Events

It seems timely for me to dredge up this PSA I did for Hofstra Television in October 1991: On later viewing, though, it seems to me like we still had trouble seeing that date rape was exponentially more common than random street rape. That said, I was pretty proud that HTV broadcast the video, from a script that we used in crisis hotline training. Cast: Heather Maidat (Hofstra '94). Director: Sean Pearson (Hofstra '92).

The American Bar Association had concerns about Brett Kavanaugh 12 years ago: Democrats for three years had been blocking President George W. Bush’s 2003 nomination of Kavanaugh to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. They argued he was biased, as shown by his work as a lawyer for Bush’s presidential campaign, for an independent counsel’s investigation into President Bill Clinton and for other conservative causes. Republicans kept pushing to make Kavanaugh a judge on the powerful appeals...

Brett Kavanaugh's hearing yesterday dominated the news. Here are some reactions: My favorite: Alexandra Petri demanding HOW DARE YOU DO THIS TO BRETT KAVANAUGH. My least favorite: Mona Charen correctly identifying it as a show trial but incorrectly identifying the aggrieved party. Sarah Holder makes the case for a local investigation of Kavanaugh's conduct. Emma Green found herself baffled by Rachel Mitchell's questions. Andrew Sullivan notes that everyone lost yesterday. Aaron Blake says the GOP's...

Phew! I own property again, as of 11:42 CDT today. I'm glad meet the requirements for voting as established in most of the States back in 1789. (Fortunately, we've updated the requirement, and the Republican Party haven't succeeded in rolling back the new rules.)

Republican David Brock, who worked with Judge Brett Kavanaugh on the Clinton impeachment, urges the Senate to vote "No" on Kavanaugh's nomination: Twenty years ago, when I was a conservative movement stalwart, I got to know Brett Kavanaugh both professionally and personally. A detailed analysis of Kavanaugh's own notes from the Starr Investigation reveals he was cherry-picking random bits of information from the Starr investigation — as well as the multiple previous investigations — attempting vainly to...

Long-time readers know how much I hate what Eddie Lampert has done to Sears (recent example here). Now, apparently, even he thinks the company is done for: Edward Lampert's proposed debt reduction plan for Sears Holdings is noteworthy for what it doesn't include: any commitment of new funds from the hedge fund mogul/CEO himself for the floundering retailer he has controlled since 2005. That may be why the plan landed with such a thud on Wall Street. Sears stock tumbled 7 percent after Sears disclosed...

Writing in Forbes, psychologist Todd Essig says it's perfectly plausible that Brett Kavanaugh has no recollection of what to Christine Blasey Ford was a life-changing event: It is distinctly possible that his lack of memory is not because it never happened but because he really has no recollection of it taking place. He never encoded the event. Therefore, he cannot remember something he never noticed, even though it proved to be life-altering for someone else. As Dr. Richard Friedman wrote this week, an...

Brilliant essay in The Atlantic by Rosa Inocencio Smith: There’s an eerie symmetry between Donald Trump and The Great Gatsby’s Tom Buchanan, as if the villain of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel had been brought to life in a louder, gaudier guise for the 21st century. It’s not just their infamous carelessness, the smashing-up of things and creatures that propels Tom’s denouement and has seemed to many a Twitter user to be the animating force behind Trump’s policy and personnel decisions. The two men...

The two most prominent Republican women who write for left-leaning major newspapers are not happy with the Brett Kavanaugh saga. First, Michelle Goldberg says the current GOP elite are "pigs all the way down:" Let’s start with Kavanaugh’s high school, Georgetown Prep, also the alma mater of Neil Gorsuch, Trump’s first Supreme Court pick. There’s now a wealth of reporting painting the private school as a bastion of heedless male entitlement. Kavanaugh’s high school friend Mark Judge — who Christine...

For the first time since April 2000, none of my property is real. (That's a little lawyer humor.) The last transaction of the month will be Friday, when I close on Inner Drive Technology World Headquarters 5.0. Meanwhile, I own nothing, and I owe nothing. It's an odd feeling.