John Neely Kennedy, the junior senator from Louisiana, sounded like an imbecile yesterday when, as part of the Kavanaugh brouhaha, he referred to his Democratic colleagues by saying that "These are people-- I’m not gonna name names-- but I’m not sure they have a soul. I don’t think their mother breast-fed them. I think they went right to raw meat."Kennedy graduated from Vanderbilt magna cum laude in 1973, got a law degree from the University of Virginia and then another law degree with honors from Oxford. So he was certainly no dummy. Of course, back then he was a Democrat. In 1988 he became special counsel to then-Democratic Gov.Buddy Roemer and 1991 and he ran for Attorney General, unsuccessfully, as a Democrat that year. In 2004 he ran for an open U.S. Senator, seat, again as a Democrat. By that time he was flipping back and forth between parties anti was clear than he was basically an opportinist. He was elected state Treasurer in 1999-- as a Democrat-- was reelected as a Republican, then ran as a Democrat for the U.S. Senate and then ran for the U.S. Senate again. In 2007 he officially joined the GOP. He lost another Senate bid that year and finally won a Senate seat on his third try-- this time as a Republican-- in 2016, with the support of Trump and Pence (who he had endorsed in their election). Got that? Here's his early electoral history:After reading the sham FBI report, he told reporters that that some revelations in it "really make me angry... I really wish you could see this. I really wish you could read this report." Tuesday was when he told Tucker Carlson that he doubted some Senate Democrats "have souls." He told his hometown paper that "She didn't convince me-- nor does the record-- that Brett Kavanaugh was involved."Wednesday Amy Wang reported in the Washington Post that most Senate Democrats aren't "searching for the truth. It's about winning. Just win, baby, win." I don't know if Kennedy drinks as much as Kavanaugh but...
By Wednesday afternoon, Kennedy was back in the Senate halls, hammering the Democrats on Fox News. “I’m not prejudging the FBI report, but it’s time for the senators to be senators, for women to women up, for men to man up, and let’s vote,” Kennedy said.
So what was it that Kennedy read that caused him to tell reporters that some revelations in it "really make me angry... I really wish you could see this. I really wish you could read this report?" Perhaps this report from PoliticusUSA by Leo Vidal explains something that made its way into the report that flipped out Kennedy: Senate Transcript Accuses Kavanaugh of Rape in the Back of a Car. No one seems to be talking about it either, but, wrote Vidal, "According to a 23-page transcript of an interview with Brett Kavanaugh conducted by a staffer with the Senate Judiciary Committee, the nominee allegedly raped a woman in the back of a car. This, along with several other sexual assault allegations, had not been reported in the media until yesterday. In all there were six sexual assault allegations against Kavanaugh that are discussed in the interview transcript. This is the woman who Kavanaugh raped in a letter to Kamala Harris:
Kavanaugh and a friend offered me a ride home. I don’t know the other boy’s name. I was in his car to go home. His friend was behind me in the backseat. Kavanaugh kissed me forcefully. I told him I only wanted a ride home. Kavanaugh continued to grope me over my clothes, forcing his kisses on me and putting his hand under my sweater. ‘No,’ I yelled at him.The boy in the backseat reached around, putting his hand over my mouth and holding my arm to keep me in the car. I screamed into his hand. Kavanaugh continued his forcing himself on me. He pulled up my sweater and bra exposing my breasts, and reached into my panties, inserting his fingers into my vagina. My screams were silenced by the boy in the backseat covering my mouth and groping me as well.Kavanaugh slapped me and told me to be quiet and forced me to perform oral sex on him. He climaxed in my mouth. They forced me to go into the backseat and took turns raping me several times each. They dropped me off two blocks from my home. ‘No one will believe if you tell. Be a good girl,’ he told me.According to the official transcript from the Senate staff, after hearing the above passage read to him, Kavanaugh responded by saying:“Nothing-- the whole thing is ridiculous. Nothing ever-- anything like that, nothing. I mean, that’s-- the whole thing is just a crock, farce, wrong, didn’t happen, not anything close.”
Not upsetting to Susan Collins? Apparently not. She voted to shut down debate this morning-- as did Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Jeff Flake (R-AZ). Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) voted against cloture. Tomorrow afternoon, everybody could change their final votes when the actual confirmation roll call is scheduled.
