The Maryland Court of Appeals has ruled that a girl distributed child porn by “sexting” explicitly pictures of herself.
This is completely insane.
The only reason that charges like this get laid is because unethical DA’s use it to extract a plea.
It’s corrupt and evil.
Who Protected Epstein for Decades, and Why?
There is significant evidence that elements of the US state security apparatus may have protected Jeffrey Epstein, and his extensive sexual abuse of children, because he was an intelligence gathering asset, either as an informant, or as a “Honey Pot”.
Even if this is not true, it is clear that SOMEONE OR SOMETHING was protecting him, and it behooves us to find out who and what.
I have nothing in the way of direct knowledge of the events, but Jeffrey Epstein’s suicide does appear to solve what was a troubling situation for his rich and powerful friends.
Whether this was the final act of a psychopathic narcissist, or the desperate act of those billionaires who he had damning evidence on, it doesn’t matter.
What does matter is that these people, and there were dozens, if not hundreds, of people who were willing partners in this horror show, and now there will be no accounting:
It was Friday night in a protective housing unit of the federal jail in Lower Manhattan, and Jeffrey Epstein, the financier accused of trafficking girls for sex, was alone in a cell, only 11 days after he had been taken off a suicide watch.
Just that morning, thousands of documents from a civil suit had been released, providing lurid accounts accusing Mr. Epstein of sexually abusing scores of girls.
Mr. Epstein was supposed to have been checked by the two guards in the protective housing unit every 30 minutes, but that procedure was not followed that night, a law-enforcement official with knowledge of his detention said.
Again, how convenient.
In addition, because Mr. Epstein may have tried to commit suicide three weeks earlier, he was supposed to have had another inmate in his cell, three officials said. But the jail had recently transferred his cellmate and allowed Mr. Epstein to be housed alone, a decision that also violated the jail’s procedures, the two officials said.
At 6:30 a.m. on Saturday, guards doing morning rounds found him dead in his cell. Mr. Epstein, 66, had apparently hanged himself.
I’ll be spending the next few days considering the tin-foil hat possibilities.
Perhaps, at long last, a serial rapist and pedophile may be brought to justice, more than a dozen years after he was first charged with crimes that have brutalized countless girls and women. But what won’t change is this: the cesspool of elites, many of them in New York, who allowed Jeffrey Epstein to flourish with impunity. For decades, important, influential, “serious” people attended Epstein’s dinner parties, rode his private jet, and furthered the fiction that he was some kind of genius hedge-fund billionaire. How do we explain why they looked the other way, or flattered Epstein, even as they must have noticed he was often in the company of a young harem? Easy: They got something in exchange from him, whether it was a free ride on that airborne “Lolita Express,” some other form of monetary largesse, entrée into the extravagant celebrity soirées he hosted at his townhouse, or, possibly and harrowingly, a pound or two of female flesh.
If you watch Fox News, you will believe Bill Clinton was Epstein’s No. 1 pal and enabler. If you watch MSNBC, this scandal is usually all about Donald Trump. In fact, both presidents are guilty (at the very least) of giving Epstein cover and credibility. There are so many unanswered questions about Epstein, but one that looms over all of them is whether the bipartisan crowd who cleared a path for him will cover its tracks before we can get answers — not just Clinton and Trump and all those who drank at Epstein’s trough but also (among others) institutions like Harvard, Dalton, and the Council on Foreign Relations, or lawyers like the New York prosecutor Cy Vance Jr., whose office tried to downgrade Epstein’s sex-offender status; Kenneth Starr, who tried to pressure Republican Justice Department officials to keep the Epstein case from ever being prosecuted; and Alan Dershowitz, who tried to pressure the Pulitzer Prizes to shut out the Miami Herald for its epic investigative reporting that cracked open the case anew.
………
This project is meant to catalogue how Epstein’s secure footing in elite spheres helped hide his crimes. It includes influential names listed in his black book, people he flew, funded, and schmoozed, along with others whose connections to him have drawn renewed attention. Certainly, not everyone cited here knew of everything he was up to; Malcolm Gladwell told New York, “I don’t remember much except being baffled as to who this Epstein guy was and why we were all on his plane.” Some said they never met Epstein at all, or knew of him only through his ex-girlfriend and alleged accomplice, the socialite Ghislaine Maxwell. Others backed away from him after the scandal. But all of the influential people listed here were attached in some way to Epstein’s world. The sum of their names constitutes a more concrete accounting of Epstein’s power than could any accounting of his disputed wealth. Consider this a pointillist portrait of enablement that all too chillingly overlaps with a significant slice of the Establishment.
The list of names, with descriptions, is jaw dropping, and almost endless.
It goes from Trump, to the Clintons, to Andrew Cuomo, to Woody Allen, to the Sultan of Brunei, to Malcolm Gladwell, to Stephen Hawking, to Stephen Banning ………
There is no way that someone among this very long list is arranging an unfortunate accident or suicide for Mr. Epstein as I type this.
H/t Eschaton.
This is not surprising.
When they raided his house, prosecutors found thousands of dollars in cash, diamonds, and a fake passport with his picture on it, which fairly screams, “Flight Risk”:
A federal judge on Thursday denied bail for Jeffrey Epstein, the financier facing sex-trafficking charges in Manhattan, rejecting his request to await trial under home detention at his Upper East Side mansion.The judge, Richard M. Berman of Federal District Court, said Mr. Epstein’s “past sexual conduct is not likely to have abated,” and he was concerned that if Mr. Epstein were released, he would continue to abuse teenage girls.
“Mr. Epstein’s alleged excessive attraction to sexual conduct with or in the presence of minor girls — which is said to include his soliciting and receiving massages from young girls and young women perhaps as many as four times a day — appears likely to be uncontrollable,” Judge Berman wrote in a bail decision.
The judge said he had taken into account the statements of two of Mr. Epstein’s accusers — Annie Farmer and Courtney Wild — who he said had “movingly testified” in a hearing earlier in the week that they feared for their safety and the safety of others if Mr. Epstein were to be released.
A federal indictment has charged that between 2002 and 2005, Mr. Epstein and his employees paid dozens of underage girls to engage in sex acts with him at his homes in Manhattan and Palm Beach, Fla.
The indictment also accused Mr. Epstein of using some of his victims to recruit additional girls, paying his “victim-recruiters” hundreds of dollars for each girl they brought to him.
Ever since his July 6 arrest at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey after a flight from Paris, Mr. Epstein, 66, has been detained at the highly secure Metropolitan Correctional Center. His lawyers had proposed allowing him to post a substantial bond and remain in his mansion guarded by 24-hour security guards, at his expense.
I’m hoping that he breaks in the New York MCC, and flips on his clients, but I’m not holding my breath.
He’s already done times for this, where his high-power lawyers got him off with a slap on the wrist.
As a result of a series of Miami Herald exposes about how prosecutors cut him a sweetheart deal, he was rearrested as he stepped off of his private jet, named (I sh%$ you not) the Lolita Express, at Teterboro, NJ.
The FBI executed a search warrant, and they found sexually explicit videos of underage girls on disks found in a safe in his home:
A trove of lewd photographs of girls, discovered in a safe inside the financier Jeffrey Epstein’s Manhattan mansion the same day he was arrested, is deepening questions about why federal prosecutors in Miami had cut a deal that shielded him from federal prosecution in 2008.
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan charged Mr. Epstein on Monday with sex trafficking, dealing an implicit rebuke to that plea agreement, which was overseen by Alexander Acosta, then the United States attorney in Miami and now President Trump’s labor secretary.
The indictment in Manhattan could prompt a moment of reckoning for the Justice Department, which for years has wrestled with accusations that it mishandled the earlier case and has faced a barrage of litigation from Mr. Epstein’s accusers. In February, the Justice Department opened its own internal review into the matter.
………
Mr. Epstein, a hedge fund manager, avoided the possibility of a lengthy prison sentence, largely because of a secret agreement his lawyers struck with federal prosecutors in 2008. His social circle is filled with the rich and famous, including former President Bill Clinton and Prince Andrew of Britain.
Yeah, also this guy hung out with Epstein:
Epstein is the guy with the gray hair 3rd from the left.
The guy on the left is (of course) Donald John Trump.
Mr. Clinton’s office said in a statement on Monday that he knows nothing about “the terrible crimes” connected to Mr. Epstein.
In 2002, Mr. Trump described Mr. Epstein as “a terrific guy,” telling New York Magazine, “It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”
Clinton knew, and Trump Knew, and so did everyone else in his circle, and they looked the other way, because he was one of them.
Our so-called elites are rotten to the core.
Several of Mr. Epstein’s accusers said they were relieved that authorities seemed to be taking their complaints seriously after many years.
Yeah, it only took 10 years, and a dogged reporter, Julie Brown, for his victims to have their day in court.
I really hope that the prosecutors, including Trump’s current Secretary of Labor, get keel hauled over this.
A 16 year raped a drunk 16 year old girl, filmed it, and shared the film.
The judge at his trial said that he deserved leniency because he came from a good family.
This sort of crap is getting really old:
The 16-year-old girl was visibly intoxicated, her speech slurred, when a drunk 16-year-old boy sexually assaulted her in a dark basement during an alcohol-fueled pajama party in New Jersey, prosecutors said.
The boy filmed himself penetrating her from behind, her torso exposed, her head hanging down, prosecutors said. He later shared the cellphone video among friends, investigators said, and sent a text that said, “When your first time having sex was rape.”
But a family court judge said it wasn’t rape. Instead, he wondered aloud if it was sexual assault, defining rape as something reserved for an attack at gunpoint by strangers.
He also said the young man came from a good family, attended an excellent school, had terrific grades and was an Eagle scout. Prosecutors, the judge said, should have explained to the girl and her family that pressing charges would destroy the boy’s life.
So he denied prosecutors’ motion to try the 16-year-old as an adult. “He is clearly a candidate for not just college but probably for a good college,” Judge James Troiano of Superior Court said last year in a two-hour decision while sitting in Monmouth County.
Now the judge has been sharply rebuked by an appeals court in a scathing 14-page ruling that warned the judge against showing bias toward privileged teenagers.
………
In recent years, judges across the country have come under fire for the way they have handled sexual abuse cases. One of the most notorious was in 2016, when a judge in California sentenced a Stanford University student to six months in jail after he was found guilty of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman. After an intense public backlash, California voters recalled the judge.
………
The judge in Monmouth County, Mr. Troiano, was scolded by the appellate court, according to the panel’s decision. “That the juvenile came from a good family and had good test scores we assume would not condemn the juveniles who do not come from good families and do not have good test scores from withstanding waiver application,” the panel wrote in its decision.
………
Family court cases are typically closed to the public, but the judges’ comments surfaced in June when the appeals court decisions were made public, joining a series of contentious sexual assault cases that have ignited outrage over a legal system that advocates for victims say is warped by bias and privilege.
………
In September 2017, the Monmouth County prosecutor’s office recommended that the case be tried in adult criminal court in part because the boy’s actions were “sophisticated and predatory.”
………
The appellate decision criticized the judge, writing that rather than focusing on whether prosecutors met the necessary standards for a waiver, “the judge decided the case for himself.”
………
In 2004, Judge Troiano imposed a gag order to prohibit people in a courtroom from discussing the high-profile case of two Montclair High School football players accused of sexually assaulting a schoolmate. The charges were eventually dropped.
Think about all the times that this does not get press, and some self-entitled rich kid gets off while some black kid gets tried as an adult for having a joint in his pocket.
Sometimes our society makes me sick.
As you may be aware, Duncan Hunter, (the son) of Duncan Lee Hunter, is under investigation for misuse of campaign funds.
What I did not know, until now, was that it is alleged that he spent his money on his girl(s) on the side:
Federal prosecutors alleged in a new court filing this week that Rep. Duncan D. Hunter used campaign funds to help facilitate extramarital affairs, and they want to show jurors evidence of the relationships at his upcoming trial.
The filing Monday alleges Hunter (R-Calif.) used campaign money to fund trips, dinners and drinks with women with whom he was romantically involved — three lobbyists, a woman who worked in his congressional office and another who worked for a member of House leadership.
In the new filing, prosecutors allege Hunter’s romantic entanglements blossomed as he used campaign money for large expenses — such as a ski trip near Lake Tahoe — and small ones, such as Uber rides to and from the women’s homes.
………
Hunter and his wife, Margaret, were charged last year with using more than $250,000 in campaign funds to pay for family vacations, theater tickets and other personal expenses. Prosecutors say he used his campaign account as his “personal piggy bank” to live well beyond his means.
………
Hunter’s wife, meanwhile, pleaded guilty in the case this month and agreed to “tell everything,” according to a copy of her agreement with prosecutors. Prosecutors revealed in another court filing they have texts between Margaret and her husband, who have three children, in which they discussed using campaign funds on personal expenses.
………
Ammar Campa-Najjar, a Democrat who is challenging Hunter in the next election, tweeted that Hunter was “literally in bed with lobbyists.”
(emphasis mine)
The kicker is that he won reelection last year, when he had already been charged.
Otherwise, they would take them to court for their “illegal” downloads, where their targets would be revealed as pr0n watchers.
Of course, the downloads were not illegal, they were uploaded by lawyers and their agents.
Well, the HMFIC of this scheme just got sentenced to 14 years in prison.
It could not happen to a more deserving asshole:
A federal judge in Minneapolis has sentenced Paul Hansmeier to 14 years in prison for an elaborate fraud scheme that involved uploading pornographic videos to file-sharing networks and then threatening to sue people who downloaded them.
“It is almost incalculable how much your abuse of trust has harmed the administration of justice,” said Judge Joan Ericksen at a Friday sentencing hearing.
We’ve been covering the antics of Hansmeier and his business partner John Steele for many years. Way back in 2012, we started reporting on a law firm called Prenda Law that was filing lawsuits against people for sharing pornographic films online. Prenda wasn’t the only law firm filing these kinds of lawsuits, but Prenda came up with a novel way of ginning up more business: uploading the films itself, including some that were produced by Prenda associates.
A key part of the firm’s strategy was to seek settlements of a few thousand dollars. The demanded sums were small enough that it cost less to settle the lawsuits than fight them. Prosecutors say that the men made more than $6 million from copyright settlements between 2010 and 2013.
………
As the extent of the alleged fraud became apparent, judges began referring the pair to federal prosecutors. In 2016, the two men were arrested and charged with federal fraud, perjury, and money laundering.
The Minneapolis Star Tribune summarized the prosecutors’ case: “When challenged by judges around the country, Hansmeier blamed other lawyers who were hired to file lawsuits on his behalf, lied to the courts about his own involvement, and ordered the destruction of evidence.”
This is a very well deserved ass whupping.
Pornhub Vice President Corey Price said in an email to BuzzFeed News that the porn-streaming giant is extremely interested in buying Tumblr, the once uniquely horny hub for young women and queer people that banned adult content last December to the disappointment of many of its users.
Price said that restoring Tumblr’s NSFW edge would be central to their acquisition of it, were it to actually happen.
Tumblr owner Verizon is reportedly currently seeking a buyer for the blogging platform, which according to the Wall Street Journal has struggled to meet revenue targets.”Tumblr was a safe haven for those who wanted to explore and express their sexuality, adult entertainment aficionados included,” Price told BuzzFeed News. “We’ve long been dismayed that such measures were taken to eradicate erotic communities on the platform, leaving many individuals without an asylum through which they could comfortably peruse adult content.”
This development is profoundly ironic.
It appears that the whole, “Shining city upon the hill,” thing is now inoperative:
A German-drafted resolution was adopted after a reference was cut referring to the need for U.N. bodies and donors to give timely “sexual and reproductive health” assistance to survivors of sexual violence in conflict.
The U.S. veto threat was the latest in a string of policy reversals that some U.N. diplomats say has been driven by U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, a conservative Christian who staunchly opposes abortion rights.
………
Acting U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Jonathan Cohen did not speak after the council vote.
After the vote French U.N. Ambassador Francois Delattre told the 15-member body: “It is intolerable and incomprehensible that the Security Council is incapable of acknowledging that women and girls who suffered from sexual violence in conflict – and who obviously didn’t choose to become pregnant – should have the right to terminate their pregnancy.”
The language promoting sexual and reproductive health is long-agreed internationally, including in resolutions adopted by the Security Council in 2009 and 2013 and several resolutions adopted annually by the 193-member General Assembly.
The text adopted on Tuesday simply reaffirms the council’s commitment to the 2009 and 2013 resolutions. A reference to the work of the International Criminal Court in fighting the most serious crimes against women and girls was also watered-down to win over Washington, which is not a member of the institution.
This is beyond contempt.
A federal court of appeals in New York on Monday took the first step in unsealing documents that could reveal evidence of an international sex trafficking operation allegedly run by multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein and his former partner, British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell.
The three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit gave the parties until March 19 to establish good cause as to why they should remain sealed and, failing to do so, the summary judgment and supporting documents will be made public. The court reserved a ruling on the balance of the documents in the civil case, including discovery materials.
………
Most of the documents, including court orders and motions, were filed under seal or heavily redacted, similar to other cases in New York and Florida involving Epstein, a wealthy, politically connected money manager. Epstein, 66, was not a party to the lawsuit, which was filed against Maxwell in 2015 by Virginia Roberts Giuffre.
………
But in an op-ed letter to The New York Times last week, Weinberg and three of Epstein’s other lawyers — including Kenneth Starr, known for his pursuit of President Bill Clinton over his sexual conduct — denied that Epstein ever ran a sex trafficking operation.
………
Attorneys for Harvard lawyer Alan Dershowitz and conservative social media blogger Michael Cernovich, two other parties to the appeal, also argued to unseal the entire case file. Dershowitz’s lawyer, Andrew G. Celli Jr., wanted the court to release three documents immediately, saying they were necessary to clear the name of his client, who has been accused of being involved in Epstein’s crimes.
Dershowitz was among a team of lawyers who represented Epstein when he came under criminal investigation in Palm Beach in 2005. Epstein was accused by more than three dozen girls, most of them 13 to 16, of luring them to his mansion to give him massages that turned into sex acts. He then used those same girls to recruit more girls over a period of several years, court and police records show.
………
In 2008, Epstein received a controversial plea deal that gave him and an untold number of others who were not named immunity from federal prosecution. The non-prosecution agreement, brokered by former Miami U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta, is now the focus of a Justice Department investigation.
Acosta, now President Trump’s labor secretary, has said that the deal was approved at the highest levels of the agency.
………
A Miami Herald investigation, “Perversion of Justice,’’ showed that Acosta and other prosecutors deliberately kept Epstein’s victims in the dark so that they could not appear at his sentencing and possibly derail the deal. The sentencing judge was also misled about the scope of Epstein’s crimes and how many girls he abused, records indicate.
………
Epstein did not go to prison, but served 13 months in a private section of the Palm Beach County jail, where he was allowed to leave for 12 hours a day to go to his office in West Palm Beach under a work release program that is normally not granted to convicted sex offenders.
There is a whole bunch of slime under these rocks, and I really want to see the rocks turned over.
This story has been percolating in the background for a while, and I think that it might be ready for some major developments.
Jeffrey Epstein is a serial child rapist who got off with a slap on the wrist because everyone, including it appears, the US Attorney’s office, felt that he was too powerful to prosecute.
That prosecutor is now Donald Trump’s Secretary of Labor:
A judge ruled Thursday that federal prosecutors — among them, U.S. Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta — broke federal law when they signed a plea agreement with a wealthy, politically connected sex trafficker and concealed it from more than 30 of his underage victims.
U.S. District Judge Kenneth A. Marra, in a 33-page opinion, said that the evidence he reviewed showed that Jeffrey Epstein had been operating an international sex operation in which he and others recruited underage girls — not only in Florida — but from overseas, in violation of federal law.
“Epstein used paid employees to find and bring minor girls to him.,’’ wrote Marra, who is based in Palm Beach County. “Epstein worked in concert with others to obtain minors not only for his own sexual gratification, but also for the sexual gratification of others.’’Instead of prosecuting Epstein under federal sex trafficking laws, Acosta, then the U.S. attorney in Miami, helped negotiate a non-prosecution agreement that gave Epstein and his co-conspirators immunity from federal prosecution. Epstein, who lived in a Palm Beach mansion, was allowed to quietly plead guilty in state court to two prostitution charges and served just 13 months in the county jail. His accomplices, some of whom have never been identified, were never charged.
A judge ruled Thursday that federal prosecutors — among them, U.S. Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta — broke federal law when they signed a plea agreement with a wealthy, politically connected sex trafficker and concealed it from more than 30 of his underage victims.
U.S. District Judge Kenneth A. Marra, in a 33-page opinion, said that the evidence he reviewed showed that Jeffrey Epstein had been operating an international sex operation in which he and others recruited underage girls — not only in Florida — but from overseas, in violation of federal law.
Acosta agreed to seal the deal, which meant that none of Epstein’s victims, who were mostly 13 to 16 years old at the time of the abuse, were told about it until it was too late for them to appear at his sentencing and possibly reject the deal. Upon learning that Epstein had pleaded guilty without their knowledge, two of his victims filed a lawsuit in the Southern District of Florida in 2008, claiming that prosecutors violated the Crime Victims’ Rights Act, which grants victims of federal crimes a series of rights, including the ability to confer with prosecutors about a possible plea deal.
Marra agreed, saying that while prosecutors had the right to resolve the case in any way they saw fit, they violated the law by hiding the agreement from Epstein’s victims. Marra’s decision capped 11 years of litigation — which included the release of a trove of emails showing how Acosta and other prosecutors worked with Epstein’s high profile lawyers to conceal the deal — and the scope of Epstein’s crimes — from both his victims and the public.
(Emphasis mine)
The others in question, “close friends,” are alleged to include:
I so want to see this blow up into a major scandal.
Jeff Bezos: “Alexa, send nudes to my secret admirer.”Alexa: “Got it. Sending nudes to the National Enquirer.”
— Pranay Pathole (@PPathole) February 8, 2019
Best Twitter Take on All of This
It now appears that Jeff Bezos’ Girlfriend’s brother leaked his texts to the National Enquirer.
This is not a surprise. He has frequently been described as an, “Acquaintance of provocative Trump backers Roger Stone and Carter Page.”
It appears that, in the world of the radical right at least, politics trumps filial obligations.
The brother of Jeff Bezos’ mistress, Lauren Sanchez, supplied the couple’s racy texts to the National Enquirer, multiple sources inside AMI, the tabloid’s parent company, told The Daily Beast.
Another source who has been in extensive communication with senior leaders at AMI confirmed that Michael Sanchez first supplied Bezos’ texts to the Enquirer.
………
AMI has previously refused to identify the source of the texts, but a lawyer for the company strongly hinted at Sanchez’s role during a Sunday morning interview on ABC.
“The story was given to the National Enquirer by a reliable source that had given information to the National Enquirer for seven years prior to this story. It was a source that was well known to both Mr. Bezos and Ms. Sanchez,” attorney Elkan Abramowitz told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos.
If only there is some way for both Bezos and Trump to lose.
Under the guise of targeting sex traffickers, FOSTA has both done damage to Section 230 protections and sex workers’ literal lives. The law has yet to result in any credible, sustained damage to human trafficking, but that hasn’t stopped the bill’s supporters from trotting out debunked numbers anytime they need a soundbite.
There will likely be no studies performed by the government to determine FOSTA’s actual impact on sex trafficking, but plenty of academics are offering evidence that pushing sex work further underground is endangering the lives of sex workers. This is just the icing on the stupid, life-threatening cake as multiple law enforcement agencies — including the DOJ itself — pointed out passing FOSTA would make it more difficult to hunt down traffickers.
A study released in 2017 showed the introduction of erotic services section on Craiglist tracked with a 17% drop in female homicides across many major cities. Craigslist spent a few years being publicly vilified by public officials — mainly states attorneys general — before dumping its erotic services section (ERS). This didn’t stop sex work or trafficking, but it did shift the focus away from Craiglist as everyone affected found other services to use.
A newly-released study [PDF] (via Sophie Cull) shows there’s been a corresponding increase in female homicides since the point Craigslist dumped ERS. Online services — enabled by Section 230 — helped sex workers stay safe by reducing or eliminating a few of the more dangerous variables.
This is not a surprise.
The effects were predicted when FOSTA was being debated.
Thank God for language geeks.
A Fake Nude of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Was Debunked By Foot Fetishists
—Motherboard
Not The Onion folks, not The Onion.
Someone thought that it would be a good idea to sample people of different political persuasions as to their political fantasies.
I find it disturbing and illuminating
In this political environment, it’s easy to look at Republicans and Democrats as having next to nothing in common. Regardless of the issue at hand, we see them as wanting completely different things—especially when it comes to issues of sex and sexuality.
From differences in the way they have approached the sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh to their views on abortion and same-sex marriage, Democrats and Republicans appear worlds apart.
It’s not just their public policy positions that seem to differ wildly, though.
According to the largest and most comprehensive survey of sexual fantasies ever conducted in the United States, it would appear that there are also political differences in our private sexual fantasies.
I surveyed 4,175 adult Americans from all 50 states about what turns them on and published the findings in a book entitled Tell Me What You Want. As part of this survey, participants were given a list of hundreds of different people, places and things that might be a turn-on. For each one, they reported on how frequently they fantasized about it.
I learned a lot about the nature of sexual desire in modern America, but one of the more intriguing things I uncovered was the political divide in our fantasy worlds.
While self-identified Republicans and self-identified Democrats reported fantasizing with the same average frequency—several times per week—I found that Republicans were more likely than Democrats to fantasize about a range of activities that involve sex outside of marriage. Think things like infidelity, orgies and partner swapping, from 1970s-style “key parties” to modern-day forms of swinging. Republicans also reported more fantasies with voyeuristic themes, including visiting strip clubs and practicing something known as “cuckolding,” which involves watching one’s partner have sex with someone else.
It appears that Republicans favorite sexual fantasies are also their favorite insults.
That juxtaposition of shame and sex does appear to explain quite a lot, though that is a thoroughly unprofessional opinion, as I am an engineer, not a doctor, dammit!*
*I love it when I get to go all Dr. McCoy!
I am referring, of course, to the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearing, which had Christine Blasey Ford (literally) schooling Senators on the neurology of human memory, Brett Kavanaugh raging in all of his entitled white frat boy glory, (he literally threatened Democratic Senators) and Lindsey Graham completely lost his sh%$ had a hysterical hissy fit for the ages.
Most tellingly, Ford, unlike Kavanaugh, specifically and explicitly stated that there should be an FBI investigation of the allegations, while Kavanaugh evaded the question.
Only one of them sounded like they had something to hide.
Disclosure: I did not watch the hearings, I checked out some live blogs and clips.
It was a complete sh%$ show for the Republicans.
*That is my translation from the original French of, “N’interrompez jamais un ennemi qui est en train de faire une erreur.”
Just spoke with #JamesRoche who was Yale roommate of Brett #Kavanaugh . He confirms that the #SCOTUS nominee was frequently drunk, and incoherently. Says he supports integrity of Debbie Ramirez, the 2nd accuser. #abc7now #KavanaughConfirmation Respects her courage. pic.twitter.com/rrBboHAyj2— Wayne Freedman (@WayneFreedman) September 24, 2018
And his roommate too
I am, of course, referring to Brett Kavanaugh and his Evil Minions™.
First, we have another allegation of sexual assault while drunk, this one at Yale:
As Senate Republicans press for a swift vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh, President Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court, Senate Democrats are investigating a new allegation of sexual misconduct against Kavanaugh. The claim dates to the 1983-84 academic school year, when Kavanaugh was a freshman at Yale University. The offices of at least four Democratic senators have received information about the allegation, and at least two have begun investigating it. Senior Republican staffers also learned of the allegation last week and, in conversations with The New Yorker, expressed concern about its potential impact on Kavanaugh’s nomination. Soon after, Senate Republicans issued renewed calls to accelerate the timing of a committee vote. The Democratic Senate offices reviewing the allegations believe that they merit further investigation. “This is another serious, credible, and disturbing allegation against Brett Kavanaugh. It should be fully investigated,” Senator Mazie Hirono, of Hawaii, said. An aide in one of the other Senate offices added, “These allegations seem credible, and we’re taking them very seriously. If established, they’re clearly disqualifying.”
The woman at the center of the story, Deborah Ramirez, who is fifty-three, attended Yale with Kavanaugh, where she studied sociology and psychology. Later, she spent years working for an organization that supports victims of domestic violence. The New Yorker contacted Ramirez after learning of her possible involvement in an incident involving Kavanaugh. The allegation was conveyed to Democratic senators by a civil-rights lawyer. For Ramirez, the sudden attention has been unwelcome, and prompted difficult choices. She was at first hesitant to speak publicly, partly because her memories contained gaps because she had been drinking at the time of the alleged incident. In her initial conversations with The New Yorker, she was reluctant to characterize Kavanaugh’s role in the alleged incident with certainty. After six days of carefully assessing her memories and consulting with her attorney, Ramirez said that she felt confident enough of her recollections to say that she remembers Kavanaugh had exposed himself at a drunken dormitory party, thrust his penis in her face, and caused her to touch it without her consent as she pushed him away. Ramirez is now calling for the F.B.I. to investigate Kavanaugh’s role in the incident. “I would think an F.B.I. investigation would be warranted,” she said.
………
Ramirez acknowledged that there are significant gaps in her memories of the evening, and that, if she ever presents her story to the F.B.I. or members of the Senate, she will inevitably be pressed on her motivation for coming forward after so many years, and questioned about her memory, given her drinking at the party.
And yet, after several days of considering the matter carefully, she said, “I’m confident about the pants coming up, and I’m confident about Brett being there.” Ramirez said that what has stayed with her most forcefully is the memory of laughter at her expense from Kavanaugh and the other students. “It was kind of a joke,” she recalled. “And now it’s clear to me it wasn’t a joke.”
Ronan Farrow and Jane Mayer have not been able to find a witness, but they have been able to someone who says that, “Another student told him about the incident either on the night of the party or in the next day or two. The classmate said that he is “one-hundred-per-cent sure” that he was told at the time that Kavanaugh was the student who exposed himself to Ramirez. He independently recalled many of the same details offered by Ramirez, including that a male student had encouraged Kavanaugh as he exposed himself.”
And do we have one person on the record, albeit with (contemporaneous) hearsay, as well as her family:
Another classmate, Richard Oh, an emergency-room doctor in California, recalled overhearing, soon after the party, a female student tearfully recounting to another student an incident at a party involving a gag with a fake penis, followed by a male student exposing himself. Oh is not certain of the identity of the female student. Ramirez told her mother and sister about an upsetting incident at the time, but did not describe the details to either due to her embarrassment.
I should note that this is not limited to just the revelation, it appears that he and his friends used their senior yearbook to slut shame a woman at a nearby school, and there is absolute confirmation of this:
Brett Kavanaugh’s page in his high school yearbook offers a glimpse of the teenage years of the man who is now President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee: lots of football, plenty of drinking, 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 Judge 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 the mentions of Renate were part of the football players’ unsubstantiated boasting about their 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.”
You will note that the “Fourth of July” has 6 extra “F”s. This stands for, “Find them, French them, Feel them, Finger them, F%$# them, Forget them.”
And finally, for Kavanaugh anyway, we have allegations of alcohol soaked parties where people pulled a train on a drunk girl.
But it isn’t just Kavanaugh, but also his friends, the Bobsey Twins of Yale Law School, Amy Chua and her husband Jed Rubenfeld.
I had already mentioned reports that Chua had advised her students that Kavanaugh wanted his clerks to look like models, which she has denied, bit now some of her former students are calling her a liar:
But another former law student who was advised by Chua and approached the Guardian after its original story was published on Thursday said his experience was consistent with the allegations presented in the article.
The male student, who asked not to be identified, said that when he approached Chua about his interest in clerking for Kavanaugh, the professor said it was “great”, but then added that Kavanaugh “tends to hire women who are generally attractive and then likes to send them to [supreme court Chief Justice John] Roberts”.
It was a reference to Kavanaugh’s role as a so-called “feeder” judge, whose clerks often go on to win highly coveted clerkships at the US supreme court.
The student alleged that Chua then added: “I don’t think it is a sexual thing, but [Kavanaugh] likes to have pretty clerks.”
The former student told the Guardian that in the following year, he advised two female classmates who were also interested in clerking for Kavanaugh to talk to Chua.
“They got the same advice: ‘He likes girls who are pretty’,” the student said. “Another girl … she got the same advice, and [Chua told her] to wear heels.”
Meanwhile, the allegations against Rubenfeld sound a lot like Kavanaugh’s freshman year:
………
And apparently the school’s been worried about Jed Rubenfeld for some time.
We can now report that Yale has been conducting an internal investigation into harassment and inappropriate conduct allegations concerning Professor Rubenfeld. The law school will neither confirm nor deny the existence of the investigation, but a letter that went out to Yale Law School Alumni over the summer confirms that the investigation is ongoing.“YLS has hired an outside investigator to look into Professor Rubenfeld’s conduct, and folks should reach out to her if they have something to share. The sooner the better, and it’s possible to talk to her in ways that preserve anonymity (see details below). The investigator’s name is Jenn Davis, and she can be reached at: [Redacted]
More details:
YLS seems to be pretty concerned about what it’s been hearing about Professor Rubenfeld’s conduct, especially (but not solely) with respect to female students. This is conduct that seems to date back decades but that has persisted into the just-concluded school year. YLS has hired an outside investigator, Jenn Davis, to try to put together a more comprehensive account of that conduct and its effects on the environment at YLS. One Dean Gerken receives this account, a determination will be made about what steps to take with respect to remedies.
Scope and process: Jenn’s jurisdiction is over issues regarding female students as well as other types of behaviors that have given rise to concern over the years. It seems she’s been tasked with understanding whether Professor Rubenfeld contributes to a hostile environment for students, generally. There is an understanding that certain behaviors might well not be unique to him or to YLS, but that does not make them OK.
More specifically, it seems Jenn is interested in hearing about, among other things:
- Disparate treatment of, or boundary crossing with, women in the YLS community. She is interested in hearing from subjects of, or witnesses to, that treatment. (E.g., comments about female students’ physical appearances or relationship histories, conversations that seem designed to “test the waters,” intimidation or efforts at manipulation targeted at female students, etc.).
- Conduct related to excessive drinking with students (driving with students while drunk, etc.).
- Inappropriate employment practices relating to RAs or Coker Fellows.
- Retaliation against students who do not show sufficient loyalty.
Anonymity: YLS has given Jenn permission to talk to individuals (students, alums, etc.), and to record (or not) what they have to say, at whatever level of anonymity the individuals feel comfortable with. There are opportunities to aggregate accounts, to speak completely off the record, etc. Obviously, the more detail that Jenn can ultimately pass along, the more useful her report will be, but any accounts that help her get a better sense of the environment at YLS will add value. If you are interested in reaching out to her, you can set up a preliminary call just to talk about procedure, if you would like. You can also change your mind at any point about the level of anonymity at which you provide information; she has said that even for people who agree to have their name or identifying information used, she will circle back to confirm before sharing it. There is enormous flexibility here. That said, the one thing Jenn cannot offer is attorney-client privilege; if her records are ultimately subpoenaed, she could fight the subpoena, but can’t guarantee she would win.
Jenn herself: She has worked on investigations at graduate and undergraduate programs at peer schools, and she seems to recognize the complexities of, and common dynamics within, these types of environments. [Redacted] has spoken with her already and would be happy to speak with anyone who wants to know more.………
Moreover, Yale Law alumni tell us that Rubenfeld’s behavior towards women was an “open secret” within the Yale Law community. The allegations of “boundary crossing” mentioned in the email have been repeated to us via anonymous emails, texts, and DMs from alumni that are known to us but do not want to go on the record until the investigation is complete. There are even public tweets which seem to speak to these matters, if you know what you are looking for.
Davis is a Title IX investigator of some note, so it’s pretty clear what the bulk of allegations are about, and given that we have reports that, “Rubenfeld apparently warned a student to avoid working for two judges: Alex Kozinski, and Brett Kavanaugh,” it is not a stretch to conclude that Kavanaugh’s office was a hostile workplace, though hopefully not quite as bad as Kosinski, whose behavior towards women led to a forced retirement.
It does appear that, in addition to the obvious pain that this is causing for bad people Kavanaugh is ……… Kavanaugh, Rubenfeld’s writings show an antediluvian attitudes toward sexual harassment and assault, and, if her book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother is any indication, Chua makes Joan Crawford look like Barbara Billingsly, there are some positive consequences for the rest of us about all of this, which I will get into later.