Kavanaugh sure has shifted: From ejaculation questions to total deference to presidential power – By Laura Clawson (dailykos.com) / Aug 20 2018
Brett Kavanaugh has had quite the change of heart since his time working for Ken Starr in the late 1990s. Now, he’s all about presidential power. But back then, Kavanaugh wrote a memo arguing that investigators should question then-President Bill Clinton in graphic, persistent detail about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky more or less solely to impose punishment on Clinton that it was not Starr’s role to impose, as Kavanaugh himself admitted in the same memo, writing that “It may not be our job to impose sanctions on him, but it is our job to make his pattern of revolting behavior clear—piece by painful piece.”
To that end, Kavanaugh wanted investigators to ask Clinton questions like “If Monica Lewinsky says that you ejaculated into her mouth on two occasions in the Oval Office area, would she be lying?” But don’t worry! He totes regretted it:
“Brett immediately regretted the tone of that memo,” Mr. Bittman said. “My memory is that he was sleep deprived and then quickly realized in retrospect that it was over the top.”
Oh, so he regretted the tone? It was over the top? The memo was an argument to shock and disgust Congress into impeaching and removing Clinton from office—what other tone would he have employed in that effort?
And then, after making his bones as a partisan Republican, Kavanaugh had a convenient change of heart for a Republican judge hoping to be nominated to the Supreme Court by a Republican president in an era when Republican administrations tend to produce criminal indictments. He decided that instead of presidents being questioned about sexual behavior unrelated to the original subject of an investigation, they should be protected entirely from civil litigation or criminal investigation—and lo and behold, the perfect president to embrace someone making that argument happened along to nominate him to the Supreme Court.
