.@SenateMajLdr: "We have hired a female assistant to go on staff and to ask these questions in a respectful and professional way. We want this hearing to be handled very professionally not a political sideshow…" #Kavanaugh pic.twitter.com/N0hGKA6NqX
— CSPAN (@cspan) September 25, 2018
Shorter McConnell: We are powerful white men, and when we make a mess, it is our right to demand that a woman come in and clean up after us. Per the Washington Post:
Republican senators have selected Arizona prosecutor Rachel Mitchell to question Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh and the woman who has accused the Supreme Court nominee of sexually assaulting her when they were teenagers, a top senator announced Tuesday.
Mitchell is the chief of the special victims division of the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office, which deals with sexual assault cases, among others. A registered Republican, Mitchell has worked for in the county attorney’s office for 26 years.
In enlisting Mitchell to join their staff, Republican senators are taking an unusual step. They are turning to her to ask what are expected to be personal and potentially painful questions about the woman’s youth on live television, sparing the all-male panel of 11 Republican senators on the committee some uncomfortable exchanges that could sway the public’s opinion about the session…
The division Mitchell heads deals with family violence, physical and sexual abuse of children, and sex offenses, including sex assault cases. Mitchell oversees about 40 to 50 people in the division, said Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery.
Mitchell has a long history of investigating years-old sex crimes and allegations that are difficult to corroborate, including in her role re-examining hundreds of cases that were unresolved and inadequately investigated by the sheriff’s office, Montgomery said.
“Over the course of Rachel’s career, she has dealt with victims in this very circumstance of delayed disclosure and circumstances where allegations were difficult to corroborate,” Montgomery said. “She has had to make a decision as a prosecutor whether or not those cases can move forward.”…
You’ve got to hand it to these guys that they think introducing a “sex crime prosecutor” into this story still doesn’t look as bad as if they asked the questions.
— Schooley (@Rschooley) September 26, 2018
If the Republicans need a woman on the Judiciary Committee to ask questions for them, they can borrow one of ours. We have four.
— shauna (@goldengateblond) September 25, 2018
Republicans have hired an outside attorney to grill Dr. Ford, they’ve scheduled a vote on Judge Kavanaugh for Friday AM (the day after this hearing), and they’re limiting questions to 1 round of 5 min Qs
Does that sound like they’re taking this seriously to you?
Me neither.
— Senator Chris Coons (@ChrisCoons) September 25, 2018
People who can’t trust themselves to be appropriately sensitive to women also shouldn’t be trusted to enact laws about their bodies. pic.twitter.com/hygjns17sv
— shauna (@goldengateblond) September 26, 2018
On the one hand, Brett Kavanaugh has been revealed to be a liar, a terrible person, and an incompetent nominee; on the other hand, the “own the libs” index of his confirmation has gone sky-high.
— laura olin (@lauraolin) September 25, 2018
They’re all in with the Dear Leader of their Death Cult…
Next time someone asks why women are afraid to come forward about sexual assault, show them this video and say “This guy was elected president.” https://t.co/BprkORyeaA
— The Volatile Mermaid (@OhNoSheTwitnt) September 25, 2018
Here's the pool transcript of Trump's rant about the accusations against Kavanaugh, including the "admits she was drunk." pic.twitter.com/5iyVeUEdWS
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) September 25, 2018
Villago Delenda Est
These idiots simply cannot stop stepping on rakes.
NotMax
Unless I’m missing something, that would have been Arpaio.
B.B.A.
Oh, it’s someone from the fascist Arpaio regime. Lovely.
Major Major Major Major
Mitchell is going along with it, so, sad to say, she must be garbage just like every other person involved in pushing Judge K.
MobiusKlein
@Villago Delenda Est: Stepping on rakes to prove they are in the club.
And show they can get away with it.
And inoculate the next appointee from similar accusations.
Martin
Dear literally everyone,
The only country that old white men should run is one filled with nothing but old white men. Representation matters. The reason they are so desperate to get Kavanaugh confirmed is that there’s a wave of women coming to Congress. Should we successfully get gender equality in Congress, there will be no more abortion debate, and nobody like Kavanaugh will even be nominated. Even the GOP knows this which is why they’re telling us that the white men on Judiciary are unqualified to even take witness testimony.
Vote like your life depends on it.
piratedan
they can’t even bring themselves to give the lady her due…. She’s a prosecutor, you know, the one you hopefully “hired” to not make you look like the boys club you so obviously are…. granted, she’s even a Republican Prosecutor and she may be even more qualified than the asshat you’re trying to stick onto the court.
My guess is that they tagged her via John Kyl, who is a soulless POS and who know already helped prep Kavanaugh and Ms. Mitchell has likely been advised as to what the score actually is. It’s also not beyond the realm of possibility that we see her “appointed” to some judgeship somewhere about two months from now as the resultant “quid pro quo” because AZ is unlikely to be ungerrymandered in one shot. Considering the limits that they are imposing on the “questions” that they are allowing, who’s to say how much damage they’re trying to avoid knowing that the group of dick steppers that are out there that someone will forget to NOT WEAR CLEATS….
M. Bouffant
Lovely story of Prosecutor Mitchell here.
sukabi
@M. Bouffant: well she sounds like a winner.?
Shalimar
@Villago Delenda Est: I think it’s time we all admit they have a rake fetish.
Mnemosyne
@B.B.A.:
Yup. The Arpaio regime that deliberately did not investigate sex crimes against Latinx people. I think there’s a huge pending lawsuit about it.
Mnemosyne
Here’s a 2012 story about what Maricopa County sheriffs didn’t do when it came to sex crimes. Somebody needs to ask Mitchell about her involvement in this whole disaster:
https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/victims-wonder-why-arpaio-let-sex-abuse-cases-languish-6463426
M. Bouffant
@Mnemosyne: AHEM!!
Mnemosyne
@M. Bouffant:
Two completely different stories from the same source. Because Mitchell is just that much of an asshole.
sm*t cl*de
“Trump on Kavanaugh” turns out to be “Trump on Trump”:
M. Bouffant
@Mnemosyne: Uh-oh. Went off too soon. But good there are two articles. The more we know & all.
Mnemosyne
@M. Bouffant:
Oh, there’s way more than two stories. One of the reasons Arpaio got voted out was the sex crimes scandal, and Mitchell appears to have been knee-deep in covering for him.
M. Bouffant
@Mnemosyne: Let’s hope this all comes out before Thurs.
Jay
“But if you were following along on Fox News’ Twitter feed, you didn’t see this stunning and humiliating moment of Trump becoming a laughing stock before the entire world. Instead, Fox tweeted a video that abruptly cuts off right as Trump said, “the history of our country,” removing the laughter entirely from the short 11-second clip, as Washington Post reporter Aaron Blake pointed out.”
patrick II
@sm*t cl*de:
Obama was Magna cum laude at Harvard law. Do we know anything about Kavanaugh at Yale, other than he stuck his dick in a woman’s face? I’m going to guess Trump wasn’t first in his class either.
Sister Golden Bear
Oooh, a lady assistant. I guess we don’t have to worry our pretty little heads about things now…
Patricia Kayden
@Martin: Our life depended on it in 2016. I just hope that the vote is so overwhelmingly Democratic that all those voter suppression tactics utterly fail.
John Revolta
Fucker says “con” six times in the one paragraph, and then he spells it for you at the end there.
Anne Laurie
@Sister Golden Bear:
Tsk, tsk, no lady would take such a narsty job… she is, according to Sen. McConnell, merely ‘a female’. The Suthron Aristocrapcy upholds the ancient Norman naming conventions: Ladies are (a lesser) part of the elite; females are livestock, pets, or servants.
hervevillechaizelounge
@patrick II:
Of course Trump wasn’t first in his class but the media will never fact check that assertion; for most of his campaign I believed he had an MBA from Wharton because the MSM mis-frames his scholastic career.
Slightly OT but I must share; my friend’s beau went to a hoity-toity attorneys’ conference in Miami this week and the keynote speaker was none other than James Comey—he was paid 150K for a 45 minute speech about leadership.
White men can only fail up; it’s the law of physics nobody talks about.
Patricia Kayden
@sm*t cl*de: Trump was Number 1 in his college class? If true, that doesn’t reflect well on his college.
Bostonian
@Patricia Kayden: Trump was only Number 1 in his own mind. He went to Fordham for two years, where he didn’t distinguish himself, and then family ties got him into U Penn, where he graduated without any kind of honors. The program from his graduation is available online, and it lists all those who earned honors; he is not among them. The number one student in his class would surely have been one of the two students who graduated Summa.
https://www.thedp.com/article/2017/02/trump-academics-at-wharton
sm*t cl*de
@Bostonian:
IKR? Trump had just one job – to lie about Kavanaugh’s integritude – and even that, he decided it was more important to let pathetic denials of his own worthlessness fall out of his facehole.
bjacques
@Villago Delenda Est: If you want a picture of the future GOP, imagine a wingtip, stepping on a rake, forever.
So, if I understand this correctly, Ms. Mitchell’s brief is to throw a moot court attempted rape trial by prosecute the *victim*? I hope Mitchell is too stupid to realize she has to impugn the Ford of six years ago and not today, and that Bromwich is prepping Ford really well for this. If Mitchell’s national impression is a bad one, it will be a bonus whether or not Kavanaugh goes down.
SFAW
@Villago Delenda Est:
It’s only “stepping on rakes” if Kavanaugh does not get confirmed and the Rethugs get smashed in November.
Until we see otherwise, the only two “female assistants” that matter (Murkowski and Collins) are going to be good soldiers. Frankly, even if Dr. Blasey Ford had pictures or videos taken by Joe Arpaio, Collins would find some excuse to fall into line. [I know much less about Murkowski.] And I don’t know if Manchin’s bullshit yesterday meant he’s wavering, or it was just performance art.
SFAW
@patrick II:
That’s only because those libtard profs at Harvard were doing their own form of Affirmative Action. And beside, Trump was Ultra Super Hyper Magna cum Laude for the entire country when he was an undergrad and grad student.
Game, set, and touchdown, libturd!
SFAW
@bjacques:
“She was asking for it, amirite?”
boatboy_srq
So this is what they mean when they talk about a woman being able to “shut that whole thing down.”
Bostonian
@SFAW: Ms. Ford, did Mr. Kavanaugh’s hands consent to being touched by your clothing?
Peter H Desmond
@M. Bouffant: oof.
ElegantFowl
Do I understand correctly that Ms. Mitchell is to be the *only* questioner? No Dem questions allowed? Why is anyone going along with this?
NotMax
@ElegantFowl
Nope.
5 minutes allocated per committee member.
11 Rs on committee = 55 minutes. 10 Ds on committee = 50 minutes.
All (or almost all) R time will be ceded to Miller.
Ds could cede time to just one or two committee members if they choose to do so.
Note: Not saying I agree with the way things are set up, just laying out how they have been set up.