October 1, 2018--Brett Kavanaugh: Wasted

If allowed by Republicans to do their work what the FBI will discover about Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh in their now resumed background check will turn out to be quite simple--back when he was accused of sexually assaulting Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and other young women he was a habitual drunk.

That would explain almost everything, including that he might in fact not remember the hideous incident. He may have been that blotto.

If they interview just a few people who knew him at the time would it surprise anyone who listened to Kavanaugh stumble through his testimony Thursday that he had a serious drinking problem? It even looked, as he rambled incoherently, that he still is a drunk.

The FBI should begin by interviewing his Yale College roommate, James Roche, who has written: 

"It is from this experience [as his roommate] that I concluded that although Brett was normally reserved, he was a notably heavy drinker, even by the standards of the time, and that he became aggressive and belligerent when he was very drunk . . . I remember Brett frequently drinking excessively and becoming incoherently drunk."

This is particularly condemning since anyone who has had a roommate knows that roommates know everything about each other.

And of course there is Mark Judge, one of Kavanaugh's prep-school drinking buddies, who was a self-admitted black-out drunk and wrote revealing books about that, including one, Wasted, that included a semi-fictional character who was habitually inebriated, "Bart O'Kavanaugh." Sound familiar?

Next the FBI should look closely at the entry Georgetown Prep senior Kavanaugh wrote about himself for the school yearbook. According to the New York Times--

"There is lots about football, reports of plenty of drinking, and parties at the beach." Among the reminiscences about sports and booze is a mysterious entry: “Renate Alumnius.”

The word “Renate” appears at least 14 times in Georgetown Preparatory School’s 1983 yearbook, on individuals’ pages and in a group photo of nine football players, including Kavanaugh, who were described as the “Renate Alumni.” It is a reference to Renate Schroeder, then a student at a nearby Catholic girls’ school.

Two of Judge Kavanaugh’s classmates say that mentioning Renate was his coded way of boasting about his and other classmates' sexual conquests.

“They were very disrespectful, at least verbally, with Renate,” said Sean Hagan, a Georgetown Prep student at the time, referring to Judge Kavanaugh and his teammates. “I can’t express how disgusted I am with them, then and now.”

And then there was last week's bizarre free-associative ramble of an answer to Senator Amy Klobuchar's questions about his apparent love for beer.

In his answer he mentioned "beer" and "brewskis" 29 times and at the end, seemingly drunk in the witness chair, bizarrely pressed Senator Klobuchar to talk about her own drinking habits--

"I liked beer. I still like beer. But I did not drink beer to the point of blacking out, and I never sexually assaulted anyone . . . We drank beer."  

Asked if he had ever suffered memory loss during a time that he had been drinking, Kavanaugh said no, and returned to his beer soliloquy-- 

"We drank beer, and you know, so . . . so did, I think, the vast majority of . . . of people our age at the time. But in any event, we drank beer, and . . . and still do. So whatever, you know."

Within the window of the week the FBI has to do its investigation they should be able to come up with a pretty complete picture of Kavanaugh's drinking history. Many things he lied about in his sworn Senate confirmation hearing.

If he was such a serious drinker and drunk during those years, to disqualify him it will not even be necessary for the FBI to get to the bottom of what actually happened the evening Dr. Blasey was nearly raped.

If this truth about his alcoholism is exposed Kavanaugh will either be compelled to withdraw or be pulled by Trump. We can't have another Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court. What Thomas got away with 27 years ago can't be allowed to happen again.