U.S. Senator Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) often appears dumb as a rock while combining malice, bad manners, and poor logic.
So imagine how many observers were surprised by this encounter Thursday, September 27:
Brett Kavanaugh: I will say, Senator, you’re asking about college? I got into Yale Law School. That’s the number-one law school in the country. I had no connections there. I got there by busting my tail in college.
Mazie Hirono: I feel insulted as a Georgetown graduate.
5. Sheldon Whitehouse Immolates Himself With Detailed Questions About Brett Kavanaugh’s Yearbook Page
U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island) grilled Brett Kavanaugh about his yearbook page about references that Kavanaugh said referred to base bodily functions, drinking games, and teen-age profanity on Thursday, September 27.
If anyone ever takes Whitehouse seriously again, it’s not Whitehouse’s fault.
4. Liar Richard Blumenthal Claims If You Lie In One Thing You Can Be Assumed To Lie In Everything
U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) as a state officeholder in Connecticut repeatedly told audiences that he served in the military in Vietnam. He didn’t.
After receiving at least five deferments, Blumenthal in 1970 joined the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, which just about ensured he wouldn’t be sent to Vietnam. Indeed, he wasn’t sent to Vietnam. But The New York Times in 2010 found three instances where he had told Connecticut audiences he served in Vietnam, and four Connecticut newspaper stories that described him as having served in Vietnam that he never sought to correct.
Imagine the surprise of viewers aware of these facts when Blumenthal questioned Kavanaugh on Thursday, September 27 by citing a Latin legal proverb:
Richard Blumenthal: Thanks, Mr. Chairman. Good afternoon, Judge Kavanaugh. As a federal judge you’re aware of the jury instruction, falsus in unibus, falsus in omnibus. Are you not? You’re aware of that jury instruction?
Brett Kavanaugh: Yeah. Yeah, I am.
Richard Blumenthal: You know what it means.
Brett Kavanaugh: You can translate it for me, Senator. You can do it better than I can.
Richard Blumenthal: “False in one thing, false in everything.” Meaning in jury instructions, that we, some of us as prosecutors have heard many times, is, told a jury that they can disbelieve a witness if they find him to be false in one thing. So the core of why we’re here today really is credibility.
Brett Kavanaugh: The core of why we’re here is an allegation for which the four witnesses present have all said it didn’t happen.
3. The Class of 1983 Yearbook Editors At Georgetown Prep Didn’t Know Basic Latin
To hear Jesuits talk, you’d think they invented Latin. And yet the editors of the yearbook at Georgetown Prep in 1983 appeared to lack a rudimentary understanding of Latin vocabulary.
A recurring reference in the yearbook, including on Brett Kavanaugh’s yearbook page, mentions a Catholic school girl whose first name is Renate. Critics of Kavanaugh claim it’s a sexual reference. Kavanaugh said it isn’t, but that it merely “was clumsily intended to show affection, and that she was one of us.”
Whatever it meant, it didn’t mean what the yearbook editors said it did. They put on the pages of Kavanaugh’s page and others the words “Renate Alumnius.”
The actual Latin word for the noun “graduate” is “Alumnus.”
(It’s not a typo, either; it appears in several places in the yearbook.)
2. Zombie Cult Protesters Learning Chants By Rote
Anti-Kavanaugh protesters gathering in a government office building were caught on camera reciting their pre-protest catechism.
This video is not — repeat, not — taken from Jonestown, Guyana c. 1978:
1. Caterwauling in the Senate
If you want a sense of what our country is becoming, watch the C-Span video of the roll call vote of the U.S. senators on the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh on Saturday, October 6.
Start at 18:17, shortly after Vice President Mike Pence begins the procedure. In short order, and not long after Pence reminds people in the gallery that expressions of approval or disapproval are not allowed in the gallery, screaming begins.
“I do not consent!” and “Shame on you!” can be discerned.
It’s not an isolated instance, either, as it continues intermittently through large portions of the roll call. The volume and duration of the shrieking are memorable.
Moments to focus on:
23:30 when Chuck Grassley booms out “Aye.”
24:50 when Joe Manchin votes Aye, followed by a woman yelling “Shame! Shame!”
35:20 is the moment of the announcement of the vote, which ended 50-48 for confirmation
