3620

I think they’re going to get to 50 w/o Murkowski and she’ll get the green-light to “no” without consequence.

3621

I had thought so too, but reading popehat’s explainer of the incredibly high bar it takes to actually convict someone of perjury in this situation means…well, probably not an avenue they can explore without some heavy evidence to the contrary.

3622

Weren’t there records of texts? Phone records?

3623
3624

Ah, well I wasn’t thinking of an actual conviction! But that would be nice. :)

3625

He doesn’t have to be convicted though. This is a job interview. They can just fail him, for clearly lying. It’s not a criminal charge.

3626

Understood.

But the political realities of the situation are such that it would take conviction-level instances of perjury to provide the cover for Republicans on the fence to vote no.

Perhaps the obvious fore-knowledge of the Ramirez incident rises to that level. Dunno.

3627

Invite them to a pool party and then remove the ladder?

3628

Or lock them in a room with wicker furniture near the fireplace. :)

3629

They should be charging 51 Republican senators with breaking their oath of office.

3630

Interesting. Mitch may have to move the vote to Monday.

3631

Huh. That seems like the sort of thing the majority whip should have known about before they made noises about scheduling a weekend vote in the first place.

3632

Not sure how much faith to put in this, but well:

3633

Popehat weighs in…

Double Jeopardy prevents successive prosecutions for the same crime, not related crimes. So — even if Kavanaugh swung the Supreme Court to overturn the Separate Sovereigns Doctrine, and even if Trump then went on a pardoning rampage to spare Ostrich Jacket and Idiot Lawyer and Junior and Dummy and so forth — Tump’s pardon would only prevent state prosecution for the same crime that Trump pardoned them for federally. What’s the “same crime?” Under the so-called Blockburger rule, two crimes are not the “same” if each one requires proof of an element that the other does not — that is, if each has at least one unique element. So: Trump’s pardon can only prevent state prosecutions to the extent the state crimes have the same elements as the federal crimes he’s pardoning. They usually don’t.

3634

I want blockburgers instead of blockchains.

3635

Gardner? Hahahahahahaha… That guy is a worthless stooge. He is voting yes 100%

3636

I’m pretty sure the answer is that Mitch doesn’t care about petty things like that.

3637

Kavanaugh has regrets:

Brett Kavanaugh wrote an op-ed that appeared in the Wall Street Journal on Thursday arguing he is an “independent, impartial judge” and conceding he “might have been too emotional” in his testimony in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee last week.

“I was very emotional last Thursday, more so than I have ever been,” Kavanaugh writes in the Journal. “I might have been too emotional at times. I know that my tone was sharp, and I said a few things I should not have said. I hope everyone can understand that I was there as a son, husband and dad. I testified with five people foremost in my mind: my mom, my dad, my wife, and most of all my daughters.”

Of course, he didn’t mention anything about his conspiracy theory that it’s all THE CLINTONS CONSPIRING AGAINST HIM!!!

Oh, PS. Mr Kavanaugh, if you want to appear impartial, stop only conversing with Right Wing media outlets.

3638

In his prepared opening statement, mind.

(strictly speaking, he was implying that Dems/the Left were trying to get “revenge for the Clintons,” presumably for the Whitewater/Lewinsky impeachment stuff in the 1990s)

3639

The main thing I feel about Kavanaugh’s performance is that it was intentionally staged that way to persuade an audience of one that his nomination shouldn’t be withdrawn. Of course, that audience of one is an idiot (driven by his id), but IMHO, it worked, because now that idiot is mocking sexual assault survivors in public and getting cheered for it by other idiots.