the broth­el, She could tell they were drugged by the way they walked. Although she nev­er learned who ran the broth­els, she found out that in two or three years the lit­tle girls were turned into the streets where they were left to die. I asked Jill if she ever report­ed what she saw, lit­tle girls who were drugged and forced into sex­u­al slav­ery. She admit­ted that she had – to some­one in the diplo­mat­ic corps. He said he would see what could be done about the abduct­ed Amer­i­can girls – but to her knowl­edge, noth­ing was ever done.

Why weren’t the ques­tions sur­round­ing Polly’s kid­nap­ping answered? One has the feel­ing there is a dev­as­tat­ing secret behind all of the them. . . .

8. Mr. Emory’s feel­ings about Cir­cus Kavanaugh and much of what goes on today is encap­su­lat­ed in a poem he fre­quent­ly reads on the air.

“Be Angry at the Sun” by Robin­son Jef­fers

That pub­lic men pub­lish false­hoods
Is noth­ing new. That Amer­i­ca must accept
Like the his­tor­i­cal republics cor­rup­tion and empire
Has been known for years.

Be angry at the sun for set­ting
If these things anger you. Watch the wheel slope and turn,
They are all bound on the wheel, these peo­ple, those war­riors.
This repub­lic, Europe, Asia.

Observe them ges­tic­u­lat­ing,
Observe them going down. The gang serves lies, the pas­sion­ate
Man plays his part; the cold pas­sion for truth
Hunts in no pack.

You are not Cat­ul­lus, you know,
To lam­poon these crude sketch­es of Cae­sar. You are far
From Dan­te’s feet, but even far­ther from his dirty
Polit­i­cal hatreds.

Let boys want plea­sure, and men
Strug­gle for pow­er, and women per­haps for fame,
And the servile to serve a Leader and the dupes to be duped.
Yours is not theirs.

 

 

 

Discussion

4 comments for “FTR #1027 Send in The Clowns: Reflections on the Kavanaugh Circus”

  1. Mr. Emory, since you are talk­ing about Jus­tice Brett Kavanaugh and his overt con­nec­tions to the Bush crime fam­i­ly milieu, I was won­der­ing if you were aware that Brett Kavanaugh blocked JFK assas­si­na­tion researcher and jour­nal­ist Jef­fer­son Mor­ley’s FOIA request and lit­i­ga­tion sim­ply titled “Mor­ley v. CIA”. Mr. Mor­ley’s law­suit was over the dis­clo­sure of all CIA doc­u­ments per­tain­ing to the JM/WAVE Sta­tion’s Chief Of Psy­cho­log­i­cal War­fare George Efythron Joan­nides. Jus­tice Kavanaugh ruled in favor of the CIA to keep Mr. Joan­nides’ files sealed. Of course, seri­ous researchers into the top­ic of state-spon­sored assas­si­na­tions will know that George Joan­nides direct­ed and financed Direc­to­rio Rev­olu­cionario Estu­dan­til, an orga­ni­za­tion that had overt con­nec­tions to con­firmed US intel­li­gence agent Lee Har­vey Oswald, alleged assas­sin of JFK. Here is a link to the Kavanaugh-Joan­nides con­nec­tion: https://aarclibrary.org/on-jfk-secrecy-brett-kavanaugh-sides-with-the-cia/

    Posted by Robert Ward Montenegro | October 23, 2018, 1:14 am
  2. This arti­cle shows how the neo-Nazis are ener­gized by Brett Kavanaughs con­fir­ma­tion. The racist “alt-right,” views Kavanaugh’s con­fir­ma­tion as a vic­to­ry in part of a larg­er cul­ture — and race — war in Amer­i­ca, with the alt-right and white peo­ple on one side against minori­ties, women and Jew­ish peo­ple.

    Andrew Angline who writes the Dai­ley Stormer web­site post­ed a list of rea­sons rape would become legal soon and how it would work. The web­site con­tends that not only is being raped sex­u­al­ly ful­fill­ing for many wom­yn, but in our exist­ing soci­etal order, wom­yn who are raped are show­ered with addi­tion­al atten­tion,” Anglin, in a post stud­ded with pic­tures of women with duct-taped mouths and bound hands and feet, laid out five things peo­ple need to know for “The Upcom­ing Legal­iza­tion of Rape in Amer­i­ca.”

    The Dai­ly Stormer has also aggres­sive­ly pushed an anti-Jew­ish sto­ry line about the Kavanaugh accu­sa­tions, alleg­ing they appeared as part of a plot orches­trat­ed by Jew­ish sen­a­tors and Hun­gar­i­an Amer­i­can phil­an­thropist George Soros. (The Soros con­spir­a­cy has even been echoed in the main­stream by GOP law­mak­ers and pun­dits on Fox News).

    Fur­ther­more, a a for­mer Louisiana State Con­gress­man who was also a for­mer KKK Grand Wiz­ard, David Duke, sup­port­ed the anti-Semit­ic posi­tion by tweet­ing “Jus­tice Kavanaugh. Thank God you are now on the Supreme Court. Because of the vicious, hate­ful media Cabal and the polit­i­cal ziog­a­rchy” (Note: Ziog­a­rchy is his belief that a Zion­ist cabal that alleged­ly con­trols the media and US pol­i­tics.

    Richard Spencer, anoth­er alt-right leader views the Kavanaugh con­fir­ma­tion con­tro­ver­sy as part of an ongo­ing race-war in Amer­i­ca.

    Note how these themes of a Jew­ish Cabal and a race-war is con­sis­tent with a con­flict out­lined in the Nazi Nov­el Serpent’s Walk.

    https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2018/10/09/far-right-neo-nazis-racists-hail-brett-kavanaughs-elevation-supreme-court-open-season-women

    On the far right, neo-Nazis, racists hail Brett Kavanaugh­’s ele­va­tion to Supreme Court as open sea­son on women, minor­i­ty rights in Amer­i­ca | South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter

    Octo­ber 09, 2018
     Brett Bar­rou­quere

    To neo-Nazi-in-hid­ing Andrew Anglin, the ele­va­tion of Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court is a mile­stone, one that he hopes will result in an end to women’s rights across the coun­try.

    Anglin, who has been known to post crude hyper­bole to draw a reac­tion, post­ed a list of rea­sons rape would become legal soon and how it would work.

    “In many cas­es, this will be as sim­ple as dri­ving up next to a woman jog­ging, wrap­ping her with duct tape, toss­ing her in the trunk and tak­ing her to your home’s rape room,” Anglin wrote.

    The reac­tion on the far right to Kavanaugh’s con­tentious con­fir­ma­tion — which was marked by alle­ga­tions of sex­u­al assault, Kavanaugh’s behav­ior dur­ing the hear­ing and his atti­tude toward women and drink­ing when he was younger — was harsh, ugly, misog­y­nis­tic and anti­se­mit­ic.

    The con­fir­ma­tion, final­ized Sat­ur­day in a 50–48 vote in the U.S. Sen­ate, also tilts the U.S. Supreme Court in a more con­ser­v­a­tive direc­tion. Kavanaugh, a one­time polit­i­cal oper­a­tive and attor­ney in the George W. Bush admin­is­tra­tion, replaces retired Jus­tice Antho­ny M. Kennedy, who was often a swing vote in favor of LGBTQ rights and women’s repro­duc­tive rights.
    In its ban­ner, the neo-Nazi web­site the Dai­ly Stormer fea­tured a pho­to of bound and gagged women, includ­ing one being tossed over the shoul­der of a man, with an explod­ing Planned Par­ent­hood clin­ic in the back­ground.

    The ban­ner also fea­tures a pho­to of Elliot Rodger, who mur­dered six peo­ple and injured 14 in Isla Vista, Cal­i­for­nia, an act he said was ret­ri­bu­tion for sex­u­al rejec­tion by women. Rodger has become an icon among the incel (invol­un­tar­i­ly celi­bate) com­mu­ni­ty, male suprema­cists and the far right.

    “The log­i­cal con­clu­sion to this is that they secret­ly desire to be raped. Not only is being raped sex­u­al­ly ful­fill­ing for many wom­yn, but in our exist­ing soci­etal order, wom­yn who are raped are show­ered with addi­tion­al atten­tion,” Dai­ly Stormer con­trib­u­tor Lee Rogers wrote. “So in essence, these wom­yn want to ful­fill their rape fan­tasies while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly hav­ing access to extra atten­tion that this ‘vic­tim’ sta­tus pro­vides them.”

    Anglin, in a post stud­ded with pic­tures of women with duct-taped mouths and bound hands and feet, laid out five things peo­ple need to know for “The Upcom­ing Legal­iza­tion of Rape in Amer­i­ca.”

    Anglin’s the­atrics aside, he’s riff­ing on very real con­cerns about the future of women’s and LGBTQ rights. For some on the racist “alt-right,” Kavanaugh’s ascen­sion is seen as part of a larg­er cul­ture — and race — war in Amer­i­ca, with the alt-right and white peo­ple on one side against minori­ties, women and Jew­ish peo­ple. And with Kavanaugh in office, the alt-right thinks it’s win­ning.

    While he writes these over-the-top satires to draw a reac­tion, Anglin fre­quent­ly fol­lows up these posts with calls for the vio­lent exter­mi­na­tion of entire groups of peo­ple. Anglin’s writ­ings on Kavanaugh reflect the atti­tude on the far right toward Kavanaugh and women.
    The Dai­ly Stormer has also aggres­sive­ly pushed an anti-Jew­ish sto­ry line about the Kavanaugh accu­sa­tions, alleg­ing they appeared as part of a plot orches­trat­ed by Jew­ish sen­a­tors and Hun­gar­i­an Amer­i­can phil­an­thropist George Soros. (The Soros con­spir­a­cy has even been echoed in the main­stream by GOP law­mak­ers and pun­dits on Fox News).

    Career racist and anti­semite David Duke also picked up the anti-Jew­ish sto­ry­line, tweet­ing Sun­day:
    Jus­tice Kavanaugh. Thank God you are now on the Supreme Court. Because of the vicious, hate­ful media Cabal and the polit­i­cal ziog­a­rchy, no mat­ter how nobly and bril­liant­ly you serve on the Court, their stain on U and fam­i­ly will nev­er be erased. Nev­er for­get who did this to you!”

    The self-described intel­lec­tu­al force behind the alt-right, Richard Spencer, views Kavanaugh’s con­fir­ma­tion as the lat­est shot in an ongo­ing bat­tle in Amer­i­ca.

    “Under­ly­ing it all is sim­ply an attack on Kavanaugh as a White male,” Spencer tweet­ed Sat­ur­day. “The ‘cul­ture war’ isn’t about ‘hot but­ton’ issues like abor­tion or the death penal­ty. It is a ‘race war,’ which is most­ly non-vio­lent but extreme­ly impact­ful.”

    On the pod­cast “Fash the Nation,” co-host “Jaz­zhands McFeels” claimed that non-white men want to remove white men from pow­er because of their race and gen­der. The fight against Kavanaugh’s nom­i­na­tion was just the lat­est rep­re­sen­ta­tion of that, McFeels said.

    “We’ve been say­ing for the past cou­ple of weeks that the fight against Brett Kavanaugh has been a proxy war on white men,” McFeels said. “White het­ero­sex­u­al men in Amer­i­ca and now it is piv­ot­ing into a war on white women.”

    Not all were thrilled with Kavanaugh after one day on the court.

    On his first day, Kavanaugh hired an all-female crew of law clerks, a slight­ly sur­pris­ing devel­op­ment giv­en his recent his­to­ry with women and sex­u­al-assault alle­ga­tions.

    “Brett Kavanaugh just hired the Supreme Court’s first all-women law clerk team What a fuck­ing fag­got. Already cucked on day one,” GAB user stripe_tobor wrote Mon­day.

    On the most extreme end of the spec­trum sits Gads­den at “The Green Pilled Per­spec­tive” on Radio Wehrwolf. The main issue, Gads­den said in a pod­cast, is Kavanaugh’s tenure in the Bush admin­is­tra­tion.

    “He’s a piece of shit because he was a Bush lawyer. He also wrote the Patri­ot Act and he pret­ty much sup­ports any­thing the Repub­li­can Par­ty sup­ports,” Gads­den said. “That’s enough in itself to say that he’s a piece of crap. That he sup­ports the neo­con GOP. Well, both par­ties are neo­con. It’s Coke ver­sus Pep­si. Either way you’re get­ting poi­soned.”

    GAB user Lawrence Blair saw the law clerks as the first hint that Kavanaugh will not work out as a jus­tice.

    “This is not a good sign,” Blair post­ed Mon­day on the alt-right social media site. “The first day into the office, he caves. As I feared from the begin­ning this man was raised in the Bush’s barn and will behave in like man­ner as the Bush’s.”

    Com­ments, sug­ges­tions or tips? Send them to HWeditor@splcenter.org and fol­low us on Twit­ter @Hatewatch.

    Posted by Mary Benton | October 23, 2018, 4:18 pm
  3. These two Guardian, UK arti­cles talk about how Supreme Court Jus­tice Nom­i­nee, Amy Coney Bar­rett, was a mem­ber of a Secre­tive Chris­t­ian Faith Group that has been crit­i­cized for dom­i­nat­ing the lives of its mem­bers and sub­ju­gat­ing women. The group was char­ac­ter­ized as poten­tial­ly more dan­ger­ous and much more sophis­ti­cat­ed [than a cult],” he said. “It is not the kind of group where sub­mis­sion of women to men means that they have to stay bare­foot and preg­nant. Instead, they have to be lawyers and judges and sub­mis­sive to men at the same time. They have to be able to have a career and sev­en kids at the same time.”

    The con­cerns are that a secre­tive orga­ni­za­tion is the oppo­site of trans­par­ent and it rais­es the ques­tion why do they need to be secre­tive – what are they hid­ing? The sec­ond ques­tion is that if woman are sub­mis­sive in this sect, would she make legal deci­sions that com­pro­mise wom­ens rights that deceased Jus­tice Ruth Bad­er Gins­burg fought for? A third ques­tion is will her reli­gious views dom­i­nate her legal doc­trine. He last ques­tion is her per­spec­tive rep­re­sent the val­ues and wills of the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion? The last ques­tion is more dif­fi­cult to answer, is this type of orga­ni­za­tion that the Under­ground Reich would sup­port due to their sup­port of a sub­mis­sive woman phi­los­o­phy and the fascis­tic Chris­t­ian per­spec­tive?

    The first Guardian, UK arti­cle was writ­ten by Mar­tin Pen­gael­ly Octo­ber, 7 2020 titled “McConnell hits out at Guardian and oth­er media over Amy Coney Bar­rett scruti­ny”

    Revealed: Amy Coney Bar­rett lived in home of secre­tive Chris­t­ian group’s co-founder
    Among McConnell’s tar­gets was a Guardian report which said Bar­rett “lived in the home of one of the founders of the Peo­ple of Praise while she was a law stu­dent, rais­ing new ques­tions about the supreme court nominee’s involve­ment with the secre­tive Chris­t­ian faith group that has been crit­i­cized for dom­i­nat­ing the lives of its mem­bers and sub­ju­gat­ing women”.

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/07/mitch-mcconnell-amy-coney-barrett-media?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

    The sec­ond arti­cle “‘It instilled such prob­lems’: ex-mem­ber of Amy Coney Bar­ret­t’s faith group speaks out” sub­ti­tled “For­mer insid­ers and reli­gious schol­ars say scruti­ny of Barrett’s con­nec­tion to Peo­ple of Praise is entire­ly legit­i­mate” by Stephanie Kirch­gaess­ner Octo­ber, 10, 2020 states:

    The 41-year-old had a rebel­lious spir­it and left Peo­ple of Praise when she turned 18. It has tak­en decades of ther­a­py and hard work to over­come the intense feel­ings of shame and fear of damna­tion that she said marked her child­hood. The Chris­t­ian faith group, based in South Bend, Indi­ana, dom­i­nat­ed every aspect of her ear­ly life, she said.

    Democ­rats have already stat­ed that nei­ther Barrett’s Catholic faith nor her mem­ber­ship in the Peo­ple of Praise – which has nev­er pub­licly been dis­cussed or dis­closed, but has been exam­ined in press reports – will be raised in their ques­tion­ing of the nom­i­nee.

    [S]ome reli­gious schol­ars who have stud­ied charis­mat­ic Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ties, say Barrett’s mem­ber­ship in this spe­cif­ic reli­gious com­mu­ni­ty does raise legit­i­mate ques­tions. They want to exam­ine how views that are inte­gral to the group’s core beliefs – from its treat­ment of women to the sep­a­ra­tion of church and state – might influ­ence her. They are also dis­tinct from most main­stream Catholic faith.

    In the bi-week­ly and hours-long meet­ings that defined Pow­ers’ child­hood, intense prayer and dis­cus­sions cen­tered on obe­di­ence and dri­ving out sin. Pow­ers, who does not know Bar­rett, fre­quent­ly wit­nessed peo­ple speak­ing in tongues and fren­zied calls for evil spir­its to be expelled, episodes that usu­al­ly led to exor­cisms. 

    “We were Catholic, but the Catholi­cism was on the side. Our life, all of our friends, all of the ran­doms who were liv­ing in our house­hold, were the [Peo­ple of Praise] com­mu­ni­ty. It was God,” she said. “The brain­wash­ing and the group­think, the female sub­ju­ga­tion of being there to serve and lis­ten to your spir­i­tu­al head. It was so devalu­ing. To me, it instilled such prob­lems.”

    Pow­ers’ expe­ri­ences are in line with a hand­book called The Spir­it and Pur­pose of the Peo­ple of Praise, which was obtained by the Guardian and con­firms that peo­ple who seek to be mem­bers of the group are prayed with for the release of “charis­mat­ic gifts” – specif­i­cal­ly, speak­ing in tongues and the gift of “prophe­cy”. It also states: “Obe­di­ence to author­i­ty and sub­mis­sion to head­ship are active respons­es to the gifts of God.”

    Although Bar­rett has not dis­cussed the issue, there is evi­dence that the for­mer Notre Dame law pro­fes­sor served as a trustee for a school affil­i­at­ed with the group; lived in the home of a promi­nent co-founder when she was in law school; and announced the birth of her chil­dren in Peo­ple of Praise’s mag­a­zine, which has removed ref­er­ences to Bar­rett and her fam­i­ly since she joined the fed­er­al bench in 2017.

    The Wash­ing­ton Post report­ed this week that Bar­rett served as a “hand­maid” as late as 2010, a lead­er­ship posi­tion for women in the com­mu­ni­ty, accord­ing to a direc­to­ry.

    Barrett’s father, Mike Coney, who has served in a lead­er­ship posi­tion in the Peo­ple of Praise, described his own deci­sion to join the group in a 2018 tes­ti­mo­ni­al at his Catholic church, describ­ing how he had ini­tial­ly unwill­ing­ly attend­ed a charis­mat­ic sem­i­nar as a young man. “When prayed with for a greater out­pour­ing of the Holy Spir­it, noth­ing hap­pened. Then lat­er that night I began to speak in tongues. More impor­tant­ly, I was filled with an insa­tiable appetite for read­ing scrip­ture and spir­i­tu­al books,” he wrote.

    “I think they’re poten­tial­ly more dan­ger­ous and much more sophis­ti­cat­ed [than a cult],” he said. “It is not the kind of group where sub­mis­sion of women to men means that they have to stay bare­foot and preg­nant. Instead, they have to be lawyers and judges and sub­mis­sive to men at the same time. They have to be able to have a career and sev­en kids at the same time.”

    Far from tak­ing her cues from the Peo­ple of Praise, Csor­das said, Barrett’s biog­ra­phy showed she was not a “mind­less devo­tee” of a cult, but rather part of the elite of the inten­tion­al charis­mat­ic covenant com­mu­ni­ty, reflect­ing her pre­vi­ous sta­tus as a hand­maid­en and trustee of the school, and her father’s lead­er­ship role.

    They want to change a cer­tain under­stand­ing of the lib­er­al order of indi­vid­ual rights, and that is com­ing from the reli­gious world­view of Catholic groups,” he said.

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/10/people-of-praise-amy-coney-barrett-faith-group?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

    Posted by Mary Benton | October 10, 2020, 12:56 pm
  4. Some notes on Supreme Court nom­i­nee Amy Coney Bar­rett.

    1. She worked for Scalia and Lawrence Sil­ber­man, who a) sank the Iraq WMD intel inves­ti­ga­tion b) Iran-Con­tra inves­ti­ga­tion and c) was involved with Octo­ber Sur­prise. Like that crowd, she is part of the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety. She also worked for Bak­er Botts dur­ing the 2000 Flori­da recount. She would bring to three the num­ber of Bush lawyers on THAT spe­cif­ic issue that serve on the Court: Coney Bar­rett, Roberts, and Kavanagh. That’s f@*#ing incred­i­ble. One-third of the Supreme Court will be Bush lawyers. Let that one sink in...

    2. Her father William Coney is REAL inter­est­ing to me. He was (is?) a long­time Shell Oil lawyer from Metairie, LA, ( home of Car­los Mar­cel­lo), whose entire career seems to be ori­ent­ed towards get­ting big gub­mint to leave them poor oil com­pa­nies alone.

    http://www.lawyerdb.org/Lawyer/Michael-Coney/

    “Michael E. Coney’s col­lege edu­ca­tion includes Uni­ver­si­ty of New Orleans, B.A., 1968, law school degree was from Loy­ola Uni­ver­si­ty, J.D., 1972, Louisiana State Uni­ver­si­ty Law Cen­ter, M.C.L., 1977; Tulane Uni­ver­si­ty, LL.M., Energy/Environmental Law, with dis­tinc­tion, 1995, oth­er bio­graph­i­cal back­ground includes Mem­ber, Loy­ola Law Review, 1972. Law clerk to Hon­or­able James A. Comesky, U.S.D.C. E.D. La. 1972–1975. Guest Speak­er: Louisiana Min­er­al Law Insti­tute; the Hous­ton Bar Asso­ci­a­tion; the Rocky Moun­tain Min­er­al Law Foun­da­tion (“RMMLF”) Insti­tute on Fed­er­al and Indi­an Roy­al­ty Val­u­a­tion and Man­age­ment. Speak­er and Co-Chair: RMMLF Fed­er­al Off­shore Oil & Gas Leas­ing & Devel­op­ment Short Course. Mem­ber: the Amer­i­can Petro­le­um Insti­tute Sub­com­mit­tee of Explo­ration and Pro­duc­tion Law, 1987–2007. Chair­man, Off­shore Oper­a­tions Com­mit­tee Legal Sub­com­mit­tee, 1987–2007. Appoint­ed Indus­try Rep­re­sen­ta­tive by Sec­re­tary of the inte­ri­or to Min­er­als Man­age­ment Ser­vice Roy­al­ty Pol­i­cy Com­mit­tee, 2004–2007. For­mer Trustee, Rocky Moun­tain Min­er­al Law Foun­da­tion. For­mer Attor­ney, Shell Oil Com­pa­ny, 1978–2007..”

    Coney was a law clerk for James A. Comiskey (mis­spelled above in that bio), who was a major play­er in New Orleans through the 60s and beyond. Incred­i­bly well-con­nect­ed indi­vid­ual. Anoth­er con­ser­v­a­tive Catholic who was not only a lawyer and judge, but a banker with ties to mul­ti­ple Louisiana banks. He was also on the City Coun­cil in the ear­ly 60s and ran for May­or in ’62. As judge, he a) sealed Marcello’s 1970 indict­ment for immi­gra­tion fraud and b) was the judge who required Gor­don Nov­el to return to Louisiana to pur­sue his civ­il case against Gar­ri­son, which would cause him to be arrest­ed for his raid on the muni­tion depot in Houma.

    https://www.laed.uscourts.gov/court-history/judges/comiskey

    Comiskey’s father was a boot­leg­ger in the 30s and then became a NOLA tax asses­sor for the last 38 years of his life! It is very “Noo Awl­ins” to have an orga­nized crime fig­ure go on to run a tax office and have his son go on to be a fed­er­al judge (appoint­ed by LBJ in ear­ly ’67). This arti­cle is amaz­ing. Click on mag­ni­fy­ing glass to bet­ter read the pages.

    ROUS­ES_NovDec2019_­Mag­a­zine-Pages

    https://yourgms.cld.bz/ROUSES-NovDec2019-Magazine-Pages2/49/

    The younger Comiskey also was put on a three-judge pan­el to hear Clay Shaw’s effort to get his tri­al moved to Fed­er­al court. I was unable to find what his opin­ions or votes were on these mat­ters. He was also the judge that sealed Mar­cel­lo’s 1970 indict­ment when the gov­ern­ment was try­ing to deport him.

    http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/White%20%20Files/Garrison/Garrison-Chronology/Garrison-Dates.pdf

    To sum it up:

    Coney Bar­ret­t’s father, a right-wing Catholic, worked as a law clerk in New Orleans from 1972–75 for a right-wing Catholic judge who made rul­ings in cas­es involv­ing both Gor­don Nov­el and Car­los Mar­cel­lo in pre­vi­ous years. This same judge was born to a father who ran a sig­nif­i­cant chunk of the New Orleans boot­leg under­world of the 20s and 30s, then ran a tax asses­sor dis­trict for the final 38 years of his life.

    Michael Coney then goes into the oil biz for decades, and his daugh­ter grows up to work for Scalia, Sil­ber­man, GWB, Bak­er Botts and then, onto the Supreme Court. Small world, right?

    Posted by CinqueAnon | November 29, 2020, 4:54 pm

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