Once again, Monday morning finds us in the middle of breaking news: Brett Kavanaugh has a second accuser. This incident is supposed to have happened during his freshman year at Yale, and also involves drinking. The woman seems to have been targeted because she was drunk, and her memories are correspondingly hazy. The story was broken yesterday by The New Yorker, and this morning other major news outlets (The New York Times and The Washington Post, for example) seem uncertain about how much to say.
This leaves me with a decision about what to do with this week’s featured article, which was written under the assumption of a single accuser. I plan to go ahead with it, but I’m still not sure what kind of adjustments are appropriate.
I wrote the piece yesterday with the idea of raising the discussion to a higher level: The country has gotten focused on whether the Republicans can or should “plow through” the accusations against Kavanaugh and confirm him. I asked a different question: How would Kavanaugh handle this situation if he really were the man of high virtue his supporters claim he is? The result is “Two Ways Brett Kavanaugh Could Be a Hero”. I suspect it’s the first time an article on the Kavanaugh nomination has quoted one of the gods of Fillory.
Anyway, I’ll figure out the final edits and get the piece posted, probably before 9 EDT.
Kavanaugh, Dr. Blasey Ford, and the Senate Judiciary Committee dominated the news this week to the extent that the weekly summary will also have a lot to say about them. (A picture of the 11 aging white men who form the committee’s Republican majority is itself worth a little meditation.) But there was also news about Rod Rosenstein, Trump’s callous interactions with hurricane victims, the political ad six members of the Gosar family made against their brother, the trade war with China, how the fall elections are shaping up, and a few other things. That post should appear between 11 and 12.
The Weekly Sift 