Just Politics

[janice shell]

If he's an alcoholic, he's a very high-performing alcoholic. He has a demanding job. You can't turn up at the DC Circuit with a crushing hangover, or, worse yet, drunk on the hair of the dog. it would be noticed.

He may have largely cleaned up his act, once he got married and started a family. It's possible he started cutting back once he got his first job. (We don't yet know if the allegations made about his assault on an unnamed woman in 1998 are true.) Many people do just that. When I was in college, weekend dates usually meant getting shitfaced drunk. Or at least pretty drunk. I remember coming back to the dorm and discussing with a friend whether we had "the whirlies".

But as I've said before, once we moved on to grad school or professional school, we cut back. Most people did, anyway. The work was harder, and you needed to concentrate. Same for first jobs. You couldn't just stagger in with a massive hangover. So outta control drinking became normal social drinking, for most people.

Maybe that was the case with Kavanaugh. But if so, he should just have said so. IF he never got so wasted he assaulted women. Obviously the question of assault is the question of the moment for most people, but we--and the Senate--need also to consider the many, many self-serving lies he told in his testimony. That is a serious problem for any Supreme Court candidate.

Whether he's stopped his excessive boozing or not, he's still an entitled brat, whining about how he was first in his high school class, for God's sake. An entitled brat who thinks confirmation to a seat on the Supreme Court is his RIGHT.

And that's just wrong.