Well, that was certainly an interesting nine hours, wasn't it?

I write this immediately after having watched the gavel-to-gavel coverage of the Christine Blasey Ford / Brett Kavanaugh hearing in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. My strongest reaction takes the long view, because I think in 20 or 30 years' time, Christine Blasey Ford's name will be as recognizable as Anita Hill's still is today. No matter what happens next, this was definitely a historic moment.

This article's title comes from the definition of post-apocalyptic: after the apocalypse. This continues the metaphor which started when then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid went with what was called at the time "the nuclear option" -- changing the Senate's rules so that all judicial appointments below the level of the Supreme Court could no longer be filibustered. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell later launched his own retaliatory nuclear strike on the Supreme Court confirmations. So, with both sides having "dropped a nuke" each, we are now in a political landscape that can only be described as post-apocalyptic.

I am reminded, in fact, of one of the most jarring lyrics from the rock band Yes (who normally wrote some rather ethereal and uplifting lyrics). In the song "Yours Is No Disgrace," however, one line appears which seems to fit what we just witnessed: "Death-defying, mutilated armies scatter the Earth. Crawling out of dirty holes, their morals, their morals disappear." At this point, that seems an apt description of our post-apocalyptic politics.

Continue Reading »

President Donald Trump just achieved a rather dubious distinction -- one he has often falsely levelled at previous presidents, in fact. Because President Trump has now officially and quite literally become the laughingstock of the world.

Continue Reading »

Brett Kavanaugh now stands accused of sexual misconduct by two women. The minefield Republicans already had to cross to get him confirmed to the Supreme Court just got a whole lot more politically explosive, in other words. "He-said/she-said" has now become: "He said/they said." And the lawyer for Stormy Daniels has hinted that he's got a third bombshell to drop into this fray (although, to be fair, he has made promises of future revelations before with no actual followup, so perhaps he's just trying to leverage the news to his and his client's advantage in some fashion).

The picture that has emerged from the accusations so far is one of Kavanaugh being quite the party animal, in both high school and college. Stories of excessive drinking are not in and of themselves a disqualification for Kavanaugh, but the more stories of him excessively drinking while in school that pop up, the more doubt there will be that he could even have remembered what happened during the times he's been accused of sexual assault.

Continue Reading »

My internet provider has been having a lot of trouble today. Internet service has been occasionally up, but mostly down. They know there's a problem and they're working on it. But just to warn everyone, there may be severe service interruptions. Thanks for your patience.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

Brett Kavanaugh was supposed to have been confirmed by the Senate to a seat on the Supreme Court by now. That was the original plan, at any rate. But this plan was blown out of the water last Friday when Christine Blasey Ford came forward and publicly accused him of attempting to rape her when the two were in high school. The fallout still continues, and will continue to do so for some time to come.

The overwhelming rush to confirm Kavanaugh, of course, was entirely made-up to begin with. There is absolutely nothing stopping the Senate from taking as much time as it needs to vet Kavanaugh, putting the lie to all of the Republicans' talk of it being "the 11th hour." There is no deadline. None. Republicans argue that they want to allow the Supreme Court to begin its next term (which starts at the beginning of October) with a full bench. But they were fully content to have only eight justices on the court throughout all of 2016, which completely undermines their position now.

Continue Reading »

[Editor's Note: At least once a year, usually during the silly season in August, I indulge in writing a summer daydream article. I am probably "borrowing" this theme from the comic strip Doonesbury, I fully admit, but when the political news is slow and the weather's hot sometimes it's fun to just indulge your inner "what if..." and spin it in a pleasant direction, just for the heck of it. Today, I choose to do so once again, because it would be so supremely justified. And, yes, "supremely" is the only possible term to use, really.]

The scenario which frightens Republicans the most right now is that the chance to tilt the Supreme Court their direction for a generation to come might just be slipping away from them. This is the sole reason the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh is being rammed through as quickly as they can manage. Which led me to ponder about the worst possible scenario for them, just for fun.

Continue Reading »

Donald Trump, in the past week, has seen his former campaign manager Paul Manafort flip on him and agree to a plea deal with Bob Mueller, watched as his Supreme Court nominee's vote had to be postponed because of a sexual assault charge levied against him, and must surely by now have heard that Stormy Daniels is about to release a new book in which she describes both Trump's genitalia and his sexual performance in rather disparaging terms. Throughout it all, though, Trump hasn't tweeted about any of it. In fact, he's been strangely subdued for days.

If Trump were a normal president, the explanation might have been that Hurricane Florence hit the Carolinas and caused widespread devastation, and Trump was restraining himself during the emergency. However, Trump is not a normal president by any stretch of the imagination, because if he were the question of why he hasn't unloaded several tweetstorms of his own wouldn't even arise. But he is who he is, which makes his silence on Twitter all the more notable.

Continue Reading »

Just to warn everyone up front, this is not really going to be a proper column. I had actually intended to take the day off for unrelated reasons, but rather than running a re-run column or not running anything at all, the following caught my eye. So I'm running this excerpt to stimulate conversation in the comments, because it certainly is an interesting concept, if true -- especially given the fact that the poll came from the Republican National Committee itself.

According to Bloomberg, Republican congressional candidates might wind up being hoist by a widespread GOP petard -- becoming victims of their own denial of reality. You see, because "the polls were wrong in 2016," that now equates to "all polls are always wrong because they're part of the liberal conspiracy against us." There simply is no impending blue wave, because instead on election night all the pointy-headed weenies are going to be aghast (once again) at the exact opposite -- the red wave that President Donald Trump has been predicting. Therefore, since Republicans are going to win big time anyway, there's no real urgency to get out and actually vote. Here's the full story:

Continue Reading »

We are all about to see a hypothetical scenario many have wondered about actually become reality. The hypothetical situation can be stated as: "In the age of #MeToo, how would the Anita Hill accusations against Clarence Thomas have played out differently?" Because we've now got another Supreme Court judicial nominee who has been accused of sexual misconduct during his confirmation process. What happens next is (as of this writing) uncertain, but it appears that the Senate committee handling his confirmation hearings is going to be forced to address the controversy in one way or another.

If further hearings happen, many will see parallels to Anita Hill's testimony in front of the same Senate committee. And many will be watching for how the senators on the committee act, because they didn't exactly set a gold standard for sensitivity back in Anita Hill's time. In fact, the Clarence Thomas hearings remain a black mark on Joe Biden's record, since at the time he was the chairman of the committee. He reportedly cut a deal with the Republicans on the committee to limit the testimony to Hill herself, which meant that others who could have corroborated her stories were not heard at all. The questioning was pretty brutal, as well.

Will history repeat itself? That's the question I've been pondering. Supreme Court judicial nominations have been rank partisan affairs for years now, and Thomas was only confirmed on a 52-48 vote. If Brett Kavanaugh is ultimately confirmed, it will likely be by a similar razor-thin margin. But the real question is whether history will repeat itself in the committee hearings or not.

Continue Reading »

A new warning has just been issued, because the hurricane-force bluster emanating from the White House is projected to reach Category 5 this weekend.

Heh. Sorry, but we couldn't resist.

Convicted felon Paul Manafort pleaded guilty today to two additional serious federal felonies, one of which was conspiracy to defraud the United States government. He also had to pony up tens of millions of dollars' worth of real estate, because one of the frauds he perpetrated was avoiding paying $15 million in federal taxes by money laundering. The biggest news, however, wasn't Manafort pleading guilty to his ninth and tenth felonies, but the fact that to get a plea deal he had to agree to cooperate with Bob Mueller's investigation. This is what he's been fighting against doing all along, so it is big news.

Continue Reading »