Here comes Karma, ready to bite Brett Kavanugh in the butt

Source: Wikimedia Commons

“What goes around comes around,”  Brett Kavanaugh declared ominously. This almost-Buddhist pronouncement came during the second round of Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on September 27th. Kavanaugh was responding to to sexual molestation charges against him that the committee was pondering. 

Buddhist wisdom?

Or threat of revenge?

Buddhist or not, "What goes around comes around" sounded to some like a veiled threat to use his judicial power on the Supreme Court for revenge against those who’d opposed his nomination. As such it was intemperate, injudicious, and not to put too fine a point on it, sleazy. 

Kavanaugh later claimed that his speech, which history may remember as the  “I like beer” speech, was the consequence of his emotions getting the better of his judicial temperament. As if the words just flew spontaneously out of his mouth. Hardly so.

Scripted emotion?

If his emotions got the better of him, they did so very methodically. If you’ll recall, Kavanaugh was reading from a ring binder full of notes, and frequently looking down and turning the pages as he spoke. 

So somebody — whether Kavanaugh or somebody else — had deliberately and calmly written that “emotional” speech. 

Clearly, his emotions must have been as spontaneous as a hooker’s faked orgasm. He even thought to have lots — and lots! — of bottles of water on hand. It’s as if he knew exactly how long his so-called spontaneity would last, and — perhaps from rehearsals — how dry it would make his throat.

Well, as Kavanaugh told us, what goes around does come around — and now it’s coming for Brett Kavanaugh, even as he takes his seat on the Supreme Court.

Forget the hoots and jeers and raucous laughter generated by comedians mocking Kavanaugh’s testimony at the Senate. 

That’s small potatoes. I’m talking about the national outrage that is already spurring others to pinpoint acts of actual perjury that Kavanaugh may have committed over the years.

Down-and-dirty

outright lies

Last week, Newsweek published a whole compendium of them headlined, “The Lies that Could Still Sink Brett Kavanaugh.” We’re not talking about little fibs here, or even Trump-style fictional hyperbole about whose crowds were bigger. We’re talking about down-and-dirty outright lies about matters ranging from the impeachment of a previous president, to Kavanaugh’s assistance in permitting the physical torture of human beings.

The entire bill of particulars warrants your attention, which you can give, if you haven’t already done so, by going here. But let me quote my two favorites:

1. May 9, 2006, SJC nomination hearing to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, response to Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL) and the late Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA), again about his knowledge of the “Memogate” emails.“I’m not aware of the memos, I never saw such memos that I think you’re referring to. I mean, I don’t know what the universe of memos might be, but I do know that I never received any memos and was not aware of any such memos.”Distance from the Truth: Kavanaugh made the denial under oath multiple times to committee members. Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), however, recently posted confidential emails on Twitter that he says were in Kavanaugh’s possession, proving his previous denials are, Leahy wrote, “just FALSE!” 

2. May 9, 2006, SJC hearing on Kavanaugh’s nomination to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, response to Senator Durbin (D-Ill.) about the judicial nomination of William Haynes, the Pentagon’s director of torture policy during the George W. Bush administration.
“I was not involved and am not involved in the questions about the rules governing detention of combatants or—and so I do not have the involvement with that.”
Distance from the Truth: Kavanaugh has since been doubly implicated, both in significant involvement with Haynes’ judicial confirmation for Bush and in having a hand in Bush detention and interrogation policies. Newly discovered emails from 2002 prove the former, Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) charged last month, and “show that Kavanaugh played a substantial role in the decision to nominate Haynes.”

The karma of Kavanaugh’s lies now lays in wait for him. It may be inactive for the moment. But sooner or later, both the Senate and House will have a Democratic majority. When that happens, Kavanaugh will almost assuredly be subject to the humiliation of impeachment and removal. Further, since perjury is involved, it is always possible that perjury charges may be brought against him.

Let him live with that while, the hot breath of Karma blowing in his ear, as he goes about attempting to undo everything civilized that has happened in the United States for over a century: Minority voting rights,  Obamacare,  Social Security, Medicare, birth control, abortion rights, voting rights, and who knows what else. He most certainly must know that Karma is half a pace behind him, waiting for the right moment to pounce.

And sooner or later, it will.