When this New York Times oped was released yesterday afternoon I was in the process of having a wisdom tooth removed. So I didn’t hear anything about it until the early evening. So when I got to reading it we were already into people’s 2nd or 3rd impressions of what to make of it. I’ve been reading it over and I want to share a few thoughts about its potential authorship.
First, a few points of context. I say ‘faux-resistance leader’ because I see this exercise primarily as one of anticipatory self-exculpation. As things look darker and darker for the President we are beginning to see the first glimmers of the argument that those who should be tainted forever by their association with President Trump may actually be “unsung heroes” who were resisting from within.
Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) was casting a lot of aspersions on Brett Kavanaugh. Will she deliver the goods?
I wanted to follow up on my post below about Kavanaugh being a made to order Justice, courtesy of the Federalist Society and the rest of the conservative judicial incubation infrastructure. One highly knowledgeable reader of ours, who comes out of the DC legal world, notes more specific points: specifically, the way Kavanaugh’s grooming and incubation was conducted for the specific purpose of a) being absolutely certain that he was a strict right-wing ideologue, with no hidden dimensions of possible heterodoxy unexamined and b)that he was clean as a whistle, not only with no scandals but no paper trail that would cause undue problems. No more emerging heterodoxy like Kennedy and Souter. No more flame-outs like Bork.
From TPM Reader XX (true initials witheld) …
For all the talk about Kavanaugh’s judicial extremism, what stands out to me most about him is that he was essentially raised in a test tube for the purposes of serving on the Supreme Court. Of course, these two facts are not exclusive of each other. They are more the means (test tube incubated Justice) and the end (made to spec conservative maximalist Justice). But he is uniquely this way. He was born and bred in Republican DC. He was given the right education. He has been guided from his twenties through a cursus honorum of titles, clerkships, offices, Republican political appointments, judgeships and more.
Check out the latest updates from the Kavanaugh hearing in Livewire.
Kavanaugh’s faces Senate grilling today, and Paul Manafort’s legal team is back before Judge Amy Berman Jackson ahead of his next trial. Here’s more on that and other stories we’re following. (Updated.)
Day 2 of the Kavanaugh hearing began with protestors interrupting.
Tierney Sneed is in the hearing room, and will spearhead our daylong coverage.
Trump couldn’t have been this awesome if what Woodward wrote were true, Sarah Huckabee Sanders says. Watch.
After a long day of throat-clearing Tuesday, the confirmation hearing for Brett Kavanaugh starts in earnest today, with potentially 12+ hours of questioning from senators.
It did not take long for the document drama to heat up during the third day of Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court hearings.
Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats released a press release Thursday denying that he wrote the anonymous op-ed in the New York Times, joining the ranks of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Vice President Mike Pence, among others.
While abroad in India, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo denied writing the anonymous op-ed in the New York Times that sparked a frenzy of speculation about the article’s author.
“It’s not mine,” he said.
The Vice President puts his name on his Op-Eds. The @nytimes should be ashamed and so should the person who wrote the false, illogical, and gutless op-ed. Our office is above such amateur acts.
— Jarrod Agen (@VPComDir) September 6, 2018
Kim Jong Un of North Korea proclaims “unwavering faith in President Trump.” Thank you to Chairman Kim. We will get it done together!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 6, 2018
Does the so-called “Senior Administration Official” really exist, or is it just the Failing New York Times with another phony source? If the GUTLESS anonymous person does indeed exist, the Times must, for National Security purposes, turn him/her over to government at once!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 5, 2018
It took nearly 12 hours, but Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh got the perennial confirmation hearing question on his thoughts about cameras in the courtroom.
A brief back-and-forth between Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) — about Booker questioning Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh about an email not in front of the judge — revealed that among the Kavanaugh documents deemed “committee confidential” and thus not accessible to the public was an email titled “racial profiling.”
As we neared the 11th hour of Wednesday’s confirmation hearings, Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) jumped right into a line of questioning about Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s views on the use of race in government policy, such as in affirmative action. Kavanaugh did his best not to answer him.





