monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

There wasn't some cabal of 6 or 7 old conservative white men protecting Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, Al Franken etc etc. They didn't protect Bill Clinton. This is not an ideological issue and to cast as such, as you have, is, frankly, disgraceful.

Dr. Ford needs to be heard in accordance with well-established rules of fairness that do not deprive Judge Kavanaugh of any of his rights.

What is happening, in this case, is a travesty. It is sickening.

As Senate Republicans press for a swift vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh, President Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court, Senate Democrats are investigating a new allegation of sexual misconduct against Kavanaugh. The claim dates to the 1983-84 academic school year, when Kavanaugh was a freshman at Yale University. The offices of at least four Democratic senators have received information about the allegation, and at least two have begun investigating it. Senior Republican staffers also learned of the allegation last week and, in conversations with The New Yorker, expressed concern about its potential impact on Kavanaugh’s nomination. Soon after, Senate Republicans issued renewed calls to accelerate the timing of a committee vote. The Democratic Senate offices reviewing the allegations believe that they merit further investigation. “This is another serious, credible, and disturbing allegation against Brett Kavanaugh. It should be fully investigated,” Senator Mazie Hirono, of Hawaii, said. An aide in one of the other Senate offices added, “These allegations seem credible, and we’re taking them very seriously. If established, they’re clearly disqualifying.”

The woman at the center of the story, Deborah Ramirez, who is fifty-three, attended Yale with Kavanaugh, where she studied sociology and psychology. Later, she spent years working for an organization that supports victims of
domestic violence. The New Yorker contacted Ramirez after learning of her possible involvement in an incident involving Kavanaugh. The allegation was conveyed to Democratic senators by a civil-rights lawyer. For Ramirez, the sudden attention has been unwelcome, and prompted difficult choices. She was at first hesitant to speak publicly, partly because her memories contained gaps because she had been drinking at the time of the alleged incident. In her initial conversations with The New Yorker, she was reluctant to characterize Kavanaugh’s role in the alleged incident with certainty. After six days of carefully assessing her memories and consulting with her attorney, Ramirez said that she felt confident enough of her recollections to say that she remembers Kavanaugh had exposed himself at a drunken dormitory party, thrust his penis in her face, and caused her to touch it without her consent as she pushed him away. Ramirez is now calling for the F.B.I. to investigate Kavanaugh’s role in the incident. “I would think an F.B.I. investigation would be warranted,” she said...

DanEggenWPost

Our supreme court is appointed by professionals

(with details to be worked on today).

“I would think an F.B.I. investigation would be warranted,” she said...

It takes courage to report these crimes, when they happen, and maybe more than I would have but what other answer is there?

A new round of US tariffs on Chinese goods has kicked in, the largest yet in the escalating trade war between the economic superpowers.

The US started imposing tariffs on $200bn ($152bn) worth of Chinese products from 12:01 Beijing time (04:01 GMT), in response to what it says are unfair trading practices by China.

China has retaliated with tariffs on $60bn of US goods.

It says the US has started the "largest trade war in economic history".

The latest move takes the total amount of Chinese imports hit by US tariffs since July up to $250bn. This means about half of all Chinese imports to the US are now subject to these new duties.

The latest escalation comes as China cancelled further trade talks with the US, according to media reports.

The latest US duties apply to almost 6,000 items, making them the biggest round of trade tariffs yet from Washington.

They affect handbags, rice and textiles, although some items such as smart watches and high chairs have been exempted.

US companies importing the Chinese products in question will have to pay an additional 10% levy.

The tax will rise to 25% from the start of 2019, unless the two countries agree a deal.

In contrast, China is placing an additional 5% duty on US products including smaller aircraft, computers and textiles, and an extra 10% on goods such as chemicals, meat, wheat and wine.

President Trump inadvertently spawned a new and trending hashtag after questioning why Professor Christine Blasey Ford did not report her alleged sexual assault by his Supreme Court nominee when it happened 36 years ago.

In one of a series of tweets on Friday, he said: "I have no doubt. that, if the attack on Dr Ford was as bad as she says, charges would have been immediately filed..."

There was a swift response.

Under the hashtag #WhyIDidntReport, thousands of women began recounting why it took them many years to talk about their attacks. By Sunday, there had been 675,000 tweets.

Many spoke of feeling ashamed or powerless, of reporting their attacker but not being believed, of years of trauma trying to process what had happened to them or trying to forget about it.

Celebrities also recounted their experiences.

"I was sexually assaulted twice. Once as a teenager. I never filed a police report and it took me 30 years to tell my parents," actress and activist Alyssa Milano tweeted in response to Mr Trump.

Ms Milano later wrote in a first person piece in Vox: "For me, speaking up meant reliving one of the worst moments of my life. It meant recognising my attacker's existence when I wanted nothing more than to forget that he was allowed to walk on this earth at all.

"This is what every survivor goes through. Telling our stories means being vulnerable to public attacks and ridicule when our only "crime" was to be assaulted in the first place."

Patti Davis, the daughter of Ronald and Nancy Reagan, wrote a piece in the Washington Post to explain why victims of sexual assault do not always remember the finer details.

She remembered the music executive's office she was in 40 years ago, she remembered the sky turning dark, what he was wearing, and what his breath smelled like when he raped her.

"I don't remember what month it was. I don't remember whether his assistant was still there when I arrived. I don't remember whether we said anything to each other when I left his office," she said.

She defended Prof Ford's lack of recall for some of the events of the night in 1982 when she says Brett Kavanaugh, then aged 17, attempted to rape her, aged 15, at a party in Maryland - a claim he has strenuously denied.

"That's what happens," Patti Davis wrote.

"Your memory snaps photos of the details that will haunt you forever, that will change your life and live under your skin. It blacks out other parts of the story that really don't matter much.

Author Deborah Copaken also defended Prof Ford in the Atlantic, and pointed out that the power Brett Kavanaugh would have as a Supreme Court judge meant it was vital that her allegations were taken seriously.

She described how she had been able to forgive her rapist after he showed deep remorse when she confronted him about it 30 years later.

"But you know what? If he were being confirmed for the Supreme Court; if his decision over what would happen to my daughter's body, should she become inadvertently pregnant, would tip the scales away from Roe; if one of the key aspects of his job as a judge would be to show and to have shown good judgment over the course of his life, you better believe that I, like Ford, would come forward and tell the committee," she wrote.

"Even if it meant going into hiding, as she's had to do. Even if it meant getting death threats, as she's received."

Prof Ford has agreed to testify next Thursday before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is considering whether to confirm Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court.

Many will see her as brave, telling the world about an alleged event she has spent her life trying to forget amid public vilification and death threats.

But she will also face great scepticism, not least from some of the Republican members of the judiciary committee who will question her on Thursday.

One of them, Lindsey Graham, told Fox News Sunday he did not expect her testimony to change his mind.

"What am I supposed to do? Go ahead and ruin this guy's life based on an accusation?" he said. "Unless there's something more, no I'm not going to ruin Judge Kavanaugh's life over this."

But the reality is that this is all an ugly, desperate mess. Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley and his ilk have shown no desire to find the truth. Forced into a hearing at the insistence of senators like Jeff Flake and Lisa Murkowski, they’ve structured it not to bring the truth to light, but to do the least damage. Grassley refused Ford a real investigation on the grounds that the Senate is enough: “The job of assessing and investigating a nominee’s qualifications in order to decide whether to consent to the nomination is ours, and ours alone,” he said. And as he was saying this, the Chief Counsel for Nominations Mike Davis was writing, “Unfazed and determined. We will confirm Judge Kavanaugh,” in a since-deleted Tweet. They, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (“Kavanaugh will be on the Supreme Court”), couldn’t be clearer: This hearing is purely for show.

Donald Trump has adopted many contradictory positions since taking office, but he has been unwavering on one point: that Russia played no role in putting him in the Oval Office. Trump dismisses the idea that Russian interference affected the outcome of the 2016 election, calling it a “made-up story,” “ridiculous,” and “a hoax.” He finds the subject so threatening to his legitimacy that—according to “The Perfect Weapon,” a recent book on cyber sabotage by David Sanger, of the Times—aides say he refuses even to discuss it. In public, Trump has characterized all efforts to investigate the foreign attacks on American democracy during the campaign as a “witch hunt”; in March, he insisted that “the Russians had no impact on our votes whatsoever.”

Elizabeth Rasor, a college classmate and former girlfriend of Mark Judge, the accused accomplice in Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s alleged sexual assault of professor Christine Blasey Ford, says that Judge admitted to her an episode when he and his friends took turns “having sex” with a drunk woman.

According to a Sunday New Yorker report, Rasor came forward with the information after seeing Judge’s denial that there was a culture of sexual assault at Georgetown Prep, where both he and Kavanaugh went to high school at the time that Blasey Ford’s assault allegedly occurred.

President Donald Trump's legal team appears to have won a victory. Special counsel Robert Mueller has agreed to let Trump provide answers in writing, instead of in a personal interview, to questions concerning his campaign's contacts with Russia. But far from a defeat for Mueller, this is part of a carefully considered approach that has been repeatedly vindicated.

Since January, Mueller and his team have reportedly been talking with the president’s lawyers about securing his testimony. By dragging out the negotiations, Mueller has allowed breathing room for the rest of his investigation. And he has put that time to good use.

Mueller has charged 12 Russian military intelligence officers with hacking Democratic National Committee emails; reached a plea deal with Rick Gates, Trump’s former deputy campaign manager; sentenced George Papadopoulos, the campaign’s former foreign policy adviser; and reached a cooperation agreement with former campaign manager Paul Manafort after convicting him on eight criminal charges.

By all accounts, the end is nowhere in sight. Mueller is like Shakespeare's Birnam Wood, creeping closer to the White House step by step, without the president fully realizing it.

Mueller has given up very little in buying that time — and in agreeing to accept written answers from Trump. The reported offer only covers questions about possible collusion. On that front, Mueller may already have enough evidence without Trump's testimony, especially now that he has cooperation from Manafort and reportedly from Trump's Mr. Fix It, lawyer Michael Cohen.

Neither does the delay likely affect Mueller’s obstruction of justice case, given the amount of already known evidence pointing to Trump’s corrupt intent in firing former FBI Director James Comey. At this point, Mueller has contemporaneous notes from Comey’s conversations with the president, in which he asked for “loyalty” and for the FBI to let go of its investigation of former national security adviser Michael Flynn (who has pleaded guilty to making false statements and will be sentenced Dec. 18).

Mueller also has the president’s own admission on national television that he fired Comey because of the "made-up" Russia story. And Mueller has had numerous unfettered interviews with White House counsel Don McGahn — who knows of Trump’s efforts to stop Attorney General Jeff Sessions from recusing from the Russia investigation, and may have more information about Trump pressure on the intelligence community to officially clear his name.

Nor has Mueller given up his ultimate weapon. He could, if he chooses, issue a subpoena to compel the president to testify. By building a paper trail that shows he has tried everything in his power to obtain the president’s voluntary cooperation, Mueller is strengthening his case if it ever does go to court.

In the meantime, the delay could even help add to Mueller’s obstruction case against the president. With every angry tweet that rails against the Russia probe, Mueller or his own attorney general, Trump adds to Mueller’s gallery of exhibits showing Trump’s “corrupt” intent to quash the Russia investigation.

The protracted negotiation with Mueller, moreover, provides a specific issue for the president to focus on with his lawyers and a channel for him to vent his frustrations. Allowing the president to believe he is calling some shots and pushing back on the investigation gives Trump the illusion of control and makes him less likely to panic, lose his temper, and impulsively try to fire Mueller or his boss, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

We may well have seen the beneficial results in the past few days. Despite a New York Times report that Rosenstein urged actions harmful to the president, a much feared Saturday Night Massacre II did not materialize. The claims — that Rosenstein offered to wear a wire around Trump and brought up the 25th Amendment — smack of spin by someone making mischief.

Still, Trump’s response has been surprisingly muted (so far), perhaps in part because Mueller and Rosenstein have avoided pushing the president into a corner (yet). The result: Despite constant rumors of Trump intending to fire one or both, they are still here.

The truth is that with the Nov. 6 elections so close, Trump’s hands are tied. He can’t fire either of them without risking a backlash and further helping Democratic candidates. No less a provocateur than Fox News’ Sean Hannity went on the air Friday after the Rosenstein allegations to beg the president, don't fire people now. Mueller’s cautious approach has helped bring us to this point.

Stalling on the interview since January has also placed Justice Department officials in an advantageous position regarding Congress. Under the special counsel regulations, Mueller does not have the authority to issue a report directly to Congress, and is required to submit his report to Rosenstein. Today, Rosenstein would be submitting such a report to a Congress controlled by Republicans who would not be eager to release it to the public.

However, with the midterm elections in six weeks, Democrats stand a strong chance of winning a House majority. That means Democrats would control the House subpoena power and could ensure that Mueller’s findings see the light, even in the event Rosenstein or Mueller is fired.

While the president’s revolving door of lawyers has been occupied protecting the president from himself, Mueller has been playing the long game. What Trump’s legal team considers a victory is a deliberate strategy by Mueller to continue kicking the can down the road and making sure the investigation — and his and Rosenstein’s jobs — survive the process.

Norman Eisen is a senior fellow at Brookings, chair of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and the author of "The Last Palace: Europe’s Turbulent Century In Five Lives and One Legendary House." Asha Rangappa is a senior lecturer at the Yale Jackson Institute for Global Affairs and a former FBI special agent. Follow them on Twitter: @NormEisen and @AshaRangappa_